bursting the carbon bubble

After listening to the panel of IPCC experts on Tuesday night - which kinda spooked me - I needed to hear this on halting fossil fuel use: "Renewable energy could provide all global energy needs by 2090," according to a study just released by the European Renewable Energy Council and Greenpeace. But it all depends on political will. If there's one thing the IPCC scientists don't agree on, it's whether or not humanity has the gumption to make the changes necessary to avoid dangerous levels of climate change. Science and technology are not the obstacles. Does it require flooding of the Cape Flats before we take this thing seriously?

We've had a dot.com bubble, a financial bubble, and all kinds of other situations where human behaviour has taken us beyond reason. On a longer timescale, we are in a carbon bubble, bingeing on a resource that seems too good to be true - as indeed it is. Like every other bubble, this one will end. It's not possible to indefinitely sustain limitless growth based on borrowing beyond our means, ignoring the casualties, hoping that rational behaviour will ensure that things don't get out of control. And like every other bubble, things got out of control long before we recognised it. We explain away the early warning bells as aberrations, the messengers as freaks, and the first fatalities as fools who lost their nerve.

With this one, our "borrowing" is in the form of capital depletion (dipping into energy and water stores that are non-renewable within the timeframes that we work with) and destruction of habitat at a rate that is faster than Earth can regenerate its ecosystems.

climate change forum hits Cape Town

I do find it vaguely curious that the American Association of Petroleum Geologists should hold the AAPG 2008 International Conference and Exhibition in Cape Town, and host a Global Climate Change Forum one evening during the event, financed in part by Shell. I just love how Americans think they can represent the world. (You've heard of American baseball's World Series, right?) Anyway, regardless of the AAPG's motivation, and my cynicism, they did in fact put up a world-class panel of four lead authors of the IPCC 4th Assessment Report of 2007, last night at the CTICC.

None of the four panelists is a climate change sceptic, but they didn't claim there is no controversy or debate around climate modelling or the interpretation of the multitude of data sources for understanding the historic record and forecasting future climate. What they did say was that the science is evolving, and the differences don't negate the clear convergence that is strengthening month by month. There is a huge volume of data constantly being exchanged, checked, integrated and adjusted to provide a cohesive body of work.

Thomas Peterson, of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in North Carolina, sees it as his job to perform "quality control" functions on the data sets. His team identifies erroneous data through various tests and comparisons, finds ways to fill in gaps in sparse data sets, and adjusts historical data so that they reflect what would have been recorded by modern instruments, so that data is homogenous.

All this adjusting doesn't mean "make the data fit the conclusions", it means making sense of differences in analysis methodologies and data type, source, age, and so on. The extent to which the IPCC reports are peer reviewed is unprecedented - in the normal course of scientific advancement, what individual research paper is reviewed by literally thousands of scientists over a number of iterations?

What this panel pointed out is that there are always data that seem like anomalies, or contradictions, and these generate intense debate, particularly among people outside the process who may see the information as undermining of the IPCC findings on climate change. In most cases, the anomalies can be explained by those who understand the data.

For example, Georg Kaser from Innsbruck, Austria, is an expert in glaciers, and he has generated some heat by pointing out that while most glaciers are shrinking, some are actually increasing in size. What he pointed out last night was that certain glaciers, for different reasons, are more sensitive to changes in rainfall than changes in temperature. This can be because they are in cold climates where warming of a few degrees might have no effect on melting, or because of the particular type of glacier. The glacier behaviour is consistent, however, with the changes in total energy in the system in all its forms - not just measured in terms of temperature.

And while it is now irrefutable that the climate is warming, there are parts of the globe that are cooling - so, for example, there is more sea ice around Antarctica because it is getting colder there.

Some things are still not clearly understood, but the number of mysteries is being relentlessly reduced. Where they remain, that's ok; no model is perfect, and the important thing is to understand its limitations and uses.

