Introduction
Recent and emerging observations of the severity of human-induced climate change have led to a feverish burst of publications imploring radical and immediate action. Many of the world’s most eminent scientists are now joining NGOs in calling for drastic halts in greenhouse gas emissions and societal changes on an unprecedented and global scale. The Climate Code Red Call for a Sustainability Emergency, for instance, likens our current position to that of the astronauts in the Apollo 13 crisis: a desperate time-crunch necessitating quick thinking, rapid response, and radical action.
However, the magnitude of the climate issue is profound and the mainstream has not responded to the scale of the threat. We are at the cusp of a global crisis that is still only perceived by relatively few individuals and groups. The voices of these authorities – our leading global change scientists and organizations – are often muffled, suppressed, or diminished by the influence of media and mass culture.
Opposition to creating sustainable change appears overwhelming: an increasingly interconnected global culture enamored with unlimited propagation and increasing energy consumption. In the following series of articles we will begin to unravel the details of our most pressing and up-to-date environmental sciences, pair this with social and cultural trends, and discuss solutions. We begin with an analysis of the world’s leading climate authority: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as well as discussing some of the emerging observations of global change and continue by placing climate change within the larger frame of overall environmental/resource shortages and implications for civilization.
You down with IPCC?
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) process has become a symbol of scientific integrity and the evolution of a sound, effective climate change policy. Without it and the guidance that its researchers have provided it is doubtful that a global agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be on the table. However, despite its achievements, even the most recent IPCC reports have been superseded by emerging research. The march of scientific knowledge has brought into focus mechanisms (rapid, non-linear change, positive feedback loops) that the IPCC failed to address in depth and which force us to adjust our sense of urgency in dealing with the threat posed by climate change.
Yet for humankind to benefit from scientific knowledge, policy makers, the media, and the public in general must learn to collectively receive and act upon updated information. Relying on the work of the IPCC results in a time lag, as much of research on which it is based is two years old or more. Climate and global systems sciences are dynamic and complex fields that provide a vast array of crucial information for global environmental and social stability. The process of research and discovery never stops, at least while civilization persists. Until then, failure to heed the advice and recommendations of most pertinent and recent data from these arenas is likely to have catastrophic results.
For example, on sea levels, the IPCC has been attacked as not giving adequate attention to research that suggests that policy makers have underestimated future rises. As NASA climatologist James Hansen told Grist.com in May 2007, “I was very disappointed that their [the IPCC’s] comments about sea level didn’t make clear that there’s been a huge change in our understanding of that situation, and it’s a much more dangerous problem than we had realized [while] their report actually caused confusion by giving smaller numbers than they gave in the previous report.”
Moreover, the main IPCC report on the physical science of climate change, released in February 2007 has since been challenged by the IPCC’s “synthesis report.” For the first time, an IPCC document spoke of “abrupt and irreversible shifts” – in effect admitting that its earlier findings had omitted crucial developments in key areas.
Additionally, some glaciologists complained about the IPCC’s predictions of sea level rise due to Antarctic glacial melt. While the February document spoke of rises between 18 and 59 centimeters and asserted that “current model studies project that the Antarctic ice sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting and is expected to gain mass due to increased snowfall”, the authors of the synthesis document wrote that, “this report does not assess the likelihood, nor provide a best estimate or an upper bound for sea level rise.”
In a variety of areas, scientists are now challenging our certainties that the process of climate change has “upper boundaries.” There is a rising awareness that what are called “non-linear shifts” can occur almost instantaneously. Such shifts are “non-linear” in comparison with the idea of gradual temperature rise in step with rising greenhouse gas emissions. Such a scenario no longer holds true in the scientific community. The changes we must expect will not be gradual – they will be abrupt, multiple and potentially massive.
The earth’s climate can reach what could be called called “tipping points.” As Lenton et al put it in a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: “The term ‘‘tipping point’‘ commonly refers to a critical threshold at which a tiny perturbation can qualitatively alter the state or development of a system.”
There is a growing awareness that relatively small increases in temperature can have massive consequences. What are called “positive feedback” loops can form, in which rising temperatures amplify carbon emissions, raising temperatures still further and engaging other feedback systems in the process. The earth, we are finding, is a much more sensitive place than we had previously thought.
As discussed below, paleoclimatologists are showing us that both non-linear shifts and positive feedback loops have historical precedents that we must heed. Civilization-breaking climate change has resulted from minor changes in the earth’s orbit, while human activities have contributed to local climate changes with devastating results.
Given what we are coming to know about the sensitivity of the earth’s climate, it is becoming clear that we cannot resolve our ecological crisis without radical social change. Business as usual, we will argue, is a recipe for disaster, and the remedies proposed by the IPCC are no better. The nature of the players and pressures involved in large policy making groups do not allow for the radical, emergency crisis responses called for by many of our leading climate scientists.
We propose the abandonment of upper limits on decarbonization and a transition to sustainable technology. 100 percent decarbonization must be the goal of the world economy by 2050 if we are to avert catastrophic climate change. This process must also start now, and we will require the political resources currently monopolized by corporations and governments in order to do so. It will also require the diversion of enough economic power to shift production and consumption from unsustainable methods. Consumerism as currently practiced in the richer parts of the world, may not be tenable.
A climate modeling project undertaken by scientists at the Carnegie Institution reported last year that to stabilize global temperatures we must reduce emissions by 100 percent, as quickly as possible. The IPCC recommended 50 percent reductions by 2050, and the UK Climate Bill currently demands 60 percent. But both targets will result in massive increase in temperature.
Recent work by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has found that if 60 percent cuts are enacted by 2050, and extended across the world, The targets are more likely to contribute to a world 4°C or 5°C warmer than pre-industrial levels, than they are to constrain warming to no more than 2°C. This would unleash drought and flooding across the world. It will also engage positive feedback loops and pass numerous tipping points, making it virtually useless in avoiding climate catastrophe.
However, we can do much better. As Ken Caldeira, one of the scientists behind the Carnegie Institution modeling has said, “It is just not that hard to solve the technological challenges. We can develop and deploy wind turbines, electric cars, and so on, and live well without damaging the environment. The future can be better than the present, but we have to take steps to start kicking the CO2 habit now, so we won’t need to go cold turkey later.”
Unfortunately the kind of actions needed to avert future disaster are still seen as impractical, too extreme, uneconomical or politically unfeasible. Yet we are now at the stage when the radical has become reasonable and what is currently seen as moderate has become insane. We are also at a stage where political cowardice amounts to mass murder. Not acting out of fears that elections will be lost, or the media will misunderstand, is inexcusable when the future of the biosphere is at stake:
We are in the middle of a climate emergency. It’s time to wake up and smell the burning planet.
Non-linear climate change and tipping points: the justification of “radical is reasonable”
Paleoclimate data (data from the distant past) clearly tells a story of major local and global shifts in climate due to biophysical feedbacks. Many of these shifts display non-linear characteristics, thresholds and critical tipping points: in other words, they were quick and utterly devastating. Relatively minor changes in an earth system can push that system into a novel state, causing widespread and rapid alterations in systemic functions. This historical evidence of fast, major climate change combined with the obvious and accelerating anthropogenic upsets of our planetīs biogeochemical systems and climate indicates a bleak future for human populations and natural resources.
In a climate system a tipping point occurs when a relatively small increase in temperature or another factor has a disproportionately large overall effect. Scientists currently identify several major present-day climate tipping points with observable and imminent shifts. Irreversible arctic sea ice loss, Greenland ice sheet loss, West Antarctic ice melt, the collapse of the Gulf Stream, acidification of marine ecosystems, and the rapid loss of Amazon rain forest are among some of the most catastrophic and looming changes characterized by critical tipping points. Without immediate, urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and capture excess carbon dioxide some, if not all, of these events appear likely within decades.
One well-documented example of these types of rapid shifts led to a major alteration in African ecosystems in the relatively recent past. A relatively slight change in Earth’s orbit over 5,500 years ago caused a minor disruption in the distribution of solar radiation on the surface of the planet. Yet this small shift triggered abrupt and large scale climatic drying through a series of interlinked feedback systems. One of the results of this systemic upset was the conversion of Africaīs Sahel region from a more humid savanna into its modern day desert condition. Model simulations suggest that biological oceanic, atmospheric, and terrestrial influences amplified the effects of the initial orbital forcing. Based on historical climate data, we can expect similar non-linear mechanisms to lead to rapid local and global climate shifts in the near future.
