I’m afraid I have more depressing news for you, in the form of two recent Australian reports and a very grim lecture on the future of coral reefs. None of them seem to have made any significant impact in the mainstream media, which seems to be hiding its head in the sand. It is possible that the steady accumulation of bad news is no longer newsworthy.

Firstly a report from Bertrand Timbal of the Bureau of Meteorology who in conjunction with the CSIRO has just completed a three year study into the correlation between global warming and the South Eastern Australian drought, which is now the driest in the 100 year record. You can read the 8 page report here or a good short description at here. Computer modelling shows that the increase in temperature is moving a high pressure system called the subtropical ridge further south, which is reducing the rainfall over south eastern Australia. Importantly without the warming the model does not show the extreme drought. A few quotes from Mr Timbal as reported in a small article in the SMH.

”It’s reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,” He also said that 80 per cent of the rain loss in south-east Australia could be attributed to the intensification of the subtropical ridge.

”In the minds of a lot of people the rainfall we had in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s was a benchmark. A lot of our [water and agriculture] planning was done during that time. But we are just not going to have that sort of good rain again as long as the system is warming up.”

Secondly John Veron, an Australian expert on corals gave a very bleak lecture at the Royal Society in London which you can see online here. He was introduced by Sir David Attenborough. It’s called “Is the Great Barrier Reef on Death Row?” and the contents make it clear that its considerably worse than that! There is synopsis here, and I extract a few quotes (my highlighting):-

He starts “This is not going to be a happy talk” and “I’ve never given a more important talk in my life”

In 25 years at 450 ppm, plus acidification, plus warmer temperature, there will be mass bleaching most years, which will mean very extensive habitat destruction which in turn will mean extinctions start.

In 50 years time at 600 ppm, plus further acidification, plus even warmer temperatures, plus sea level rise of 400 mms, we get the following:  no coral will occur shallower than 10 metres, calcification of anything will be marginal, extinctions will be extensive, reefs will be highly erosional, there will be no shallow water habitats, coralline algae which hold the reefs together won’t exist, there will be major impacts from sea-level rise and super-cyclones.  At that point we are heading for a mid-Eocene climate and accompanying extinctions. Certainly our carbon dioxide levels will not be as high as then, but we are increasing them so fast that the carbon dioxide is remaining in the surface skin of the oceans; it is not getting injected down into deep water where it can be buffered by the carbonates which will de-acidify water.

In 75 years from now at 800 ppm, plus further acidification effects, plus 5 degrees warming: some corals may survive in askeletal form, but there will be no reefs, molluscs will be in sharp decline and there will be huge biodiversity loss.

100 years ahead it will be runaway climate change which is producing the carbon dioxide. Corals will be extinct or askeletal, all other taxa will be going extinct, reefs will be wave-washed geological structures.  The sixth mass extinction, such as we had during the KT boundary (Cretaceous Tertiary) will be under way. “How can it not be?”  One ecosystem after another will tumble, an extinction not just of corals but led by corals.

A reminder towards the end: 450 ppm will bring on the demise of the Great Barrier Reef.  “Not a skerrick of doubt about it.”

Lastly a well written, concise (and frightening) policy paper written by Katherine Wells. The 19 page paper can be read here (thanks again to BraveNewClimate.com). She looks at whether 2 degrees of warming is dangerous, and tabulates the likely effects of one and up to two degrees on Australia.

Less than 1 degree

  • The loss of between 10 -40% of the snow-covered area in the Australian Alps
  • A 70% increase in droughts in NSW
  • An 18% increase in annual days above 35 degrees in South Australia, and a 25% increase in the NT.

Between 1 and 2 degrees

  • Murray-Darling river flows falling by 10 – 25%
  • A 7 – 35% decrease in Melbourne’s water supply
  • The bleaching of between 60 – 80% of the Great Barrier Reef every year
  • Significant species extinction in internationally significant environments in North Queensland and Western Australia
  • 1,200 – 1,400 more heat-related deaths per year in major population centres
  • An increase in the number of people at risk from dengue fever from 0.17 million to 0.75 – 1.6 million
  • An increase in peak electricity demand in Adelaide and Brisbane of 4 – 10%
  • An increase in the 100-year storm surge height around Cairns of 22%; the area flooded will double
  • A 25% increase in 100-year storm tides along the eastern Victoria coast.

Depressing isn’t it? It should serve to encourage us to do more, pester our politicians more, talk about the problem more, and hope for an effective Copenhagen.

