IPCC - "Criminally Complacent"

Arctic expert, professor Peter Wadhams, doesn't think much of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the Cambridge professor of ocean physics and head of the university's Polar Oceans Physics Group, denounces the IPCC as a dangerous sellout.

He highlighted that the IPCC has failed to quantify and properly assess the risk of a methane outbreak from melting permafrost and undersea methane hydrates.

"Because that is scarcely mentioned by the IPCC in it's assessment because I think it is being criminally complacent in not wanting to stress or talk about the possibility of some major catastrophes.

"They were once a body that warned the world about climate change, but now they are a body that is trying to say 'Well, it's bad, but not that bad. Just reduce your carbon emssions and everything will be okay.' But it won't. These things have come along, there is enormous evidence that this is happening, and we should be really worried about it."

Wadhams warned of the knock-on effects of loss of Arctic sea ice including a massive discharge of now frozen Arctic methane deposits, sea level rise and, ultimately, catastrophic global warming.

"Instead of getting less than a metre of sea level rise this century, which is what is predicted by the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the accelerated melt of the Greenland ice sheet could give us a couple of metres or more this century.

"In fact some glaciologists are talking about four or five metres. That might be extreme, but it is very likely to be more sea level rise than so far has been predicted. That means we have been very complacent about sea level rise and we ought to be realizing that many coastal regions, for instance the coast of Bangladesh which is very vulnerable, Eastern China, and a lot of cities like Miami, will have to be abandoned and that will have an enormous impact on the global economy and the lives of people."

He then adds that the reduction in sea-ice will cause the albedo of the Arctic to reduce, absorbing more warmth and further accelerating global warming. "This attempt to pretend that we can keep global warming below 2 degrees, which was already a pretence, is even more ridiculous. It is certainly going to get to 4 or 5 degrees by the end of this century, which will then have quite catastrophic impacts on agricultural production, for instance, and being able to support the population we have now, let alone an increase in population."

"To slow the release of methane and prevent a methane bomb we need to bring back Arctic sea-ice, and to do that we need to cool the planet."

Australian climate scientist Andrew Glikson has also written at The Conversation on Methane and the risk of runaway global warming. But other scientists have also indicated the strong risks of Arctic Methane Feedback amplifying warming

Wadhams also denounced the complacency of the world's political leadership.

"There is a conspiracy of complacency throughout the world in which they [politicians] still imagine that if we do a few minor things, a few minor adjustments and reduce our carbon emissions then all will be well. But it won't. Because we have already got too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We are already going to have more than 2 degrees warming even if we don't emit anymore because of the existing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere." said Wadhams.

"We have to not only stop emitting [CO2] or reduce our emissions, but find ways to take it out of the atmosphere. That is a technology that hasn't been developed. It would be a massive research program to develop, but we should be doing it. A bit like the Manhattan Project. We should be doing it from the point of view of our own survival. That is the sort of thing the present generation should be concentrating all our attention on.

"If we can do that, then all our children have got a future."

"When you put together all the changes that are going on you see how they are ramping up to become a major change. As they go on, they tend to accelerate. Everything is increasing exponentially.

"My fear is that no-one will do anything because of cowardice and inertia and all the normal human attributes. They say 'Well let's wait until it hits us and then we'll act', but by the time it really hits us, by the time weather changes have made it impossible to feed everybody in the world, for instance, and we have worldwide famine, those sort of changes at that scale have happened then it's too late to do anything. We will by then have too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to prevent a runaway global climate catastrophe. My fear is that our own inertia will lead us to not take action until it is actually too late to save ourselves."

I so wish Wadhams was just some wild-eyed radical on a rant - only he's not.  In fact he's just another voice in the choir of Arctic experts who have been trying in vain to warn us of what is happening in the far north and what that holds in store for our children and theirs. Their research, their analyses and their warnings are simply falling on deaf ears.  Everything is flushed down the memory hole.

A lot of the science types believe it quite likely we're heading for between 4C and 6C of warming by the end of this century.  In April I took an online course presented by top experts, including Schellnhuber, from the Potsdam Institute examining what awaited mankind and all other life on Earth should we allow the planet to warm by 4C. It's the sort of information we wouldn't dare teach even at a highschool level.  

Our politicians haven't got the guts to address it, to even hint at it, and neither do we. They know it's a Pandora's Box. Once opened they would stand exposed, incapable of justifying their complacency, borderline perfidy.

