The natural rhythm that has characterised climate on Earth during the last 3 million years is broken. It has taken humans less than 200 years to accomplish this. The industrial extraction and burning of fossil-fuels have fed the atmosphere and oceans with huge quantities of CO2, with impacts that are manifest all over the planet. In a devastating twist, the regions that are warming up the fastest are the world's coldest places: among them Antarctica and the Arctic. These remote and harsh areas are practically devoid of people and have only minimal industry. In one sense that is fortunate, because it buys humans time when none can be wasted.
Øyvind Paasche is a scientist, specialising in palaeoclimates, at the Bjerknes Centre of Climate Research, University of Bergen, Norway
A system in change
The variability of the climate system is no longer only natural, nor will it be for generations to come. The innocence of the 1950s, when it was believed that CO2 remained at stable levels in the atmosphere regardless of what humans did, is long lost. The CO2 shock-treatment of this latest half-century of intense global development has produced severe side-effects, which scientists must demonstrate but every citizen can witness. What exactly the climate of the 21st century will bring remains to be experienced, but indicators are already being observed: among them large-scale changes in temperature and precipitation patterns, vegetation covers, sea-levels and the extent of sea-ice. True, part of these changes can be attributed to natural variability; but the other part of it is due to added CO2. At the heart of climate research is finding the elusive triggers that instigate these changes in the climate.
An understanding of past climate dynamics guides awareness of the way that under certain conditions the climate system can be extremely responsive to minor pressures to change. Again, the precise forces or mechanisms that lead to change remain hard to identify. This is true for example with regard to the sudden shift in the extent of Arctic-summer sea-ice, although there is no shortage of plausible candidates. The lack of knowledge notwithstanding, the coming of a new climate system is underway. James Hansen of Nasa, one of the world's foremost experts, is only one of those convinced that the threshold to a new regime has already been passed.
An Arctic focus
In 2007, the shrinking Arctic-summer sea-ice astonished scientists. Since the late 1970s, its maximum extent had fallen from 7.5 to 4.5 million square kilometres; many experts now argue that the Arctic will in a few decades be "open" during the summer.
Indeed, the scientific focus on such high-latitude areas makes perfect sense, precisely because of their unparalleled sensitivity to changes in atmospheric CO2 levels. Paleodrake, an International Polar Year (2007-08) project, seeks to learn more about climate change in the past in such regions, in order better to assess whether natural trends are accelerating or slowing such change today. One way to do so is to look at how glaciers respond to changing climate conditions.
A glacial experience
Glaciers worldwide are in a state of demise. The ones occupying the western part of South Georgia, a small island in the south Atlantic, are no exception. Today, glaciers still cover half of the island, but fresh glacier forelands are exposed every year. The island's very position, close to both the maximum extent of Antarctic winter sea-ice and the Polar Front, makes it climatologically interesting. By reconstructing glacier activity here it is possible to identify large-scale shifts in precipitation and temperature patterns that can be used to constrain the range of natural variability.
The Hodges glacier was intensely studied by the British Antarctic Survey in the 1970s, and up to the onset of the Falkland/Malvinas war of April-June 1982 (which began with the Argentinean incursion into South Georgia). An outline of the glacier's extent was observed in 1955 and 1958; historical data indicate that the glacier was larger at the turn of the 21st century. In January 2008, I visited the corrie together with two colleagues - to discover that the glacier had melted completely away. We are now in the progress of discovering whether or not this has happened earlier during the last 10,000 years, or if what we observed last year truly represents an anomaly that can (to whatever extent) be attributed to global warming.
A warmer planet
It is hard to picture a world without permafrost, glaciers and icecaps. Yet this still represents one of many potential future scenarios that are gaining scientific credibility by the year. The loss of ice on land will undoubtedly alter ecosystems and societies, and cause a dramatic increase in sea level.
The large icecaps covering Greenland and Antarctica will persist, but - given the ongoing increase in CO2 - not forever. The formation of the Greenland ice-sheet 3 million years ago depended on sufficiently low atmospheric CO2 levels, predominantly below 300 parts per million (ppm). Similarly, the Antarctic ice-sheet formed when the CO2 level dropped below 425 ppm, some 35 million years ago. Most of the scenarios presented by the latest (2007) report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest that the atmospheric CO2 level in 2100 will be above 425 ppm. At present it is 387 ppm, and it is currently rising by about 2 ppm a year.
There is a chance - still - that this IPCC report will become a historic turning-point. It has made possible the realisation, albeit reluctant, that humans' way of living on Earth has a devastating global impact. This is perhaps the most frightening thing to face, especially for political leaders: that to accept reality and acknowledge responsibility - something politicians usually try very hard not to do - is also to create a necessity to act.
In this sense, global warming and poverty are not so different: we know how to eliminate it, but it's not on our list of priorities. Putting it on that list, and at the very top, is of the utmost importance. How to do it? I am a scientist, and I know only this: it will take a lot more than scientists documenting yet another disappearing glacier.
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openDemocracy writers explore the politics of climate change, including the debate of that name (edited by Caspar Henderson) in 2004-05:
Mike Hulme, "Climate security: the new determinism" (20 December 2007) Simon Maxwell, "The politics of climate change" (15 June 2009) External Relations Authority, "Report on World 87" (20 August 2009) |
Comments
the warming of the earth follows increases in C)2, and is not a cause of thoses increases. I'm a bit taken back by the statement:
In this sense, global warming and poverty are not so different: we know how to eliminate it, but it's not on our list of priorities.
There is too much out there that counters the claims of man-made global warming/climate change/whatever the phrase is this week. To equate poverty and 'global warming' is a red herring. And if we did know how to eliminate poverty, we sould have already done so, eh?
So I ask the author of the above, how DO we eliminate poverty?
