Climate Truth Blog

While some of us climate cynics have difficulty imagining humanity saving itself from its own insatiable oil addiction before it produces terminal levels of atmospheric CO2, there are pragmatic optimists like economist Jeffrey Sachs, a professor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, who can always be counted upon to devise plausible escape scenarios from the dark woods of global heating. In his Sustainable Developments column in the March, 2008 issue of Scientific American, Sachs, the Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, once again draws us a useful map.

Basic science and math tell us that too little CO2 in the air around us would lead to a frozen, dead planet. Too much of the critical gas and we burn up. The magic numbers are well known and for millennia have hovered between 180 and 280 parts per million (ppm). This is the equivalent of 20 to 30 people in a community of 100,000. Small numbers! As we have relentlessly burned fossil fuels for the last 200 but especially the last 30 years, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has steadily climbed.

In 2008 it has risen to 383 ppm or nearly 40 people in our metaphorical town of 100,000. Still a small number and yet the higher it climbs, the more likely all life on Earth suffers and begins to die. Sachs tells us that in the next year we will pump another 36 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and will watch the ppm climb fron 383 to 385 and beyond.

We are already in unchartered territory—the atmosphere has never seen this much CO2 in the human era—but many scientists are guessing it may not be lethal or dangerous yet (and it is a guess—we don’t really know). Every one agrees we are accelerating toward the cliff’s edge but most experts think there is still time to alter our course. Where is the point of no return? No one knows for sure but some, including Sachs, have suggested the stop sign is 440 ppm. This is the equivilent of adding six or seven people to our town of 100,000.

Others like James Hansen, head of the Earth Sciences Division of NASA’s Goddard Space Institute propose a much bleaker view. In a December 7, 2007 National Geographic article Hansen estimated that the CO2 tipping point for many parts of the climate is around 300 to 350 ppm, exits we missed on the climate highway at least 30 to 60 years ago. Following a presentation at the American Geophysical Union conference Hansen said, “The evidence indicates we’ve aimed too high—that the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 is no more than 350 ppm.”

Environmentalist author Bill McKibben writing in the Washington Post on December 28, 2007 referred to these critical thresholds and said, “The last time the Earth warmed two or three degrees Celsius—which is what 450 parts per million implies—sea levels rose by tens of meters, something that would shake the foundations of the human enterprise should it happen again.”

According to Sachs, a 440 ppm limit will allow us to “safely” plow another 900 billion tons of CO2 into the air for another 40 years. Even with this approach we would need to immediately end tropical deforestation, which accounts for seven billion tons of CO2 each year and reduce our current annual fossil-fuel-based emissions by one-third from 36 billion to 21 billion tons. Anyone want to bet that will happen?

But let’s suppose we want to follow Sach’s map to climate stabilization. What roads will he take us down? Sachs suggests that we derive our electricity by emission-free technologies “through the mass mobilization of solar and nuclear power and the capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide from coal-burning power plants.”

Of course it sounds good but there are two problems. The first is that we don’t really know if Hansen or Sachs is right. If Hansen is right, it might not matter what map we use. It may be too little too late. The second problem is that even if Sachs is right and the atmosphere is forgiving of our continuing abuse of it; even if the map he’s drawn will get us to the promised land of climate stabilization, there’s not a shred of evidence that the political will or courage exists among our leaders to take us there.

Two final points we can all concede. Time is running out and we have not yet begun to act. And what good is a map, even an accurate one, if we fail to use it?

Steven C. Sherwood, a Professor of Geophysics in the department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University was recently published in Science (15 February, 2008) beneath a headline that read, Climate Change: A Titanic Challenge. Sherwood wrote in response to a November 23 article in Science by Richard Kerr, a Senior News Writer at Science who asked the most important and prescient question of our time, How Urgent is Climate Change?

Sherwood praises Kerr’s “excellent summary of the challenges facing action on climate change, and the reasons why we are unfortunately already committed to substantial warming.” While acknowledging Kerr’s list of issues that “compel action now,” Sherwood also argues, “Greater urgency comes from the rapid growth rate (especially in the developing world) of the very infrastructure that is so problematic.”

This is correct. Many people treat climate change as if it is not really changing at all, as if it’s holding still while we get around to fixing it. But in fact it is a rapidly moving target. The climate is undergoing dramatic and relentless change. Constantly. As I write this. As you read this. While we think about not making the climate worse, we are, each and every one of us making it worse. Much worse. While we talk about alternative energy, we are racing at breakneck speed to increase, not decrease our dependency on fossil fuels. As Pogo used to say, “We have met the enemy and it is us.” We are the agents of the change we claim to fear. We are the means of our own destruction. We are the threat we hope to avert.

