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Hi Byron I agree that the greatest inertia now is the socio economic political inertia. When we face even the slightest risk of irreversible global climate catastrophe, it is up to the experts to prove that the risk doesn't exist- not to the advocates of global environmental health protection to prove that the consequence is certain. This precautionary approach is recognised in the standard risk assessment formula of risk equals probability times magnitude of the consequence. Obviously the precautionary approach to provide absolute protection to the food and health security of at least billions of people let alone the end of most life on Earth ( from intentional and unnecessary constant atmospheric greenhouse gas pollution ) is an unconditional moral imperative. Now it is really far too late in the day to to be communicating the realities of global climate catastrophe as risk - which I have been trying to do for the past many years. Not to make the connection between the record loss of Arctic albedo and the extraordinary extent and severity of Northern hemisphere drought would neither be intelligent nor moral. The most obvious reason for that is if the connection is not made or the connection is rejected there will be no recognition of the emergency and no preparation even, for an emergency response. First I want to point out that there is scientific agreement based on the climate crop models (that fail to capture about half of the multiple adverse effects from global warming and climate change) that food productivity will have declined below today's baseline at a global temperature increase of 3° C from preindustrial. This means that above a temperature of 3° C civilisation would eventually almost certainly collapse. The IPCC 2007 reported that world food output is at risk at a global temperature increase from pre preindustrial of 1.5° C. Prof Kevin Anderson seems to have appreciated this point when in 2009 he made a public statement that above a global warming of 4° C almost all of the human population would perish. Back to inertia - according to Climate Interactive the combined national emissions policy proposals that have been formally lodged with the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change commit us to a global temperature increase of 4.5° C by 2100 (even if all proposals were probably carried out). The reports we have this year show there is no sign of these proposals being carried out. An increase of 4.5° C by 2100, because of the ocean heat lag, is a commitment over the centuries following 2100 of at least 8° C. Since 2008 even the International Energy Agency (that was set up to keep the oil flowing around the world) has been warning that without strong national and international interventions the world was headed for a warming of 6° C by 2100, which is an eventual full term commitment of at least 11° C. In its 2007 world energy outlook the IEA warned that if there were strong interventions by 2015 we would be locking ourselves into a 6° C warming by 2100 due to investments in fossil fuel energy exploitation and infrastructure. Further on the issue of inertia- the absolute minimum contemplated for an emergency emissions response results in a warming of another 4.0° C which right from the start commits us to 1.2° C. The majority of the published science only contemplates a virtual zero emissions reduction until the end of the century- much more warming. The latest assessment we have on the delayed ocean heat lag is from the National Research Institute's 2010 Climate Stabilisation Targets which says that the lag almost doubles the realised or transient temperature increase this century. The NRC table for 1.2° C has a lag of another 1.2 and so we are now at a committed 2.4° C. We cannot stabilise atmospheric carbon dioxide or temperature without zero carbon emissions, and that means unmasking the fossil fuel air pollution deferred additional warming from the aerosol cooling, which is recorded in the science at a low of 0.4° C - the IPCC records a paper giving 0.8C and the recent research indicates it at around 1° C. Taking the 0.4 we are now at a commitment of 2.8° C. On top of all this is the incurred additional warming from climate system feedbacks. According to the IPCC data of feedback climate system carbon feedback response to a warming of 2.8° C is 0.7° C, just to 2100. This excludes the largest feedbacks which are the Arctic methane feedbacks. However even without considering Arctic methane we have a committed warming today of 3.5° C. At a global temperature increase of 4° C the IPCC assessed that up to 70% of species would be at risk of eventual extinction. As this was the impact of global climate change alone and not the real world impact of global climate change impacting on top of what is regarded as the sixth mass extinction event of life- it is safest to assume that for degrees C means the extinction of 70% of species. At just 1.5° C temperature increase the IPCC assessed up to 30% of species committed to eventual extinction. We don't have a number from the scientists on the long feared increased rate of warming from the combined combined positive Arctic feedbacks of the loss of albedo cooling, peat rich wetlands warming, permafrost thawing and destabilising subsea methane hydrate. Enough to say they are bound to greatly boost the use warming numbers. The Arctic planetary reality is that because all planetary methane feedbacks are operant and the summer Arctic sea ice is past its tipping point (T Lenton) that we are in a climate change runaway situation- that is an extreme risk to the survival of almost all life. There is alarming evidence that important tipping points, leading to irreversible changes in major ecosystems and the planetary climate system, may already have been reached or passed. Climate Climate feedback systems and environmental cumulative effects are building across Earth systems demonstrating behaviours we cannot anticipate. The potential for runaway greenhouse warming is real and has never been more present. UNEP 2009 and 2010 A 2008 paper by Kevin Anderson and Bows (Reframing the climate change challenge in the light of post-2000 emissions trends) is consistent with this calculation of committed 3.5° C. Ultimately, the latest scientific understanding of climate change allied with current emission trends and a commitment to ‘limiting average global temperature increases to below 4C above pre-industrial levels’, demands a radical reframing16 of both the climate change agenda, and the economic characterization of contemporary society. The evidence therefore from multiple approaches to the situation today is that all of humanity and life are now in a state of dire committed climate change planetary emergency. The moral imperative of all time is to acknowledge this emergency and demand a response to it from our morally handicapped governments. Without crying from the rooftops that the Earth and humanity are in a state of emergency there can be no budging the inertia. I must commend the faith groups as being far ahead of our other institutions in recognising and trying to communicate the fact that Earth is in peril. May peace be with you Peter Carter -----Original Message----- From: Byron Smith Sent: Friday, July 27, 2012 1:16 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: On Greenland and writing to your MP about Tory electricity market 'reforms' Hi Peter and all, "If the methane emissions are not stopped obviously total planetary climate runaway catastrophe is inevitable." With respect, would you read my post from July 16 (https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=CRISIS-FORUM;ce7d421.1207) and answer some of the questions there? As I said back then, I don't doubt that Arctic methane is indeed a nasty problem that is very likely to exacerbate an already potentially overwhelming unfolding climate catastrophe by ensuring elevated methane levels (and contributing to rising CO2 levels), but I haven't yet seen a credible geophysical mechanism capable of delivering thawing methane to the atmosphere fast enough for a methane spike. "The loss of Arctic summer sea ice albedo has already been projected in the published science to lead to increased Northern hemisphere drought together with the increased climate variability and other extreme events." Can you point to the literature linking NH drought with Arctic sea ice albido? Is this the idea that declining sea ice contributes to a higher amplitude of jet stream waviness and thence to a higher likelihood of loops getting "stuck" (blocking event)? "global climate food security catastrophe is here- ultimate human crisis." The food security catastrophe has been here for decades and longer for many in Africa, the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent and other regions with a combination of extreme poverty and ineffective governance. Climate change is indeed a serious threat to food security, though the picture is complex as it also involves other important factors such as biofuels policy, agricultural subsidies, water stress, market speculation, government corruption, global inequality and much else besides. The supermarkets of Iowa are not going to have empty shelves as a result of this drought, but it is indeed a very worrying continuation of disturbing trends and a further illustration of the kinds of threats that are likely to worsen in the absence of major structural improvements of various kinds. The point is that while climate change is a key threat multiplier and has a very insidious temporal lag rendering it too slow to match the horizons of political and business leaders but too fast to be comfortably ignored, it is not the only problem here. Disasters such as droughts, floods, famines and fires are hugely complex interactions of ecological, climatological, (geo)political, social, cultural and economic systems. "Because this drought is the result of the Arctic albedo loss feedback caused by global warming and the albedo loss is only going to get worse every summer we can only expect the drought to get worse." In general, over the long term globally, this is likely true. But does this mean that next year the US will experience worse drought than this year? I don't think we have much reason to expect that with a particularly high degree of confidence, not least because we are apparently heading into El Niño conditions. So we'd expect wetter than average Americas and drier than average Australia (speaking very simplistically), and higher than average global temps (i.e. higher than the underlying trend). It's important to note that the fact that we are rolling more high numbers (and some incredibly high numbers previously unexperienced), doesn't mean that there are not still weather dice to be rolled or that low numbers might not still pop up. I found this discussion and extrapolation of the "climate dice" analogy to be particularly useful. http://planet3.org/2012/07/20/craps/ "It's going get worse in any case because it's happening in today's global warming of 0.8° C and where absolutely committed to 3 times this warming- I make it a definite fourfold increase." It's important to distinguish between commitments in geophysical and political/economic/infrastructural senses. While it is true that thermal inertia of the oceans means we are geophysically committed to something like another 0.6ºC and while our mild unwitting solar radiation management in the form of aerosols from forest fires, wood stoves and un(der)regulated coal plants (esp in the emerging Asian economies) is possibly masking up to another 1ºC more (estimates on this vary quite a bit), these commitments are very different from the inertia in our human systems. Such inertia can take the form of sunk costs. Once a piece of infrastructure is built, it is unlikely to be "stranded" (retired early before its economic return has been maximised) and so the IEA has warned that by 2017 on our current trajectory, the infrastructure will be in place to ensure that - once it is used to continue emissions over the next five or six decades - we breeze past 2ºC. There is also political inertia, such that policy changes require a cycle of elections, mandates, debates, lobbying, legislating and implementing that can last years. Yet let us note that the thermal inertia of the oceans is different in kind to the solar masking from aerosols. Thermal inertia is heat energy already in the oceans that has yet to work its way into the atmosphere and will do so basically whatever we do. Solar masking is an (uncontrolled and already massively dangerous) form of proto-geoengineering that can mask further risks for as long as it is continued. Unfortunately, the current costs of doing so include the respiratory health of billions of people (esp in Asia). The costs to the public health budgets of major populations are estimated to run easily into the trillions annually. This proto-geoengineering is shortening and worsening the lives of millions and millions of people. It is worth noting that the dangers to respiratory health are largely due to (a) the fact that the a significant amount of the smallest of particles (PM 2.5) occur at ground level where they lodge in lungs and (b) the various toxins (mercury, etc.) released by coal and biomass combustion and so the kind of deliberate solar radiation management proposed by some on this list would not have these effects (though it may well have a variety of others: tropospheric ozone depletion, disruption of the hydrological cycle and acid rain being three of the most serious known unknowns). If either our inadvertent or later deliberate solar radiation management programmes were ever to be interrupted (deliberately or otherwise), models suggest that the masked warming would appear with great and potentially devastating rapidity. This is not a mask we can take off easily or quickly. Furthermore, and even more importantly, both these forms of geophysical inertia are very different in kind to the various forms of inertia in the human systems. Human systems do not usually change overnight and so cultural, economic and political changes are slow. But they can. The usual example given is the transformation of the culture, economy and politics of allied nations during WWII, virtually overnight. Within a couple of years of the invasion of Poland, the UK had implemented widespread rationing, had a unity government and devoted vast quantities of economic output to the war effort, all without major civil unrest. After Pearl Habor, US manufacturers stopped making cars altogether, and within weeks were building tanks, boats and planes on a scale never before seen in human history. Obviously, there are some big differences between the threats posed by National Socialism/Japanese imperialism on the one hand and ecological/climate threats on the other. The former are visible, concrete, located, immediate, personal and easily imagined. The latter are cumulative, disparate, largely invisible (appearing only in the graphs of aggregate data compiled over vast distances and long time periods), impersonal, global and with much more complex indirect causal paths. And so cultivating sufficient political will to fight Hitler is a different kettle of fish to cultivating sufficient political will to leave at least 80% of our fossil fuel reserves in the ground while cutting consumption in rich nations to a fraction of present levels and building a new cleaner infrastructural base while developing resilience to already committed impacts and undertaking massive reforestation (and perhaps other forms of carbon sequestration - I'll let readers add solar radiation management to taste...). I'm not pretending this is either easy or likely (not least given the kind of spiritual and psychological insights outlined by Prof Macintosh in his excellent book), simply pointing out that it is technically possible in a way that stopping the thermal lag of the oceans is not. Technically possible, just politically impossible. Faced with a geophysical impossibility and a political impossibility, I know which impossibility I'd like to tackle, even if the chances of success are slim. Grace & peace, Byron Smith PhD candidate in moral theology University of Edinburgh