The International Climate Assessment
January 2013
US scientists warn of dire effects of global warming. A new report by the International Climate Assessment team of 240 scientists demonstrates the extent to which climate change is already having a profound impact. (13 Jan 2013).
US scientists in fresh alert over effects of global warming
US National Climate Assessment reveals that severe weather disruption is going to be commonplace in coming years
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jan/12/us-scientists-effects-global-warming
Climate Change Already Profoundly Affecting Americans – Report
https://climatechangereports.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/climate-change-already-profoundly-affecting-americans-report/
Climate change deniers have exploited the irreducible complexity and hence unpredictability of the climate system to the maximum. Of course, predictions and forecasts made by climate scientists are prone to error, of course the climate deviates from the best our scientific reasoning can do to anticipate it. But, of course, the question is not one of predictability, reason and control at all. The best predictions are designed to be self-falsifying or self-fulfilling. In the case of climate change, the point of pointing to the looming eco-catastrophe is to encourage human beings to see the error of their ways and modify their behaviour accordingly. Such predictions affirm the conscious, creative capacity of human agency to change behaviour and alter outcomes.
The space for creative human agency is narrowing all the time, shifting the balance away from human self-determination and making a ruthless, amoral environmental determinism all the more inescapable. We are moving beyond prediction. The effects of global warming are now being felt.
The draft version of the US National Climate Assessment (Jan 2013), written by US government scientists, states clearly that global warming is no longer a future condition but is already having a major impact on life in America. The US National Climate Assessment (draft version) reports observable facts rather than makes predictions – the everyday lives of Americans are now being profoundly effected by increasing storm surges, record heatwaves and intensive rainfall, intensifying droughts and extensive floods, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and permafrost. It’s all happening, breaking records, and wreaking havoc. In the words of the report: "Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington state and maple syrup producers have observed changes in their local climate that are outside of their experience."
The impact is being felt on a number of fronts, straining health services, water supplies, farming, transport and infrastructure generally beyond breaking point. Super-storm Sandy, which battered the US east coast a few months ago, caused billions of dollars of damage. Climate change deniers still dominate US politics, but the insurance companies are reading the financial riot act. Increasing environmental destruction on this scale cannot be fiscally sustained. National governments will be bankrupted long before the environment finally implodes. Finances will go before the ecology. The problem is not going to go away. The US report makes it clear that severe weather disruption is soon going to become the norm rather than the exception. And at a time when climate change deniers have bullied scientists into pulling their punches, it is worth emphasising that the authors of the report identify the cause of the climate crisis very clearly. "Global warming is due primarily to human activities, predominantly the burning of fossil fuels." That statement bears repetition. "It is due primarily to human activities, predominantly the burning of fossil fuel." The rise in temperature is the result of increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As air pollution worsens, wildfires increase, storm surges rise and insect-borne diseases spread, conflicts around ever more scarce resources intensifies. This is all so close on the horizon that it can already be seen and felt. The Earth is becoming hotter, drier, more unhealthy, more uncomfortable, more dangerous and more disaster-prone a whole lot sooner than has been anticipated.
It is time for effective, concerted, international political action. It is time to ignore the deniers.
The picture that the US report presents with respect to the effects of global warming is plain, direct and stark. The language is uncompromising and the message unambiguous. Versions of the word "threat" occur 198 times and versions of the word "disrupt" occur 120 times. To those who will shout ‘alarmist’, the assessment contains 1,146 pages and is meticulously researched. The authors of the report know the science and know the political implications of a careless statement. There should be no illusions about the impact of global warming upon the planet and no more time wasted on those engaging in denial for political reasons. They and the economic system they seek to protect are a busted flush. It’s long since been time to move them on. History has passed them by, they are not fit to control the new productive forces.
What makes the robustness of the language so striking is its contrast to the pusillanimous approach to the environment taken during the presidential campaign. Neither presidential candidate, neither Obama nor Mitt Romney, made a serious comment on climate change. Climate change affects every aspect of the life of every person on our planet today – yet, apart from comments from old stagers Clinton and Gore in light of hurricane Sandy, nothing of significance was said in the US presidential campaign. That says it all about the irrelevance of the conventional political realm – it’s merely the mouthpiece and rubber-stamper of the collapsing capital system.
The effects of global warming are now being felt directly in the US, the richest country on the planet, and have profound implications for every country on the planet. The assessment has implications for the whole of humanity, the lives of those living today as well as future generations.