Al Gore put it best when he said, “So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.”

Sherwood writes, “Mitigating climate change is often compared to turning the Titanic away from an iceberg. But this “Titanic” is getting bigger and less maneuverable as we wait–and that causes prospects to deteriorate nonlinearly, and on a time scale potentially much shorter than the time scale on which the system itself responds.”

Recently Nobel Prize-winning biologist, IPCC scientist and Chico State University professor, Dr. Jeffrey Price admitted we are running out of time and said, “It’s definitely coming to fourth and goal, there’s two minutes left, and we’re behind.” The climate is like a bridge or an elevator with a limited weight capacity. We don’t know the exact number but we know there is one and once we pass it, there will be no turning back. Some say we have already passed it while others give us no more than 5 or 10 years. The time for action is clearly now and yet is there any evidence that humanity understands how little time is left?

The Titanic must be turned even as it grows larger and more monstrous. The iceberg looms ahead. We talk about turning the great ship around but this is only talk. Scientists warn us and are ignored. They know what is coming. They understand that real efforts to avoid the calamity ahead have not begun. The clock is ticking and the insurmountable odds againsts us grow worse every second we delay. Is this madness? Look around and see. This nightmare is only beginning to unfold.

On Sunday, August 26, 2007, Mr. Silas Lyons, editor of the Record Searchlight wrote an editorial entitled “Healthy dissent brings truth closer.” This is my response.

DC

Dear Mr. Lyons,

Thank you for your editorial this morning (http://redding.com/news/2007/aug/26/healthy-dissent-brings-truth-closer/). Ever since you took over for Kelly I was curious what your position on climate change would be. As you know the Record Searchlight’s previous position on this issue is far from Samuelson’s but it would appear from your piece that you are staking your claim in the middle.

The best refutation of Samuelson was written over a year ago and can be found at: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/exxonmobil-smoke-mirrors-hot.html.

I too subscribe to Newsweek along with Time, Harper’s, Nation, The New Yorker, New York Review of Books and Mother Jones among others. But I don’t rely on these magazines as my primary source of climate science news. For that I subscribe to science journals and magazines. The very best science journals on the planet are Science and Nature. They are expensive but they are they most important publications I receive each week. Another one I subscribe to is Scientific American. And one I am just now subscribing to is New Scientist. I highly recommend all of these.

Samuelson like many other contrarians are consistent. No matter how unanimous the science, they stick to their skeptical stance. There are many others like him. Your paper publishes one of the worst. Thomas Sowell. You also give space to another denier, George Will. But there are others. John Stossel, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Alexander Cockburn (Nation). What they all have in common is a tenacious, non-scientific approach to a purely scientific issue. In other words they decide the results before they do the experiment. They know the truth before they examine the evidence.

Scientists are differerent. Unlike journalists they have to prove their statements. They have to run their studies and publish their data and it is picked over by hundreds of other brilliant scientists who then do their own studies refuting or replicating the original study or adding to our knowledge in important ways. Between 1971 and 2005 there were exactly 17,561 studies on climate change. In 2005 alone there were 2000 studies. That is 5 or 6 a day.

You and I cannot discuss climate science meaningfully unless we reference these studies and their results. Fortunately the scientists summarize all this regularly for us. As you know the IPCC publishes their findings every few years. A couple thousand of the top scientists on the planet (including one from Chico State, Dr. Jeff Price) scrutinize this data and come to their unavoidable conclusions. The facts determine their conclusions instead of their conclusions determining their “facts.” And then government officials with political views take over and water it down a bit (China and Saudi Arabia especially) and then the IPCC releases their results.

This last release which prompted your paper to recognize the facts in February of this year stated once again with more conviction than ever that:

Climate Change is real. It is human caused. It is extremely serious. We must act. If we fail to do so, the consequences for humanity and life on the planet will be disastrous.

If you study the IPCC reports you know they give us best and worst case scenarios. What you may not know is that the National Academy of Sciences (originally formed by Abe Lincoln) released a report this year which said in effect we are on a trajectory which will exceed the worst case scenario (http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2609305.ece and pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0700609104).

