Climate Hawks

Did you ever have to make up your mind?

-Loving Spoonful

Forty thousand head men 

couldn't make me change my mind.

-Traffic

Greetings

I'm going to start off with public service announcement

The Clean Energy Jobs Bill is back before the legislature.

The bill will lower Oregon’s greenhouse gas emissions by adopting a cap, trade, and invest plan — we will cap greenhouse gas emissions from major sources, trade emission permits to allow maximum market efficiency in reducing carbon pollution, and invest proceeds to help Oregon transition to a greener, cleaner future.  You can learn about the bill and join the fight to protect our future in two ways:

For those who want to learn more about the CEJ Billbefore Lobby Day:

On Monday, Feb 5 at 3 PM the Joint Environmental and Energy and Natural Resources Committees will roll out the CEJ Billwith an Informational Meeting in Room F at the Capitol.

and on Wed, Feb 7 at 3 PM the same Joint Committee will hold a Public Hearing regarding the bill in Room F.

and you can join your friends from the Oregon League of Conservation Voters and Renew Oregon at the Clean Energy Jobs LOBBY DAY at the State Capitol on Monday, Feb. 12.  

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 You may want to stop reading here

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It may be a good idea to put this bill in perspective.  What can we hope to achieve?   What would we have to give up to get there?  Dave Roberts, a clear eyed "climate hawk"  displays what he sees as the best case scenario, as part of an article chiding environmentalists for getting in the way of implementing climate policy. see    Reckoning with Climate Change will demand ugly trade offs from environmentalists and everyone else  .  He says we can't meet our 2 degree target using solar and wind alone.   We also will need nuclear power, more dams, and loads of transmission lines running across sensitive habitats.

Mostly its because we waited so long, so we missed the gradual ramp down see e.g.

Implications for limiting warming to 2C

Here's what Roberts says it would take.   

It would mean an immediate, sustained global mobilization of a sort that has no precedent in human history.

If something like that mobilization were to happen, it would not be gentle or pretty. It would not unfold according to the best-laid plans of wonks. Some people, landscapes, and legitimately worthwhile priorities would suffer in the short- to mid-term.

One example: environmentalists often cite studies showing that high penetrations of renewables are possible in the US. But those studies all show that achieving high penetrations requires a country-spanning network of new transmission lines. If there’s a study showing how to fully decarbonize without tons of new transmission, I haven’t seen it. So yes, transmission lines connecting zero-carbon power sources and loads might disrupt some people and ecosystems, but systematically opposing them simply isn’t commensurate with being a climate hawk.

Another example: full decarbonization would require, among other things, an enormous industrial shift. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of jobs in polluting industries would be wiped out and workers displaced. There would be new jobs in clean energy, but the US has not typically handled such workforce transitions well. Being a climate hawk means accepting serious social and economic disruption.

Decarbonization will also involve a mind-boggling amount of manufacturing, building, and retrofitting. Multiple solar and wind gigafactories would be built every year. Renewables would cover every open surface. Every city would be as dense and transit-served as possible. Being a climate hawk means accepting that some natural areas will be turned over to energy production and that “the character of the neighborhood” is going to be disrupted by infill and multi-modal transportation systems.

Conservative climate hawks may have to tolerate climate solutions that involve heavy government intervention. Farmer climate hawks may have to tolerate swaths of their land being claimed for transmission lines or wind turbines. Wealthy climate hawks may have to tolerate restrictions on their consumer purchases or airline travel. Environmentalist climate hawks may have to tolerate large-scale carbon sequestration or new rivers given over to dams. And so on.

This is the future Roberts suggests that we need.   I am reminded of the "Chinese miracle".  New factories, new industries.  Forward !

