Arquivo da tag: Mudanças climáticas

Baylor Researcher Finds First-Ever Evidence of Climate Change of Northern China Region Dating Back Thousands of Years (Baylor Univ.)

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China's Hunshandake Sandy Lands

China’s Hunshandake Sandy Lands (Courtesy of Steve Forman)

Feb. 16, 2015

By Tonya B. Lewis

Study Sheds Light on How Populations Respond and Adapt to Climate Change

WACO, Texas (Feb. 16, 2015) — Using a relatively new scientific dating technique, a Baylor University geologist and a team of international researchers were able to document—for the first time—a drastic climate change 4,200 years ago in northern China that affected vegetation and led to mass migration from the area.

Steve Forman, Ph.D., professor of geology in the College of Arts & Sciences, and researchers—using a dating technique called Optically Stimulated Luminescence—uncovered the first evidence of a severe decrease in precipitation on the freshwater lake system in China’s Hunshandake Sandy Lands. The impact of this extreme climate change led to desertification—or drying of the region—and the mass migration of northern China’s Neolithic cultures.

Their research findings appear in the January 2015 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and are available online.

“With our unique scientific capabilities, we are able to assert with confidence that a quick change in climate drastically changed precipitation in this area, although, further study needs to be conducted to understand why this change occurred,” Forman said.

Between 2001 and 2014, the researchers investigated sediment sections throughout the Hunshandake and were able to determine that a sudden and irreversible shift in the monsoon system led to the abrupt drying of the Hunshandake resulting in complications for the population.

“This disruption of the water flow significantly impacted human activities in the region and limited water availability. The consequences of a rapid climatic shift on the Hunshandake herding and agricultural cultures were likely catastrophic,” Forman said.

He said these climatic changes and drying of the Hunshandake continue to adversely impact the current population today. The Hunshandake remains arid and even with massive rehabilitation efforts will unlikely regrow dense vegetation.

“This study has far-reaching implications for understanding how populations respond and adapt to drastic climate change,” Forman said.

Forman is the director of the Geoluminescence Dating Research Lab in the department of geology.

Study co-authors include: Xiaoping Yang, Ph.D., of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Louis A. Scuderi, Ph.D., of the University of New Mexico; Xulong Wang, Ph.D., of Chinese Academy of Sciences; Louis J. Scuderi, Ph.D., of the University of Hawaii; Deguo Zhang, Ph.D., of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Hongwei Li, Ph.D., of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Qinghai Xu, Ph.D., of Hebei Normal University; Ruichang Wang, Ph.D., of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Weiwen Huang, Ph.D., of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology and Shixia Yang, Ph.D., of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.

Why Communicating About Climate Change Is so Difficult: It’s ‘The Elephant We’re All Inside of’ (Huffington Post)

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Jim Pierobon

Posted: 02/05/2015 8:48 pm EST Updated: 02/05/2015 8:59 pm EST

How stakeholders communicate about climate change has long been framed by who’s doing the framing as much, or more so, than the information being communicated. So I am forever curious how various stakeholders — believers, skeptics and deniers alike — are talking about it and who, if anybody, is “moving the needle” in either direction.

One of the most salient and recent inputs to the climate communications conundrum is Don’t Even Think About It — Why Our Brains Are Wired To Ignore Climate Change, by George Marshall in Oxford, England.

Marshall’s work deserves to be spotlighted for how it illuminates why skeptics and deniers alike will not be moved to engage in thoughtful exchanges unless those communicating respect certain tenets of what academic and nonprofit research are finding.

Marshall draws on the efforts of the climate information network (COIN) he co-founded along with research by two leading university-based centers: the Project on Climate Change Communications at Yale University in Princeton, NJ and the Center for Climate Change Communications at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.

George Marshall is the co-founder of the Climate Outreach and Information Network, a nonprofit organization that specializes in public communication around climate change.

Marshall also taps into the works of authorities who’ve written and/or spoken extensively about climate change, such as Harvard Professor of Psychology Daniel Gilbert, GOP pollster Frank Luntz, Princeton Psychology and Public Affairs Professor Daniel Kahneman, former South Carolina Congressman Bob Inglis, Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Oregon Kari Norgaard and ABC-TV network correspondent Bill Blakemore.

Perhaps it would behoove those preparing for the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, aka COP21, in Paris November 30 – December 11, 2015 to heed much of what Marshall and other top-tier researchers are finding and sharing if they are serious about forging a legally binding and universal agreement on climate.

Here is my synthesis of the most illuminating take-a-ways from Marshall’s book. I offer it as a checklist with which to gauge climate communications efforts, regardless of which — if any — side of the issue you’re on. Be sure to share your thoughts.

  • Perceptions are shaped by individual psychological coping mechanisms and the collective narratives that they shape with the people around them.
  • A compelling emotional story that speaks to peoples’ core values has more impact than rational scientific data such as hotter global temperatures and rising sea levels.
  • People’s social identity has an extraordinary hold over their behaviors and views.
  • Drawing too much attention to an undesirable norm (e.g. catastrophic weather) can seriously backfire.
  • In high-carbon societies, EVERYone has a strong reason to ignore the problem or to write their own alibi. What might work better are narratives based on cooperation, mutual interests and a common humanity.
  • The real story is about our fear, denial and struggle to accept our own responsibility. “Climate change isn’t the elephant in the room; it’s the elephant we’re all inside of,” said ABC’s Bill Blakemore.
  • Our brains are UNsuited to deal with climate change unless the threats are personal, abrupt, immoral and immediate. A distant, abstract and disputed threat does not have the necessary characteristics for seriously mobilizing public opinion.
  • Without a clear deadline for action, we create our own timeline. We do so in ways that remove the compulsion to act. We make it just current enough to accept that something needs to be done but put it just too far into the future to require immediate action.

We’d all benefit the most from: what models for communicating about climate change are working, and which ones are not?

  • The messenger is more important than the message. The messenger can be the most important — but also the weakest link — between scientific information and personal conviction. Building on that, to break the partisan “deadlock” and public disinterest starts, Marshall asserts educational efforts need to create the means for new messengers to be heard.
  • There may be lessons learned from the campaign by oil giant BP in the early 2000s offering person-on-the-street testimonials about the need to deal with climate change. Full disclosure: While a Senior Vice President of Public Affairs with Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide from 2001-2006, I helped develop and execute elements of BP’s “Beyond Petroleum” campaign.
  • Until the economy is back on a strong growth track, climate change advocates will struggle to earn attention in their home countries as long as bread-and-butter ‘pocketbook’ issues are more important to an overwhelming majority of citizens.

See George Marshall in action from this recent interview on TalkingStickTV via YouTube.

While we’re on the subject, I recommend reading the excellent work by the MacArthur Foundation’s “Connecting on Climate” guide completed in 2014. It includes 10 principles for effective climate change communication based on research from various social science fields.

What to Call a Doubter of Climate Change? (New York Times)

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FEB. 12, 2015

The Aurora Australis glows over an emperor penguin colony at Atka Bay, Antarctica.Stefan Christmann/Corbis

The words are hurled around like epithets.

People who reject the findings of climate science are dismissed as “deniers” and “disinformers.” Those who accept the science are attacked as “alarmists” or “warmistas. ” The latter term, evoking the Sandinista revolutionaries of Nicaragua, is perhaps meant to suggest that the science is part of some socialist plot.

In the long-running political battles over climate change, the fight about what to call the various factions has been going on for a long time. Recently, though, the issue has taken a new turn, with a public appeal that has garnered 22,000 signatures and counting.

The petition asks the news media to abandon the most frequently used term for people who question climate science, “skeptic,” and call them “climate deniers” instead.

Climate scientists are among the most vocal critics of using the term “climate skeptic” to describe people who flatly reject their findings. They point out that skepticism is the very foundation of the scientific method. The modern consensus about the risks of climate change, they say, is based on evidence that has piled up over the course of decades and has been subjected to critical scrutiny every step of the way.

Drop into any climate science convention, in fact, and you will hear vigorous debate about the details of the latest studies. While they may disagree over the fine points, those same researchers are virtually unanimous in warning that society is running extraordinary risks by continuing to pump huge quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

In other words, the climate scientists see themselves as the true skeptics, having arrived at a durable consensus about emissions simply because the evidence of risk has become overwhelming. And in this view, people who reject the evidence are phony skeptics, arguing their case by cherry-picking studies, manipulating data, and refusing to weigh the evidence as a whole.

The petition asking the media to drop the “climate skeptic” label began withMark B. Boslough, a physicist in New Mexico who grew increasingly annoyed by the term over several years. The phrase is wrong, he said, because “these people do not embrace the scientific method.”

Dr. Boslough is active in a group called the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, which has long battled pseudoscience in all its forms. Late last year, he wrote a public letter on the issue, and dozens of scientists and science advocates associated with the committee quickly signed it. They include Bill Nye, of “Science Guy” fame, and Lawrence M. Krauss, the physicist and best-selling author.

A climate advocacy organization, Forecast the Facts, picked up on the letter and turned it into a petition. Once the signatures reach 25,000, the group intends to present a formal request to major news organizations to alter their terminology.

All of which raises an obvious question: If not “skeptic,” what should the opponents of climate science be called?

As a first step, it helps to understand why they so vigorously denounce the science. The opposition is coming from a certain faction of the political right. Many of these conservatives understand that since greenhouse emissions are caused by virtually every economic activity of modern society, they are likely to be reduced only by extensive government intervention in the market.

So casting doubt on the science is a way to ward off such regulation. This movement is mainly rooted in ideology, but much of the money to disseminate its writings comes from companies that profit from fossil fuels.

Despite their shared goal of opposing regulation, however, these opponents of climate science are not all of one mind in other respects, and thus no single term really fits them all.

Some make scientifically ludicrous claims, such as denying that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas or rejecting the idea that humans are responsible for its increase in the atmosphere. Others deny that Earth is actually warming, despite overwhelming evidence that it is, including the rapid melting of billions of tons of land ice all over the planet.

Yet the critics of established climate science also include a handful of people with credentials in atmospheric physics, and track records of publishing in the field. They acknowledge the heat-trapping powers of greenhouse gases, and they distance themselves from people who deny such basic points.

“For God’s sake, I can’t be lumped in with that crowd,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a former University of Virginia scientist employed by the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington.

Contrarian scientists like Dr. Michaels tend to argue that the warming will be limited, or will occur so gradually that people will cope with it successfully, or that technology will come along to save the day – or all of the above.

The contrarian scientists like to present these upbeat scenarios as the only plausible outcomes from runaway emissions growth. Mainstream scientists see them as being the low end of a range of possible outcomes that includes an alarming high end, and they say the only way to reduce the risks is to reduce emissions.

The dissenting scientists have been called “lukewarmers” by some, for their view that Earth will warm only a little. That is a term Dr. Michaels embraces. “I think it’s wonderful!” he said. He is working on a book, “The Lukewarmers’ Manifesto.”

When they publish in scientific journals, presenting data and arguments to support their views, these contrarians are practicing science, and perhaps the “skeptic” label is applicable. But not all of them are eager to embrace it.

“As far as I can tell, skepticism involves doubts about a plausible proposition,” another of these scientists, Richard S. Lindzen, told an audience a few years ago. “I think current global warming alarm does not represent a plausible proposition.”

Papers by Dr. Lindzen and others disputing the risks of global warming have fared poorly in the scientific literature, with mainstream scientists pointing out what they see as fatal errors. Nonetheless, these contrarian scientists testify before Congress and make statements inconsistent with the vast bulk of the scientific evidence, claiming near certainty that society is not running any risk worth worrying about.

It is perhaps no surprise that many environmentalists have started to call them deniers.

The scientific dissenters object to that word, claiming it is a deliberate attempt to link them to Holocaust denial. Some academics sharply dispute having any such intention, but others have started using the slightly softer word “denialist” to make the same point without stirring complaints about evoking the Holocaust.

Scientific denialism has crept into other aspects of modern life, of course, manifesting itself as creationism, anti-vaccine ideology and the opposition to genetically modified crops, among other doctrines.

To groups holding such views, “evidence just doesn’t matter any more,” said Riley E. Dunlap, a sociologist at Oklahoma State University. “It becomes possible to create an alternate reality.”

But Dr. Dunlap pointed out that the stakes with most of these issues are not as high as with climate-change denial, for the simple reason that the fate of the planet may hang in the balance.

New York Times: Those Who Deny Climate Science Are Not ‘Skeptics’ (Climate Progress)

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BY JOE ROMM POSTED ON FEBRUARY 13, 2015 AT 2:15 PM (Climate Progress)

“New York Times: Those Who Deny Climate Science Are Not ‘Skeptics’”

shutterstock_196423220

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

The New York Times has an excellent piece on why the people who spread disinformation about climate change are not “skeptics” — and why it’s no surprise they are called climate science “deniers.”

Now that the world’s leading scientists and governments have found that human-caused climate change is already causing serious harm on every continent, denying the grave risk posed by unchecked carbon pollution is no longer an abstract or theoretical issue. If we keep listening to those spreading disinformation, a livable climate will be destroyed and billions of people will needlessly suffer.

And yet we continue to see the sad and ultimately self-destructive spectacle whereby “contrarian scientists testify before Congress and make statements inconsistent with the vast bulk of the scientific evidence, claiming near certainty that society is not running any risk worth worrying about.” So as the Times explains:

It is perhaps no surprise that many environmentalists have started to call them deniers.

And it’s also no surprise that four dozen leading scientists and science journalists/communicators issued a statement in December urging the media to “Please stop using the word ‘skeptic’ to describe deniers” of climate science. The impetus for the Times piece is that letter, written by physicist Mark Boslough, and signed by such luminaries as Nobel laureate Sir Harold Kroto, Douglas Hofstadter, physicist Lawrence Krauss, and Bill Nye “the Science Guy.” Full list here.

The disinformers are not skeptics. “Skepticism is the very foundation of the scientific method,” as the Times explains. “Proper skepticism promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims,” as the 2014 letter reads. “It is foundational to the scientific method. Denial, on the other hand, is the a priori rejection of ideas without objective consideration.”

The author of the Times piece, reporter Justin Gillis, points out that the denial “movement” — those who “so vigorously denounce the science” — is “mainly rooted in ideology, but much of the money to disseminate its writings comes from companies that profit from fossil fuels.” These people tend to be conservatives because “Many of these conservatives understand that since greenhouse emissions are caused by virtually every economic activity of modern society, they are likely to be reduced only by extensive government intervention in the market.” Precisely.

Now the climate science deniers, who generate a lot of phony objections to real science, also like to generate phony outrage when anyone has the nerve to explain that they are not skeptics. One of the deniers with the longest history of being debunked by scientists, Dr. Roy Spencer, responds on his website to Gillis’s use of the word “deniers” by claiming:

You know — as evil as those who deny the Holocaust. (Yeah, we get the implication.)

He then goes on to malign the scientific character of Dr. Richard Lindzen (a Jew who is not entirely pleased with misplaced Holocaust imagery) because the majority of scientific opinion runs contrary to Dr. Lindzen….

Except that isn’t the implication of the word “denier,” which simply means “one who denies.”

If the point of the word was to link someone to Holocaust deniers, then why would Lindzen himself tell the BBC back in 2010 (audio here):

“I actually like ‘denier.’ That’s closer than skeptic.”

D’oh.

It’s actually quite common for deniers to embrace the term — as the National Center for Science Education explained in their 2012 post, “Why Is It Called Denial?” Even disinformers associated with the beyond-hard-core extremists at the Heartland Institute like the term (video here). Heck, some even sing, “I’m a Denier!”

Spencer, the Charlie Sheen of deniers, actually went so far on his website last year as to write an entire post explaining why from now on he will refer to politicians and scientists who use the term “deniers” as “global warming Nazis”!

I do think that undefined labels are always subject to criticism and out-of-context attacks, especially by people who spread disinformation for a living, so it is a good idea to define one’s terms. As I’ve written, climate science deniers are nothing like Holocaust deniers. Holocaust deniers are denying an established fact from the past. If the media or politicians or the public took them at all seriously, I suppose it might increase the chances of a future Holocaust. But, in fact, they are very marginalized, and are inevitably attacked and criticized widely whenever they try to spread their disinformation, so they have no significant impact on society.

The climate science deniers, however, are very different and far more worrisome. They are not marginalized, but rather very well-funded and often treated quite seriously by the media. They are trying to persuade people not to take action on a problem that has not yet become catastrophic, but which will certainly do so if we listen to them and delay acting much longer.

In fact, while we have high confidence that we could avoid the worst impacts if we act to sharply cut carbon pollution ASAP, we now know that if we continue to listen to the deniers, for even a couple more decades, we can expect billions of people to suffer from multiple, catastrophic climate impacts that are not merely very long-lasting and potentially beyond adaptation — but that are “irreversible” on a time scale of centuries. And we also know that action now would be super cheap.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science — the world’s largest general scientific society explained in a 2014 report: “Physicians, cardiovascular scientists, public health experts and others all agree smoking causes cancer. And this consensus among the health community has convinced most Americans that the health risks from smoking are real. A similar consensus now exists among climate scientists, a consensus that maintains climate change is happening, and human activity is the cause.”

The media doesn’t write about “tobacco science skeptics” or even bother quoting people who deny the dangerous health consequences of cigarette smoking any more. It’s time for the media to treat climate science deniers the same way.

Panel Urges Research on Geoengineering as a Tool Against Climate Change (New York Times)

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By FEB. 10, 2015

Piles at a CCI Energy Solutions coal handling plant in Shelbiana, Ky. Geoengineering proposals might counteract the effects of climate change that are the result of burning fossils fuels, such as coal. Luke Sharrett/Getty Images 

With the planet facing potentially severe impacts from global warming in coming decades, a government-sponsored scientific panel on Tuesday called for more research on geoengineering — technologies to deliberately intervene in nature to counter climate change.

The panel said the research could include small-scale outdoor experiments, which many scientists say are necessary to better understand whether and how geoengineering would work.

Some environmental groups and others say that such projects could have unintended damaging effects, and could set society on an unstoppable path to full-scale deployment of the technologies.

But the National Academy of Sciences panel said that with proper governance, which it said needed to be developed, and other safeguards, such experiments should pose no significant risk.

In two widely anticipated reports, the panel — which was supported by NASA and other federal agencies, including what the reports described as the “U.S. intelligence community” — noted that drastically reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases was by far the best way to mitigate the effects of a warming planet.

A device being developed by a company called Global Thermostat, is made to capture carbon dioxide from the air. This may be one solution to counteract climate change.Henry Fountain/The New York Times 

But the panel, in making the case for more research into geoengineering, said, “It may be prudent to examine additional options for limiting the risks from climate change.”

“The committee felt that the need for information at this point outweighs the need for shoving this topic under the rug,” Marcia K. McNutt, chairwoman of the panel and the editor in chief of the journal Science, said at a news conference in Washington.

Geoengineering options generally fall into two categories: capturing and storing some of the carbon dioxide that has already been emitted so that the atmosphere traps less heat, or reflecting more sunlight away from the earth so there is less heat to start with. The panel issued separate reports on each.

The panel said that while the first option, called carbon dioxide removal, was relatively low risk, it was expensive, and that even if it was pursued on a planetwide scale, it would take many decades to have a significant impact on the climate. But the group said research was needed to develop efficient and effective methods to both remove the gas and store it so it remains out of the atmosphere indefinitely.

The second option, called solar radiation management, is far more controversial. Most discussions of the concept focus on the idea of dispersing sulfates or other chemicals high in the atmosphere, where they would reflect sunlight, in some ways mimicking the effect of a large volcanic eruption.

The process would be relatively inexpensive and should quickly lower temperatures, but it would have to be repeated indefinitely and would do nothing about another carbon dioxide-related problem: the acidification of oceans.

This approach might also have unintended effects on weather patterns around the world — bringing drought to once-fertile regions, for example. Or it might be used unilaterally as a weapon by governments or even extremely wealthy individuals.

Opponents of geoengineering have long argued that even conducting research on the subject presents a moral hazard that could distract society from the necessary task of reducing the emissions that are causing warming in the first place.

“A geoengineering ‘technofix’ would take us in the wrong direction,” Lisa Archer, food and technology program director of the environmental group Friends of the Earth, said in a statement. “Real climate justice requires dealing with root causes of climate change, not launching risky, unproven and unjust schemes.”

But the panel said that society had “reached a point where the severity of the potential risks from climate change appears to outweigh the potential risks from the moral hazard” of conducting research.

Ken Caldeira, a geoengineering researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science and a member of the committee, said that while the panel felt that it was premature to deploy any sunlight-reflecting technologies today, “it’s worth knowing more about them,” including any problems that might make them unworkable.

“If there’s a real showstopper, we should know about it now,” Dr. Caldeira said, rather than discovering it later when society might be facing a climate emergency and desperate for a solution.

Dr. Caldeira is part of a small community of scientists who have researched solar radiation management concepts. Almost all of the research has been done on computers, simulating the effects of the technique on the climate. One attempt in Britain in 2011 to conduct an outdoor test of some of the engineering concepts provoked a public outcry. The experiment was eventually canceled.

David Keith, a researcher at Harvard University who reviewed the reports before they were released, said in an interview, “I think it’s terrific that they made a stronger call than I expected for research, including field research.” Along with other researchers, Dr. Keith has proposed a field experiment to test the effect of sulfate chemicals on atmospheric ozone.

Unlike some European countries, the United States has never had a separate geoengineering research program. Dr. Caldeira said establishing a separate program was unlikely, especially given the dysfunction in Congress. But he said that because many geoengineering research proposals might also help in general understanding of the climate, agencies that fund climate research might start to look favorably upon them.

Dr. Keith agreed, adding that he hoped the new reports would “break the logjam” and “give program managers the confidence they need to begin funding.”

At the news conference, Waleed Abdalati, a member of the panel and a professor at the University of Colorado, said that geoengineering research would have to be subject to governance that took into account not just the science, “but the human ramifications, as well.”

Dr. Abdalati said that, in general, the governance needed to precede the research. “A framework that addresses what kinds of activities would require governance is a necessary first step,” he said.

Raymond Pierrehumbert, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago and a member of the panel, said in an interview that while he thought that a research program that allowed outdoor experiments was potentially dangerous, “the report allows for enough flexibility in the process to follow that it could be decided that we shouldn’t have a program that goes beyond modeling.”

Above all, he said, “it’s really necessary to have some kind of discussion among broader stakeholders, including the public, to set guidelines for an allowable zone for experimentation.”

A version of this article appears in print on February 11, 2015, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Panel Urges Research on Geoengineering as a Tool Against Climate Change.

The Risks of Climate Engineering (New York Times)

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By CLIVE HAMILTONFEB. 12, 2015

Sarah Jacoby 

THE Republican Party has long resisted action on climate change, but now that much of the electorate wants something done, it needs to find a way out of the hole it has dug for itself. A committee appointed by the National Research Council may just have handed the party a ladder.

In a two-volume report, the council is recommending that the federal government fund a research program into geoengineering as a response to a warming globe. The study could be a watershed moment because reports from the council, an arm of the National Academies that provides advice on science and technology, are often an impetus for new scientific research programs.

Sometimes known as “Plan B,” geoengineering covers a variety of technologies aimed at deliberate, large-scale intervention in the climate system to counter global warming.

Despairing at global foot-dragging, some climate scientists now believe that a turn to Plan B is inevitable. They see it as inscribed in the logic of the situation. The council’s study begins with the assertion that the “likelihood of eventually considering last-ditch efforts” to address climate destabilization grows every year.

The report is balanced in its assessment of the science. Yet by bringing geoengineering from the fringes of the climate debate into the mainstream, it legitimizes a dangerous approach.

Beneath the identifiable risks is not only a gut reaction to the hubris of it all — the idea that humans could set out to regulate the Earth system, perhaps in perpetuity — but also to what it says about where we are today. As the committee’s chairwoman, Marcia McNutt, told The Associated Press: The public should read this report “and say, ‘This is downright scary.’ And they should say, ‘If this is our Hail Mary, what a scary, scary place we are in.’ ”

Even scarier is the fact that, while most geoengineering boosters see these technologies as a means of buying time for the world to get its act together, others promote them as a substitute for cutting emissions. In 2008, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, later Republican presidential candidate and an early backer of geoengineering, said: “Instead of penalizing ordinary Americans, we would have an option to address global warming by rewarding scientific invention,” adding: “Bring on the American ingenuity.”

The report, considerably more cautious, describes geoengineering as one element of a “portfolio of responses” to climate change and examines the prospects of two approaches — removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and enveloping the planet in a layer of sulfate particles to reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface.

At the same time, the council makes clear that there is “no substitute for dramatic reductions in the emissions” of greenhouse gases to slow global warming and acidifying oceans.

The lowest-risk strategies for removing carbon dioxide are “currently limited by cost and at present cannot achieve the desired result of removing climatically important amounts,” the report said. On the second approach, the council said that at present it was “opposed to climate-altering deployment” of technologies to reflect radiation back into space.

Still, the council called for research programs to fill the gaps in our knowledge on both approaches, evoking a belief that we can understand enough about how the Earth system operates in order to take control of it.

Expressing interest in geoengineering has been taboo for politicians worried about climate change for fear they would be accused of shirking their responsibility to cut carbon emissions. Yet in some congressional offices, interest in geoengineering is strong. And Congress isn’t the only place where there is interest. Russia in 2013 unsuccessfully sought to insert a pro-geoengineering statement into the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Early work on geoengineering has given rise to one of the strangest paradoxes in American politics: enthusiasm for geoengineering from some who have attacked the idea of human-caused global warming. The Heartland Institute, infamous for its billboard comparing those who support climate science to the Unabomber, Theodore J. Kaczynski, featured an article in one of its newsletters from 2007 describing geoengineering as a “practical, cost-effective global warming strategy.”

Some scholars associated with conservative think tanks like the Hoover Institution and the Hudson Institute have written optimistically about geoengineering.

Oil companies, too, have dipped their toes into the geoengineering waters with Shell, for instance, having funded research into a scheme to put lime into seawater so it absorbs more carbon dioxide.

With half of Republican voters favoring government action to tackle global warming, any Republican administration would be tempted by the technofix to beat all technofixes.

For some, instead of global warming’s being proof of human failure, engineering the climate would represent the triumph of human ingenuity. While climate change threatens to destabilize the system, geoengineering promises to protect it. If there is such a thing as a right-wing technology, geoengineering is it.

President Obama has been working assiduously to persuade the world that the United States is at last serious about Plan A — winding back its greenhouse gas emissions. The suspicions of much of the world would be reignited if the United States were the first major power to invest heavily in Plan B.

Clive Hamilton is a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Australia and the author, most recently, of “Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on February 12, 2015, on page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: The Risks of Climate Engineering.

Notes from the Anthropocene #1 (The Brooklyn Rail)

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Nov 5th, 2014

by Glenn Dyer and Stephanie Wakefield

On September 21, 2014, nearly 400,000 people took part in the People’s Climate March and Mobilization, winding their way from Central Park through Midtown Manhattan and ending with a block party celebration on the city’s mostly empty West Side (flooded during Sandy). Cleanly subdivided into six categories of political subjects—indigenous and environmental justice groups up front, a medieval combination of scientists and priests in the fifth, and finally “Here comes everybody! L.G.B.T.Q., N.Y.C. Boroughs, Community Groups, Neighborhoods, Cities, States, and more” in the sixth—the march called on the United Nations Climate Summit and governments around the world to steer a course towards appropriate “climate action” and “climate justice” on behalf of the groups neatly represented like meats and cheeses on a Hormel party tray. The following day, former anti-globalization and Occupy Wall Street activists, many on the payroll of this or that N.G.O., attempted a mass civil disobedience action on the blocks leading to the New York Stock Exchange. When the orchestrated non-violence of Flood Wall Street met the orchestrated non-brutality of the NYPD, ne’er an arrest occurred and the organizers called it all off, going home and turning the streets over to a few hundred unofficial protesters who were determined to be peacefully taken into custody.

As the United Nations met later that week to talk about talking about limiting global temperature rise to less than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) through a reduction in carbon emissions while simultaneously making economies, cities, and networks resilient, the People’s Climate Summit website released its own numbers: 400,000 people, 1,574 organizations, 50,000 college students, 5,200 articles, and 7 celebrity selfies. Homemade and mass-produced signs, puppets and inflatables, polar bear costumes and globes, thousands of buses whose bills were footed by non-profits and Gofundme.com, a pony-tailed Leo DiCaprio parading around as the U.N.’s Messenger for Peace, with a special focus on climate change issues. A success, they say, in launching the climate justice movement, a success as quantifiable as the parts per million of the upper safety limit for the atmosphere. As the march quickly faded into most New Yorkers’ memories, as when a million of us marched against the war that happened anyway, a variety of non-questions circulated to try to cement the march’s legacy. Was it too radical? Not radical enough? Too little too late? A photo-op? A corporate greenwash with the help of the “non-profit industrial complex”? 1 Non-questions for a non-world. Simply put, the Climate March was a blast from the past, mobilizing a set of political techniques and priorities that have literally been left behind by reality, by the new common in which we find ourselves.

A new epoch is certainly at hand; one need only trace the fault lines from the glacial barricades of Kiev’s Maidan across the radioactive swamp left by Fukushima’s failing ice wall to the “Winter is Coming” graffiti of Istanbul’s Gezi commune. Everywhere this age speaks its exhaustion, in the massive human efforts to break through and in the falling of idols. The once coherent subject around which the world was ordered stands in ruin as a neurotic information node whose closest relationship is with a cellphone or iPad. The claims to mastery over the world are being literally washed away by rising seas, while terminal diagnoses of our civilization proliferate as quickly as fantasies of the end (see the Walking Dead’s Terminus). As Brad Evans and Julien Reid describe it in their book Resilient Life, “We are living out the final scenes of the liberal nightmare in all its catastrophic permutations,” an epoch that is sensed just as much in the collapse of the Western Antarctic ice sheet2 and the bamboo barricades of Hong Kong as in the desertification of the Amazon rainforest and the death vows of the Lakota in the face of the KeystoneXL pipeline.3 Some people say the world is ending, but we say it is just a way of life, a certain order of things.

Ironically, it is geologists who have already arrived at this conclusion, by way of atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen’s “launch[ing] a small hand grenade into the world of geological time scales.”4 Crutzen, formerly most famous for his Nobel Prize-winning research on the depletion of the ozone layer, used the term the Anthropocene in 2000 in a newsletter of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme.5 Since then geologists such as Jan Zalasiewicz have taken up the term, forming the Anthropocene Working Group (A.W.G.) to prepare a proposal for its inclusion in the International Commission on Stratigraphy’s official geological time scale. Etymologically the Anthropocene designates the “epoch of man”—a triumphal crowning of the liberal subject and its way of life, dated unsurprisingly from the middle of the 18th century. Stratigraphically the Anthropocene designates that Man has become the most powerful geological force on the planet, meaning that our measurable physical impact on sedimentation is more powerful than the oceans’ tides or the movement of mountains. Though in many popular accounts the Anthropocene is often reduced to the impacts of global warming or other processes contributing to climate change, geologists have focused on a series of metrics in addition to these such as deforestation, the acidification of the ocean, mass extinction, urbanization, the reshuffling of the biosphere, and the homogenization of environments. As such the perceptible triumph of man and his civilization, its coming to the fore as the most powerful force on earth, can best be measured in a catastrophic impact.

In light of the Anthropocene, geologists have also begun reshuffling their own rubrics, expanding the purview of paleontology from the organic to the inorganic and from the past to the present with the introduction of “technostratigraphy.”6According to Zalasiewicz and colleagues Colin Waters (Principal Mapping Geologist at the British Geological Survey) and Mark Williams (Professor of Palaeobiology with Zalasiewicz at Leicester), technofossils7 may well stand as the most convincing evidence of the epoch’s environmental signature. In the first-ever instance of geoscientists using anything other than biological fossils to help classify a chronostratigraphical unit, the A.W.G. are not looking at dinosaur vertebrae frozen in amber or ancient leaf imprints found in stone, but at critical infrastructures and cities like New York itself, which they see as “one of the most extensive, durable and geologically distinctive aspects of the Anthropocene” (Williams et al, 399) and thus as representative index fossils of the epoch’s recent, current, and near future. Whereas palaeontology has always been about studying past geological artifacts, the objects now under consideration as Anthropocene fossils—the key evidence in the Anthropocene dossier—are those of our present-day, still-functioning civilization. Thus for the first time in history, geologists are now dating an epoch in the present tense, studying contemporary, still functioning, infrastructures as fossils, studying the constituent elements of our civilization the way they once studied the remains of a long-vanished life form.

Through their attempt at naming and measuring the epoch of man, studying cities and subways as fossils in real time, and conjuring future geologists from outer space to study a world in which this civilization has completely vanished, thesegeologists have called our entire civilization and its requisite way of life a ruin. It would be easy to read the “humanity” implied in the Anthropocene as the final expression of modern man’s vanity, one last Promethean blast, but doing so misses entirely what’s most decisive about the stratigraphers’ concept: the Anthropocene elevates liberal humanity to prime geohistorical agent, center of the world, but does so only in the moment of its historical collapse. Has there ever been a civilization that named itself after its most cherished principle in order to call the whole thing a failure?

The Anthropocene as name and as phenomenon: the completion of the West, modernity, and liberal humanism. Seemingly by accident, coming from the sciences but immediately overflowing their bounds of acceptability—constant pressure to avoid seeming too negative and to remain dispassionate in their work—the geologists have cleared away the web of confusion. Naming the epoch after its first principle-in-ruins, they force us to face our age in all its schizophrenia.

Even if the geologists can’t quite say aloud what the New York Times could publish—“that this civilization is already dead”8—they place us succinctly and directly in the present. The end of the world is not this or that disaster coming in the future—a biblical flood, the next hurricane, the collapse of Midwestern agriculture—nor is it a potential future extinction of homo sapiens. The end of the world is what we are living through right now. And whereas the deluge of newspaper accounts of “the collapse of civilization”9 focus almost primarily on environmental factors, we insist that the devastation named by the Anthropocene is just as much a spiritual, existential, human devastation as it is an environmental one. It is impossible to separate the collapse of ice sheets from the collapse of man. Yet here again, in the very name itself, the Anthropocene seems to exceed what is considered polite or acceptable to say.

From this angle the People’s Climate March and Mobilization looks a bit different. Rather than being a matter of too much clicktivism, too few paint bombs, or of making demands to an utterly discredited institution, the Mobilization was designed to function as a last ditch attempt to shore up the present. At work in the generation of a discourse of climate crisis and a climate movement is an operation that dims down the complex reality of our epoch to a single phenomenon—global warming as generated by increased ppm of CO2—and deriving from that a set of clearly representable subjects—from “frontline communities” to “climate activists”—and a set of core questions—how can this situation be managed and how can this way of life be saved from itself?—that in effect attempt to hold back the apocalypse one more day, while also holding back any possibility of redemption. Keeping us cocooned, trapped, within an eternal, frozen present.

Conclusion

As Lauren Berlant writes, “the present is perceived, first, affectively: the present is what makes itself present to us before it becomes anything else” (Cruel Optimism, 4). This series will explore our present, an epoch for which we lack precedents or words but in which we are, already, called and shaped. Its aim is to read the tracks in front of us from within the situation, to recognize the present as it unfolds and to trace the breaths and rhythms with which it expresses itself. As such, the writing may occasionally take on different forms—stories, letters, interviews, or whatever seems appropriate. Future topics include “Those Who Go West” in Japan, extinction obsession, France’s Zone A Défendre and other ZADs, hacker spaces, autonomy, “survival skills,” and more. We will read the signs of the time and open ourselves up to the forms of life that are already coming to replace man in this exhausted age. An age obsessed with the end because it wants to see the world reborn.

NOTES


  1. Pinto, Nick. “Last Month’s Climate Protests: Potent Message Or Toothless.” Gothamist. Oct. 13, 2014. Web

  2. Goldberg, Suzanne. “Western Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse Has Already Begun, Scientists Warn.” The Guardian, May 13, 2014. Web.

  3. Ibanez, Camila. “Lakota Vow: ‘dead or in Prison before We Allow the KXL Pipeline’ – Waging Nonviolence.” Waging Nonviolence. Mar. 13, 2013

  4. Sample, Ian. “Anthropocene: Is This the New Epoch of Humans?” The Guardian. N.p., 16 Oct. 2014. Web.

  5. Stoermer, Eugene. “Have We Entered the ‘Anthropocene’?” – IGBP. Oct. 31, 2014. Web.

  6. Zalasiewicz, Jan, Mark Williams, Colin Waters, Anthony Barnosky, and Peter Haff. “The Technofossil Record of Humans.” The Anthropocene Review 1.2 (2014): 34-43. Web.

  7. “Is the fossil record of complex animal behaviour a stratigraphical analogue for the Anthropocene?” Geological Society of London, Special Publications 10/2013;

    See also Colin N. Waters, Jan A. Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams, Michael A. Ellis, and Andrea M. Snelling, “A stratigraphical basis for the Anthropocene?” Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 395, first published on March 24, 2014.

  8. Scranton, Roy. “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene.” Opinionator Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene Comments. The New York Times, Nov. 10, 2013.

  9. Ahmed, Nafeez. “Nasa-funded Study: Industrial Civilisation Headed for ‘Irreversible Collapse’?” The Guardian. Mar. 26, 2014.

CONTRIBUTORS

Glenn DyerGLENN DYER was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana and now lives in Ridgewood, Queens. He is a historian, translator, amateur strategist, and part-time instructor at the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies. Glenn is also part of 1882 Woodbine, a workshop and organizing space for practical experiments in building autonomy.

Stephanie WakefieldSTEPHANIE WAKEFIELD is a geographer living in Ridgewood, Queens, where she is part of 1882 Woodbine. She teaches Urban and Urban Environmental Studies at Queens College, and her work has appeared in Progress in Human Geography, Society and Space, and May. Stephanie is currently finishing a book on the emerging climate resilience dispositif in New York City.

IPCC: climate denial, fundamental restructuring of global economy and social structures, and vested interests and climate governance

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IPCC AR5, WG III, Chapter 4

Sent by Robert J. Brulle

Climate Denial – pages 300 – 301 

Denial mechanisms that overrate the costs of changing lifestyles, blame others, and that cast doubt on the effectiveness of individual action or the soundness of scientific knowledge are well documented (Stoll-Kleemann et  al., 2001; Norgaard, 2011; McCright and Dunlap, 2011), as is the concerted effort by opponents of climate action to seed and amplify those doubts (Jacques et  al., 2008; Kolmes, 2011; Conway and Oreskes, 2011).

Fundamental restructuring of global economy and social structure – page 297

Third, effective response to climate change may require a fundamental restructuring of the global economic and social systems, which in turn would involve overcoming multiple vested interests and the inertia associated with behavioural patterns and crafting new institutions that promote sustainability (Meadows et  al., 2004; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005)

Vested Interests and Climate Governance – page 298

A defining image of the climate governance landscape is that key actors have vastly disproportionate capacities and resources, including the political, financial, and cognitive resources that are necessary to steer the behaviour of the collective within and across territorial boundaries (Dingwerth and Pattberg, 2009). A central element of governance therefore relates to huge asymmetry in such resources and the ability to exercise power or influence outcomes. Some actors, including governments, make use of negotiation power and/or lobbying activities to influence policy decisions at multiple scales and, by doing so, affect the design and the subsequent allocation and distribution of benefits and costs resulting from such decisions (Markussen and Svendsen, 2005; Benvenisti and Downs, 2007; Schäfer, 2009; Sandler, 2010) — see e.g., Section 15.5.2. The problem, however, also resides in the fact that those that wield the greatest power either consider it  against their interest to facilitate rapid progress towards a global low carbon economy or insist that the accepted solutions must be aligned to increase their power and material gains (Sæverud and Skjærseth, 2007; Giddens, 2009; Hulme, 2009; Lohmann, 2009, 2010; Okereke and McDaniels, 2012; Wittneben et  al., 2012). The most notable effect of this is that despite some exceptions, the prevailing organization of the global economy, which confers significant power on actors associated with fossil fuel interests and with the financial sector, has provided the context for the sorts of governance practices of climate change that have dominated to date (Newell and Paterson, 2010).

Interdisciplinaridade em Mudanças Climáticas: pesquisas atuais e em desenvolvimento (IAG/USP)

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O evento será realizado na FEA/USP nos dias 9 e 10 de março

O INterdisciplinary CLimate INvestigation cEnter / Núcleo de Apoio à Pesquisa em Mudanças Climáticas (INCLINE / NapMC), a Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade (FEA) e o Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas (IAG) da Universidade de São Paulo convidam para o evento “Interdisciplinaridade em Mudanças Climáticas: pesquisas atuais e em desenvolvimento”.

O evento acontece nos dias 9 e 10 de março, no Auditório FEA-5. O objetivo é apresentar e discutir o estado da arte das pesquisas científicas sobre Mudanças Climáticas realizadas no âmbito do INCLINE.

As inscrições são gratuitas e abertas para toda a comunidade USP e interessados de instituições externas, e podem ser feitas online: http://goo.gl/forms/VNQ2rRRW9I

Apresentações pôster

Alunos de graduação e pós-graduação podem se inscrever para apresentar um pôster de seu trabalho, na temática de Mudanças Climáticas.

Apresentações orais

Pós-doutorandos vinculados ao INCLINE podem se inscrever para uma apresentação oral durante o evento.

Prazos de inscrição

Data limite para se inscrever como ouvinte: 04/03/2015

Data limite para se inscrever para apresentar pôster: 01/03/2015

Data limite para se inscrever para apresentação oral: 26/02/2015

Local do evento: Auditório do bloco FEA-5, na FEA/USP (Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, 908)

O INCLINE tem por objetivo integrar e potencializar colaborações essenciais ao tema das Mudanças Climáticas, com o envolvimento de professores, pesquisadores, colaboradores externos e estudantes de graduação/pós-graduação, organizados através de 16 subprojetos integrados na temática de mudanças globais. No âmbito do INCLINE, a Universidade de São Paulo (USP) assume um papel de liderança na investigação científica sobre mudanças climáticas.

(Comunicação – IAG/USP)

Geoengineering report: Scientists urge more research on climate intervention (Science Daily)

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Date: February 10, 2015

Source: University of Michigan

Summary: Deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, while necessary, may not happen soon enough to stave off climate catastrophe. So, in addition, the world may need to resort to so-called geoengineering approaches that aim to deliberately control the planet’s climate.

Deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, while necessary, may not happen soon enough to stave off climate catastrophe. So, in addition, the world may need to resort to so-called geoengineering approaches that aim to deliberately control the planet’s climate.

That’s according to a National Research Council committee that today released a pair of sweeping reports on climate intervention techniques.

The University of Michigan’s Joyce Penner, who is the Ralph J. Cicerone Distinguished University Professor of Atmospheric Science, served on the committee. Penner studies how clouds affect climate.

The reports consider the two main ways humans could attempt to steer the Earth’s system: We could try to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Or we could try to reflect more sunlight back into space. The committee examined the socioeconomic and environmental impacts as well as the costs and technological readiness of approaches in each category.

The researchers said that certain CO2-removal tactics could have a place in a broader climate change response plan. But the sunlight reflecting technologies, on the other hand, are too risky at this point. They underscored how important it is for humans to limit the levels of CO2 they put into the atmosphere in the first place, and they called for more research into all climate intervention approaches.

“I, for one, am concerned with the continuing rise in CO2 concentrations without clear efforts to reduce emissions,” Penner said. “The widespread impacts from these increases are readily apparent, and the cost of climate change impacts is likely to be high.

“We may need to employ some of these climate interventions techniques to avoid a catastrophe such as the loss of the Antarctic ice sheets, or even to remain below levels of climate change that are considered dangerous in the political arena.”

Techniques to remove CO2 include restoring forests and adopting low-till farming — both of which trap carbon in plants and soils. Oceans could be seeded with iron to promote growth of CO2-consuming organisms. And carbon could be be sucked directly out of the air and injected underground.

Methods to reflect sunlight include pumping sulfuric compounds into the stratosphere to, in essence, simulate a volcanic eruption; and spraying sea water mist or other finer-than-usual particles over the ocean. Smaller particles lead to brighter clouds, Penner said.

While the committee said that some of the CO2 removal strategies including “carbon capture and sequestration” have potential to be part of a viable plan to curb climate change, it noted that only prototype sequestration systems exist today. Much development would have to occur before it could be ready for broad use.

The scientists caution against dumping iron in the oceans, as the technical and environmental risks currently outweigh the benefits. Similarly, they warned against sunlight-reflecting approaches, also known as “albedo modification.”

These efforts might be able to reduce the Earth’s temperature in just a few years, and they’re relatively cheap when compared to transitioning to a carbon-free economy. But they’d have to be kept up indefinitely and could have numerous negative secondary effects on ozone, weather and human health.

Even in its opposition to sunlight reflecting tactics, the committee still recommended more research into them, as it urged more study of all climate intervention possibilities. Penner was struck by this call to action.

“U.S. agencies may have been reluctant to fund this area because of the sense of what we call ‘moral hazard’ — that if you start down the road of doing this research you may end up relying on this or condoning this as a way of saving the planet from the cost of decreasing CO2 emissions,” Penner said. “But we’ve stated that decreasing emissions must go hand in hand with any climate intervention efforts.”

Penner says the recommendation is a sign of the climate problem’s urgency.

“We need to develop the knowledge base to allow informed decisions before these dangerous effects are upon us,” she said.

The study was sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, U.S. intelligence community, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and U.S. Department of Energy. The National Academy of Sciences is a private, independent nonprofit institution that provides science, technology and health policy advice under a congressional charter granted to NAS in 1863. The National Research Council is the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.

Scientists urge global ‘wake-up call’ to deal with climate change (The Guardian)

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Climate change has advanced so rapidly that work must start on unproven technologies now, admits US National Academy of Science

Series of mature thunderstorms located near the Parana River in southern Brazil.

‘The likelihood of eventually considering last-ditch efforts to address damage from climate change grows with every year of inaction on emissions control,’ says US National Academy of Science report. Photograph: ISS/NASA

Climate change has advanced so rapidly that the time has come to look at options for a planetary-scale intervention, the National Academy of Science said on Tuesday.

The scientists were categorical that geoengineering should not be deployed now, and was too risky to ever be considered an alternative to cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

But it was better to start research on such unproven technologies now – to learn more about their risks – than to be stampeded into climate-shifting experiments in an emergency, the scientists said.

With that, a once-fringe topic in climate science moved towards the mainstream – despite the repeated warnings from the committee that cutting carbon pollution remained the best hope for dealing with climate change.

“That scientists are even considering technological interventions should be a wake-up call that we need to do more now to reduce emissions, which is the most effective, least risky way to combat climate change,” Marcia McNutt, the committee chair and former director of the US Geological Survey, said.

Asked whether she foresaw a time when scientists would eventually turn to some of the proposals studied by the committee, she said: “Gosh, I hope not.”

The two-volume report, produced over 18 months by a team of 16 scientists, was far more guarded than a similar British exercise five years ago which called for an immediate injection of funds to begin research on climate-altering interventions.

The scientists were so sceptical about geo-engineering that they dispensed with the term, opting for “climate intervention”. Engineering implied a measure of control the technologies do not have, the scientists said.

But the twin US reports – Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration and Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool the Earth – could boost research efforts at a limited scale.

The White House and committee leaders in Congress were briefed on the report’s findings this week.

Bill Gates, among others, argues the technology, which is still confined to computer models, has enormous potential and he has funded research at Harvard. The report said scientific research agencies should begin carrying out co-ordinated research.

But geo-engineering remains extremely risky and relying on a planetary hack – instead of cutting carbon dioxide emissions – is “irresponsible and irrational”, the report said.

The scientists looked at two broad planetary-scale technological fixes for climate change: sucking carbon dioxide emissions out of the atmosphere, or carbon dioxide removal, and increasing the amount of sunlight reflected away from the earth and back into space, or albedo modification.

Albedo modification, injecting sulphur dioxide to increase the amount of reflective particles in the atmosphere and increase the amount of sunlight reflected back into space, is seen as a far riskier proposition.

Tinkering with reflectivity would merely mask the symptoms of climate change, the report said. It would do nothing to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

The world would have to commit to continuing a course of albedo modification for centuries on end – or watch climate change come roaring back.

“It’s hard to unthrow that switch once you embark on an albedo modification approach. If you walk back from it, you stop masking the effects of climate change and you unleash the accumulated effects rather abruptly,” Waleed Abdalati, a former Nasa chief scientist who was on the panel, said.

More ominously, albedo modification could alter the climate in new and additional ways from which there would be no return. “It doesn’t go back, it goes different,” he said.

The results of such technologies are still far too unpredictable on a global scale, McNutt said. She also feared they could trigger conflicts. The results of such climate interventions will vary enormously around the globe, she said.

“Kansas may be happy with the answer, but Congo may not be happy at all because of changes in rainfall. It may be quite a bit worse for the Arctic, and it’s not going to address at all ocean acidification,” she said. “There are all sorts of reasons why one might not view albedo modified world as an improvement.”

The report also warned that offering the promise of a quick fix to climate change through planet hacking could discourage efforts to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

“The message is that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is by far the preferable way of addressing the problem,” said Raymond Pierrehumbert, a University of Chicago climate scientist, who served on the committee writing the report. “Dimming the sun by increasing the earth’s reflectivity shouldn’t be viewed as a cheap substitute for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. It is a very poor and distant third, fourth, or even fifth choice. |It is way down on the list of things you want to do.”

But geoengineering has now landed on the list.

Climate change was advancing so rapidly a climate emergency – such as widespread crop failure – might propel governments into trying such large-scale interventions.

“The likelihood of eventually considering last-ditch efforts to address damage from climate change grows with every year of inaction on emissions control,” the report said.

If that was the case, it was far better to be prepared for the eventualities by carrying out research now.

The report gave a cautious go-ahead to technologies to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, finding them generally low-risk – although they were prohibitively expensive.

The report discounted the idea of seeding the ocean with iron filings to create plankton blooms that absorb carbon dioxide.

But it suggested carbon-sucking technologies could be considered as part of a portfolio of responses to fight climate change.

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers has come up with some ideas for what

Carbon-sucking technologies, such as these ‘artificial forests’, could in future be considered to fight climate change – but reducing carbon dioxide emissions now is by far the preferable way of addressing the problem. Photograph: Guardian

It would involve capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and pumping it underground at high pressure – similar to technology that is only now being tested at a small number of coal plants.

Sucking carbon dioxide out of the air is much more challenging than capturing it from a power plant – which is already prohibitively expensive, the report said. But it still had a place.

“I think there is a good case that eventually this might have to be part of the arsenal of weapons we use against climate change,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University, who was not involved with the report.

Drawing a line between the two technologies – carbon dioxide removal and albedo modification – was seen as one of the important outcomes of Tuesday’s report.

The risks and potential benefits of the two are diametrically opposed, said Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology and a geoengineering pioneer, who was on the committee.

“The primary concern about carbon dioxide removal is how much does it cost,” he said. “There are no sort of novel, global existential dilemmas that are raised. The main aim of the research is to make it more affordable, and to make sure it is environmentally acceptable.”

In the case of albedo reflection, however, the issue is risk. “A lot of those ideas are relatively cheap,” he said. “The question isn’t about direct cost. The question is, What bad stuff is going to happen?”

There are fears such interventions could lead to unintended consequences that are even worse than climate change – widespread crop failure and famine, clashes between countries over who controls the skies.

But Caldeira, who was on the committee, argued that it made sense to study those consequences now. “If there are real show stoppers and it is not going to work, it would be good to know that in advance and take it off the table, so people don’t do something rash in an emergency situation,” he said.

Spraying sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere could lower temperatures – at least according to computer models and real-life experiences following major volcanic eruptions.

But the cooling would be temporary and it would do nothing to right ocean chemistry, which was thrown off kilter by absorbing those emissions.

“My view of albedo modification is that it is like taking pain killers when you need surgery for cancer,” said Pierrehumbert. “It’s ignoring the problem. The problem is still growing though and it is going to come back and get you.”

Anthropologists Release Statement on Humanity and Climate Change (AAA)

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February 9, 2015

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) adopted a strong and clear statement on Humanity and Climate Change on January 29, 2015. The statement, based on the final report of the Association’s Global Climate Change Task Force, reveals eight ways anthropologists attack the problems of climate change from an anthropological perspective. The document recognizes climate change as a present reality and an intensifier of current underlying global problems; the markedly uneven distribution of impacts across and within societies; and the fact that humanity’s decisions, actions and cultural behaviors are now the most important causes of the dramatic environmental changes seen in the last century.

“Anthropologists focus on several aspects of climate change research that other scientists do not fully address, specifically the disproportionately adverse impacts on vulnerable populations, the extent to which our current challenges stem from culture and cultural choices on a societal level; and the value of the long record of human development and civilization that can inform our choices for the future,” said Shirley J. Fiske, Ph.D., Chair of the American Anthropological Association Global Climate Change Task Force.

The statement affirms that the global problem of climate change is rooted in social institutions and cultural habits. Solutions and social adaptations therefore require knowledge and insight from the social sciences and humanities. “Resilience and adaptation can be best addressed locally and regionally, by enabling communities to provide knowledge and social capital to construct viable solutions,” said task force member Ben Orlove, Ph.D. While climate change will have a global impact, the impact will fall unevenly; and as climate impacts intensify, public expenditures needed for emergency aid and restoration will escalate.

“It is crucial that we attend to the statement’s message that climate change is not a natural problem, it is a human problem,” said AAA President Monica Heller, Ph.D. in a recent statement. “Anthropologists play a vital role solving this human problem and the AAA is eager to continue to support the work of our members in this area.”

Task force members are Drs. Susan Crate, Carole Crumley, Shirley Fiske, Kathleen Galvin, Heather Lazrus, George Luber, Lisa Lucero, Anthony Oliver-Smith, Ben Orlove, Sarah Strauss and Richard Wilk. Read the entire statement and learn more about the AAA Global Climate Change Task Force at http://bit.ly/1At4qnn.

Clive Hamilton: Climate change signals the end of the social sciences (The Conversation)

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January 24 2013, 7.24pm
Clive Hamilton

Our impact on the earth has brought on a new geographical epoch – The Age of Humans.AAP/Damien Shaw

In response to the heatwave that set a new Australia-wide record on 7 January, when the national average maximum reached 40.33°C, the Bureau of Meteorology issued a statement that, on reflection, sounds the death knell for all of the social sciences taught in our universities.

“Everything that happens in the climate system now”, the manager of climate monitoring at the Bureau said, “is taking place on a planet which is a degree hotter than it used to be.”

Eminent US climate scientist, Kevin Trenberth, made the same point more fully last year:

The answer to the oft-asked question of whether an event is caused by climate change is that it is the wrong question. All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.

Trenberth’s commentary calls on us to reframe how we think about human-induced climate change. We can no longer place some events into the box marked “Nature” and some into the box marked “Human”.

The invention of these two boxes was the defining feature of modernity, an idea founded on Cartesian and Kantianphilosophies of the subject. Its emergence has also been tracked by science studies in the contradiction between purified science and the messy process of knowledge creation, leading to Bruno Latour’s troubling claim that the separation of Human and Nature was an illusion, and that “we have never been modern”.

Climate science is now telling us that such a separation can no longer be sustained, that the natural and the human are mixed up, and their influences cannot be neatly distinguished.

This human-nature hybrid is true not just of the climate system, but of the planet as a whole, although it would be enough for it to be true of the climate system. We know from the new discipline of Earth system science that changes in the atmosphere affect not just the weather but the Earth’s hydrosphere (the watery parts), the biosphere (living creatures) and even the lithosphere (the Earth’s crust). They are all linked by the great natural cycles and processes that make the planet so dynamic. In short, everything is in play.

Apart from climatic change, it is apparent that human activity has transformed the Earth in profound ways. Every cubic metre of air and water, every hectare of land now has a human imprint, from hormones in the seas, to fluorocarbons in the atmosphere and radioactivity from nuclear weapons tests in the soil.

Each year humans shift ten times more rock and soil around the Earth than the great natural processes of erosion and weathering. Half of the land surface has been modified by humans. Dam-building since the 1930s has held back enough water to keep the oceans three centimetres lower than otherwise. Extinctions are now occurring at a rate 100 times faster than the natural one.

So profound has been the influence of humans that Earth scientists such as Will Steffen have recently declared that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch, an epoch defined by the fact that the “human imprint on the global environment has now become so large and active that it rivals some of the great forces of Nature in its impact on the functioning of the Earth system”. Known as the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans, it marks the end of the Holocene, the 10,000-year period of remarkable climatic stability and clemency that allowed civilisation to flourish.

The modern social sciences — sociology, psychology, political science, economics, history and, we may add, philosophy — rest on the assumption that the grand and the humdrum events of human life take place against a backdrop of an inert nature. Only humans have agency. Everything worthy of analysis occurs in the sealed world of “the social”, and where nature does make itself felt – in environmental history, sociology or politics – “the environment” is the Umwelt, the natural world “over there” that surrounds us and sometimes intrudes on our plans, but always remains separate.

What was distinctive of the “social sciences” that emerged in 18th-century Europe was not so much their aspiration to science but their “social-only” domain of concern.

So the advent of the Anthropocene shatters the self-contained world of social analysis that is the terrain of modern social science, and explains why those intellectuals who remain within it find it impossible to “analyze” the politics, sociology or philosophy of climate change in a way that is true to the science. They end up floundering in the old categories, unable to see that something epochal has occurred, a rupture on the scale of the Industrial Revolution or the emergence of civilization itself.

A few are trying to peer through the fog of modernism. In an epoch-marking intervention, Chicago historian Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued that the distinction we have drawn between natural history and human history has now collapsed. With the arrival of the Anthropocene, humans have become a geological force so that the two kinds of history have converged and it is no longer true that “all history properly so called is the history of human affairs”.

E.H. Carr’s famous definition of history must now be discarded:

History begins when men begin to think of the passage of time in terms not of natural processes — the cycle of the seasons, the human life-span — but of a series of specific events in which men are consciously involved and which they can consciously influence.

From hereon our history will increasingly be dominated by “natural processes”, influenced by us but largely beyond our control. Our future has become entangled with that of the Earth’s geological evolution. As I argue in a forthcoming book, contrary to the modernist faith, it can no longer be maintained that humans make their own history, for the stage on which we make it has now entered into the play as a dynamic and capricious force.

And the actors too must be scrutinised afresh. If on the Anthropocene’s hybrid Earth it is no longer tenable to characterise humans as the rational animal, God’s chosen creatures or just another species, what kind of being are we?

The social sciences taught in our universities must now be classed as “pre-Anthropocene”. The process of reinventing them — so that what is taught in our arts faculties is true to what has emerged in our science faculties — will be a sustained and arduous intellectual enterprise. After all, it was not just the landscape that was scorched by 40.33°C, but modernism itself.

Permission to Care: From Anxiety to Action on Climate Change (Desmog Canada)

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Mon, 2015-01-26 12:59

RENEE LERTZMAN

Over the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to participate in discussions about climate change threats and environmental issues with people across private, public, governmental, and research sectors. Whether at an island retreat in Puget Sound, a corporate conference at a resort or in the halls of our esteemed universities, the same questions get asked: How can we get people to care more? How do we motivate people? What’s it going to take?

What if these are the wrong questions to be asking?

Let’s consider this question by first reconsidering the context.

Environmental issues can generate huge anxieties that make them hard for many people to contemplate. Climate change in particular taps into all sorts of cognitive dissonances and feelings of guilt, leaving many people feeling overwhelmed about their role in the problem and solution. This anxiety is often managed through an array of brilliant (usually unconscious) strategies, often both privately and socially, that help us avoid pain, discomfort and conflicts.

Assuming we can agree on these things, the questions we should be asking are: How can our well-established insights into loss and cognitive dissonance guide new approaches to reaching people? How can our understanding of the way anxiety impacts our psyche and conduct inform the way we engage, message and campaign for a more sustainable future?

Psychology and sustainability may seem like strange bedfellows but more than 100 years of psychoanalytic research reveals a lot about how people use unconscious processes to manage anxiety. If I am feeling rather down about the prognosis of our planet, I like to ask myself: “What would a good therapist do?” Does a therapist berate the patient for being scared, reticent or a bit stuck? Does a therapist offer cash incentives for changing behaviors? (I hope not.) One of the first things a (good) therapist does is create what’s called a sense of safety and containment. They can do this by acknowledging their patient’s conflict, suffering and struggle, by helping the patient feel “seen”. Then – and only then – do they form an alliance with the patient to work together in a collaborative, participatory way towards change.

How this translates into engaging people more widely and creatively can be surprising. For starters, acknowledging that people use unconscious strategies for managing anxiety changes the ways we consider (and research) how people think and feel about our world. Analysis needs to go beneath the surface to explore where people feel stuck in conflict and anxious. Second, a psychoanalytic paradigm asks not whether people care or not but focuses onwhere care may exist but may not have permission to be expressed.

This approach can infuse our engagement work, whether in research or strategy, with a mood of curiosity as opposed to frustration and irritation at how wasteful, greedy and short-sighted societies can be. And this mood of curiosity and inquiry can lead us into some unexpected behavior change strategies – particularly through conversation.

The power of conversation may be the most profound insight we can gain from those on the frontlines of the therapeutic professions. Conversation changes people. As Rosemary Randall’s development of Carbon Conversations demonstrates, it’s very simple – if we want people to change, we have to listen to them. Humans are designed to learn, be changed and process information in the act of conversing. In this context, engagement can move beyond the creation of “Green Teams” and champions, into a far more dynamic evolution that creates contexts for creative participation. This means letting go of some control and being open to seeing what emerges when we invite people to contribute (a concept usefully offered by British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott) and exercise their agency.

What all of this amounts to is a radical reframe, a shift from a focus on motivating, persuading, cajoling and gamifying to inviting, enabling, facilitating and supporting. This is about giving people permission to care. As deeply social beings, we need some permission, we need to feel safe. Now, more than any other time, we need to start practicing a new form of engagement that presumes there is more care than can be contained – it just needs some help being channeled.

This article originally appeared on Climate Access.

Image Credit: Mark Stevens via Flickr

From the Concorde to Sci-Fi Climate Solutions (Truthout)

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Thursday, 29 January 2015 00:00 By Almuth Ernsting, Truthout

The interior of the Concorde aircraft at the Scotland Museum of Flight. (Photo: Magnus Hagdorn)

The interior of the Concorde aircraft at the Scotland Museum of Flight. (Photo: Magnus Hagdorn)

Touting “sci-fi climate solutions” – untested technologies not really scalable to the dimensions of our climate change crisis – dangerously delays the day when we actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Last week, I took my son to Scotland’s Museum of Flight. Its proudest exhibit: a Concorde. To me, it looked stunningly futuristic. “How old,” remarked my son, looking at the confusing array of pre-digital controls in the cockpit. Watching the accompanying video – “Past Dreams of the Future” – it occurred to me that the story of the Concorde stands as a symbol for two of the biggest obstacles to addressing climate change.

The Concorde must rank among the most wasteful ways of guzzling fossil fuels ever invented. No other form of transport is as destructive to the climate as aviation – yet the Concorde burned almost five times as much fuel per person per mile as a standard aircraft. Moreover, by emitting pollutants straight into the lower stratosphere, the Concorde contributed to ozone depletion. At the time of the Concorde’s first test flight in 1969, little was known about climate change and the ozone hole had not yet been discovered. Yet by the time the Concorde was grounded – for purely economic reasons – in 2003, concerns about its impact on the ozone layer had been voiced for 32 years and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) first report had been published for 13 years.

The Concorde’s history illustrates how the elites will stop at nothing when pursuing their interests or desires. No damage to the atmosphere and no level of noise-induced misery to those living under Concorde flight paths were treated as bad enough to warrant depriving the richest of a glamorous toy.

If this first “climate change lesson” from the Concorde seems depressing, the second will be even less comfortable for many.

Back in 1969, the UK’s technology minister marveled at Concorde’s promises: “It’ll change the shape of the world; it’ll shrink the globe by half . . . It replaces in one step the entire progress made in aviation since the Wright Brothers in 1903.”

Few would have believed at that time that, from 2003, no commercial flight would reach even half the speed that had been achieved back in the 1970s.

The Concorde remained as fast – yet as inefficient and uneconomical – as it had been from its commercial inauguration in 1976 – despite vast amounts of public and industry investment. The term “Concorde fallacy” entered British dictionaries: “The idea that you should continue to spend money on a project, product, etc. in order not to waste the money or effort you have already put into it, which may lead to bad decisions.”

The lessons for those who believe in overcoming climate change through technological progress are sobering: It’s not written in the stars that every technology dreamed up can be realized, nor that, with enough time and money, every technical problem will be overcome and that, over time, every new technology will become better, more efficient and more affordable.

Yet precisely such faith in technological progress informs mainstream responses to climate change, including the response by the IPCC. At a conference last autumn, I listened to a lead author of the IPCC’s latest assessment report. His presentation began with a depressing summary of the escalating climate crisis and the massive rise in energy use and carbon emissions, clearly correlated with economic growth. His conclusion was highly optimistic: Provided we make the right choices, technological progress offers a future with zero-carbon energy for all, with ever greater prosperity and no need for economic growth to end. This, he illustrated with some drawings of what we might expect by 2050: super-grids connecting abundant nuclear and renewable energy sources across continents, new forms of mass transport (perhaps modeled on Japan’s magnetic levitation trains), new forms of aircraft (curiously reminiscent of the Concorde) and completely sustainable cars (which looked like robots on wheels). The last and most obscure drawing in his presentation was unfinished, to remind us that future technological progress is beyond our capacity to imagine; the speaker suggested it might be a printer printing itself in a new era of self-replicating machines.

These may represent the fantasies of just one of many lead authors of the IPCC’s recent report. But the IPCC’s 2014 mitigation report itself relies on a large range of techno-fixes, many of which are a long way from being technically, let alone commercially, viable. Climate justice campaigners have condemned the IPCC’s support for “false solutions” to climate change. But the term “false solutions” does not distinguish between techno-fixes that are real and scalable, albeit harmful and counterproductive on the one hand, and those that remain in the realm of science fiction, or threaten to turn into another “Concorde fallacy,” i.e. to keep guzzling public funds with no credible prospect of ever becoming truly viable. Let’s call the latter “sci-fi solutions.”

The most prominent, though by no means only, sci-fi solution espoused by the IPCC is BECCS – bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. According to their recent report, the vast majority of “pathways” or models for keeping temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius rely on “negative emissions.” Although the report included words of caution, pointing out that such technologies are “uncertain” and “associated with challenges and risks,” the conclusion is quite clear: Either carbon capture and storage, including BECCS, is introduced on a very large scale, or the chances of keeping global warming within 2 degrees Celsius are minimal. In the meantime, the IPCC’s chair, Rajendra Pachauri, and the co-chair of the panel’s Working Group on Climate Change Mitigation, Ottmar Edenhofer, publicly advocate BECCS without any notes of caution about uncertainties – referring to it as a proven way of reducing carbon dioxide levels and thus global warming. Not surprisingly therefore, BECCS has even entered the UN climate change negotiations. The recent text, agreed at the Lima climate conference in December 2014 (“Lima Call for Action”), introduces the terms “net zero emissions” and “negative emissions,” i.e. the idea that we can reliably suck large amounts of carbon (those already emitted from burning fossil fuels) out of the atmosphere. Although BECCS is not explicitly mentioned in the Lima Call for Action, the wording implies support for it because it is treated as the key “negative emissions” technology by the IPCC.

If BECCS were to be applied at a large scale in the future, then we would have every reason to be alarmed. According to a scientific review, attempting to capture 1 billion tons of carbon through BECCS (far less than many of the “pathways” considered by the IPCC presume) would require 218 to 990 million hectares of switchgrass plantations (or similar scale plantations of other feedstocks, including trees), 1.6 to 7.4 trillion cubic meters of water a year, and 75 percent more than all the nitrogen fertilizers used worldwide (which currently stands at 1 billion tons according to the “conservative” estimates in many studies). By comparison, just 30 million hectares of land worldwide have been converted to grow feedstock for liquid biofuels so far. Yet biofuels have already become the main cause of accelerated growth in demand for vegetable oils and cereals, triggering huge volatility and rises in the price of wood worldwide. And by pushing up palm oil prices, biofuels have driven faster deforestation across Southeast Asia and increasingly in Africa. As a result of the ethanol boom, more than 6 million hectares of US land has been planted with corn, causing prairies and wetlands to be plowed up. This destruction of ecosystems, coupled with the greenhouse gas intensive use of fertilizers, means that biofuels overall are almost certainly worse for the climate than the fossil fuels they are meant to replace. There are no reasons to believe that the impacts of BECCS would be any more benign. And they would be on a much larger scale.

Capturing carbon takes a lot of energy, hence CCS requires around one-third more fuel to be burned to generate the same amount of energy. And sequestering captured carbon is a highly uncertain business. So far, there have been three large-scale carbon sequestration experiments. The longest-standing of these, the Sleipner field carbon sequestration trial in the North Sea, has been cited as proof that carbon dioxide can be sequestered reliably under the seabed. Yet in 2013, unexpected scars and fractures were found in the reservoir and a lead researcher concluded: “We are saying it is very likely something will come out in the end.” Another one of the supposedly “successful,” if much shorter, trials also raised “interesting questions,” according to the researchers: Carbon dioxide migrated further upward in the reservoir than predicted, most likely because injecting the carbon dioxide caused fractures in the cap rock.

There are thus good reasons to be alarmed about the prospect of large-scale bioenergy with CCS. Yet BECCS isn’t for real.

While the IPCC and world leaders conclude that we really need to use carbon capture and storage, including biomass, here’s what is actually happening: The Norwegian government, once proud of being a global pioneer of CCS, has pulled the plug on the country’s first full-scale CCS project after a scathing report from a public auditor. The Swedish state-owned energy company Vattenfall has shut down its CCS demonstration plant in Germany, the only plant worldwide testing a particular and supposedly promising carbon capture technology. The government of Alberta has dropped its previously enthusiastic support for CCS because it no longer sees it as economically viable.

True, 2014 has seen the opening of the world’s largest CCS power station, after SaskPower retrofitted one unit of their Boundary Dam coal power station in Saskatchewan to capture carbon dioxide. But Boundary Dam hardly confirms the techno-optimist’s hopes. The 100-megawatt unit costs approximately $1.4 billion to build – more than twice the cost of a much larger (non-CCS) 400-megawatt gas power station built by SaskPower in 2009. It became viable thanks only to public subsidies and to a contract with the oil company Cenovus, which agreed to buy the carbon dioxide for the next decade in order to inject it into an oil well to facilitate extraction of more hard to reach oil – a process called enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The supposed “carbon dioxide savings” predictably ignore all of the carbon dioxide emissions from burning that oil. But even with such a nearby oil field suitable for EOR, SaskPower had to make the plant far smaller than originally planned so as to avoid capturing more carbon dioxide than they could sell.

If CCS with fossil fuels is reminiscent of the Concorde fallacy, large-scale BECCS is entirely in the realm of science fiction. The supposedly most “promising technology”has never been tested in a biomass power plant and that has so far proven uneconomical with coal. Add to that the fact that biomass power plants need more feedstock and are less efficient and more expensive to run than coal power plants, and a massive-scale BECCS program becomes even more implausible. And then add to that the question of scale: Sequestering 1 billion tons of carbon a year would produce a volume of highly pressurized liquid carbon dioxide larger than the global volume of oil extracted annually. It would require governments and/or companies stumping up the money to build an infrastructure larger than that of the entire global oil industry – without any proven benefit.

This doesn’t mean that we won’t see any little BECCS projects in niche circumstances. One of these already exists: ADM is capturing carbon dioxide from ethanol fermentation in one of its refineries for use in CCS research. Capturing carbon dioxide from ethanol fermentation is relatively simple and cheap. If there happens to be some half-depleted nearby oil field suitable for enhanced oil recovery, some ethanol “CCS” projects could pop up here and there. But this has little to do with a “billion ton negative emissions” vision.

BECCS thus appears as one, albeit a particularly prominent, example of baseless techno-optimism leading to dangerous policy choices. Dangerous, that is, because hype about sci-fi solutions becomes a cover for the failure to curb fossil fuel burning and ecosystem destruction today.

The Climate Science Behind New England’s Historic Blizzard (Climate Progress)

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BY JOE ROMM POSTED ON JANUARY 26, 2015 AT 3:49 PM UPDATED: JANUARY 26, 2015 AT 4:52 PM

“The Climate Science Behind New England’s Historic Blizzard”

sea surface temperatures

Warming-fueled sea surface temperatures provide a boost of moisture for the forecast New England blizzard, just as it has for previous monster East Coast snow storms. Via NOAA.

Another epic blizzard is bearing down on New England. There is a “big part” played by “human-induced climate change,” especially warming-fueled ocean temperatures, according to Dr. Kevin Trenberth, former head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

I asked Dr. Trenberth to comment on the role climate change has on this latest storm, which is forecast to set records. He explained:

The number 1 cause of this is that it is winter. In winter it is cold over the continent. But it is warm over the oceans and the contrast between the cold continent and the warm Gulf Stream and surrounding waters is increasing. At present sea surface temperatures are more the 2F above normal over huge expanses (1000 miles) off the east coast and water vapor in the atmosphere is about 10% higher as a result. About half of this can be attributed to climate change.

Before this latest storm, we’ve seen a long-term pattern of more extreme precipitation, particularly in New England winters. Climate scientists had long predicted this would happen in a warming world. Here’s why.

heavy precipitation

“Percent changes in the amount of precipitation falling in very heavy events (the heaviest 1%) from 1958 to 2012″ by region,” via the 2014 National Climate Assessment. “There is a clear national trend toward a greater amount of precipitation being concentrated in very heavy events, particularly in the Northeast,” driven by a warming climate.

Like a baseball player on steroids, our climate system is breaking records at an unnatural pace. And like a baseball player on steroids, it’s the wrong question to ask whether a given home run is “caused” by steroids. As Trenberth wrote in his must-read analysis, “How To Relate Climate Extremes to Climate Change,” the “answer to the oft-asked question of whether an event is caused by climate change is that it is the wrong question. All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.”

One of the most robust scientific findings is the direct connection between global warming and more extreme precipitation or deluges. “Basic physics tells us that a warmer atmosphere is able to hold more moisture — at a rate of approximately 7 per cent increase per degree [Celsius] warming,” as the U.K. Met Office explained in its 2014 update on climate science. “This is expected to lead to similar percentage increases in heavy rainfall, which has generally been borne out by models and observed changes in daily rainfall.”

This means that when it is cold enough to snow, snow storms will be fueled by more water vapor and thus be more intense themselves. So we expect fewer snowstorms in regions close to the rain-snow line, such as the central United States, though the snowstorms that do occur in those areas are still likely to be more intense. It also means we expect more intense snowstorms in generally cold regions. This may appear to be counterintuitive — and certainly climate science deniers like to play up big snowstorms for that reason. But the fact is that the warming to date is not close to that needed to end below-freezing temperatures during midwinter over parts of the globe like New England, while it is large enough to put measurably more water vapor into the air.

A 2014 MIT study by Prof. Paul O’Gorman found that “snowfall extremes actually intensify” even many decades from now, in a future with high levels of warming:

O’Gorman found that there’s a narrow daily temperature range, just below the freezing point, in which extreme snow events tend to occur — a sweet spot that does not change with global warming….

“People may know the expression, ‘It’s too cold to snow’ — if it’s very cold, there is too little water vapor in the air to support a very heavy snowfall, and if it’s too warm, most of the precipitation will fall as rain.”

We’ve long known that warmer-than-normal winters favor snow storms. A 2006 study, “Temporal and Spatial Characteristics of Snowstorms in the Contiguous United States” found we are seeing more northern snow storms and that we get more snow storms in warmer years:

The temporal distribution of snowstorms exhibited wide fluctuations during 1901-2000…. Upward trends occurred in the upper Midwest, East, and Northeast, and the national trend for 1901-2000 was upward, corresponding to trends in strong cyclonic activity….

Assessment of the January-February temperature conditions again showed that most of the United States had 71%-80% of their snowstorms in warmer-than-normal years…. a future with wetter and warmer winters, which is one outcome expected, will bring more snowstorms than in 1901-2000. Agee (1991) found that long-term warming trends in the United States were associated with increasing cyclonic activity in North America, further indicating that a warmer future climate will generate more winter storms.

The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) U.S. Climate Impacts Report from 2009 reviewed that literature and concluded, “Cold-season storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent.

So it is no surprise that a 2012 study found extreme snowstorms and deluges are becoming more frequent and more severe. The 2014 National Climate Assessment (NCA), which is the most comprehensive analysis to date of current and future U.S. climate impacts, pointed out, “The mechanism driving these changes is well understood.” The congressionally-mandated report by 300 leading climate scientists and experts, which was reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences, explains: “Warmer air can contain more water vapor than cooler air. Global analyses show that the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere has in fact increased due to human-caused warming…. This extra moisture is available to storm systems, resulting in heavier rainfalls. Climate change also alters characteristics of the atmosphere that affect weather patterns and storms.”

That final point is very important. The worst deluges have jumped not merely because warmer air holds more moisture that in turn gets sucked into major storm systems. Increasingly, scientists have explained that climate change is altering the jet stream and weather patterns in ways that can cause storm systems to slow down or get stuck, thereby giving them more time to dump heavy precipitation (see my recent literature review here).

The National Climate Assessment noted that this “remains an active research area” but pointed outthat: “Heavier-than-normal snowfalls recently observed in the Midwest and Northeast U.S. in some years, with little snow in other years, are consistent with indications of increased blocking (a large scale pressure pattern with little or no movement) of the wintertime circulation of the Northern Hemisphere.”

You can see these the remarkable swings in the fraction of annual precipitation coming from extreme deluges in New England from NOAA’s Climate Extremes Index for the past century:

CEI Winter

NOAA chart showing the percentage (times 2) of New England “with a much greater than normal proportion of precipitation derived from extreme (equivalent to the highest tenth percentile) 1-day precipitation events” during the cold season (October-March).

In the case of the blizzard bearing down on New England, we have both the extra moisture off the East Coast and an “odd configuration of the jet stream (once again) is moving the low pressure system through a pattern that will create an epic blizzard.”

What of the future? Trenberth explains, “In mid winter, it is expected with climate change that snowfalls will increase as long as the temperatures are cold enough, because they are warmer than they would have been and the atmosphere can hold 4% more moisture for every 1F increase in temperature. So as long as it does not warm above freezing, the result is a greater dump of snow.” On the other hand, “at the beginning and end of winter, it warms enough that it is more likely for rain to result.” The net result is that average total snowfall may not increase.

The 2014 MIT study provides some more regional specificity about how the future will play out in terms of average snowfall versus extreme snowfall:

The study found that, under high warming scenarios, those low-lying regions with average winter temperatures normally just below freezing would see a 65 percent reduction in average winter snowfall. But in these places, the heaviest snowstorms on average became only 8 percent less intense. In the higher latitudes, extreme snowfall became more intense, with 10 percent more snow, even under scenarios of relatively high average warming.

Of course, climate science deniers and their allies will no doubt continue to misinform the public and policymakers by arguing that monster snowstorms are somehow evidence against the theory of human caused global warming, when they are no such thing. The latest science means the deniers will continue to have increasingly intense extreme “snowmageddons” in colder regions like New England, especially in midwinter, to mislead the public for decades to come.

É difícil atribuir seca em SP ao aquecimento global (Folha de S.Paulo)

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Entrevista da 2ª – Carlos Nobre

26 de janeiro de 2015

São necessários mais estudos, diz climatologista, para quem o sudeste tem regime de chuvas especialmente imprevisível

MARCELO LEITE DE SÃO PAULO

O renomado climatologista Carlos Afonso Nobre está muito preocupado com a crise hídrica. No Sudeste, para que a estação chuvosa janeiro-março fique na média histórica, seria preciso chover 60% a 80% mais que o usual nos dois meses que faltam.

O problema é que não há como prever se isso vai ocorrer. No ano passado, o bloqueio atmosférico (massa de ar que impede a entrada de umidade) durou até meados de fevereiro. A boa notícia é que, neste janeiro de 2015, ele foi rompido pela frente fria dos últimos dias –mas nada impede a sua volta.

As condições do Sudeste, afirma, fazem dele uma região de baixa previsibilidade para secas e chuvas, mesmo na escala de semanas.

Secretário de Políticas e Programas de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento do Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação, Nobre se encontra na posição desconfortável de ser um destacado estudioso da mudança do clima com funções executivas num ministério em que o titular (Aldo Rebelo) já pôs o fenômeno em dúvida. Evita tratar do assunto, porém, por ter convivido pouco com o novo ministro.

De todo modo, Nobre não abandona a prudência científica. “É difícil atribuir ao aquecimento global um extremo climático como as secas do Sudeste”, afirma nesta entrevista, concedida por escrito.

A impossibilidade de se relacionar diretamente a mudança climática a episódios específicos não significa, porém, que governos não devam se preparar para o aumento de eventos extremos causado por ela, diz Nobre.

–

Folha – O verão 2013/14 foi o mais seco em 62 anos no Sudeste, em especial na bacia que alimenta o Cantareira. Já é possível avaliar se o de 2014/15 irá superá-lo ou igualá-lo?

Carlos Nobre – Ainda não, pois fevereiro e março são meses da estação chuvosa. De qualquer maneira, para que a estação chuvosa no Sudeste se encerrasse dentro da média histórica, as chuvas em fevereiro e março deveriam ficar de 60% a 80% acima da média.

Até novembro e dezembro de 2013, as previsões sazonais não haviam sido capazes de indicar a estiagem que viria em janeiro de 2014.

De fato, não há quase nenhuma previsibilidade para a região Sudeste e Centro-Oeste quando se trabalha com uma escala de meses.

Tal região não está entre os locais do planeta com previsibilidade climática sazonal, como o norte do Nordeste, partes da Amazônia e Sudeste da América do Sul (centro-leste da Argentina, Uruguai e Paraguai, e sul do Brasil).

A variabilidade climática no Sudeste é fortemente influenciada por frentes frias e por fenômenos atmosféricos de grande escala, como os bloqueios, que geram os veranicos [com estiagem] no meio da estação chuvosa, que são difíceis da prever. Isso aumenta o nível de incerteza na gestão dos recursos hídricos.

Isso vale para a maior parte do Brasil?

No semiárido do Nordeste, as previsões de secas com antecedência de alguns meses têm alto índice de acerto, quase 80%, e são forma importante para políticas de mitigação dos impactos das secas.

Para a estação chuvosa principal do semiárido, de fevereiro a maio deste ano, as previsões indicam risco de chuvas abaixo da média, um quadro de continuidade do deficit hídrico de vários anos.

No caso da Amazônia, é significativo o risco de grandes incêndios florestais, como em 1998 em Roraima?

Para o norte da Amazônia, especialmente Roraima, as chuvas dos últimos meses têm estado um pouco abaixo da média histórica, e fevereiro e março são meses do período mais seco do ano.

A principal explicação para chuvas abaixo da média no norte da Amazônia é o El Niño [superaquecimento das águas do Pacífico que aquece a atmosfera], ainda que o episódio atual seja considerado fraco e deva se enfraquecer-se nos próximos meses. Não se espera uma seca tão intensa em Roraima como foi aquela de 1997-98, reflexo do mega-El Niño ocorrido então.

Em janeiro de 2014, o bloqueio atmosférico permaneceu até meados de fevereiro. Com a frente fria que chegou a SP nesta quinta-feira (22), pode-se dizer que o pior já passou?

Como disse, prever bloqueios atmosféricos com semanas de antecedência não é factível. Mas, de fato, a situação a partir da chegada de uma fraca frente fria ao Sudeste nos últimos dias é diferente daquela de janeiro e fevereiro de 2014.

A repetição em 2014 e 2015 de condições de estiagem grave, ao menos no Sudeste, pode ter relação com o aquecimento global? Afinal, 2014 foi declarado pela Nasa e pela Noaa o mais quente já registrado. Qual é a chance de que seja apenas uma coincidência?

O fato de que as observações globais indicam a continuidade da tendência de aquecimento global, com 2014 sendo o ano com a mais alta temperatura à superfície desde 1860, é algo bem esperado, em razão da crescente quantidade de gases do efeito estufa na atmosfera.

Por outro lado, é bem mais difícil atribuir ao aquecimento global um extremo climático como as secas do Sudeste. São necessários estudos com modelos climáticos globais complexos, nos quais se simula o clima com e sem os aumentos dos gases-estufa.

Além disso, sempre é necessário estabelecer quais são os mecanismos físicos para a mudança. No caso de bloqueios atmosféricos, envolveria entender mecanismos complexos. Como a propagação de ondas atmosféricas de milhares de quilômetros está respondendo ao aquecimento global? Trata-se de uma tarefa cientificamente bastante desafiadora.

Como se explica que reservatórios relativamente próximos, como Guarapiranga/Billings e Cantareira tenham comportamento tão díspares?

Em anos de bloqueios atmosféricos grandes sobre o Sudeste, toda a região apresenta chuvas abaixo da média. O efeito de ilha urbana de calor [afetadas pela temperatura mais elevada da cidade, massas úmidas de passagem viram tempestades], porém, atua para fazer com que os deficits sobre a região metropolitana de São Paulo sejam menores do que em regiões vizinhas, como o Cantareira.

Por outro lado, mesmo excetuando fenômenos de grande escala como os bloqueios, observa-se uma diminuição relativa das chuvas sobre o Cantareira nas últimas décadas e um aumento das chuvas sobre a cidade. Hipoteticamente, esse efeito de longo prazo pode estar relacionado com a ilha urbana de calor, mas estudos em andamento precisarão comprovar, ou não, essa hipótese.

O governo federal já trabalha com a hipótese de que a Grande São Paulo chegue a um estado de calamidade pública, com esgotamento completo do sistema Cantareira, por exemplo?

O Cemaden (Centro Nacional de Monitoramento e Alertas de Desastres Naturais) desenvolveu um modelo hidrológico para o sistema Cantareira e instalou, em abril e maio de 2014, 33 pluviômetros automáticos para melhorar o monitoramento das chuvas sobre as bacias de captação. Como não é factível prever hoje as chuvas em fevereiro e março, pode-se apenas traçar cenários.

No caso de continuidade de chuvas abaixo da média nesses meses, de fato há risco de o reservatório não ter condições de manter o abastecimento nos níveis atuais.

O que o poder público deve fazer no médio e no longo prazos para prevenir a repetição dessa situação limítrofe? Diria que se trata do principal problema no campo da adaptação à mudança do clima?

Adaptação às mudanças climáticas deve ser uma prioridade de política pública. Hidrólogos devem incorporar o fato de que os extremos climáticos estão se tornando mais frequentes e, em muitos casos, mais intensos.

Em outras palavras, as séries históricas de observações hidrológicas não podem mais ser consideradas estacionárias. O planejamento da utilização dos recursos hídricos deve levar em conta isso. A atual crise hídrica já está tendo um impacto em demonstrar que o Brasil precisa urgentemente buscar desenvolver sistemas e infraestruturas resistentes ao aumentos dos extremos climáticos.

Qual é a sua avaliação da Conferência de Lima e sua expectativa com relação a Paris, em dezembro?

Lima trouxe progressos incrementais. Embora exista a expectativa de algo maior em Paris, creio que seja realista não esperar uma revolução. Além disso, é preocupante a relativa diminuição recente dos preços dos petróleo e gás: se persistir, irá causar um inevitável aumento das emissões de gases do efeito-estufa.

“Há tecnologia para redução de emissões”, diz pesquisador Paulo Artaxo (Zero Hora)

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Considerado uma das principais autoridades em mudanças climáticas, físico afirma que o Protocolo de Kyoto “já é letra morta”

por Bruno Felin

24/01/2015 | 11h23

"Há tecnologia para redução de emissões", diz pesquisador Paulo Artaxo Anxo Lamela/Anxo Lamela

Camadas de gelo da Groelândia perdem aproximadamente 258 bilhões de toneladas ao anoFoto: Anxo Lamela / Anxo Lamela

Paulo Artaxo é uma das principais autoridades em mudanças climáticas a representar o Brasil nas conferências da ONU. O físico da Universidade de São Paulo tem mais de 300 trabalhos publicados, parte deles nas grandes revistas científicas do mundo. É uma das pessoas a colocar o país como referência em estudos sobre o clima.

Como o mundo saiu da conferência em Lima, no Peru? Há um rascunho de acordo?
Paulo Artaxo: Não há um rascunho. Há, no máximo, uma tentativa de se fazer um acordo para redução de emissões, mas não há nenhum compromisso concreto com uma possivel verificação (de quem cumpre ou não). Isso, infelizmente, ainda não existe. O Protocolo de Kyoto foi uma ferramenta importante, mas já é letra morta, não foi cumprido pela falta de penalidade para quem não cumpre.

Evidências comprovam a urgência da luta contra o aquecimento global
Mudanças climáticas se tornam debate urgente em 2014
As técnicas mirabolantes da geoengenharia para conter o aquecimento global

O que emperrou para que esse encontro tivesse mais resultados concretos?
Paulo Artaxo: Obviamente, o que emperra são as velhas questões de sempre: quem paga a conta e como é que são divididas as responsabilidades do ponto de vista das reduções de emissões. Alguns países, como os Estados Unidos, não aceitam fazer nenhum tipo de redução se a China, por exemplo, que é o seu grande competidor, também não fizer uma redução. Essa é a questão.

Quanto ao proximo acordo, temos de ficar otimistas ou pessimistas?
Paulo Artaxo: Não é questão de ficar otimista, ou jogo de sim ou não. É fundamental que se façam políticas de redução de emissão de gases do efeito estufa, principalmente no setor de energia. Isso é fundamental, a estabilidade do clima no planeta no futuro depende disso. Agora, isso não é a única coisa relevante no nosso planeta, você tem questões econômicas, tecnológicas e políticas para tratar com isso. Então, não podemos simplesmente imaginar que vamos chegar em Paris, vamos sentar e redigir o novo acordo, e todo mundo vai ficar feliz. Não funciona desse jeito. É um longo processo, que esperamos que tenha sucesso, mas não se espera que saia um acordo para reduzir 80% das emissões. Talvez fique em 20% até 2050.

O que esperar da Cúpula do Clima
Relatório da Onu conclui que emissões de gases têm de zerar até 2100
“O Brasil é um dos exemplos mais importantes”

Temos tecnologia para reduzir a dependência dos combustíveis fósseis. O desafio é barateá-la?
Paulo Artaxo: Na verdade não é uma questão tecnológica. Há tecnologia para redução de emissões em todos os setores. Por exemplo, o setor mais óbvio é a indústria automotiva. Existe tecnologia para reduzir as emissões dos automóveis em pelo menos 50%. A questão é ter políticas públicas que ponham essas tecnologias em uso. Tem que obrigar as fábricas a fazer carros mais eficientes no menor prazo possível. Se isso não acontece, as fábricas vão continuar colocando no mercado carros extremamente ineficientes e totalmente inapropriados para a questão climática como a gente tem hoje.

Nos gráficos abaixo, as evidências demonstram a urgência por ações:

Níveis de CO2Os níveis de CO2 sempre variaram durante a história da Terra. Ao respirar, as plantas retiram o CO2 da atmosfera, ficam com o carbono e soltam oxigênio. Os animais puxam o oxigênio e soltam CO2. Um balanço perfeito. Durante centenas de milhares de anos, os seres vivos foram morrendo e esse material indo cada vez mais para o fundo da Terra. Ao ser exposto a calor e pressão, se transformou nos combustíveis fósseis: petróleo, gás e carvão. E aí mora o nosso problema: todo esse carbono que demorou centenas de milhares de anos para se formar está voltando para a atmosfera em apenas algumas centenas de anos.

Veja animação com o aumento do CO2 ao longo dos anos:

http://www.clicrbs.com.br/sites/swf/zh_grafico_aquecimentoglobal/co2.html

Aumento da temperatura

A temperatura oscilou durante toda a história do planeta acompanhando os níveis de CO2 na atmosfera. Cientistas estimam que os gases do efeito estufa emitidos pelo homem demorem 50 anos para começar a alterar os níveis de CO2 medidos. Por isso é perceptível que, após a revolução industrial, a temperatura tenha aumentado tanto.

http://www.clicrbs.com.br/sites/swf/zh_arte_infograficos_imagem_estatica/index.html?img=http://zerohora.clicrbs.com.br/rbs/image/17179158.jpg


Em animação, veja onde a temperatura aumentou nos últimos anos:
http://www.clicrbs.com.br/sites/swf/zh_grafico_aquecimentoglobal/temperature.html

Aumento do nível dos oceanos

O aumento do nível do mar se dá por dois fatores relacionados ao aquecimento global: a água que vem do derretimento do gelo da terra e a expansão natural da água quando esquenta. Em média, o nível do mar está subindo 3.17 milímetros por ano. No último século, foram 17 centímetros.

Em gráfico, acompanhe o aumento do nível do mar:

http://www.clicrbs.com.br/sites/swf/zh_arte_infograficos_imagem_estatica/index.html?img=http://zerohora.clicrbs.com.br/rbs/image/17179157.jpg

Desmatamento

Manter as florestas de pé é fundamental para combater o aquecimento, pois as plantas absorvem o CO2 e liberam oxigênio. O Brasil tem a segunda maior área de florestas do mundo, atrás apenas da Rússia, e já desmatou muito a Amazônia. Porém, os números vêm reduzindo, somos exemplo para outros países.

Em gráfico, veja o desmatamento da Amazônia nos últimos anos:

http://www.clicrbs.com.br/sites/swf/zh_arte_infograficos_imagem_estatica/index.html?img=http://zerohora.clicrbs.com.br/rbs/image/17179343.jpg

Massa de gelo

As camadas de gelo da Antartica reduziram cerca de 147 bilhões de toneladas por ano enquanto as da Groelândia perderam aproximadamente 258 bilhões de toneladas ao ano. No Ártico, a média de declínio da camada de gelo é de 13,3% por década (relativo às médias de 1981 a 2010).

Veja como ficaram alguns pontos do globo antes e depois dos efeitos das mudanças climáticas:

http://www.clicrbs.com.br/sites/swf/zh_grafico_aquecimentoglobal/antesdepois/index.html

Dahr Jamail | Mourning Our Planet: Climate Scientists Share Their Grieving Process (Truthout)

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Sunday, 25 January 2015 00:00 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | News Analysis 

Scientists write their feelings about climate change

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)

I have been researching and writing about anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) for Truthout for the past year, because I have long been deeply troubled by how fast the planet has been emitting its obvious distress signals.

On a nearly daily basis, I’ve sought out the most recent scientific studies, interviewed the top researchers and scientists penning those studies, and connected the dots to give readers as clear a picture as possible about the magnitude of the emergency we are in.

This work has emotional consequences: I’ve struggled with depression, anger, and fear. I’ve watched myself shift through some of the five stages of grief proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance I’ve grieved for the planet and all the species who live here, and continue to do so as I work today.

I have been vacillating between depression and acceptance of where we are, both as victims – fragile human beings – and as perpetrators: We are the species responsible for altering the climate system of the planet we inhabit to the point of possibly driving ourselves extinct, in addition to the 150-200 species we are already driving extinct.

Can you relate to this grieving process?

If so, you might find solace in the fact that you are not alone: Climate science researchers, scientists, journalists and activists have all been struggling with grief around what we are witnessing.

To see more stories like this, visit “Planet or Profit?”

Take Professor Camille Parmesan, a climate researcher who says that ACD is the driving cause of her depression.

“I don’t know of a single scientist that’s not having an emotional reaction to what is being lost,” Parmesan said in the National Wildlife Federation’s 2012 report. “It’s gotten to be so depressing that I’m not sure I’m going to go back to this particular site again,” she said in reference to an ocean reef she had studied since 2002, “because I just know I’m going to see more and more of the coral dead, and bleached, and covered with brown algae.”

Last year I wrote about the work of Joanna Macy, a scholar of Buddhism, eco-philosophy, general systems theory and deep ecology, and author of more than a dozen books. Her initiative, The Work That Reconnects, helps people essentially do nothing more mysterious than telling the truth about what we see, know and feel is happening to our world.

In order to remain able to continue in our work, we first must feel the full pain of what is being done to the world, according to Macy.” Refusing to feel pain, and becoming incapable of feeling the pain, which is actually the root meaning of apathy, refusal to suffer – that makes us stupid, and half alive,” she told me. “It causes us to become blind to see what is really out there.”

I recently came across a blog titled, Is This How You Feel? It is an extraordinary compilation of handwritten letters from highly credentialed climate scientists and researchers sharing their myriad feelings about what they are seeing.

The blog is run and operated by Joe Duggan, a science communicator, who described his project like this: “All the scientists that have penned letters for this site have a sound understanding of climate change. Some have spent years designing models to predict changing climate, others, years investigating the implications for animal life. More still have been exploring a range of other topics concerning the causes and implications of a changing climate. As a minimum, they’ve all achieved a PhD in their area of expertise.”

With Joe’s permission, I am happy to share the passages below. In the spirit of opening the door to a continuing dialog among readers about our collective situation, what follows are the – often very personal – thoughts and feelings of several leading climate scientists.

Frustration

“Like many others I feel frustrated with the current state of public discourse and I’m dismayed by those who, seemingly motivated by their own short-term self interest, have chosen to hijack that discussion,” wrote Dr. John Fasullo, a project scientist in the climate analysis section of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, on the Is This How You Feel? blog. “The climate is changing and WE are the primary cause.”

Professor Peter B. deMenocal with Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory shared an analogy to the climate scientist’s predicament, comparing it to how a medical doctor would feel while having to inform their patient, who is an old, lifelong friend, of a dire but treatable diagnosis. The friend goes on to angrily disregard what you have to say, for a variety of very human reasons, as you watch helplessly as their pain and illness unfold over the rest of their now-shortened life. “Returning to our patient, I feel frustrated that my friend won’t listen,” he concluded.

Dr. Helen McGregor, a research fellow at the Australian National University’s Research School of Earth Sciences, shared a very emotionally honest letter about her experience as a climate scientist. Here is what she wrote in full:

I feel like nobody’s listening. Ok Sure, some people are listening but not enough of our leaders are listening – those that make decisions that influence all our lives. And climate change is affecting and will continue to affect all our lives.

I feel perplexed at why many of our politicians, business leaders, and members of the public don’t get that increased CO2 in the Earths atmosphere is a problem. The very premise that CO2 traps heat is based on fundamental physics – the very same physics that underpins so much of modern society. The very same physics that has seen higher C02 linked with warmer periods in the geological past. And sure, there have been warm periods in the past and the Earth weathered the storm (excuse the pun) but back then there weren’t millions of people, immovable infrastructure, or entire communities in harms way.

I feel astonished that some would accuse me of being part of some global conspiracy to get more money – if I was in it for the money I would have stayed working as a geologist in the mining industry. No, I do climate research because I find climate so very interesting, global warming or not.

I feel both exasperation and despair in equal measure, that perhaps there really is nothing I can do. I feel vulnerable, that perhaps by writing this letter I expose myself to trolling and vitriol – perhaps I’m better off just keeping quiet.

Hope

Dr. Jennie Mallela with the Research Schools of Biology and Earth Sciences at the Australian National University shared a range of emotions, including optimism.

“I believe people are capable of amazing things and I do believe that climate change can be halted and even reversed,” she wrote. “I just hope it happens in my lifetime. I don’t want to become the generation that future children talk of as having destroyed the planet. I’d like to be the generation that fought back (and won) against human induced climate change. The generation that worked out how to live in harmony with the planet – that generation!”

She wasn’t alone.

“So whilst there is enough good and committed people we can change our path of warming,” wrote Dr. Jim Salinger, an honorary research associate in climate science with the University of Auckland’s School of Environment. However, he went on to add, “I am always hopeful – but 4 to 5 degrees Celsius of change will be a challenge to survive.”

I asked Dr. Ira Lefier, an Atmospheric/Oceanic Scientist whose research has focused on methane how he felt about our current situation. He expressed his concerns and frustration, but also optimism.

“I find the current situation is highly distressing, in that the facts regarding global warming have been known for many decades, because like an aircraft carrier avoiding a collision, course changes can easily be managed well in advance, but become impossible at the last minute – inertia seals the future destiny,” he said. “And I ask myself, what did we (scientists and activists and concerned citizens of the planet), how did we get here, so close to the midnight? And I think that there was a tragic underestimate based on the successful campaign to save the Ozone Layer through the fight against CFCs – a gas with almost no political lobby, that the global society could easily accept the widespread changes needed to address global climate change through reducing CO2 emissions – which affects almost everyone on the planet. And that political change could be engendered simply by scientists presenting their facts and observations.

“So yes, I find it highly distressing that we are having a societal discussion on whether to take climate change seriously, half a century late. Still, I refuse not to be an optimist, – it is not yet too late. I continue to do whatever I can both scientifically and by communicating with the public, firstly, because it is the right thing to do, and secondly, in the hope and belief that even now, positive action will reduce the damage from ma warming climate to the ecosystem. I refuse to accept ‘apres moi le deluge’ [after me comes the flood].”

Concern

“As a human-being, and especially as a parent, I feel concerned that we are doing damage to the planet,” wrote Professor Peter Cox, of the University of Exeter, on the blog. “I don’t want to leave a mess for my children, or anyone else’s children, to clear-up. We are currently creating a problem for them at an alarming rate – that is worrying.”

Professor Gabi Hegerl, a professor of climate system science with the University of Edinburgh, wrote, “I look at my children and think about what I know is coming their way and I worry how it will affect them.”

Dr. Sarah Perkins, a climate scientist and extreme events specialist with the University of New South Wales, shared both her concern and hope about our Earth.

For sometime now I’ve been terribly worried. I wish I didn’t have to acknowledge it, but everything I have feared is happening. I used to think I was paranoid, but it’s true. She’s slipping away from us. She’s been showing signs of acute illness for quite a while, but no one has really done anything. Her increased erratic behavior is something I’ve especially noticed. Certain behaviors that were only rare occurrences are starting to occur more often, and with heightened anger. I’ve tried to highlight these changes time and time again, as well as their speed of increase, but no one has paid attention.

It almost seems everyone has been ignoring me completely, and I’m not sure why. Is it easier to pretend there’s no illness, hoping it will go away? Or because they’ve never had to live without her, so the thought of death is impossible? Perhaps they cannot see they’ve done this to her. We all have.

To me this is all false logic. How can you ignore the severe sickness of someone you are so intricately connected to and dependent upon. How can you let your selfishness and greed take control, and not protect and nurture those who need it most? How can anyone not feel an overwhelming sense of care and responsibility when those so dear to us are so desperately ill? How can you push all this to the back of your mind? This is something I will never understand. Perhaps I’m the odd one out, the anomaly of the human race. The one who cares enough, who has the compassion, to want to help make her better.

The thing is we can make her better!! If we work together, we can cure this terrible illness and restore her to her old self before we exploited her. But we must act quickly, we must act together. Time is ticking, and we need to act now.

Sharing both his frustration and concern, Dr. Alex Sen Gupta with the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales wrote:

I feel frustrated. The scientific evidence is overwhelming. We know what’s going on, we know why it’s happening, we know how serious things are going to get and still after so many years, we are still doing practically nothing to stop it. I feel concerned that unmitigated our inaction will cause terrible suffering to those least able to cope with change and that within my lifetime many of the places that make this planet so special – the snows on Kilimanjaro, the Great Barrier Reef, even the ice covered Arctic will be degraded beyond recognition – our legacy to the next generation.

Anger

“My overwhelming emotion is anger; anger that is fuelled not so much by ignorance, but by greed and profiteering at the expense of future generations,” wrote Professor Corety Bradshaw, the director of ecological modeling at the University of Adelaide. “I am not referring to some vague, existential bonding to the future human race; rather, I am speaking as a father of a seven year-old girl who loves animals and nature in general. As a biologist, I see irrefutable evidence every day that human-driven climate disruption will turn out to be one of the main drivers of the Anthropocene mass extinction event now well under way.”

The rest of his letter is worth reading in full:

Public indifference and individual short-sightedness aside, I am furious that politicians like Abbott and his anti-environment henchman are stealing the future from my daughter, and laughing about it while they line their pockets with the figurative gold proffered by the fossil-fuel industry. Whether it is sheer stupidity, greed, deliberate dishonesty or all three, the outcome is the same – destruction of the environmental life-support system that keeps us all alive and prosperous. Climates change, but the rapidity with which we are disrupting the current climate on top of the already heavily compromised environmental health of the planet makes the situation dire.