Jonathan Overpeck, whose field is paleoclimatology (study of the ancient climate record), pointed out that from the perspective of the ancient record, current greenhouse gas concentrations are far above what would be natural levels without human influence. We are not in a historically warm period, but the rate at which we are changing concentrations of CH4, CO2 and N2O are unprecedented. The record shows that there is good correlation between temperature and GHG levels, but what is worrying is that there is not a clear understanding of what caused some of the very abrupt changes in global temperature. Scientists don't know what might take us over a tipping point that would accelerate our already high rate of change.

125,000 years ago, the Arctic temperature was 3-5 degrees warmer than it is now, and the sea level was 4-6m higher (current investigations are suggesting that the sea may have been as much as 9m higher). We are now on course to bring the Arctic temperatures back to that level, even if we dramatically slow emissions right now.

Bruce Hewitson, director of UCT's Climate System Analysis Group and a Coordinating Lead Author on regional climate change projections for both the IPCC's 3rd (2001) and 4th (2007) Assessment Report, highlighted two key shortcomings of the IPCC's work. One is that Global Climate Models (GCM), while useful, are limited in their ability to help with national and regional responses to climate change. The models are improving all the time, and are useful for what they do, but Prof Hewitson is undertaking groundbreaking work in downscaling the GCMs for regional interpretation. Where the various models differ is not on the overall trends, but on where the regional boundaries are between areas that will show particular changes in future.

At these boundaries, scientists can't be sure what will happen, and governments don't know how to plan for adaptation. Most of the Western Cape, for example, is repesented as one point on a GCM, despite significant variations in temperature and rainfall within the region - the global models just can't reflect teh diversity at this scale. So the UCT team is testing perturbations in the model parameters, to generate a "cloud" of variable outcomes at the regional level. This will help deal with probabilities, which is the best way to respond to uncertainty.

The other limitation that Hewitson sees is that there is no integration between the science and the social challenges we face in responding to climate change. Vulnerability is a function of exposure to risk, the magnitude of the risk, and capacity to respond. Africa faces high exposure to climate-related risk of high magnitude, and has a poor capacity to respond positively. He is taking the modelling forward, since the global models aren't up to the job of regional planning.

Climate change is already happening in Africa. Plants and animals are on the move, and agriculture is under pressure. Hewitson believes that indigenous knowledge can be useful in validating the regional models, but perhaps more importantly in finding ways to improve community resilience and adaptation to change. The big challenge is in gaining access to that knowledge. There are some initiatives, such as weADAPT, that are beginning to find ways to collaborate on adaptation strategies, but we have a long way to go.

ground zero for the climate change battle

It's been widely reported that right about now - certainly this decade - cities are overtaking rural areas as home to more than half the world's population. Statistics like this tend to reinforce the emphasis on cities as the source of most environmental problems, making them the focus of research and planning. Most researchers and planners, after all, live in cities.

It's worth remembering that there's still the other half out there. A paper issued last week by the International Institute for Environment and Development claims that cities are often unfairly blamed for producing 75 to 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. If you look at where products and services are consumed, rather than where they are produced, cities are only responsible for 40% of emissions, according to the paper - and the consumer should rightly take responsibility. This is not to demonise people in rural areas; the point is that there are a lot of efficiencies and potential improvements in efficiencies that can be made in cities, but not so much in rural areas. Compact cities, for example, can make better use of resources, can have greater synergies between different land uses, and can have people driving less.

In general, wealthy people outside cities are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than those in cities as they have larger homes that need to be heated or cooled, more automobiles per household and greater automobile use.

It's not clear, from the summary of the paper, whether the global allocation of emissions to urban and rural areas holds true in developing countries, where there is a particular balance between rich and poor in urban and rural areas that differs from the mix found developed countries. The use of energy by poor people could swing emissions either way: rural poverty often results in less efficient use of energy, such as burning wood for cooking - and likewise, the smog hanging over urban slums might produce beautiful sunsets, but it sure doesn't help the environment.

The paper's author, David Satterthwaite, blames the rich for producing the bulk of emissions, and sees the easiest solutions in urban areas. Both conclusions might be true, but a sustainable solution absolutely must address poverty, wherever it exists, and address it in a way that does not replicate a middle class that consumes resources with abandon. I don't see the point in keeping the battle within city boundaries. Spatial planning, and design of the built form, need to be attuned to environmental preservation on farms, in towns and in the physical and functional relationships between settlements of all sizes.