So, lets put this activity in context.  How are we doing with respect to overshoot?    It just so happens that 15,000 scientists in 184 countries recently issued  a report :World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice"  which noted the a number of deteriorating trends

Among the negative 25-year global trends noted in the article are:

• A 26 percent reduction in the amount of fresh water available per capita
• A drop in the harvest of wild-caught fish, despite an increase in fishing effort
• A 75 percent increase in the number of ocean dead zones
• A loss of nearly 300 million acres of forestland, much of it converted for agricultural uses
• Continuing significant increases in global carbon emissions and average temperatures
• A 35 percent rise in human population
• A collective 29 percent reduction in the numbers of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish

So, Robert's prescription would make some of those things worse.   But perhaps the additional impacts would be offset by the reduced impacts of climate change on the biosphere?

Well......no.     It turns out that climate change has had very little impact on species extinction.   This great extinction is bring caused by the ordinary things that humans do.   A recent article in Nature points out that main cause of species extinction is over consumption -  logging, fishing, agriculture, urban expansion, and pollution are the real culprits.     In fact climate change ranks very low.  see here

But even though climate change is going to have a very powerful impact on plants and wildlife world-wide, climate change has also become a sort of scape-goat, with a “growing tendency for media reports about threats to biodiversity to focus on climate change,” write the authors of a new study analyzing the impact each sector of our society has on life on Earth. According to their findings, the real culprits are staple human activities such as logging, hunting, or farming, which pose a far greater — and much more immediate — danger to Earth’s biodiversity.

“[Agriculture and rampant resource over-exploitation are] by far the biggest drivers of biodiversity decline,” the authors write in a comment published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

A team of scientists led by University of Queensland doctoral student Sean Maxwell analyzed thousands of species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species to determine exactly what we’re doing to put them on that list.

They found that over-exploitation, including logging, hunting, fishing and the gathering of plants is the biggest single killer of biodiversity, directly impacting 72 percent of the 8,688 species listed as threatened or near-threatened by the IUCN. Agricultural activity comes second, affecting 62 percent of those species, followed by urban development and pollution which threaten 35 and 22 percent respectively. Species such as the African cheetah and Asia’s hairy-noes otter are among the 5,407 species that find themselves threatened by agricultural practices, while illegal hunting impacts several populations such as the Sumatran rhino and African elephant.

Climate change on the other hand comes in on a surprising, if somewhat unimpressive, 7th place in the 11 threats identified by the team. Even when you combine all its effects, it currently threatens just 19 percent of the species on the list, the team reports. 

So add to that Robert's prescription of  a " ..... mind-boggling amount of manufacturing, building, and retrofitting. Multiple solar and wind gigafactories would be built every year. Renewables would cover every open surface"  

Of course, the alternative of doing nothing is much worse.   A recent article by David Spratt, author of Climate Code Red, puts the possible futures in perspective

 

Not going to zero emissions would be worse in the short term: other recent work shows warming would be 2.2-2.4°C by 2050 if we continue on the current high-emissions path.  And it would be disastrously worse not to go to zero emission very fast, due to the longer-term impacts: continuing on the current high-emissions trajectory would bring warming of 4.1–5°C by 2100.

Nevertheless,  Spratt, points out that even if we went to zero emissions tomorrow, we would be unlikely to avoid two degrees,

Thus, without solar radiation management (replacing anthropogenic aerosols from fossil fuel use with anthropogenic aerosols spread from planes or fired into the atmosphere) it will be difficult to avoid 2°C no matter what CO2 emissions path we take, and all but impossible not to overshoot 1.5°C by at least a third. It is not yet clear that there is demonstrable clear net environmental benefit from solar radiation management, and we should only do it if that is the case. But in not doing it, we need to be honest about what will be lost and what further tipping points may be crossed.

(Speaking of tipping points,  I suppose its worth pointing out here that a recent study suggests that 1.5 is likely to be the trigger to the beginning of the permafrost melt..  

      Roberts makes a good argument, but it contains a hidden premise.  It may be true that all of the things he mentions, nuclear plants, more dams, transmission lines crisscrossing the country will be needed, if we are to stop CO2 emissions,  and we are to continue to live a high consumption, high energy lifestyle.     But maybe its that lifestyle itself that is the problem.  Not just. for the climate.

