Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
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The Climate Change Emergency is Upon Us and Time is Short |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2016-05-23
Summary Many recent scientific observations (see list below) reveal that exceedingly adverse climate changes are occurring today much sooner or to a much greater extent than have earlier been predicted—and much sooner and more than most politicians seem to be aware. This means that the urgency to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to zero is far more urgent today than seemed to be suggested only a decade ago. How Much Time Do We Have? Most people today know that global warming / climate change (GWCC) presents a grave danger to all life on earth, and to humankind and its civilizations in particular. And most people also know that, today, there is only one way known to avert climate catastrophe: ending all human burning of fossil fuels and otherwise reducing the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). Where people differ is on the question of urgency—how soon we must get to (or very near to) zero emissions of GHGs, how soon we must cease to burn fossil fuels. Some people believe that we have a long time, maybe until 2050 or even 2070, to get to what I shall call ”Zero Emissions Day”. Others believe that we have at best a short time to achieve “ZE”. How Much Time Is There? Not Much! This essay presents the view that our time is actually far shorter than people generally believe, and that everyone, and especially politicians charged with working for the safety of humankind, should become energized to fight GWCC on an immediate, urgent, high intensity basis. The time for yesterday’s dilly-dallying is over. This is for two reasons: [1] inadequate (previous) “modeling” of the climate system and [2] the utter failure of mankind, despite warnings since 1950, to shut-down the use of fossil fuels. There are, indeed, a few signs that the scientific “models” (computer programs which have been developed by climate scientists over 25 years) have not predicted some recently observed consequences of GHG emission. The “models” are thus, to a small degree, inadequate or out of date, so that any planning to avert climate change —by getting to Zero Emissions of greenhouse gases— which is based solely on those “models” will be too little and too late. But next to such (small) failures by scientists to predict the perils of GWCC adequately, the failures by society to cutback GHG emissions in a prudent and timely fashion, even according to the earlier scientific warnings, has been enormous, grotesque, over-the-top, in a word, suicidal. When scientists predicted the future of the earth’s climate system years ago, they laid out various scenarios for how the climate would respond (as the years went by) depending on the degree to which humankind—more or less following scientific advice—subsequently limited GHG emissions, You know, if mankind limited GHG emissions severely, climate change would be bad but not too bad. If mankind limited GHG emissions only somewhat, climate change would be much worse. And if mankind limited GHG emissions only a little, the resulting climate change would be dreadful. But humankind’s failure to limit GHG emissions even slightly has put climate change off the charts. Call the result of human behavior over the last 20 years catastrophic. The reasons for the failures by the world’s governments may be characterized as either: [a] culpable failure to understand what scientists have been saying for years, a failing that might charitably be called: urgency unrealized.; and [b] deliberate refusal to admit the truth of what the scientists have been saying, “climate-denial”, which might also be be called urgency denied. Why Do I Take This View? Until recently, there has been a good correspondence between current observations of climate facts and the predictions made by climate “models”—the computer programs which make climate predictions based on past climate facts. Recently, however, current climate observations (current climate facts) have begun to diverge from what is predicted by the models. That is, today we are seeing importantly adverse climate facts that were not predicted, or not predicted to occur until many years later. The upshot? Disaster is coming faster and sooner than expected. Why Does This Matter? It matters because politicians and other planners have thought that they had a long time during which to reduce human emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) to near zero, whereas, as it now appears, they (and we) have almost no time at all. It is our job as citizens to demand immediate, urgent, and massive action from our governments. We must wake our politicians from their comfortable sleep. It also means that those who hear this message must play a role in making sure that all people understand the seriousness of the emergency, the importance of getting to ZE-Day, and the possibility of getting to ZE-Day if we all cooperate. Now I may be quite wrong about this; and I hope I am. But these days I far too frequently read reports of recent climate observations and recent climate events which seem to me to be inconsistent with the “we have all the time in the world” attitude toward getting to ZE-Day which is implied by the near do-nothing behavior of the national and most state governments in the USA. What follows is my evidence. My intention is to continue to update this list as long as makes sense to me to do so. What Is The Evidence That Catastrophic Climate Change Is Approaching Sooner Than Predicted—Due to Incomplete Modeling and Culpably Human Failure to Limit GHG Emissions? The items listed below are from the internet. Although some items may merely be “bad news”—bad but not inconsistent with the models in use 2000-2016—most of the following items, however, seem to me to signal grave deficiencies in the existing models (the models upon which the Paris 2015 agreements were reached) and—far worse—to signal grave danger if humankind does not soon achieve ZE-Day. ● On 9/28/2016 we read: Point of No Return: Earth Reaches 400ppm Threshold Permanently. September’s carbon dioxide output failed to drop below 400 parts per million (ppm) despite historically being the year’s low point for CO2 emissions, which means the Earth has very likely passed that symbolic climate threshold forever.Remember those long-ago days when people were (still) trying to prevent the earth from reaching 350 ppm? GWCC is not just about what happens (cause and effect) when GHGs increase. It is overwhelmingly about what people actually do, that is, do to increase or decrease GHG emissions. And what people are actually doing, as far as I can see, to reduce emissions to zero (to “get to Zero-Emissions-Day” (ZE-Day) so to speak as quickly as possible) is—nothing. Things continue to get worse, The “ppm” score-card continues to rise like basketball scores, as if that were a good thing. Humankind—so it seems to me—is committing suicide and omnicide, something like biocide. And the USA has chosen to be a leader of the parade. Perhaps I’m wrong. But, if today:400, then tomorrow: what? And, always remember: GWCC operates like a ratchet with a builtin delay. The accumulation of GHGs only increases (in timescales of interest to today’s humankind) (that’s the “ratchet”) but the price-or-penalty the earth has to pay for rising GHGs is always in the fairly distant future (that is, 10 or 20 or 50 years away), too far in the future for a lot of people to understand that there is a serious price-or-penalty we all must pay for today’s inaction in getting to ZE-Day. So, getting to ZE-Day will not reduce the level of GHGs in the atmosphere. It will merely stop it from growing. There is no advantage to the health of the earth and the oceans (and the people who depend on them) to delaying getting to ZE-Day, but a big price-or-penalty which grows each day, each month, each year that we fail to get to ZE-Day. ● On 9/10/2016 we read that: Soaring Ocean Temperature ‘Greatest Hidden Challenge’ We perhaps haven’t realised the gross effect we are having on the oceans, we don’t appreciate what they do for us. We are locking ourselves into a future where a lot of the poorer people in the world will miss out.” ● On 8/192016 we read that: Smallpox could return as Siberia’s melting permafrost exposes ancient graves. No-one thought that the melting of the arctic permafrost could uncover the graves of people who’d died of anthrax and smallpox and thereby release into the world a disease (smallpox) thought to have been eradicated. Spores of potentially fatal anthrax from dead people and reindeer that had been entombed in the permafrost are already thought to have infected 24 patients currently in hospital in Salekhard near Russia’s north coast.. ● On 6/2/2016 we read in NewsWeek None of the permafrost thawing beneath millions of lakes across the Arctic is accounted for in global predictions about climate change—it’s “a gap in our climate modeling,” says Katey Walter Anthony, a University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher who studies permafrost thaw across Alaska and Siberia. She’s become famous in certain circles for finding methane bubbling up beneath the ice in frozen-over permafrost lakes, cutting a hole ice-fishing style and lighting the highly flammable gas on fire, sending up a column of flames 10 feet high.And methane released from melting permafrost is one of the largest threats of a sudden and enormous “positive feedback” whereby warming causes an event (here melting of permafrost) and that event causes more warming. ● On 5/20/2016, the hottest temperature ever recorded was experienced in India: “temperatures soared to 123.8 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday”. This appears to have been an exceptional event, not predicted by most climate models. ● On 5/19/2016 it was reported that Abnormal Arctic ice season may signal abrupt climate change. Summary: • A so-called “Blue-Ocean Event” — a period during the melt season with less than 1 million square kilometers (a little over 386,100 square miles) of Arctic sea ice — was not expected to occur until 2070 to 2100 by most science modeling projections of the early 21st Century. • Recent polar ice observations, however, indicate extreme loss of volume. Daily sea ice loss rates since late April 2016 have averaged about 75,000 square kilometers (about 29,000 square miles) per 24 hours, resulting in continuously record low levels. • Many climate scientists now project the first “Blue-Ocean Event” within a