In a separate editorial in the October 2008 edition of the journal Environment and Urbanisation, Satterthwaite acknowledges the importance of addressing poverty, but keeps the focus on urbanisation and seems not to recognise urban-rural relationships. He notes that efforts by poor communities to gain control over their economic situation can be more easily repressed, and their energy diffused, by municipalities that choose not to (or cannot) address urban inequalities. "In addition, physical proximity is no advantage for urban poor groups when city authorities view them or their settlements as constraints on the city’s development and capacity to attract new investment." Which leads me to think that some strategies to address human settlement challenges could in fact be more effective in rural areas or small towns. And where social and housing needs can be addressed with conscious planning, there must be a parallel opportunity to deal with resource consumption and GHG emissions.

Interestingly for South Africans, the same edition of the journal also includes a paper by Debra Roberts on how Durban has institutionalised a climate change strategy.

Durban is unusual among cities worldwide in having a municipal government that has developed a locally rooted climate change adaptation strategy. The paper highlights the need for climate change issues to be rooted in local realities that centre on avoiding or limiting impacts from, for instance, heat waves, heavy rainfall and storm surges, and sea-level rise, and also the ecological changes and water supply constraints brought about by climate change. The paper also notes how little attention international agencies have paid to adaptation, as the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation) has been prioritized. This paper also stresses the importance of building local knowledge and capacity about climate change risks and adaptive responses. Without this, decision makers will continue seeing environmental issues as constraints on development rather than as essential underpinnings of and contributors to development.

powering our way to extinction

Most references to biodiversity are in relation to how we are reducing plant diversity by taking over habitats either by expanding the built environment or by extending agricultural areas. What is rarely considered is the role of humans as animals (technically 'megafauna') within the ecosystem. An article published in the August 12 edition of PNAS presents a fascinating argument about the risks of population collapse (ours and other megafauna) in the context of energy and climate change.

The creation of biomass, whether as plants or animals, depends on energy flow through ecosystems, and the source of that energy is the sun. Until the industrial revolution, humans relied on solar energy directly, just as other species do - then we extended our ability to grow as a population by drawing from stored energy sources: wood, coal, oil and natural gas. So our current population growth trajectory depends on finite energy reserves. People have written before about the limits to growth - notably the Club of Rome - and their estimates of the limits of earth's carrying capacity have been shown to be inaccurate. But this new analysis approaches the issue from a different angle: the trade-off of biomass among megafauna.

the disaster that isn't

South Africa is already paying the price of climate change, and it's not just Rooibos farmers who are having to adapt by changing agricultural practices. It's also the government itself, which up to now has been bailing out farmers who suffer from drought. The Cape Times [subscription required] reported yesterday:

The national Department of Agriculture has warned farmers in the central Karoo that with the onset of climate change, drought "may no longer be regarded as a disaster" and has called on farmers to adapt to increasingly variable and possibly drier conditions rather than relying on department funds to bail them out.

[...]

In March, the provincial Department of Agriculture asked the national department for R37 million in drought relief.

Sounds like funds will be drying up as what was once considered abnormal weather is now commonplace. Peter Johnston of UCT's Climate Systems Analysis Group says western South Africa's climate has already been "highly variable" but droughts will be expected more often. National Department of Agriculture spokesperson Priscilla Tsotso Sehoole has acknowledged this, and says "the response should not only focus on funds".

climate complications

Research at The Open University, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, suggests that acid rain from atmospheric pollution in China could be reducing the production of methane from rice fields by up to 24%. There is a possibility that "the sulfate component of acid rain may actually boost rice yields... reducing a source of food for the methane producing micro-organisms that live in the soil." This process also affects natural wetlands, which are another source of methane. So does this mean that if China stopped building coal-fired power stations - a source of acid rain - there would be higher levels of methane contributing to global warming?

