Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

[T]he arrest of carbon emissions may not be sufficient to halt the current trend, except if accompanied with global efforts at down-draw of atmospheric CO2 using a range of bio-sequestration, organic and chemical methods.

...even science fiction writers such as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley or Doris Lessing did not envisage a civilisation that would knowingly, against the best scientific evidence, devastate its own atmosphere and ocean system as comprehensively as has been and continues to be done through anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change.

Inherent in IPCC climate change projections are continuous trends toward mean global temperatures of 1.8 to 3.6 degrees C by 2100, depending on emission scenarios, as adopted in the Stern and Garnaut reports, giving an impression as if mitigation and/or adaptation can be undertaken at any economically or politically chosen time over the next several decades. Unfortunately this is not the case.

Just before 2 a.m. on February 19, the war on climate science showed its grip on the U.S. House of Representatives as it voted to eliminate U.S. funding for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Republican majority, on a mostly party-line vote of 244-179, went on record as essentially saying that it no longer wishes to have the IPCC prepare its comprehensive international climate science assessments.

June, April to June, and Year-to-Date Global Temperatures are Warmest on Record Last month’s combined global land and ocean surface temperature made it the warmest June on record and the warmest on record averaged for any April-June and January-June periods … Worldwide average land surface temperature was the warmest on record for June and the April-June period, and the second warmest on record for the year-to-date (January-June) period, behind 2007. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US)

Feeble attempts by civilization to mitigate the climate are drowning in a tide of medieval conspiracy theories by man-over-nature ideologues. There is nowhere else the 6.5 billion of contemporary humans can go.

There is no knowing the time table towards an ice-free Earth, the current “experiment” by Homo sapiens being unique in the history of the planet. The atmosphere is not waiting for human decision. 

The unique nature of the "experiment" Homo sapiens is conducting with the atmosphere through the emission of 319 billion tons of carbon by 2007, and the consequent extreme rise in atmospheric CO2 of about 2 ppm/year, two orders of magnitude faster than during the last glacial termination, counsels caution. … The alternative to urgent fast tracked mitigation efforts does not bear contemplation.

Inherent in any attempt at challenging published scientific theories is the need to conduct research, or advance discussions, submitted to the peer-reviewed scientific literature: the core of the scientific process allowing discrimination between credible scientific work and ambit claims. ... Not so the so-called "climate change sceptics" who, rather than follow scientific procedures, mostly publish in politically friendly media channels.

With no intermediate targets defined, no clean energy technology assistance given to developing countries, come 2050, a magic wand will be waved, carbon emissions will be cut by 80 percent, mean temperatures limited below 2 degrees C, and pigs will fly.

Rarely do politicians listen to climate scientists, nor is the atmosphere likely to cooperate with governments trying to obtain a “balance” between fossil fuel corporations, trade unions, environmentalists and the public. Not to decide is to decide.

Fresh out of meetings at the Heartland Institute (earlier involved in tobacco promotion) supported by the American Enterprise Institute, which received $1,625,000 from Exxon-Mobil between and 1998 and 2005, Senator Fielding states, "So far I don't think there's been a real debate about the science," and "Let's actually explore that". Unfortunately, the climate is not waiting for Senator Fielding’s “exploration”.

Having endured the sharp climate upheavals of the Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles, humans are likely to survive in suitable environments, including clouded tropical mountain regions, high elevation islands and cool high latitudes regions. Hinging on extensive agriculture in temperate climate zones, prone to severe droughts, on cultivation in low river deltas, prone to sea level rise, and on irrigation of mountain snow-fed rivers, the future of civilization under global warming on the scale of several degrees Celsius is less clear.

The implications of climate change for ecosystems are illustrated in the new book Heatstroke: Nature in an Age of Global Warming by Anthony Barnosky, of Yale University. Despite intensified warnings from the Copenhagen climate conference, as a self-fulfilling prophecy the government’s “great moral issue of our time” is being relegated to secondary priority. Given that warnings by scientists have proven mostly correct, as contrasted with watered-down reports percolating upward through bureaucracies, there is little evidence the Rudd government is listening to the recent dire warnings by climate scientists.

It is likely only a combination of deep urgent cuts in carbon emissions, coupled with major investments in fast-tracked development of a wide range of effective geo-engineering methods may be capable of making the difference.

Obama, the EU (and Rudd?) face two issues: first the plethora of extreme weather events around the world, including fatal fires and floods, inherent in accelerating climate change, and second, a massive well-funded disinformation campaign, which has provided governments an excuse to undertake no mitigation measures or over more than 20 years.

There is little evidence the “climate change skeptics” worry too much their misunderstanding of climate science may lead to the death of billions and the likely demise of civilization . The legal status of disinformation campaigns aimed at the promotion of substances of proven fatal global consequences, such as ozone-destroying CFCs, or greenhouse gas levels pushed up to near-40% above their natural level, is unclear. The lack of suitable laws to prevent ecocide may yet prove to be the Achilles heel of global civilization.

Until recently, whenever climate research organizations reported increases in Arctic Sea ice melt rates , advocates of global “cooling” have been making references to the Antarctic continent as supposed counter argument. Referring to small stable or slightly cooling parts of east Anarctica, a plethora of bogus climate websites claim Antarctic warming is not a part of global warming. Presumably regarding Antarctica as part of another planet?

Planetcide challenges every faith, ideal and social system humans ever held. Individuals are crushed, as in H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, when cells rebelling against the insanity of a murderous global Martian society are destroyed by the parent organism.

The sensitivity of the Earth’s atmosphere to anthropogenic carbon gases has been underestimated. As the orgy of burning carbon products of 400 million of biological evolution continues unabated, pushed by business, advertisers and consumption-promoting governments, global warming proceeds at a pace faster than projected by the IPCC, tracking toward likely climate tipping points.

According to Anderson and Bows (2008) it may be too late to arrest climate change by reduced carbon emission alone. Humanity needs to fast-track development of techniques for atmospheric CO2 down-draw to levels c. 350 ppm and below (Hansen et al., 2008). (Andrew Glikson)