Why do we care about dangerous climate change?

Why do we care about dangerous climate change?

Over the next 40 years or so we are unfortunately going to see human induced climate change regardless of human attempts to prevent it (Wigley et al., 2005). Inertia within the climate system (primarily caused by the oceans absorbing massive amounts of energy and gradually releasing it into the climate system), means that the impact of emissions in the present will still be taking effect in decades to come. This is what people are talking about when they say change in the pipeline or Climate Change Commitment.

This figure from Murphy et al., 2009 shows just how substantial the ccean heat uptake has been over the past 50 years relative to the land and atmosphere  

The key point is that when we talk about stabilising GHG concentrations, the ultimate goal is not to instantaneously stop climate change in its tracks, but to constrain it within 'manageable levels' (Taken from the Energy and Climate Change Committee's 2014 report)

Climate change happens naturally on a variety of timescales ranging from decades, to millions of years. There is great deal of research on the role of past climate variability on human societies, and biodiversity (I’ve put a list of some interesting links at the bottom). The world that we see around us is in many respects a testament of resilience to this change. However, in the context of anthropogenic climate change, where GHG concentrations and associated radiative forcing are with a ‘very high confidence’ occurring at rates unprecedented in the past 22,000 years and most probably the last 800,000 years (although confidence in this statement is restricted by a present lack of high resolution records going back to that date), this resilience is likely to be put under extreme stress.

This is where the concept of dangerous climate change comes in.

As Stephen H. Schneider and Janica Lane comment, danger has become a buzzword used so often in the climate change context that it has become cliché and suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity. Despite this fact, the term dangerous climate change was initially formulated at the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with a strict meaning and purpose.

Dangerous climate change was defined as change which:

§  Does not allow ecosystems to adapt naturally;

§  Threatens food production;

§  Does not enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner (UN, 1992)

The term was to be used as a baseline to guide mitigate efforts, one designed to simply present the threat at hand. While no formal attempt was made by the UNFCCC in 1992 to quantify a level of climate change considered dangerous, the term has since become heavily linked to a 2^oC global warming limit relative to pre-industrial temperatures (Randalls, 2010).

“2^oC of global warming to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally, food production to continue un-threatened and economic development to continue in a sustainable manner, what a conveniently precise and rounded figure” I hear you say. Well you guessed right, I (and a large portion of the scientific community I might add) am not convinced.

So get ready for my next post where I explain exactly where this number comes from and why it is so difficult to quantify dangerous climate change.

Here is my Secret Link and some interesting papers on the links between past climate change, evolution and societal development: 

Maslin M.A., C. Brierley, A. Milner, S. Shultz, M. Trauth, K. Wilson “East African climate pulses and early human evolution” Quaternary Science Reviews (2014) 

Willis, K. J., Bennett, K. D., Bhagwat, S. A., & Birks, H. J. B. (2010). 4° C and beyond: what did this mean for biodiversity in the past?. Systematics and Biodiversity, 8(1), 3-9.

Dangerous Climate Change: be afraid, be very afraid

Hello again. If you’re reading this I guess it is safe to say that you either found something interesting in my first post, or I succeeded in scaring you into reading further.

Funnily enough, I’ve been doing some reading on the role of fear in encouraging climate change adaptation and I came across a few interesting points that might actually help me write this blog.

Hoog et al. (2005) talk about how fear can promote action and behavioural changes, but it works best when the threat has personal relevance. At the same time Moser and Dilling (2007) point out that without constructive information on how to reduce the threat, fear mongering can actually prove to be extremely disempowering.

Taking all that into account welcome to my first segment on

Dangerous Climate Change



http://wwf.panda.org/who_we_are/wwf_offices/belgium/index.cfm?uProjectID=BE0009

http://www.cockburn.wa.gov.au/Council_Services/Environment/Climate_Change/Adapting_to_Climate_Change_/default.asp

Well that’s my job done.

In all seriousness, this next series of posts is going to be a bit of discussion on what it is we are trying to achieve with a GHG concentration stabilisation scenarios. I’m going to talk about:

·       What we mean when we say dangerous climate change

·       How we actually quantify and assess danger in this context

·       And how the notion of dangerous climate change is used to judge a desirable level at which GHG concentrations should be stabilised

So stay tuned as I take you through all things dangerous about climate change.

Here’s my secret link to really get you excited: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siwpn14IE7E

An Introduction

Hi and welcome to my blog! “The Stabilisation Sceptic”! I am a postgraduate student reading MSc Climate Change at UCL and as a part of our course we are asked to maintain a blog on a topic that interest us. I chose the issue of GHG concentration stabilisation and in this introductory post I hope to help you understand why I find this topic interesting and importantly why you might as well!

The People’s Climate March

Last month the UN General Assembly convened in New York to discuss the issue of climate change. While Leonardo DiCaprio spoke in his new role as the UN Climate Change Representative (just a little different from his previous role in the Wolf of Wall Street and Django) an estimated 125,000-311,000 people marched through the City’s streets.