What we know is that for millions of years the “natural” level of CO2 in the atmosphere hovered between 440 and 660 billion tons. We are now at 880 billion tons and accelerating. It may already be too late (our activity may have already triggered us past a point of no return…we are forcing a dramatic transformation on the planet and it is laboring to respond but there is no doubt it is responding). Scientists tell us the very best scenario is that life as we know it can continue with 55 billion more tons (they are guessing of course…we have already created a “new planet” that never existed since human beings existed on Earth).

That gives us 10 years. In your most optimistic views do you believe we are going to give up our addiction to the internal combustion engine? Do you believe China will quit their production of coal plants? We both know that we are going to put that 55 billion tons up there and much much more.

Imagine that you were could go back in time and prevent little Tess from jumping up and grabbing that bar that ultimately ended her life (Tess Stevens was a 12 year old girl who died in an accident in a construction area near her home.) Of course you would do it. Tess is a metapor for humanity. She is poised. Some of us want to stop her but Samuelson and Sowell suggest we keep discussing it (”healthy dissent?”). As we talk she is flexing those calf muscles and beginning her leap. We cannot stop her now. It’s too late.

Your editorial is titled “Healthy dissent brings truth closer.” In the same way that an alcoholic argues with himself about whether he should continue drinking or not.

We are presently engaged in the most incredible gamble that humanity has ever faced. Imagine if there was a child who had a life-threatening illness. Imagine 98 of the top doctors in the world all agreed on the cause and treatment but 2 doctors disagreed. Would you say “the doctors can’t agree so we will just wait” or would you gamble on the 98%? The odds are pretty good that you would “win” if you went with the consensus view.

But Samuelson and Sowell and others would gamble on inaction. Meanwhile the child grows sicker by the day.

Everything we hold dear hangs in the balance. Everything. We are gambling all life on this planet on the possiblity that virtually every climate scientist and every climate science report might turn out to be wrong. And meanwhile we do nothing. Healthy dissent? I call it sheer madness. Blind suicidal, genocidal insanity.

The irony is that your “healthy dissent” virtually guarantees we will ignore the science and let blind guides lead us to the end of millions of years of evolution. This is beyond comprehension.

I feel such an incredible sense of futility. I have naively sent letters to Bruce (Bruce Ross is the editorial page editor of the Record Searchlight) on this topic but it is rather pointless. Silly even. The rantings of a fanatic or zealot. My only hope now is that we see what we have done in time to apologize to the Earth, to the Creator and creation and honor her. The very worst outcome would be to carry out this crime and never acknowledge it.

Thanks Silas. Blessings to you and your family.

Doug Craig

I wish to thank Mr. Ken Murray for highlighting global warming on his July 5 radio program on KQMS and for acknowledging the critical human role in both the problem and the solution. It was extremely refreshing and gratifying to hear one of our community leaders speak out so clearly in recognizing a factual reality that the rest of our leaders in the north state still deny or pretend isn’t happening. At a time when record-breaking heat, droughts, floods, wildfires and extreme weather events rock the planet Murray is to be applauded for his forthrightness and courage.

Thankfully, Murray is not the only one speaking out from the right. National Review, a highly conservative magazine recently ran a cover story entitled, “Taking the Heat, A Conservative Strategy on Global Warming” in which they said, “It is no longer possible, scientifically or politically to deny that human activities have very likely increased global temperatures…conservatives should accept this reality—and move on to the question of what we should do about it.”

The article stated, “The underlying physics require us to accept that rising concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are driving increases in global temperatures.” The article went on to state, “If you are skeptical of this, you are skeptical of the last 120 years of particle physics. All else equal, the more CO2 molecules we have in the atmosphere, the hotter it gets.”

Unfortunately, as Murray admitted, it may already be too late for us to stop the runaway train of climate change. According to the councilman, who has been studying the latest scientific reports, we may be four years too late or, at most, have ten years left to find and implement an effective solution. He also correctly recognizes that the so-called solutions presented by Schwarzenegger and the Democrats are worse than nothing because they merely pretend to solve the global crisis while precious time is being wasted.

So what should be done? I would suggest the following:

1) Each of us in our local community need to set aside our differences and join with others across the planet on the left and right to acknowledge the scientific facts and take the painful, necessary steps to reduce our personal and collective contribution to the problem.

2) In his book, “Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning,” George Monbiot correctly identifies rationing as our only hope. We know we have to reduce our carbon emissions and scientists generally agree on how much. Each of us needs to pressure our local, state and federal representatives to join with us in ensuring that meaningful legislation is drafted which will establish mandatory, enforceable “carbon allocation” limits.