 We want a functioning ecosystem.  We want to keep temperatures down.  And we want to continue our high consumption high energy lifestyle.  

We want all three.

But ,  perhaps Roberts is right.   We can't have all three.   

So, how about that lifestyle?

But how much energy do we really need?   Here is an interesting exploration of energy poverty and energy decadence

Greenland and Antarctic maps reveal “unprecedented” ice loss

Cold as ice

Someday you'll pay the price

    - Foreigner

I have lived here before, the days of ice,
And of course this is why I'm so concerned,
And I come back to find the stars misplaced
and the smell of a world that has burned.

      -Jim Hendrix

Greetings

      Interesting goings on up in Greenland.  Ice is  melting.   (see below from Carbon Brief) This, of course is somewhat concerning, as it will "eventually" result in a problematic sea rise.

    As usual with climate science, this recent melting is proceeding "faster than anticipated".  And it seems to be accelerating.  As reported by Robert Scribbler

   "It was an extraordinary rate of melt now 4.7 times faster than in the period from 1997 to 2003 and 2.5 times faster than during 2003 to 2009. But, likely, it is but one more milestone on the path to even faster melt."

    

     What does this mean?

   Perhaps its useful to look at at the geologic record .  Here's a summary from a new report from David Spratt, author of Climate Code Red

• "During mid-Miocene climatic optimum  [16-14 million years ago] CO2 levels were similar to today, but temperatures were ~3–6C warmer and sea levels 25 to 40 metres higher than at present… When CO2 levels were last similar to modern values (greater than 350 ppmv to 400 pmv), there was little glacial ice on land, or sea ice in the Arctic, and a marine-based ice mass on Antarctica was not viable… Lower levels were necessary for the growth of large ice mass on West Antarctica (~250 to 300 ppmv) and Greenland (~220 to 260 ppmv)" (Tripati, Roberts et al., 2009).
• “We estimate sea level for the Middle Pliocene epoch [3.0–3.5 million years ago] – a period with near-modern CO2 levels – at 25±5 metres above present, which is validated by independent sea-level data” (Rohling, Grant et al., 2009).
• Likewise, “during the middle-Pliocene … we find sea level fluctuations of 20-40 metres associated with global temperature variations between today’s temperature and +3°C” (Hansen, Sato et al., 2013).

 

   But of course, humans,  being creatures with hyperbolic discount rate, we aren't that concerned about events that might happen at the end of the century, but do worry about things in our lifetime.   Our first question is ; When?

     It seems the future is coming at us at an accelerating rate.   Back to Robert:

"It is likely that mass rate losses will continue to increase until some kind of break or negative feedback comes into play. Similar rates of melt increase would mean an annual 5-8 millimeter sea level rise by 2035 due to Greenland and Antarctic melt on top of a 2-3 millimeter sea level rise from thermal expansion of the oceans and from other melt sources. But even taking into account the cooling effect at the ocean surface from ice melt and fresh water floods, one could easily envision the feared 1-3 foot sea level rise by sometime near mid century and the even more concerning 3-9 foot sea level rise amidst a very intense battle between hot and cold weather systems through to century’s end."

Fun facts about sea level rise from here:

• Thirteen of the world’s 20 largest cities are now located on a coast.

• Nearly 25% of the world’s population lives within 62 miles (100 kilometers) of a shoreline, and this figure is likely to increase to 50% over the next 25 years as people flock to coastal cities.

• More than 600 million people live in coastal regions that are less than 10 meters above sea level.

• Two-thirds of the world’s cities have populations of five million or more living in at-risk areas that are less than 10 meter above sea level. (Source)

• Thirteen of the world’s fifteen largest cities are on coastal plains. Many smaller cities, such as Alexandria, Egypt’s ancient center of learning, also face a severe risk of inundation with a 39-inch (1m) rise in sea level. 