It has been a while since I've seen such an emotive grant application - I had thought they were becoming more nuanced in recent years. For example, it has become more fashionable to refer to the more robust 'climate change', rather than the embarassingly directional 'global warming'. Adding in 'poverty' as well, as in 'we know how to fix it', is also a weakness of this application, since it reveals the applicant as hopelessly naive and ill-informed. We have established that giving money to the poor doesn't work (e.g. see UK welfare dependency). We have established that giving money to their rich politicians doesn't work (e.g. see most of Africa). We have established that socialism doesn't work (e.g. see 20th century). So, free enterprise it is. Don't screw it up. Don't, in particular, burden it with absurd CO2 taxes. But the applicant wants to save the glaciers in this way. The naivety is that he will just confuse the grant panel with this, and reduce his chances of that juicy grant.
The article is fair and informed. There is a certain brand of pseudo economics that is really an ideology, whose adherents would have us believe that 'natural prices' can solve all human problems. What church do you bozos attend to be so naive. I think you read articles like this for the opportunity to repeat your private mantra, not to learn about climate change, a perfectly reasonable concept of which global warming is but one of many manifestations. I generally read without comment but neanderthals always set me off..Sorry, but it does not appear coiincidental that the only two comments before mine use the same stale attack argument.
TugOgren
If the ice could speak it might be saying something about GHGs already being too high. The article didn't mention that the ice acts as a climate buffer to regulate heat long-term. Lost buffers means lost regulation and a cross-your-fingers and hope-to-die strategy for civilisation. Listen out for the ice once more and you might hear a far-away giggle at the whimsical hope that the IPCC's incremental tweaking of business as usual could possibly intervene in time to avoid run-away positive feedbacks and humanity scratching its collective head in surprise at the speed of all the entwined collapse dynamics. The IPCC can't help because the solutions do not lie amidst the symptoms, but instead in the mechanics of dysfunctional global systems. Changing these means defining paradigms that elude media attention and seeking leverage points that are barely ever discussed. For those interested in a future that could work, here is one attempt: http://www.wiserearth.org/resource/view/2f007297ce994215d709c47f4c9230a1
It is hard to understand if this scientist has exercised his full scientific method and understanding to arrive at implications and conclusions made here.
I just dropped back to see if the climate change deniers are still trolling about in their preferred habitat, oD. They are, I see.
Let's try them with Pascal's Wager:Which side would you bet on?
In the end, this is not an academic debate, because we and our children are part of the experiment. The consensus among scientists (yes, with a few exceptions, as is always the case in science) is that we should decarbonise our economy as a matter of urgency.
Say we decarbonise our economy, and it turns out that IPCC view is wrong? Well, we will have created hundreds of thousands of jobs in insulation, energy efficiency, low CO2 energy manufacturing and taken thousands out of fuel poverty. Not bad, but that's not all. We will also have reduced the shock of Peak Oil and Peak Gas, and reduced the acidification of the oceans. And addressed our energy security problems. And increased prosperity in hot countries (through solar technologies). Not bad, not bad at all.
Say we go the way of the denialists/sceptics, and they turn out to be wrong? We will have problems with energy security, Peak Oil, Peak Gas, acified oceans, acid rain, fuel poverty, unemployment, poverty, civil unrest and finally, massive, catastrophic climate disruption from droughts, floods, crop failures, disease, and war. With massive migration caused by environmental collapse. Not good.
Now, which side of the argument would readers of oD put their money on, I wonder?
Dr. Paashe's article examines trends of prior eras in earth's warming and cooling - and the glacial cover, arctic snow pack, and summer ice pack in Arctic waters all affect solar albedo... the amount of dark v. reflective area struck by the sun during warm months when the arctic is turned toward the sun. While the global average temperature has risen "only" 1°C because of trapped greenhouse gases, the changing albedo and other factors, the greater solar exposure during the northern hemisphere "summer" means the temperature nearer the north pole have risen an average of 6°C during the same time period.He is a paleoclimatologist - a person looking back in order to understand the likelihoods in our planet's climate future. He uses pragmatic and measurable means to do that. One can "look back" with considerable precision now - the Greenland and Vostok Antarctic ice cores provide analysis of atmospheric gas content, temperature, chemical signatures of catastrophic events such as strato-volcanic eruptions with world-circling clouds of tephra ash, or meteor strikes leaving small particles of unusual elements identified with extraterrestrial impacts. Similarly, sediment cores from the ocean bottoms and lake bottoms in Scandinavia, Canada and China allow us to see summer water and current temperatures on a year-by-year basis back almost 3000 years. The global climate past is not unknown to us... and there were rare times when the world melted clean down of ice - no snow, no glaciers, no winter even.Once, more than 200 million years ago, the oceans heated to the extent that most creatures could not survive, many lakes evaporated away, any animal not living in deep cooler ocean or adapted to survive in a cave became extinct. That one anomalous time provides much of our "fossil fuel" of today." We can choose to all become the "fossil fuel" for a similar culture 200 million years in the future... by triggering the same unfortunate scenario.All we have to do is thaw the tundra. That's it folks. Look back 7800 years at the Storegga Event... when all the permafrost tundra of the Barents Plain (now underwater) and the Norwegian coastal plain (now underwater) were frozen permafrost, laden with methane clathrate. If you don't believe that thawing the tundra now will trigger an unstoppable global cycle of unliveable heat - study that time frame lasting 200 or so years. The climatic heating stopped then because the limited square kilometres involved "ran out" of sequestered methane. And what about the current-day permafrost tundra of Siberia, Russian, northern Canada and Alaska? It is melting now... and releasing lots of methane (proportionately more each year). Don't just watch - put a stop to it.Michael Cerulli Billingsley (not looking for a grant - looking for relief from idiotic thinking)
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