Our regular contributor, Terrance Field, retired business person living in France and Florida, London School of Economics graduate and voracious reader, pens another cry of concern over the change in the earth's climate. Here in America the catastrophic, unprecedented deluge of rain over Houston and other parts of the Gulf Coast have brought to the fore front the reality that yes, for whatever reasons, the globe's temperature is rising. Again disturbing, confrontational reading.-Glenn N. Holliman
A Short Note on the Undeniable Reality of Climate Change
by
Terry Field
A slew of excellent reports from the
highest calibre science institutes across the world, supported by
copper-bottomed observation data from multiple sources shows irrefutably that:
1 Climate change is continuing at
rates unanticipated a decade ago.
2 The severity of the range of
possible outcomes is greater than previously modelled.
3 The upper ranges of temperature,
acidification of oceans, storms and desertification is expanded over prior
expectations as data is better gathered and more clearly analyzed as to
outcomes.
In every refining of the data, of
observations, of analysis in the last decade there has only been a
reinforcement of the disturbing reality that sensitivity to carbon has been
understated when it comes to climate change and warming of the globe.
There is no refutation possible now.
All else is quackery.
This problem, known for very many
decades now, of progressive deterioration in the climatic conditions that allow
the vast diversity of life to exist on this planet has a particularly
disturbing characteristic. One that is now becoming more fully understood, and
more incontrovertible.
Climate change – global warming – is
increasing disproportionately to the energy input. There is a ‘cumulating’
effect, and on top of this, as the earth heats, it becomes more sensitive to a
given energy input from carbon release.
Some had hoped that an increase in
cloud cover and moisture density in the atmosphere would act to ‘ameliorate’
climate change. Study shows this is not the case. There is no such aid to be
had from cloud cover and distribution both vertically and horizontally.
At the time of writing, CO2
concentration has risen to 406 parts P.M and has been recorded very recently at
410 ppm. This is unprecedented for enormous periods of time. Add to this the
rate of accumulation is faster than in nature by large multiples, and the
picture of disorder, uncontrolled acceleration, and the potency of human
generation of CO2 from carbon burning is now quite compelling.
What has been done; what is being
done. Is it sufficient?
Almost nothing has been done to
restrict the growth in carbon burning and CO2 release to date, despite what has
been known and what is now known.
The Paris agreement is voluntary,
timid in its actions, disordered in its ‘voluntarism’ (required in order to get
any agreement at all from the United States) and is a tiny fraction of what was
needed to avert rapid warming, and tipping points being reached, met and the
consequences becoming patent.
Add to this the political
impossibility of selling to the American people the idea of wealth transfer to
the ‘developing’ world to cause it to avoid the use of hydrocarbons and the
Paris accord is now of really very little value indeed, despite the hype.
Now the United States has dismantled
its monitoring and control agencies. The EPA is eviscerated, and the nation has
given notice of leaving the Paris Climate accord. The United States is now
removing the modest actions taken to disfavour carbon extraction and burning,
and is doing all it can to accelerate the use of that source of energy.
Whilst local actions by committed
environmental CO2 ‘averters’ is welcome, it is no match for a full federal
program combined with the oil, gas and coal industries working together to
re-establish massive carbon input into the productive economy.
Has the process stalled terminally,
and what is the likely future?
There are, at the time of writing,
1600 incremental coal fired power stations planned for the developing nations
and these will be built across the world. The United States has a clear drive,
via fracking, leaving aside the coal and oil being pushed by Trump’s
administration to continue its recovered vitality and prosperity.
The appearance of alternative solar
and to a small degree wind-powered systems has acted at the margin. The real
driver to American prosperity is fracked, super-cheap gas with gigantic
reserves available for future usage. Europe
is attempting to switch much of its power generation to ‘renewables’ with less
CO2 output, but with limited success. Germany uses coal stations to back up the
variability of these sources, and its CO2 output is not greatly reduced as a
result.
The reality for Europe is the
imposition by didactic political power of relatively impoverishing expensive
lower carbon output energy. Europe is, by its history, a place where state
power is immense, and personal freedom highly constrained. Even there, the
attempt at decarbonisation is puny. The socialist/green alliance to destroy
nuclear power has a great deal to do with this quite perverse outcome.
Thus the process of attempted
reduction in carbon output is trivial across the world. Much marketing hype in
national media, some old technologies made a little more effective, but that is
about it.
Why is the attempt so trivial to
date??
In a word, economics.
The elites who guide the affairs of
the world – even ever so poorly – have for long understood the powerful linear
relationship between availability – and thus low price – of conventional energy
sources and economic prosperity. Indeed, in the West that relationship is
enhanced by a relative power over the rest of the world that has flowed
directly from the control not only of abundant hydrocarbons, but also the
financial downstream – the recycling of funds through the western banking
system, for mostly internal usage. They know that that system is under threat
from the heterogenous supply characteristics of distributed ‘renewable’ power
systems. Add to this the potential to recycle funds earned from these new
energy systems through non-western banking systems and the threat becomes
very obvious indeed.
Are the claims that new energy
technologies are low cost and the switchover will not be damaging to Western –
indeed global economic wealth-generation correct????
When the Stern report was produced
about a decade ago, the optimistic assumptions contained in the report
concerning the very modest costs required to switch to low-carbon energy
systems and the ‘benign’ effect to be experience in the real economy was the
subject of some quite cynical comments in the serious press.
Now, so much later, and with data
showing we are at a much more serious point in CO2 concentration, and with dire
projections for 2100 near term outturns, nobody suggests that this benign
economic projection is realistic.
People like Hansen
in the USA suggest we are now at the point where the only viable method of
avoiding total catastrophe in not many decades is the development of immense
Carbon Capture and Storage technologies.
This technology does not presently
exist in a scaled format. Only very small plants in test-mode exist. Some new
designs are being built, but the general observation on this technology is that
it will add between 60% to 130% on top of the existing hydrocarbon input to
gain the same output. This translates to gigantic increased hydrocarbon demand,
and immense increases in cost, rapid approach towards ‘peak’ oil, and result in
vast non carbon pollutions both upstream and downstream for the use of coal.
This, and all the other disruptions
associated with carbon removal suggest that energy becomes stratospherically
expensive, and physically difficult to deliver. The pressure to bring new
nuclear power designs on-stream will be intense. The early indications of this
technology would suggest a significant increase to costs of energy supply from
this source.
The re-engineering of the
distribution system that will be required from the potential CCS power stations
and the new generation of nuclear, plus renewables is anticipated to add
considerable cost to the grid distribution system.
Add to this the integration of
hydrocarbon products into a vast number of products, that supply being achieved
by energy intensive thermal and catalytic cracking plants. These products are
not subject to simple substitution with non-carbon sourced chemicals. The more
we know, the more it would appear that there is a massive impact to the economy
resultant from any real attempt to ‘decarbonise’ energy supply and product
design. Some suggest it cannot be done; that we have arrived at a point where it
is so late, and the required revolution to avoid utter climate catastrophe so
vast in cost and disruption that civilisation, organised advanced society
cannot survive the experience.
A fancy way of saying that is simply
cannot be done.
We are too late to even try.
What are the real prospects, today,
for the coming 100 years of climate change? In a simple descriptive.
The models are less and less vague.
Data is more robust.
It suggests a possible range of
outcomes.
In terms of temperature, the range of
outcomes by 2100 seems to coalesce around the range 2 degrees C minimum, more
probable 3.5 degrees C. A maximum of 6 degrees C is now reinforced by
progressively more studies, better data, more accurate analysis and realistic
modelling.
The descriptives of this range
of average global temperatures range from unsettling, where degraded quality of
agriculture, living standards, length of life, species survival becoming more
difficult and ‘on the edge’ - to a collapse of life across a vast
swath of species, and unliveable conditions for all higher forms of life in all
but the extreme polar regions. And even there small survivor groups of greatly
reduced ranges of species will be exposed to the real possibility of
extinction. And that includes us.
An earth at + 2 degrees is
dangerously unpleasant. Very different from now.
An earth of + 3.5 degrees sees
drowned countries, disappearance of coasts, most cities charnel houses no
longer habitable, the central belt of the globe subject to super-hot periods where
mass death of hundreds of millions will be unavoidable. The waters of the
Indian sub-continent become seasonal, and the deserts of central India, of
China, of the Mongolian plateau, of the Sahara then surrounding the
Mediterranean both south and north grow inexorably.
The Amazon largely disappears and
becomes a carbon emitter, not carbon absorber.
The Northern ice is gone. The waters,
now dark, absorb more heat – a ‘feedback effect’. The southern ice melts at an
increasing rate from land not simply ice-shelfs, and Greenland ice does the
same.
Massive rises in sea levels are
experienced.
International food and most other
trade dies. Starvation across the globe becomes commonplace.
+ 4 degrees and above – feedback
reinforcing loops abound. Death of every form of sophisticated life is
everywhere. We cannot and do not survive this experience.
Why do you hear nothing of this?
Because:
1 Climate Scientists are not social
scientists. They fail to communicate. And now often fear so to do.
2 Some – indeed many – now fear
nothing can be done, and there is little point in terrifying the population.
3 This catastrophic circumstance
takes time to assimilate. We are trained to hope and believe that we are able
to innovate in every way to solve previously insoluble problem.
Yet now this problem is slowly - very
slowly – becoming obviously ‘soluble’ at the expense of either:
An utter collapse in our economy,
social and political order and distribution of wealth, power, and absence of
extreme violence on the one hand or at the expense, on the other:
A collapse of the conditions that
support life and a drastic and frankly unimaginable reduction in the size of
the global human population.
Please note and be aware that
‘solutions’ as described here are solutions for the earth. Not for us.
Physics is like that.
It is not anthropocentric.
4 Politicians have suggested that
things are better than they are. The IPCC reports have consistently underplayed
the dread reality.
5 The models all – or nearly all –
include geo-engineering – the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere as a critical
element in presenting g a credible plan to remain within an acceptable climate
outcome – usually defined as + 2 degrees.
The problem here is a simple one.
None of these technologies exists, all are in the earliest conceptual stage,
none are even remotely understood as to their total effect on life on earth.
None are close to being ‘costed’.
Implementation, nor thought
about in terms of resilience and reliability. NO running cost effect on
economic continuity is attempted.
In other words, we need these
technologies to make numbers add up and the outcome look even tolerable
therefore they must be made to exist! A sort of moral imperative applied to
both physics and economics.
Many, myself included, would call
this close to insane. Certainly utterly
irresponsible; but foolish lightweight politicians need coca to sleep at night,
and this is their ‘cocoa’.
Are we seeing the start of the
catastrophe? Will such a thing make a positive difference?
The bloodless argument revolves
around ‘probability’.
Are the events
increasing in violence, severity, destructiveness, incidence of human and other
species death? Do we see events we have never seen before?
Certainly there is data suggesting
hurricanes are shifting northward at 35 miles every ten years from the Gulf.
The recent storms attacking the Eastern seaboard in the US look highly unusual.
Houston is presently experiencing the consequences of 52 inches of water
dropped from a single low pressure event.
If we look at Asia, the monsoon seems
perturbed; varying in date, in intensity, in regional effects in ways not seen
before.
Heat plumes in the Middle East, some
150 F – have been seen in Iran, Kuwait, Iraq, and elsewhere.
Never before seen heat plumes.
mortally dangerous to those unprotected by air conditioning. Certainly mortal
to local fauna.
The perturbation of the Arctic has
seen minus 80 degrees experienced in Siberia. This has destroyed transhumance,
and hunter gatherers have ceased their way of life after tens of thousands of
years of quiet continuity.
In the most recent extreme cold, two
thirds of all mammalian life in large swathes of Siberia died. This was seen
before, when the Arctic melted in the last interglacial, and the pressure
variation down from the arctic modified. The records of this are very clear.
Syria has lost its surface water; its
agricultural regions have become deserts, the weather table has dropped from 9
feet below grade to 1500 feet below grade. War was in significant measure
caused by this. In Turkey, the Eastern regions of Asia Minor are also
experiencing extreme water stress, social discontent, and a (possibly)
irritated population turns to radical Islam as a panacea.
Portugal is modelled consistently as
being one of the most early-affected States bordering the North Mediterranean.
Sure enough, immense summer fires have consumed large areas of the landscape of
that country.
Projections show that the
Mediterranean basin will be the most acutely and earliest affected non-polar
region on earth as the climate heats up and absorbs energy.
The models suggest
that the entire basin will become a desert; Italy will be a desert. The desert
may extend as far as Paris.
Consider the consequences for the
loss of viability, agriculture, activity in much of the south of the United
States. The data would indicate that event is beginning to be seen.
Night-time temperatures are
rising across the belt from Cancer to Capricorn. This may be the pre-curser to
the impossibility of human (let alone other mammalian and other life)
continuing to live in that large central belt on Earth.
Is this alarming and dreadful set of
conditions unavoidable; possibly avoidable, probably avoidable?
We are dealing with probabilities.
Potentials.
As things are, I believe it is simply
too late to avoid more than + 2 degrees C.
If carbon removal technologies
develop and become affective, this may be avoided. I do not expect this. It is
an un-quantified hope, and nothing more.
BUT if there is no serious reduction
in carbon output, and no geo-engineering project works with any significant
effect, then I expect +3 to +4 degrees by about 2100.
At which point so many positive
feedback loops will have kicked in, that Humans will then have no effect on the
outcome – their capacity to control the process will have become null.
Whatever happens, I anticipate a
massive reduction in the productive economy across the world. And if we as a
global society avoid violent disorder and large-scale regional collapse I will
be very surprised indeed.
And remember, so many of the positive
feedback loops are not even in the IPCC reports as they cannot be reliably
quantified.
Some of these are as follows.
1 The loss of northern Arctic sea ice
– the ‘albedo’ effect accelerates ocean heating.
2 The loss of a very large portion of
the Amazon Basin. Now considered unsaveable by most informed observers.
3 Methane release from the Siberian
tundra.
4 Methane release from frozen
clathrates in the warmed shallow Arctic oceans.
5 Non-linear ‘plus’ response to a
given input of CO2 to the system.
There are many others; these are sufficient to be going on with. - Terry Field
Steph on the Columbian Ice Fields
Steph, her son and new daughter in law, the one who informed her about tipping customs in the North Country.