Alastair Breingan

 

The UN’s Copenhagen climate summit planned for this December is widely acknowledged to be our last good chance of keeping global warming under 2 degrees, and therefore of avoiding runaway warming. Its therefore worthwhile reviewing just what should be asked of our politicians leading up to the event.

The majority of the warming is driven by CO2 and methane emissions. The latest figure from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii which has been monitoring CO2 since 1957 is 388ppm (July 2009), and it has been increasing at about 2.3ppm per year, with 400ppm considered a safe limit even though it represents a 25% chance of exceeding the 2 degree target.

We are already at a level that is likely to produce a total warming of 2 degrees, and so the simple answer is that we need global cuts of 60-80% and we need them now. This has virtually no chance of happening and so we are going to overshoot, and attempt to pull back emissions before warming gets too bad. Again quite obviously, this is like playing chicken with a semitrailer while riding a pushbike, and to have any chance at all of working we must make cuts as dramatic as possible. We definitely need global emissions to peak within 5 years.

The scheme world leaders are adopting to share out emissions cuts is called contraction and convergence which ends up with each person in the globe allowed to emit the same amount of CO2 at the end of the period (normally 2050). Therefore developing countries could continue to increase emissions until they are at that level. Note that this takes no notice of historical emissions which were due to the developed countries. As the world population is projected to rise almost 50% to 9 billion by 2050 each person’s slice of the pie will reduce over that period.

Its very easy for politicians to set targets for 2050, by which time they will be long gone, but 2020 targets are much trickier as they actually require real action within the term of the current government. Thus you tend to see ambitious targets for 2050 and weak ones for 2020.

The Kyoto protocol was intended to reduce developed countries emissions by 5.2% over 1990 levels by 2008-2012 and is widely considered to be very undemanding, so it is concerning that many of the Kyoto countries are nowhere near meeting their obligations. Spain, Portugal, Canada, Greece, New Zealand and Ireland are just some of the worst, and Australia would have no chance of meeting our 8% increase without the land use change provision, which seems very susceptible to manipulation. Furthermore Kyoto allows countries that have not reduced their emissions to buy credits from (usually) schemes in developing countries that reduce emissions. Many of these schemes also seem rather dubious and are unlikely to result in significant emissions reductions.

So we need considerably tougher targets than Kyoto while avoiding the problems which beset that treaty. We have the technology we need, though it needs to be scaled up, commercialised and the costs need to be considerably reduced. So far governments have mainly avoided thinking about the technological requirements and focused on setting a price on carbon, and hoping the market will do the rest. They conveniently ignore the sorry tale of what happened in Europe when this was tried. Simply put the market “gamed” the system, found the loopholes and maximised profits while minimising costs. That after all is what companies are set up to do.

The existing energy companies are massively dependent on fossil fuels and have very little expertise or interest in renewable energy. They are therefore not likely to change unless they see they have no choice in the matter, and the new rules must be as simple as possible to avoid loopholes. This unfortunately is a matter for individual countries to address, and the industry friendly political systems in most of the western world make it very difficult to accomplish rapid change.

The other major problem in any international agreement results from each government trying to support their balance of trade, which again leads to various exceptions where the rules become unclear and subject to political pressure from the major companies.

Though it is still considered very gauche to mention it, population growth is a very major factor affecting future emissions, especially as development increases the per capita energy use. A recent study shows that having a child far outweighs all of the energy saving activities currently popular.

A successful Copenhagen agreement would in my view deliver the following:-

  • Reductions of about 40% by 2020 from a 1990 base for developed counties.
  • A simple system that penalises heavy emitters and rewards reductions, without the complexity that rewards financial engineering.
  • At least 80% of reductions (ideally more) should be achieved within each country rather than being outsourced.
  • A fair way of calculating emissions due to exports. For example roughly 30% of China’s emissions are caused by exports. These should be at least partly counted against the importing country, though this will be difficult without opening up further loopholes. While I can’t find any good numbers on this for Australia I suspect we are also significantly affected.
  • A significant amount of money should be made available to developing countries to assist in reducing emissions. Forestry schemes in particular could be very valuable, but again they need to represent lasting change and be verifiable.
  • Developing countries whose emissions rise above the per capita cap (on a reducing scale towards the 2050 target) should be required to make some cuts to emissions. Ideally there should be incentives offered for developing countries who keep population growth under projected levels.
  • UN Reviews should be conducted during the period (for example in 2015 and 2018) and some penalties (probably tariff related) imposed if countries are not making progress, with harsh international trade penalties applied to those that don’t meet their reductions by 2020.

     

We must keep the global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha