A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic
by Peter Wadhams
by Peter Wadhams
Please use this thread to discuss Ch. 13: The state of the planet.
In total there is 1 user online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 1 guest (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
Most users ever online was 871 on Fri Apr 19, 2024 12:00 am
I'm not familiar with the term 'carbon mining' in the sense you seem to be using it, Robert.Robert Tulip wrote:The implication of all the melting is that the whole planetary situation is profoundly distressing, with a dangerous shift now underway between geological epochs due to human intervention. The technological basis of this shift is mining of carbon. It is by far the fastest ever geological shift on the planet, except perhaps for some big asteroid hits. That means it is highly unpredictable, except that we can readily see that allowing ongoing high CO2 levels will bring major disruption.
A few, smallish countries are succeeding in reducing emissions, but the fact that perhaps only a global pandemic can produce a worldwide annual reduction is very discouraging. Something like a 7% decrease for 2020 has been forecast, but it's insignificant in terms of retarding temperature increase. Population increase is another factor that just adds to the degree of difficulty of getting to a sustainable planet. If we were looking at the population of any other animal growing as ours is, we'd objectively assess the effect of this pressure on all the rest of the planet's life and resources, but we're too close to the situation to be objective.The increase of emissions is still accelerating, not slowing. And nearly all the past carbon that humans have mined continues to force further warming. Wadhams expresses extreme pessimism in view of population increase, especially the projection that Africa will gain an extra three billion people this century. The likelihood that such a population trajectory will fail to be durable is high.
Amen to that. The retreat into personal comfort is extremely hard to resist, for those of us who think, however unconsciously, that we will be on the 'winning' side.Exponential growth is intrinsically unsustainable. Things that can’t be sustained stop. The response to the inevitability of major global change is cultural paralysis, a retreat into personal comfort. But a lack of planning is far more likely to produce something bad than something good. As Wadhams states, our salvation lies in our own actions.
Yet Wadhams does, also, think that individual action is a necessary concomitant of the tech solutions that so many will still resist. It people are not personally committed to sustainability, willing to make significant changes in lifestyle, will they ever get to the point of supporting geoengineering or carbon removal? Furthermore, though emission reduction is marginal in avoiding the worst effects of warming, Wadhams advises that zero carbon emissions is still the goal to shoot for, largely because we can't continue to use the oceans as a carbon sink.This leads to an important analysis of what can be done. Emission reduction is marginal, since it offers prospect through massive cultural change of cutting energy use by up to 20%, when we need to reduce emissions by 200% by removing CO2 from the air. In an important statement of the futility of individual action on energy use, Wadhams observes that “if everyone does a little, we will achieve only a little.” Politicians respond with astonishing complacency, resolutely refusing to notice the simple climate arithmetic which shows that once things start to get worse their pace of change will accelerate.
Maybe that attitude will change, as the mainstream media increases coverage of geoengineering/carbon removal. I don't see anyone offering tech solutions as a way to avoid the need to fundamentally restructure the energy economy, so maybe the moral hazard worry of environmentalists will diminish. If we all recognize the full urgency of the problem, we'll accept that micro and macro solutions are equally needed.In a key statement on the incoherence of current climate debate, Wadhams states that “reducing emissions is less useful than reducing carbon levels.” This simple observation is ignored and confounded by the political ideology which insists that reducing carbon levels will prevent reduction of emissions.
He would seem to be in favor of decarbonizing through not just nuclear power, but renewables, of which nuclear is not one.For sensible coherence, Wadhams is unrivalled. He explains that there are three basic things to do for the climate, CO2 removal, switching to non emitting energy such as nuclear power, and directly cooling the planet by what he calls the ‘sticking plaster’ solution, buying time by increasing reflection of sunlight.
In our natures, we probably combine the features of riverboat gamblers and denialists. Overcoming what have been, in terms of evolution, beneficial traits will be the great challenge of the century.Unfortunately, the main environmental organisations Greenpeace and WWF are “unhelpful to humanity” due to their corrupt and craven obeisance to their donor’s ignorant emotions. This ignorant popular attitude prevents serious public debate about climate change, with cutting emissions having a prominence way beyond its real potential contribution. And that unjustified prominence creates the right wing backlash of climate denial.[/quote[]
Wadhams gives the simple conservative calculation that if we had stopped all combustion in 2015 CO2 would not fall to 350 ppm until 2060. Other sources suggest it would take far longer than that, since CO2 has atmospheric turnover time far longer than the calculation Wadhams uses. But the point is that allowing such a vast quantity of CO2 to stay in the air is the global equivalent of storing thousands of tonnes of explosives together with fireworks in a city and forgetting about them. Surely people could not be that stupid…
No, geoengineering is not much discussed in Australia, although there was one radio program about it this year - https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/pr ... g/12477026DWill wrote:Maybe in Australia, the time has arrived when one can talk about geoengineering without being dubbed a mad scientist, but not here. There is still a fervent wish to believe that decarbonizing is the straight path to avoiding catastrophe. The hope is that if a leader fully respectful of science again leads the U.S. (and that has to happen or we're ruined), one or more of his advisors will educate him on the more effective ways to control temperature. Old Joe has shown an ability to learn and change, so he offers at least slim reason for optimism.