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.