In addition to rapid, non-linear changes, we must also be weary of the positive feedbacks to climate change both expected and observed. Positive feedbacks which are capable of adding increasing amounts of greenhouse gases include a litany of interconnected and potentially catastrophic elements:
- Higher temperature and increasing deforestation lowers the planet’s carbon removal mechanisms
- Increased global temperatures cause faster rates of microbial metabolism, releasing more CO2
- The Southern Ocean’s ability to absorb CO2 has decreased over 30% in the last 20 years and is reaching saturation
- Hotter, drier conditions in forests worldwide lead to increased fires and droughts
We now have evidence of rapid climatic alterations from non-human sources: biophysical feedback systems. These rapid shifts demonstrate that the risks of non-linear changes are high. Yet skeptics often doubt that humans can have profound effects on terrestrial mechanisms like the climate. Unfortunately for them, a familiar, yet seemingly easy to forget episode refutes their claims.
One of the most frightening instances of anthropogenic alterations to the atmospheric components that ensure our biosphere’s functioning is the depletion of the ozone layer by chloroflurocarbon (CFC) emissions. The rapid cultural response to this crisis has barely enabled humankind to avoid catastrophic climatic alterations and serves as an example that global societies may quickly alter their behavior in response to emerging scientific findings if the information is met with appropriate responses by policy makers, the business and industrial sectors, and the general public.
Avoiding catastrophic ozone deterioration came partly by sheer luck. If the chemical industry had arbitrarily chosen to use bromofluorocarbons (an equally useful refrigerant but far more dangerous ozone destroyer) instead of chlorofluorocarbons, atmospheric chemists would not have had time to identify and alter their effects without creating a global catastrophe. This should serve as a harbinger of the dangers of the industrial-technological sector left unattended by policy derived from sound ecosystem science.
Adaptation or Extinction
Compiling and reviewing the most up to date and emerging observations of climate change as well as those of current greenhouse gas emissions gives a bleak and urgent image: both the effects of warming as well as predicted emissions rises have been grossly underestimated in even the worst-case scenario predictions of most major reports from past data. The planet is barreling full-throttle into a global climate disaster and its time for societies to react in response to the severity of the situation.
Based on climate data from historical proxy and model predictions, we can expect with high confidence that the rapid fluctuations to Earth system cycles caused by human activity will be met with similarly drastic alterations. The longer we hesitate to make widespread societal responses to our greenhouse gas emission rates the greater the future cost in lives as well as economic and natural resources.
These tipping points, if reached, are also likely to further speed up processes of climatic change. For example, the loss of Arctic sea ice will reduce the albedo of the polar region, reducing the amount of sunlight reflected back into space and increasing the amount of energy trapped within the earth’s atmosphere. Large scale burning and depletion of the Amazon will eliminate a massive carbon sink and liberate enormous quantities of carbon into the air, further accelerating warming.
There is a high probability that these tipping points cannot be separated from each other. We need to look at the “big picture” if we are to understand the gravity of the climate crisis. If we reach one, we will likely reach many or all of them, with catastrophic consequences. Failure to act appropriately may lead to a runaway cascade of rapid, non-linear shifts, a process that could prove unstoppable and, for much of humanity, unsurvivable. Radical action must begin immediately and continue unabated by the dawdling typical of “business-as-usual” policy.
Global cultural awareness actions such as Live Earth, Earth Hour, the recent Allegiance for Climate Protection climate commercials, and similar social unification events and statements are working to push the cultural tipping-point towards sustainability. Whether or not they will be successful may hold the fate for the majority of human and non-human life on Earth. The following article in this series will continue to address cultural components of climate change and consider these and other environmental and natural resource issues within the framework of the transition from the industrial to ecological era.
We are now in the process of launching even more devastating changes – on a global scale. Scientists have come to call the period of our attempted global suicide the Anthropocene – in which human beings have become the dominant force in changing global ecosystems. This is our planet, whether we like it or not, and it is ours either to break, or to heal.