In the international climate conferences, the richest nations in the world have been the ones most loathe to agree to strong and binding targets. Clearly, they felt that their wealth insulated them from the immediate impacts of global warming. Now the US, the world's richest economy, has started to feel financial strain of global warming, becoming increasingly fearful of its future impact. As more and more greenhouse gases are pumped into the atmosphere, even in the middle of the biggest economic crisis for eighty years, temperatures around the world continue to rise. The report concerning impacts in the US must chill the blood of other nations. It is plain that the whole planet faces a very uncertain future. Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, at the London School of Economics, makes precisely this point: "For those outside the US, this report carries a brutal message because it shows that even the world's leading economy cannot simply adapt to the impacts of climate change. The problem clearly needs concerted international action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to avoid the worst potential consequences."
"The report makes for sobering reading," says Professor Chris Rapley, of University College London. "Most people in the UK and US accept human-induced climate change is happening but respond by focusing attention elsewhere. We dismiss the effects of climate change as 'not here', 'not now', 'not me' and 'not clear'. This compelling new assessment by the US experts challenges all four comforting assumptions.”
Climate change is no longer a prediction, it’s a reality: it’s here, it’s now, it’s us and it’s clear. The scientists have done all that they can. It’s now a question of politics, of our willingness to act as citizens in a public realm, to be something more than atomistic, self-interested voters and consumers. We need to replace the current idiocracy with a genuine democracy. Only the individuals composing the demos are capable of doing that.
As Professor Rapley concludes: ‘The message is clear: now is the time to act."
Actually, the time to act was decades ago, but the hardball politics of climate change deniers, protecting the vested interests in the economy which is destroying the life support systems of the planet, got in the way of effective actions and policies. We need to sweep these characters away, along with the moribund, corrupt and wasteful economic system they support. It’s their world that is ending, their system that is in crisis, not ours.
The national climate assessment is required by law and is produced every four years by a team of 240 scientists. The language of the draft version is far more uncompromising than that contained in the two previous assessments from 2000 and 2009. For the past few years, climate change deniers have repeatedly claimed that the scientific case for AGW is increasingly unravelling. Not so. Quite the contrary, in fact. Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Centre at Texas Tech University and one of the authors of the report, states that "the bluntness reflects the increasing confidence we have in the science and day-to-day realities of climate change."
Climate change deniers frequently abuse climate scientists as ‘alarmists’. Well, the scientists are sounding the alarm and, as the US report details at length, there is plenty to be alarmed about – the runways of 13 American airports are threatened by inundation as a result of rising sea levels, the melting permafrost disrupting the landscape will cause billions of dollars’ worth of damage to Alaskan roads, pipelines, sewer systems, buildings and airports; "weeds, diseases, insect pests and other climate change-induced stresses" will all increase. And these are only some of the things in store.
It’s easy to be cynical. This is only the latest in a long, long line of warnings going back decades. It has always been said that dire predictions will never be sufficient to change behaviour. Only when the climate crisis is visibly happening (that is, when it’s too late), will attitudes change. Well, it’s happening. Governments have continually sought to kick the climate crisis into the long grass. Well, we are now into the long grass, and there is no longer any way that some parts of the Earth can shield themselves from the impact of climate change. There is an old Jewish curse, may you live in a house and die in every room. The US, the best room, on the top floor, of the house, is now feeling the effects of global warming. It’s time for action. We have left the world of predictions and alarms. "There is so much that is already happening today," argues Hayhoe. "This is no longer a future issue. It's an issue that is staring us in the face today."
We can make a start by finally telling climate change deniers to do their own research and put up their own science or shut up. If they fail to do either, we should just ignore them as time-wasters and get on with more important work. The uncompromising, unambiguous language of the US National Climate Assessment gives the lie to the climate change deniers. There is no doubt what lies behind the climate crisis. To repeat the words of the assessment: "It is due primarily to human activities, predominantly the burning of fossil fuel." If the climate change deniers can say otherwise, let them produce the scientific research and evidence. That call has been issued time and again. We have been this way many times before - the deniers claim that their voice has been suppressed and marginalised, they are given a platform, the mountain labours, and brings forth …. we don’t know and we need more research. The deniers seem to be looking for the invisible pixies who leave no trace in my magic garden. They want unlimited time to investigate.
