Eco Catastrophe in our lifetimes
Catastrophic warming 'in our lifetimes' - Met Office
Met Office warns of catastrophic global warming in our lifetimes
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/sep/28/met-office-study-global-warming
'Unchecked global warming could bring a severe temperature rise of 4C within many people's lifetimes, according to a new report for the British government that significantly raises the stakes over climate change.The study, prepared for the Department of Energy and Climate Change by scientists at the Met Office, challenges the assumption that severe warming will be a threat only for future generations, and warns that a catastrophic 4C rise in temperature could happen by 2060 without strong action on emissions.'
A Met Office study for the British government has challenged the assumption that a severe temperature rise will be a threat only for future generations, warning that unchecked global warming could bring a temperature rise of 4C within the lifetime of those living today. The report prepared by Met Office scientists for the Department of Energy and Climate Change warns that, without strong action on carbon emissions, a catastrophic 4C rise in temperature could happen by 2060. Since the early eighties, deniers have frequently sought to kick the climate issue into the long grass. When will this be an issue, President Reagan asked his scientific advisors. In 30 years came the response. Come back in 30 years Reagan laughed. The joke’s on us. We are now in the long grass. There is no hiding place left. There is nowhere left to run. It’s time to think like hedgehogs and act like foxes, to think globally and act locally – and vice versa.
The Met Office claim significantly raises the stakes over climate change, and it is plain that we are betting our lives on the outcome. Richard Betts, the head of climate impacts at Met Office Hadley Centre, spells out the stark implications. "We've always talked about these very severe impacts only affecting future generations, but people alive today could live to see a 4C rise." He directly challenges those who will shout ‘eco-alarmism’ without even checking the evidence. "People will say it's an extreme scenario, and it is an extreme scenario, but it's also a plausible scenario."
The implications of a 4C increase are serious, threatening the water supply of half the world's population and wiping out up to half of animal and plant species, and swamp low coasts. The problem is even worse when one analyses the specifics within the broad picture. The impact is not evenly distributed, with some areas affected much more than others. According to the Met Office report, a 4C average would mask more severe local impacts, with the Arctic and western and southern Africa experiencing a warming of up to 10C.
The Met Office study updates the findings of the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had claimed that, if greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise, the world would probably warm by 4C by 2100. The IPCC report had presented a more severe scenario, with emissions and temperatures rising further as a result of more intensive fossil fuel burning. That scenario was not considered realistic in 2007. It is considered realistic now. According to Betts, "that scenario was downplayed because we were more conservative a few years ago. But the way we are going, the most severe scenario is looking more plausible."
A report from the UN Environment Programme presents evidence that shows emissions since 2000 to have risen faster than even the IPCC worst-case scenario. "In the 1990s, these scenarios all assumed political will or other phenomena would have brought about the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by this point. In fact, CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel burning and industrial processes have been accelerating."
Hilariously, as the evidence for AGW and its consequences firms up, climate change deniers continue to trot out the old line that the climate science is increasingly discredited. As depressing as the fact that these claims can still be made is, even more depressing is the fact that so many are inclined to believe them. As Freud lamented, all the science in the world can’t alter the fact that, ultimately, people will believe what they want to believe. If Freud is right, and "our unconscious will murder even for trifles,” then imagine what the rich and powerful would do to hold on to their wealth and power, and imagine what the cowardly and the dependent would do to serve that wealth and power. (P Roazen Freud Political and Social Thought 1969 ch 4). Plain head-in-the-ground stupidity like this will doom the human race.
The computer models used by the IPCC in 2007 were updated by the Met Office scientists to include the carbon feedbacks or tipping points which occur as warmer temperatures release more carbon, such as from soils. When the models for the extreme IPCC scenario were run, the scientists found that a 4C rise could come by 2060 or 2070, depending on the feedbacks.
The claim that it can happen is not a claim that it will happen. This is how deniers attempt to ridicule the scenarios presented by scientists by reducing them to hard and fast predictions of inevitabilities. The Club of Rome predictions didn’t come true, therefore, claim the critics, predictions can be distrusted and ignored. Something will turn up. We will adapt. Human ingenuity will find a way. Precisely. The intention is to spur a change in human behaviour and is to appeal to human inventiveness in avoiding outcomes that are only inevitable in the absence of human action. It’s called foresight, human beings’ greatest attribute in the struggle against global warming. The scientists are arguing for the checking of global warming. The catastrophic 4C temperature rise accompanies an unchecked global warming, the result of the human failure to act appropriately.
My old history teacher used to emphasise that nothing is inevitable in history, nothing written in the history books that we studies was certain to happen the way it did. Behind the events recorded in the history books are living, acting, thinking, choosing individuals. Things could have been different. There are always alternative possibilities. And that applies to us now. History can explain the past and can help us to understand the present, but it cannot determine the future, that is our responsibility as creative, conscious agents. We need to affirm our freedom as self-determinism against any determinism within long term historical trends and tendencies.
Thus, Betts emphasises: "It's important to stress it's not a doomsday scenario, we do have time to stop it happening if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon." To avoid a 2C increase in temperature, soaring emissions must peak and start to fall sharply within the next decade, Betts states. To avoid a catastrophic 4C rise, that peak must come by the 2030s.
So, a prediction is not an inevitability, it is a call to action. The longer governments and governed take to mobilise resources and act effectively, the more a predicted outcome will become inevitable. Scientists can only project on the basis of trends and tendencies; they cannot factor in the radical indeterminacy of human agency – that is a matter of politics and ethics, and that is our responsibility.
It is becoming increasingly clear that a substantial number of scientists expect a temperature rise of 3C-4C by the end of the twenty first century. Statements issued through official bodies tend to the overly conservative, and are still met with cries of ‘eco-alarmism’. The real situation may well be much, much worse.
The implications of a 4C rise on agriculture, water supplies and wildlife are frankly terrifying. Mark New, a climate expert at Oxford, warns: "If we get a weak agreement at Copenhagen then there is not just a slight chance of a 4C rise, there is a really big chance. It's only in the last five years that scientists have started to realise that 4C is becoming increasingly likely and something we need to look at seriously."
Well, we got a weak agreement at Copenhagen and that was followed by the white flag of surrender at the Rio Earth summit.
The failure is not the failure of the scientists, it’s the failure of governments and the governed to show the necessary nerve and nous to act on the evidence. The extreme scenario can still be avoided if appropriate action is taken, the sooner the better. Limiting global warming to 2C could be achieved with an investment in new technologies designed to suck greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. The question is whether governments and governed have sufficient will and intelligence: As New comments, "I think the policy makers know that. I think there is an implicit understanding that they are negotiating not about 2C but 3C or 5C." These governments are accepting the worst and negotiating the terms of our eco-failure. They are cheating future generations out of their health and happiness, just to snatch a little more profit and pleasure for themselves in the little time that remains to them in the present.