Climate change: we have the power

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2772943.ece

From The Sunday Times
November 4, 2007

Climate change: we have the power

There are pale greens and dark greens. Often they don’t see eye to eye. But there is no shortage of technologies to tackle global warming. We listen to the visionaries of change

Bryan Appleyard

Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, suggested in 1936 that carbon dioxide from burning coal could create an atmospheric greenhouse effect and warm the planet. In 1979 the American National Academy of Sciences warned that a wait-and-see policy on global warming “may mean waiting until it is too late”. In 1988 delegates from 46 countries to a Changing Atmosphere conference in Toronto called for a 20% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2005. In February 2005, the Kyoto Protocol established an international binding agreement to cut carbon-dioxide emissions. In October 2007, I can now reveal the net outcome of all this science. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. CO2 emissions, now approaching 30 billion tonnes a year, have continued to rise inexorably.

“In spite of all the rhetoric,” says Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum and one of the world’s leading climate scientists, “we sit perfectly on or just above the business-as-usual curve.”

Green Europe is actually doing worse than the sceptical United States. European emissions continue to rise while, last year, American emissions fell by 1.6%. In fairness, this may be because America has outsourced much of its manufacturing to China, so the US’s net effect on global emissions will probably still be negative. And, of course, India and China are both on rapid growth curves – economically and politically – and won’t take lectures from western greens. So even if we switched to windmills and electric cars tomorrow, total emissions would be unlikely to fall.

So here’s the big picture. The huge economic growth of the past 150 years has been built on fossil fuels – oil and coal. This has resulted in the emission of 500 gigatonnes of CO2, most of it in the past 40 years. Atmospheric CO2 is now at 385 parts per million (ppm), a third higher than it was before industrialisation. Whatever we do now, it will rise to at least 450ppm, but since we appear to be doing nothing, it may rise far higher. The best guess is that this will cause temperatures to rise 2C over the next century, but there is evidence that there may be a tipping point. The whole process may accelerate uncontrollably, creating far higher temperatures and reducing the amount of land habitable by humans either by flooding or desertification.

Deep-green James Lovelock – creator of the Gaia hypothesis, which views the Earth as a single living organism – points out that the Earth has two default conditions: icehouse or greenhouse. We thrive in the intermissions. He thinks we’re definitely sliding towards greenhouse. The consequences will be horrific, destroying ways of life and killing billions. On the other hand, pale-green Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish eco-sceptic whose doubts about deep-green claims make him one of the most influential thinkers in the world, agrees it’s happening, but believes it’s manageable. We need to do something, but not much.

The consensus lies somewhere between the two. But, on the whole, it’s closer to Lovelock:most scientists think we do indeed have to spend real money and political capital on either cutting emissions or developing new energy technologies – or preferably both.

How we do this is the issue. Technologically it’s a problem. Politically it’s a nightmare, requiring unprecedented levels of global co-operation from a species whose second and third favourite pastimes are tribalism and war. The technology can drive the politics if it’s effective, cheap and geopolitically beneficial – for example, freeing us of the need to cover the dubious expense accounts of the Saudi royal family. But is it?

“We are kind of poised, says Rapley, “to see if technology really is the cavalry coming over the horizon or not.” The good news is that we can definitely hear hoof beats and a bugle.

...

[stuntcat]

1. "tribalism and war. "

I don't know that we'll be able to forget the meaningless greed junk in time to save ourselves. I wish visionaries had it right but I don't "hope" anymore.

the Kyoto plan needs serious changes, but a plan that the powerful will work together on is all that can help us.