There will now be a three-month period for comment, not only by scientists but by members of the public. The document will also be reviewed by the US National Academy of Sciences. Later this year, the final version will be published. It’s an open invitation to act as citizens, to engage in debate and help determine the future. As the world’s largest economy, the US is a massive emitter of greenhouse gases. Without a change in direction in the US, there is no prospect of cutting carbon emissions, stopping global warming, checking the melting of the Earth's icecaps, curtailing rising sea levels, or halting the increasing acidification of the oceans.
Given the well-organised and well-funded political opposition in the US to effective action on climate change, one should be under no illusions. This is politics, the hardball politics of interests and zero-sum power games, not the politics of creative human self-realisation and flourishing. The people who practice such politics do not respect science as such. Scientific reason and evidence is not the arbiter in this conflict. Indeed, neo-conservative forces and think tanks have continually dismissed the concept of man-made global warming as a liberal hoax, designed to raise prices and taxes and justify contracts and careers in the establishment. If that is all that the science of climate change amounts to, it shouldn’t be difficult to falsify it with good, sound science. Science, as James Lovelock argues, is self-cleansing. Bad theories have a short shelf life. The fact is that the science of global warming is getting firmer by the year. The idea of hundreds of thousands of scientists all the world over being involved in a conspiracy to hoodwink the public only needs to be stated for its absurdity to be apparent.
It’s easy to get frustrated by the vehemence of the opposition against the concept of man-made climate change. Personally, I am encouraged by the manifest stupidity of the deniers – judging by their machinations on climate science, there really is nothing to beat. Take the hysterical reaction to the Met Office's revising downward of its forecast of likely global warming up to 2017. The revision was slight. Yet, in their rabid hordes, the climate change deniers used the data to claim that global warming has stopped. This typifies the way that these clowns use research that is not their own, cherry picking it to prove whatever point they want to make. They’ve been using this little trick for years. They have claimed that the world is cooling on the basis of the 1998 peak year, even though seven of the hottest temperatures recorded in history came in the decade after 1998. It’s such twaddle it can only be designed to reinforce existing prejudices as well as waste the time and wear down the will of those with more intelligence and integrity. My view is that these people are merely the toadstools that grow out of the putrefying ground of a decaying system. It is worth stating, for the billionth time, that the Earth is heating and not cooling, and it is worth taking the opportunity to restate the solid scientific case that exists for global heating.
In point of scientific fact, the planet as a whole has warmed since 1998, sometimes even in the years when surface temperatures have fallen. According to the dataset of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2005 was the warmest year since records began, with 1998 and 2007 tied in second place.
According to NASA, the 12-month running mean global temperature has reached a new record in 2010 despite recent minimum of solar irradiance. “We conclude that global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade” and “there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C/decade that began in the late 1970s.”
For further details concerning the science involved, one may consult www.newscientist.com/.../dn14527-climate-myths-global-warming
It’s important to continue to state the scientific evidence clearly. Climate change deniers are out to denigrate and disable the science and should not be allowed to get their way. To argue at the level of scientific reason and evidence, however, is to miss the point. It’s the deceit that is much more interesting. It’s time to go on the political frontfoot against these people, they have nothing left but lies and misinformation. Like the Stalinist old-guard of the Soviet Union, they have long since lost touch with reality. It’s time to move them on, they are not fit to control and direct the new productive forces.
But, to return to the science, the Met Office's figures clearly show that most of the years between 2013 and 2017 will be hotter than those of the hottest year on record. The Met Office revises its projections slightly downward, and the deniers claim this as evidence of global cooling. The deniers are not stupid people. This nonsense is clearly politically motivated. They claim that those who subscribe to the science of climate change are politically motivated. Fine. Then let us have this political conflict out in the open – who are these people who are quite happy to denigrate science and destroy the planet, who pays them, who do they work for, what interests do they have? The Met Office stand by their longer-term projections and are clear that there will be significant warming over the course of the century. That this clear message was drowned out by claims that global warming has gone into reverse indicates the extent to which the politics of climate change has supplanted the science. This issue cannot be fought on the level of science alone. It’s time to have that political struggle out in the open.
One can despair of the extent to which the position of the deniers seems to be entrenched. That’s overly pessimistic. The reality of climate change is going to become increasingly evident. The issue is not going away. The science on climate change is firming up. This is a political struggle against the forces of deceit, lies and misinformation, wilful ignorance, greed and exploitation, stupidity. Other than that, the deniers have nothing. If we cannot beat an enemy as feeble as that, then what’s the point of anything anyway.