Just another example of how difficult it is to understand ecological processes and their impacts on climate. Some might interpret this as a reason to proceed cautiously in addressing climate change, but I would suggest that the complications make it all the more important to move quickly, since there could well be many more "hidden" processes that will stymie our efforts.

global warming - why even doubters should pay attention

Whether or not you believe that humans are the cause of climate change, it's hard to deny the accumulated studies suggesting that the earth's atmosphere is warming. Many will still argue that it doesn't matter: the climate goes through cycles, so what's a few degrees up or down?

An article published online yesterday in Nature provides a statistical analysis of literally thousands of observations of natural systems from around the world, taken between 1970 and 2004.

Among the warming-linked changes seen in the study are the timing of plant flowering, bird nesting, ice melting, salmon migration and pollen release; declines in populations of polar bears, krill and penguins; and increased growth of Siberian pines and cool-water ocean plankton.

There seems to be a clear picture forming of significant change in biological systems. Again, does it really matter if a few species go extinct or fruit ripens earlier or later? In some respects, we don't know how much it matters, but that in itself is reason to be cautious. Business as usual is to deplete the earth's resources - both the living and the stored - so arguments that "there is no proof of anthropogenic climate change, so we should just do nothing" are fallacious. We aren't doing nothing now; we are actively changing the environment in which we live. If we clear the oceans of fish, what does that do to the rest of the food chain? Biodiversity is important for a number of reasons, and one is to provide ecological resilience. It's easy to forget that we are part of the chain, and while we may be able to overcome some obstacles, we are not immune to the laws of nature. Some species have gone extinct in dramatic fashion, not gradually. You have been warned.

So here's my short list of why a few degrees matters, and why we need to do something about it.

migration through climate change

Here's a fascinating look at how human population growth and migration has been affected by warming and cooling periods on Earth from 160,000 years ago up to recent times. [via rebecca's pocket]

how is your inner primate?

Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson started writing about climate change in his Mars books, and takes the topic further in his latest trilogy. In an interview with BLDGBLOG, he talks of how we - modern society - pursue activities that are intended to make our lives easier, or more interesting, or somehow better, and many of these things are harming us directly as individuals and also indirectly by altering our earthly habitat.

And there’s an addictive side to this. People try to do stupid technological replacements for natural primate actions, but it doesn’t quite give them the buzz that they hoped it would. Even though it looks quite magical, the sense of accomplishment is not there. So they do it again, hoping that the activity, like a drug, will somehow satisfy the urge that it’s supposedly meant to satisfy. But it doesn’t. So they do it more and more – and they fall down a rabbit hole, pursuing a destructive and high carbon-burn activity, when they could just go out for a walk, or plant a garden, or sit down at a table with a friend and drink some coffee and talk for an hour. All of these unboosted, straight-forward primate activities are actually intensely satisfying to the totality of the mind-body that we are.

So a little bit of analysis of what we are as primates – how we got here evolutionarily, and what can satisfy us in this world – would help us to imagine activities that are much lower impact on the planet and much more satisfying to the individual at the same time. In general, I’ve been thinking: let’s rate our technologies for how much they help us as primates, rather than how they can put us further into this dream of being powerful gods who stalk around on a planet that doesn’t really matter to us.

[...]

Sustainable development, as well: that’s a term that’s been contaminated. It doesn’t even mean sustainable anymore. It means: let us continue to do what we’re doing, but somehow get away with it. By some magic waving of the hands, or some techno silver bullet, suddenly we can make it all right to continue in all our current habits. And yet it’s not just that our habits are destructive, they’re not even satisfying to the people who get to play in them. So there’s a stupidity involved, at the cultural level.

why the US did what it did at Bali

In a guest column on Grist, Professor Andrew Light provides the best analysis I have seen of why representatives of the Bush admimistration behaved the way they did at the Bali conference. We'll probably never really know for sure, but Professor Light provides several possible explanations. Considering it was all about setting the scene for the negotiations to come, rather than actually producing a binding protocol for post-2012 Kyoto, it seems bizarre that Washington should be so obstructionist.

What is heartening, though, is that despite the petty behaviour of US negotiators, the rest of the delegate countries were willing to leave a seat for the US at the negotiating table. Let's hope the next US president is as magnanimous.