By the way, Wadhams believes the only hope left requires geo-engineering to cool the planet and restore the Arctic sea ice and polar atmosphere.

Update:  Meanwhile, the very sort of politician Wadham denounces, in this case the NDP's Tommy Angry Beard, has pulled a rabbit out of his ass to declare that Canada can expand Tar Sands production, just in a "sustainable" way.

Climate Change In The Raw

Imagine a highway full of cars, all traveling at very high speed, and all of them simultaneously going out of control.  Something along those lines may be in store with climate change if we can't very quickly decarbonize our economies and our societies.

I've done a few online courses in climate change, fairly mundane stuff.  I'm doing one now that's head and shoulders above the rest.  This course is being presented by experts from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, one of the most prestigious organizations in this field.  The Potsdam Institute is funded by the German government.  This course is funded by the World Bank.

This week's lectures explore what awaits us if, despite all the warnings, our governments allow 4 degrees Celsius of warming which, by the way, is what the consensus concludes is likely to happen. I prefer to go through the week's lectures non-stop so I don't fall behind and can avoid the necessity of reviewing everything at week's end before taking the test.

Much of the information is pretty well known to anyone who reads news reports - sea level rise; disease and pest migration; both cyclical and sustained drought and flooding and so on.  Other impacts are less well known but equally problematical.

Rate of change is something not commonly discussed yet it should be central to our governmental responses.  Some impacts will be gradual, linear and mild. Others will be abrupt, potentially severe and unpredictable.  The critical point to take from this is that we really don't have the luxury of time to waste in taking effective action.  We're not overtaken by events beyond our control yet, not yet, but that point is far closer than most of us seem to believe.

Carbon capture and sequestration.  Leaving aside all of its drawbacks and pitfalls, CCS probably won't be ready for large scale implementation until around 2025.  However it will then take at least two decades to implement on a scale that will even remotely put a dent in our emissions problems.  That's time we just don't have.  In other words it could turn out to be a gimmick, a blunder with enormous consequences if we cling to the faint hope of CCS instead of going cold turkey on fossil fuels as quickly as possible.

One lecture discussed the "cascade."  This describes the synergy of climate change impacts on other climate change impacts.  In effect they become greater than the sum of their parts.  Some of these challenges include the loss of coral reefs triggering a collapse in marine biodiversity; abrupt changes to the Indian Monsoons, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet (itself being accelerated by black soot from wild fires in the tundra and Boreal forests); the potential collapse of the Amazon rainforest and the effects that will have not only on natural carbon sequestration but also precipitation patterns (Sao Paulo, etc.); the retreat of glaciers, especially in the Himalayas and Hindu Kush; the decline of the Atlantic Ocean conveyor; and something called the marine biological carbon pump.  To these you can add sea level rise, ocean acidification, biome loss (habitat destruction) and so on.  At some point we have to anticipate some or many of these impacts sort of ganging up on us, each bolstering the others, and that is going to be a wild ride.

Two new terms entering popular lexicon are "3 Sigma events" and "5 Sigma events."  3 Sigma events are what we now consider rare, extreme weather events. They're severe but we've endured them in the past.  They're going to become the new normal.  They will increase in duration, intensity and frequency.

5 Sigma events are coming.  We've had no experience of them.  They're unprecedented and and will render some parts of the world (the tropics and mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere) uninhabitable.  Toward the latter part of the century these will become common.

By about 2080 the coolest summer months are projected to be "substantially hotter" than the warmest month we've known in human history.  As for the hottest months, fortunately most of us won't have to deal with that.

Ecosystems are changing everywhere, especially in the Arctic.  In temperate latitudes, Spring is now arriving 2-weeks earlier than the historic normal.  Crop zones are shifting away from the equator.  Frost line defences are failing, enabling the migration of pests and diseases.

As for the 2C target, getting ourselves on track to limit warming to 2C by 2100 has many payoffs ranging from giving ourselves vital time to implement adaptation strategies to giving species in peril essential time to migrate and avoid some loss of biodiversity.

There was a discussion about the need to move promptly on upgrading and replacing infrastructure that was designed and constructed for the demands of a climate that is now gone and won't be returning.  We need to design infrastructure to meet the climate loads that will be here in just a decade or two and that's a huge challenge.

Those are some of the most salient points covered in this week's lectures. They're pretty stark, especially in the context of what awaits us if we don't act boldly and without delay.  Do we have the will to do that?  I have my opinion as I'm sure you have yours.