decade or less. Some experts speculate it may even occur during the melt season of 2016. This article also links to this video of James Hansen discussing the impact of ice melt. Unhappily, except for announcing frightening news (in plain English), much of this video is (in my opinion) likely to be understandable only to scientists. It’s clearest result is his finding that the models used for many years (and still) are not consistent with the more frightening events being seen in actuality. ● On 5/20/2016, we are advised that Antarctica’s Totten Glacier is ready to melt, flow into the sea, and raise world sea-level by 11 feet. This is reported as previously unexpected, thus not merely the ordinary day-by-day run of bad news of GWCC but a surprise warranting quicker and more urgent response by the world’s governments. The article says the danger will be realized if the temperature warms by more than 2°C but doesn’t make clear if that means average earth surface temperature or the local (Antarctic) temperature. The last time the glacier melted, boosting sea levels tremendously, was during the Pliocene epoch, 3 millions years ago, when temperatures were 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than they are now, and CO2 levels in the atmosphere were 400 parts per million (ppm), Siegert noted. ● On 5/3/2016, we saw this headline: “Florida Reefs Are Dissolving Much Sooner Than Expected”, coral reefs dissolving when the ocean water becomes more acidic, as it does when (as after 1800) it absorbs more carbon dioxide from the air. The warning here is that this dissolution is occurring sooner than anticipated. This means that, as in many other cases, the scientific community’s models (anticipations) of changes due to climate change (global warming) were underestimating the speed of changes. ● On 4/15/2016 a world temperature graph was published which showed not only a steep rise in temperatures but showed most recent temperatures above the long-term trend line for occasional high-point “outliers”, suggesting (but not of course “showing”) that the observed temperature rise is on a new and steeper track. Worth keeping an eye on. If this is true, the world is in far worse shape than has long been thought—bad as the situation has been thought! ● On 4/15/2016,we read that the Greenland ice melt is far, far more extreme than climate scientists had dreamed that it would be: Much warmer than normal temperatures for months on end have meant that for much of the frozen north, there essentially wasn’t a winter this year. In late December, parts of the Arctic were briefly warmer than Texas, southern California, and the Sahara. All across the Arctic, temperatures have shattered records and are causing scientists to scratch their heads. ● On 4/9/2016 we read: A severe food and water crisis is fast spreading in Mindanao and the rest of the Philippines in the wake of what scientists say maybe the most severe El Niño episode on record. Global warming and climate change has been generating not only super typhoons but also super-El Niños. The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) issued a warning early last year that there would be 34 provinces affected by El Niño by March 2016 and 68 provinces by April. On 4/7/2016, we learned that scientific “models” of the climate system had erred by assuming that clouds reflected more, even much more, heat back into outer space than they in fact do. This means that the earth will be absorbing more heat, day-by-day, than earlier thought and the much-desired-to-be-avoided 1.5°C is approaching faster than earlier thought. ● On 3/24/2016, we learned that a long-held assumption of climate science—that soil (or “land”), which acts as a net “sink” of CO(((SB₂SB))), overall reduces GHG emissions and thus fights GWCC—is not true today, due to human interventions. It has been found that due to emissions of methane and nitrous oxides from cattle, fertilisers, manure, and agriculture, the terrestrial biosphere is actually accelerating climate change rather than slowing it. ● On 3/23/2016 we heard that the USA is releasing so much methane (CH(((SB₄SB)))) (and very much more than EPA had heretofore admitted) that these leaks wipe out all the progress cutting down CO(((SB₂SB))) that the Obama Administration had made. Some surprise! Another sign that we’d better get very, very busy. ● On 2/26/2016, we read that scientists now estimate that we may safely burn only 1/2 as much fossil fuels as previously thought, greatly shortening the already short time we have left to get to zero-emissions. ● On 2/28/2016, we read that the moving of sea creatures away from the equator as the seas warm up—is happening faster than earlier thought. “For the species that we have really good data on where they’ve lived historically over the past 100 years, we’re seeing about half of those have actually moved where they live, which is an astonishing number given we’ve only had one degree centigrade warming,” she said. The East Australian Current has moved 350 kilometres further south in the past 60 years. If scientists keep finding surprises which imply that global warming is happening faster than (or earlier than) anticipated, then the “deadline” earlier thought to be 2050 may have to be reset to 2030. |
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