3) The more creative among us will then help us adjust to life within a “carbon budget” as we transition to reliance on alternative sources for our energy and transportation needs.

Murray may be right. It may be too late. We may utterly fail to solve the most crushing catastrophe to ever face humanity in its brief appearance on Earth’s stage. But we must try. For the sake of our children and future generations and the millions of life-forms now dependent on our actions, we must try. Acknowledging reality is a great place for to start. Ken Murray has done us a favor. It is now up to each of us to follow his lead.

It continues to amaze me how many people are still confused about climate change. It is understandable that since the media is a source of considerable climate change disinformation, (http://mediamatters.org/items/200703230007) media consumers would also be confused. However, the science on climate change has never been more clear. Imagine a coin on which the words “Human Caused Climate Change” are inscribed on one side and on the other side are inscribed the words “Natural Caused Climate Change.” Now imagine that that you flipped that coin every time a climate scientist published a study on climate change between 1993 and 2003. You would have to flip that coin nearly 10,000 times. Now imagine that the coin came up on the “Human” side every time the study concluded humans were primarily responsible for climate change and it came up “Natural” every time the study concluded that climate change was happening primarily due to natural causes. Now imagine that you did a random sample of the coin flips, say about 10% and selected a total of 928. Imagine now that you discovered that the coin NEVER came up on the “Natural” side and 75% of the time (about 700 times in all) came up on the “Human” side. Would that not be amazing? Can you imagine flipping a coin nearly 700 times and it never coming up tails even one time? But that is what we find when we look at the scientific literature on climate change. Like a weighted coin, the weight of the scientific evidence consistently comes up concluding that human activity is causing climate change while it NEVER suggests otherwise.

This is what Naomi Oreskes found (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686) in her study published in Science on December 3, 2004 entitled Beyond The Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.

Oreskes writes, “The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.

This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.”

The question comes down to a very basic one: Do we believe in science? If the answer is yes, then we must accept the current consensus view that human activity is causing the atmosphere to warm and the climate to change. To argue otherwise is to place faith in opinion, ignorance or prejudice, not science. The contrarians are telling us to ignore the score of 700 to zero and instead believe that the scientists are still divided on this issue. Just because they want to gamble the future of life on planet Earth on a lie does not mean we have to. As Oreskes states, “There is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen.”

On Tuesday, February 6, 2007 I will stand before the Redding City Council in Shasta County in Northern California and ask the Mayor and the Council to sign the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement for the second time. The Agreement itself will accomplish little but in my view it is an essential sign that a city, its leaders and its inhabitants are ready to take the first step to tackle the most serious problem to ever face humanity. What follows are the comments I plan to make.

Hello, my name is Doug Craig. It has been almost exactly ten months since my last appearance on this stand when I requested that the council authorize the signing of the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. As you may recall at that time there were 224 other mayors across the nation who had already signed the agreement which acknowledged that thousands of the top climate scientists across the planet and representatives from the governments of the world, including our own, clearly recognized that there is no longer any credible doubt that climate disruption is a reality and that human activities are largely responsible for increasing concentrations of global warming pollution.

Last Friday, that same group of scientists issued their latest report as you know and stated that they are 90 per cent certain that global climate change is man-made. One scientist said the report was based on science that is “rock-solid, peer-reviewed, conservative” and indisputable.

Since I stood before you 10 months ago, 169 more mayors have signed the agreement including the mayor of Chico. Approximately every two days another mayor in America signs on. Today the mayors of nearly 400 cities have now signed the agreement representing nearly 60 million Americans. Last year then Mayor Murray, Councilwoman Stegall, and Mr. Jim Feider met with me and two others to consider the agreement. At that time you declined. But as you know, ignoring problems does not make them go away.

In the year since you last considered this issue, each of us has produced the equivalence of a large elephant—6 tons—of carbon dioxide emissions and placed it in our atmosphere where it will outlive us all. For every gallon of gasoline we burn we add another 25 pounds of CO2 to our air where it will trap heat for at least a century.

Scientists tell us that there is more CO2 in our atmosphere right now than has been there for 650,000 years, that eleven of the last twelve years rank among the twelve hottest years on record and that hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent.

The report concludes that if we take no action to reduce emissions, there will be “twice as much warming over the next two decades than if we had stabilized heat-trapping gases at 2000 levels.”

For the sake of our children and grandchildren and all generations to come who will live in the atmosphere we create for them, I urge you to do the right thing, sign the agreement and provide Redding with the leadership we require. Thank you for your time.
Doug Craig