Physics Today has just run an unusually salient history of science article, The Discovery of Rapid Climate Change, which among much else focuses on how rapidly the research community’s perception of the risks of rapid climate change is changing. Got that And note that a longer article, focusing on rapid one-way climate shifts, is available here.
The London Guardian Draws Conclusions
If the WMO press release is too understated for your taste, try the articles that George Monbiot and John Vidal have been publishing in the Guardian recently. Particularly notable are:
* Monbiot’s Shadow of Extinction which presents evidence that the great Permian extinction may have been caused by a mere 6C degrees of climate change. (July 1st)
* Vidal’s Global Warming may be Speeding Up, which evocatively argues that this summer’s global drought/heatwave could indicate that the warming has already begun to accelerate. (Aug 6th)
* Monbiot’s With Eyes Wide Shut, which reviews some of the more terrifying of the recent science, and suggests that we are, perhaps, living in a dream. (Aug 12th) All three of these articles cite a recent workshop where top atmospheric scientists, including Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen and Bert Bolin, former chairman of the IPCC, concluded that the masking effect that aerosols are having on the warming could be far greater than previously thought, and that, therefore, the IPCC’s estimate of the “high end” danger could turn out to be far too low. For more on this, see First, the Bad News in the current issue of Climate Equity Observer.
The Big Wrap Up
This Strategic Assessment of the Kyoto-Marrakech System was jointly prepared by an impressive list of European climate policy researchers, gathered together under the “Climate Strategies” umbrella. You’ll definitely want to start with the (mercifully short) synthesis report and then, to drill deeper, download the underlying “modules” (why not just call them papers) from the British Centre for Energy Policy and Technology. All, curiously, except Benito Muller’s “Module 4” on Framing Future Commitments, which isn’t downloadable. Instead you get it (a free PDF) by emailing www.oxfordenergy.org (at information@oxfordenergy.org), and we, actually, recommend that you do. Take a special look at page 68, where Benito lays down his notion of the “twin taboos” (one Northern; one Southern) that underlie the current impasse, and at the appended comments (starting on page 123) by Anju Sharma of India’s Centre for Science and the Environment.
The Truth about McCain Lieberman
The Myth, of course, is that any serious effort to control emissions is bound to bankrupt us. The reality, as shown, once again, by two authoritative studies of the McCain Lieberman proposal, is far different.
The better known of the two is the Emissions Trading to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the United States: The McCain-Lieberman Proposal, better known as “The MIT study, which showed that the per-household “welfare loss” would typically be a mere $50 to $175 in 2010, rising to about $100 to $350 per household in 2020. And this, please note, was the original McCain Lieberman proposal, before it was watered down to win more vote.
Still, that would be enough to hurt the poor, so we felt better when the Tellus Institute released its Analysis of the Climate Stewardship Act. Tellus’ analysis, while entirely consistent with the MIT study, also assumed targeted policies designed to promote efficiency and renewables, and concluded that, in fact, net savings to consumers accrue from 2013, and would reach $48 billion annually in 2020.
Keep these studies in mind the next time you hear some blowhard from the Competitive Enterprise Institute sound off about the so-called economic realities.
Can we defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb?
In this fascinating, accessible presentation, James Hansen, one of our most respected climate scientists, argues that we’re much closer to “dangerous anthropogenic interference” than the IPCC’s work would suggest: “The dominant issue in global warming, in my opinion, is sea level change and the question of how fast ice sheets can disintegrate. A large portion of the world’s people live within a few meters of sea level, with trillions of dollars of infrastructure. The need to preserve global coast lines, I suggest, sets a low ceiling on the level of global warming that would constitute DAI.” The funny thing is the Hansen is still an optimist. Or, rather, he thinks we still have time. Just. This one is a must read.
World Meteorological Organization Warning
In the midst of the summer heat wave, the UN World Meteorological Organization issued an unusual press release that clearly ascribed recent extreme weather events to climate change. WMO cited record temperatures of over 40 degrees C in the South of France, a record number of tornadoes in the US, and pre-monsoon heat waves in India that were up to five degrees higher than average.
The New Apollo Project
There’ve been lots of efforts to form a “blue green” labor-environment coalition in the US, but none ever looked as promising as The Apollo Alliance, which just might have legs. Apollo’s focus is on creating jobs and energy independence, two goals that would benefit tremendously from an effective drive for renewables. And Apollo’s time, clearly, is right.
To be sure, there’s almost no attention given, in the Apollo frame, to either global warming or international justice, but that’s because Apollo is shooting for the moon, not the stars. And hey, it’s a first step. For more info, check out Apollo’s media center. Amanda Griscom’s Declaration of Energy Independence, originally from Grist Magazine, is a nice place to start.
Emissions Inequality Rising
Only fifteen percent of the population lives in the high-income countries, but they use 50 percent of the world’s energy and emit 50 percent of its anthropogenic CO2. These grim figures are not unfamiliar, but they are now corroborated by a UNFCCC analysis based on the increasingly sophisticated “national communications” required by the climate treaty. (June 2003)
The UNFCCC analysis, Rich countries see higher greenhouse gas emissions, lays out the news pretty clearly: the rich world, which stabilized its greenhouse gas emissions during the 1990s, will likely see these emissions rise again by the end of the current decade. Indeed, the combined emissions of Europe, Japan, the US and other highly industrialized countries could grow by 17% between 2000 to 2010, despite domestic measures currently in place to limit them.
Richard Heinberg’s “The Party’s Over, Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies”
by Richard Heinberg. (Gabriola Island, BC, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2003.)
The beer keg has run dry, only a few dispirited hors d’ouevres languish on the tray…The Party’s Over. In this important new book, Richard Heinberg argues that the end of the biggest party of all, the fossil fuel gala, is in sight. Basing his argument on the work of geophysicist M. King Hubbert, who accurately predicted that U.S. crude-oil production would peak between 1966 and 1972 (the actual peak year was 1970), Heinberg draws on a contemporary “roster of Cassandras” in petroleum research to suggest that global fossil-fuel liquid extraction rates could peak as early as 2006, depending on how quickly the world economy grows. In the process he effectively debunks the rosy visions of well paid cornucopians like Bjrn Lomborg, whose 2001 book The Skeptical Environmentalist was greeted enthusiastically by the business community and journals like The Economist. He also argues, and quite convincingly, that Iraq War II was, finally, about oil: the Bush administration, according to Heinberg, knew about the predicted peak through its access to oil-insider information like that provided by Petroconsultants, and acted to secure one of the largest oil reserves on the planet so that no one else would get there first. Continue reading “Richard Heinberg’s “The Party’s Over, Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies””
A CEO Interview: Michael Grubb
Michael Grubb is one of our best known international climate policy analysts. Currently at the Royal Institute for International Affairs and at University College, London, Grubb has written on all aspects of the climate problem, focusing especially on issues of equity, emissions trading, and European leadership.
This interview was conducted on December 30 2002 (we were still in the shadow of COP8) by Paul Baer and Tom Athanasiou of EcoEquity. It’s been a while, we know, but we’ve been busy, and there was that war… And, actually, Michael’s comments are only more interesting for the delay. Continue reading “A CEO Interview: Michael Grubb”