• Low-lying coastal regions in developing countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, and China have especially large populations living in at-risk coastal areas such as deltas, where river systems enter the ocean. Both large island nations such as the Philippines and Indonesia and small ones such as Tuvalu and Vanuatu are at severe risk because they do not have enough land at higher elevations to support displaced coastal populations.

• Some island nations risk the danger of losing their fresh-water supplies as sea level rise pushes saltwater into their aquifers. For these reasons, those living on several small island nations (including the Maldives in the Indian Ocean and the Marshall Islands in the Pacific) could be forced to evacuate over the 21st century. (Source)

• With sea level projected to rise at an accelerated rate for at least several centuries, very large numbers of people in vulnerable locations are going to be forced to relocate. If relocation is delayed or populations do not evacuate during times when the areas are inundated by storm surges, very large numbers of environmental refugees are likely to result. (Source)

For visual representation of such a rise see here.    

-------

Greenland and Antarctic maps reveal “unprecedented” ice loss

A series of maps published this week show Greenland and Antarctica are losing more ice than at any time since satellite records began.

Scientists found the two vast ice sheets are losing a total of 500 cubic kilometers of ice per year, contributing to rising global sea levels.

Ice loss

The researchers used data from the European Space Agency's CryoSat - a satellite that passes over the earth at 700 kilometers above the surface and measures the thickness of polar ice.

The satellite was launched in 2010 and has been collecting data on sea ice and ice sheets ever since. By comparing data with other satellite missions, scientists can see how quickly the ice sheets are changing.

The study, just published in the journal The Cryosphere, reveals that since 2009, the volume of ice loss has tripled in West Antarctica and more than doubled in Greenland. This is the highest rate of ice loss since satellite records began 20 years ago.

Regional differences

The maps show that Greenland is losing around three times more ice than Antarctica, including thinning of the entire western ice sheet and further losses in the southeast and northwest ice sheets. You can see where the greatest losses of ice are occurring in the red areas in the maps below.

In Antarctica, the maps show thinning of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Peninsula. East Antarctica shows some increases in thickness (shown in blue in the maps), though this doesn't outweigh the losses elsewhere. Overall, more ice is being lost than gained.

Elevation changes in Greenland (top) and Antarctica (bottom) between January 2011 to January 2014. Areas in red show loss of ice; blue shows gains. Source: V. Helm et al.(2014)

Satellite measurements

CryoSat collects data at 200 million points in Antarctica and 14.3 million in Greenland, as aBBC article today notes. Satellites can measure ice sheet heights by firing a radar pulse at each point and recording the time it takes for the signal to bounce back.

The data is used to create digital elevation models that provide a 'snapshot' of the state of the ice sheets covering the two land masses. You can see how the ice thickness varies over the surface of the earth in the figures below. The areas in red show thicker ice towards the middle of the land mass and the blue areas show the thinner ice around the edges.

Elevations of ice in Greenland (top) and Antarctica (bottom) in 2012. Red shows areas of thicker ice; blue shows thinner ice. Source: V. Helm et al. (2014)

New imagery

These aren't the only new satellite images to be released this week. A Canadian collaboration, including the University of Waterloo and the Canadian Space Agency, released a satellite 'mosaic' image of the whole of Antarctica.

The image, shown below, is made up from over 3,000 satellite images taken in 2008.

Mosaic satellite image of Antarctica. Source: University of Waterloo

Yesterday's Mail Online covered the new research, featuring some of the satellite's images - such as the one above - including a close-up of an individual ice shelf.

The team behind the image also produced an equivalent version from images taken in 1997 and hope that being able to compare the two could help scientists identify changes in the ice sheets over Antarctica.

The next steps for the team include providing more regular updates to the Antarctic image, and creating a similar mosaic image for Greenland.

V. Helm, A. Humbert, and H. Miller (2014) Elevation and elevation change of Greenland and Antarctica derived from CryoSat-2, The Cryosphere, doi:10.5194/tc-8-1539-2014