 The takeaway message from DiCaprio’s spotlight speech and the protestation was that ‘‘the time to answer the greatest challenge of our existence on this planet is now. You can make history or be vilified by it’. This quotation is of course making reference to the need to take action against rising GHG emissions. Summarised as succinctly as I can:

• Atmospheric GHG (in particular CO₂) concentrations are increasing at rates far beyond natural explanation
• Anthropogenic Emission of GHGs (again especially CO₂) have concurrently increased exponentially

Taken from in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (it really is a great summary of the scientific literature concerning climate change so I apologise in advance for continually talking about it):

• “The warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia”

And Finally

•  "It is extremely likely [95 percent confidence] more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together”

A graph from John Cook's post on Skeptical Science summarising the first two points (a great website covering the science of global warming)

The scientific community has long since recognised that humans GHG emissions are causing global warming (in fact Cook et al., (2013) suggest 97.1% of peer-reviewed literature on the topic ‘endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming’); the recent march, with numbers comparable to that of the "Great March on Washington" in 1963, suggests that an increasing number of the public are adopting a similar stance on the issue.

To be clear, I am a sceptical person but I am not a climate change sceptic. Having focused heavily on climate science throughout my undergraduate degree I am entirely convinced. While the goal of this blog is not to not to cover the issue of climate change denial (see www.skepticalscience.com) I will say this: rarely do scientists like to use phrases such as ‘virtually certain’ to discuss their findings. The fact that the IPCCs summary for policy makers frequently uses this phrase is, to me at least, a clear indicator of the strength of the science underlying climate change.  

What remains heavily disputed and what I remain heavily sceptical about is exactly what to do about this problem. This is where the concept of GHG stabilisation comes in.

GHG Stabilisation

The idea is a very simple one: to prevent continued warming, anthropogenic GHG emissions into the atmosphere must be balanced by both the Earth’s natural capacity and human efforts to extract these gases.

The Climate Bathtub http://www.climate-change-knowledge.org/uploads/bathtub.png

The bathtub analogy is often used to explain this issue. Where rate of GHG emission into the atmosphere (water in from the tap) exceeds water leaving through the drain (natural and anthropogenic drawdown) the water level (atmospheric concentration) continues to rise. Therefore either inflow must decrease, outflow increase or more realistically a combination of both must occur to stabilise stock conditions. This is obviously a simplification in some respects, but that is an issue for future posts.   

The stabilisation sceptic

So why do I consider myself a stabilisation sceptic? I struggle to see how such a scenario could become a reality  

I am sceptical about our capacity to regulate and reduce emissions

• Our knowledge of the Earth System suggests that to balance anthropogenic emission with natural drawdown requires emission reductions of around 80%, yet last month the Global Carbon Project released their findings that carbon emissions continue to grow at a quickening rate.
• Reducing emissions requires a global collaborative effort, one that challenges pre-existing geopolitical structures, economic principles and threatens to produce conflict between the developed and developing world.

I am sceptical of the cost of such an emission reduction:

1.       Just as importantly, it requires a shift in the way that we as individuals view energy. I am currently writing this in the middle of the day with my curtains shut and lights on full blast to minimise reflection on my computer screen (I’m sure I’m not alone in doing this). Similarly petrol prices rise even slightly in the USA and it becomes headline news. We are addicted to cheap energy; I find it hard to believe that a transition to cleaner and potentially costlier energy sources, combined with the need to reduce energy usage as a whole, can come without severe and damaging withdrawal symptoms.

I am sceptical that new technologies and innovations can help overcome these issues:

Blade Runner - Innovation and Climate Change Mitigation

•       When Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798 he prophesised a future of famine and crisis. In the years that followed population continued to grow and rather than reaching predefined limits and catastrophe, human innovation found ways to overcome these constraints again and again (Trewavas, 2002).
•       Proponents of geoengineering suggest carbon sequestration technologies can help correct the present imbalance between the anthropogenic emissions and natural sink; Economists suggest economic innovations in the trading of carbon will help tie global economic and environmental imperatives; Scientists claim that advances in the production of ‘clean’ energy sources will allow emissions to fall without severely containing global energy consumption and minimal economic cost.
•       Perhaps because of my lack of knowledge on the topic (and possibly because I look out of my window a little disappointed to still not have cars flying by) I remain sceptical of futurists such as Ray Kurzweil who place such faith in human innovation.

What do I hope to gain from writing this blog:

So I really hope to gain few things:

•        I hope to answer the question of whether I am rightfully sceptical about the future emission stabilisation scenario, or simply being overly pessimistic because of a lack of understanding and appreciation of the options available.
•          I want to explore a side of climate change that I haven’t looked at in anywhere near enough depth, and a range of topics that I and hopefully you will find interesting
•         And just as important I think this blog will help me back up my opinions the next time I am asked by a friend of family member “is there any hope”.

Well that’s my introduction done. I hope it wasn’t too depressing to read (although that was in a way the point I was trying to get across). Just in case, here is my secret link for the post to lighten the mood (yes I am ripping off Philip DeFranco).Please feel free to comment down below on everything and anything you find interesting!