My frustration with these greedy, lying bastards is personal. Human-caused climate disruption is not a belief – it is one of the best-studied phenomena on Earth. Even a half-wit can understand this. As any father would, anyone threatening my family will by on the receiving end of my ire and vengeance. This anger is the manifestation of my deep love for my daughter, and the sadness I feel in my core about how others are treating her future.

Mark my words, you plutocrats, denialists, fossil-fuel hacks and science charlatans – your time will come when you will be backed against the wall by the full wrath of billions who have suffered from your greed and stupidity, and I’ll be first in line to put you there.

“The Pivotal Psychological Reality of Our Time”

Joe told me the response to his project has been, in general, positive.

“I have received emails from all over the world from people of all walks of life thanking me for establishing the website – from retired grandmothers through to undergraduate university students,” he said. “The letters have been picked up by various social media sites like Science Alert…and have subsequently reached massive audiences.”

He was happy to add that the responses from scientists have been positive, and said his question of “How does climate change make you feel?” is “something they have not been asked before.”

“Of course there have been some very vocal opponents to my work,” Joe added. “This is to be expected. As I have said in the past, there is a small but very vocal group of people out there whose sole goal is to misinform and mislead the general public about climate change. These people don’t have to use the facts, they don’t have to even use the real data. They can cherry-pick from graphs, or even tell flat-out lies in an attempt to mislead the greater public. To what end, who knows? ITHYF [Is This How You Feel] does not exist to change the minds of deniers. It exists to provide an avenue through which every day people can relate to climate change.”

The term “climate change deniers,” then, has an entirely new – and ever more relevant – meaning when viewed through the lenses of the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief, given that “denial” is literally one of the five stages.

Joe is now asking laypeople to send in their letters about how they feel, and plans to publish those as well.

“This approach is not the only way to communicate on climate change, but it is one way, and I certainly feel that it is effective,” he concluded.

The practice of scientists sharing their feelings runs contrary to the dominant consumer capitalist culture of the West, which guards against – and attempts to divert attention from – the prospect of people getting in touch with feelings provoked by witnessing the wholesale destruction of the planet.

In fact, Joanna Macy believes it is not in the self-perceived interest of multinational corporations, or the government and the media that serve them “for us to stop and become aware of our profound anguish with the way things are.”

Nevertheless, these disturbing trends of widespread denial, disinformation by the corporate media, and the worsening impacts of runaway ACD, which are all increasing, are something she is very mindful of. As she wrote in World as Lover, World as Self, “The loss of certainty that there will be a future is, I believe, the pivotal psychological reality of our time.”

We don’t know how long we have left on earth. Five years? 15 years? 30? Beyond the year 2100? But when we allow our hearts to be shattered – broken completely open – by these stark, cold realities, we allow our perspectives to be opened up to vistas we’ve never known. When we allow ourselves to fully experience the crisis in this way, we are then able to truly see it through new eyes.

Like reaching new heights on a mountain, we can see things we’ve never seen before. Our thinking, attitudes, and outlook on life changes dramatically. It is a new consciousness, one in which we realize the pivotal stage in history we find ourselves in.

Perhaps, within this new consciousness, we can live in this time with grace, dignity, and caring. Perhaps, here, we can find ways to save habitat for a few more species, while we share this precious lives and this precious time with loved ones, in the wild places we love so much, on this rare and precious world.

Affective Habitus, Environment & Emotions (Synthetic Zero)

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By 

January 24, 2015

“Ariel Salleh: The Vicissitudes of an Earth Democracy

Even as we face the global crisis, an Earth on fire, the role of water goes unacknowledged. Yet it is water that joins Humanity and Nature, mind and body, subject and object, men, women, queers, children, animals, plants, rocks, and air. Water carries the flow of desire, nourishes the seed, sculpts our valleys, and our imaginations. As water joins heaven and Earth, it steadies climates. But the Promethian drive to mastery, militarism, mining, manufacture, steals water, leaves deserts in its wake. More than peak oil, we face peak water. What kind of ecotheory will turn this Anthropocene around? Who embodies the deep flow of resistant affect that Adorno and Kristeva find in non-identity? Can the universities give us theory that is guided by this logic of water? Or are our canons and cognitions still too embedded in the commodities and objects of fire? While life on Earth falls into Anthropocenic disrepair, a global bourgeois culture promotes ad hoc action as policy and pastiche as style. Timothy Morton’s recent essay ‘The Oedipal Logic of Ecological Awareness’ is provocative in this respect. In response, we ask: What does the hybrid politics of ecological feminism say about affect and the dissolution of old binaries like Humanity versus Nature? How does its embodied materialism translate into an Earth Democracy? Whose affective habitus can nurture nature’s agency – indigenes, mothers, peasants? Whose common labour skills reproduce the unity of water and land?

Eileen Joy: Post/Apocalyptically Blue

This talk is an attempt to think about depression as a shared creative endeavor, as a trans-corporeal blue (and blues) ecology that would bind humans, nonhumans, and stormy weather together in what anthropologist Tim Ingold has called a meshwork, where “beings do not propel themselves across a ready-made world but rather issue forth through a world-in-formation, along the lines of their relationships.” In this enmeshment of the “strange strangers” of Timothy Morton’s dark ecology, “[t]he only way out is down” and art’s “ambiguous, vague qualities will help us to think things that remain difficult to put into words.” It may be, as Morton has also argued, that while “personhood” is real, nevertheless, “[b]oth the surface and the depth of our being are ambiguous and illusory.” And “still weirder, this illusion might have actual effects.” I want to see if it might be possible to cultivate this paradoxical interface (literally, “between faces”) between illusion and effects, especially with regard to feeling blue, a condition I believe is a form of a deeply empathic enmeshment with a world that suffers its own “sea changes” and which can never be seen as separate from the so-called individuals who supposedly only populate (“people”) it.”

O apagão do planeta (O Estado de São Paulo)

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Entrevista. Martin Rees

Indiferente aos ‘céticos do clima’, a Terra está cada vez mais quente e a previsão é de desastres devastadores até o fim do século, alerta astrônomo de Cambridge

Ivan Marsiglia

24 Janeiro 2015 | 16h 00

GUILHERME CALDAS E OLAVO ROCHA/DIVULGAÇÃO

GUILHERME CALDAS E OLAVO ROCHA/DIVULGAÇÃO 

Os desastres da gestão da água em São Paulo e dos apagões elétricos no País não são obra de São Pedro ou de Deus, esse brasileiro – como chegaram a atribuir certas autoridades. Mas foram ambos agravados por cenário maior, também de catástrofe anunciada, só que em escala global. Há anos o Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), da ONU, alerta para o risco de mudanças climáticas decorrentes do aquecimento global, pregando praticamente no deserto. Na semana passada, somando-se ao aumento perceptível de eventos atmosféricos extremos mundo afora, um relatório da Nasa, a agência espacial americana, confirmou: 2014 foi o ano mais quente desde que essa medição começou a ser feita, em 1880. E, embora os cientistas “céticos do clima” continuem sua cruzada para esfriar os ânimos do ambientalismo, essa é uma realidade cada vez mais difícil de negar.

“Se as emissões anuais de CO2 continuarem a aumentar podemos enfrentar uma mudança climática drástica, com cenários devastadores até o século 22”, crava um dos cientistas mais respeitados do mundo na área. Sir Martin John Rees, astrônomo e professor de cosmologia e astrofísica na Universidade de Cambridge, presidente da prestigiosa Royal Society entre 2005 e 2010, não é o que se pode chamar de “alarmista”. E, no entanto, em um livro de 2003 – Our Final Century (Hora Final – Alerta de um Cientista, Companhia das Letras) – já dizia, com polidez britânica, que a humanidade tem 50% de chance de sobreviver ao século 21.

Na entrevista a seguir, o autor de From Here to Infinity: A Vision for the Future of Science – livro de 2012 em que investiga as conexões entre ciência, política e economia no século 21 – descreve o delicado estado de coisas neste nosso “mundo congestionado”, sob ameaça não só do crescimento populacional e da incessante demanda por recursos naturais, mas também da incapacidade humana de pensar a longo prazo. Problemas que, alerta Martin Rees, não serão resolvidos com medidas paliativas ou pela mão invisível do mercado: “Exigem intervenção governamental e ação internacional”.

Em Our Final Century (2003) o sr. afirmava que nossa civilização tinha 50% de chance de sobreviver até o fim do século 21. Esse porcentual continua o mesmo?

Não mudei meu ponto de vista – e tenho ficado surpreso com a quantidade de pessoas que pensam que não sou suficientemente pessimista. Claro que é improvável que todos nós sejamos exterminados. Mas penso que vamos ter que ter muita sorte para evitar retrocessos devastadores. Em parte devido ao aumento do estresse nos ecossistemas devido ao crescimento populacional e a nossa crescente demanda por recursos. Mas, mais do que isso, porque nos apoderamos de uma nova tecnologia: entramos em uma nova era geológica, o “antropoceno”, em que as ações humanas determinam o futuro do meio ambiente.

Em que medida isso é uma ameaça?

Até a segunda metade do século 20, a grande ameaça, ao menos para o Hemisfério Norte, era a guerra termonuclear, que por pouco não foi desencadeada durante a crise dos mísseis em Cuba, na década de 1960. Estivemos perto dela em outras ocasiões durante a Guerra Fria. Mas agora enfrentamos novas ameaças decorrentes do uso indevido das bio e cybertecnologias, em avanço espantoso. É com elas que me preocupo mais e por causa delas é que teremos uma jornada difícil neste século.

O ano passado foi o mais quente na Terra desde 1880, quando esse tipo de medição começou a ser feito, disse um relatório divulgado essa semana pela Nasa, a agência espacial americana, e o National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). O que está acontecendo com o planeta?

Já está claro que há uma tendência de aquecimento de longo prazo nos últimos 50 anos. Essa taxa não é estável nem uniforme na superfície da Terra. Mas é uma tendência que se sobrepõe a outros efeitos, como o El Niño, em que as alterações na circulação e no calor do oceano armazenam-se nele em vez de na atmosfera. Sabemos que a quantidade de CO2 na atmosfera está aumentando e isso provoca aquecimento – e, consequentemente, mudanças em larga escala nos padrões climáticos em todo o mundo. O que ainda não está claro é quão grande é esse efeito. A duplicação do CO2 na atmosfera causa um aquecimento de 1,2°C. Mas esse efeito pode ser ampliado devido às trocas de vapor d’água e nuvens – e não sabemos as consequências desses processos. Entretanto, parece claro que se as emissões anuais de CO2 continuarem a aumentar poderemos enfrentar uma mudança climática drástica, com cenários devastadores até o século 22.

Depois de fazer um diagnóstico catastrófico em 2007, quando estimou que 6 bilhões de pessoas morreriam até o final do século, o cientista britânico James Lovelock voltou atrás em 2012, dizendo que havia sido ‘alarmista’ em relação ao aquecimento global. Esse novo relatório da Nasa reforça as opiniões mais pessimistas?

Não posso falar por James Lovelock – mas é fantástico vê-lo, aos 95 anos de idade, engajado nesses temas e ainda disposto a mudar de ideia. Recentemente, por exemplo, ele adotou uma postura favorável à energia nuclear. Entretanto, não serão dados relativos a um único ano que vão convencer as pessoas a mudar suas atitudes. Acho que vamos levar uns 20 anos ainda para começar a reduzir a atual taxa de aquecimento. Até lá, saberemos com mais precisão – talvez a partir de modelos produzidos por computação avançada – quanto a temperatura global tem efetivamente aumentado e quão fortemente o feedback de vapor d’água e nuvens de que falei amplifica os efeitos da acumulação de CO2 no “efeito estufa”.

Por que, apesar de todos os alertas feitos pelo IPCC da ONU, os líderes políticos ao redor do mundo parecem ainda pouco sensibilizados pela questão, caminhando lentamente na direção de formas alternativas de energia ou na redução dos atuais padrões de consumo?

Embora devamos ter esperança de que a conferência de Paris em dezembro deste ano obtenha progressos efetivos, meu palpite pessimista é que os esforços políticos para descarbonizar a produção de energia no mundo não vão ganhar força. E a concentração de CO2 na atmosfera vai subir a um ritmo acelerado nas próximas duas décadas. Até lá, ficará claro se o clima do mundo está entrando em um território perigoso. Pode então haver pânico e uma pressão para que sejam adotadas medidas de emergência. O que poderia tornar necessário um “plano B”: fatalismo quanto à continuidade da dependência mundial dos combustíveis fósseis, acompanhado de medidas que combatam seus efeitos com o uso da geoengenharia.

Que tipo de medidas poderiam reverter o aquecimento global?

O efeito estufa poderia ser contra-atacado, por exemplo, com a colocação de aerossóis (partículas que absorvem e dispersam a luz solar) na atmosfera ou mesmo de grandes guarda-sóis no espaço. É aparentemente factível lançar material suficiente na estratosfera para mudar o clima do mundo – o assustador seria imaginar como isso seria feito, se com recursos de uma única nação ou talvez de uma megacorporação. Os problemas políticos em torno do uso desse tipo de geoengenharia podem ser esmagadores. Sem falar na possibilidade de ocorrerem efeitos colaterais. Além disso, o aquecimento poderia voltar caso essas medidas fossem por alguma razão descontinuadas e também se mostrassem ineficazes em relação a outras consequências do acúmulo de CO2. Em especial, os efeitos deletérios que o gás causa na acidificação dos oceanos.

Ou seja, ainda que estejam surgindo tecnologias supostamente capazes de reverter o aquecimento global, a utilização delas teria resultados imprevisíveis?

A geoengenharia seria um pesadelo político absoluto. Nem todas as nações iriam querer ajustar o termostato da mesma maneira. Modelos climáticos superelaborados seriam necessários para calcular os impactos regionais de qualquer intervenção artificial. Imagine: seria uma festa para os advogados se um indivíduo ou uma nação pudessem ser responsabilizados por qualquer mau tempo. Acho que seria prudente estudar suficientemente as técnicas de geoengenharia para deixar claro que opções fazem sentido antes de adotar um otimismo injustificado em relação a elas. Não haverá “solução rápida e técnica” para consertar o clima.

Qual é a sua opinião sobre os chamados ‘céticos do clima’, cientistas que ainda negam o aquecimento global, com pesquisas às vezes financiadas por grupos econômicos que ganham com a exploração dos combustíveis fósseis?

O debate sobre o clima tem sido marcado por muita disputa entre a ciência, a política e os interesses comerciais. Aqueles que rejeitam as projeções feitas pelo IPCC têm contribuído mais para jogar a ciência na lata do lixo do que em fazer um apelo “por uma ciência melhor”. E ainda que os resultados da ciência fossem claros e cristalinos, haveria uma margem gigantesca para debate sobre a melhor resposta política. Acho que as divergências em questão dizem respeito mais a desentendimentos éticos e econômicos do que científicos. Os que propõem medidas tímidas e convencionais, como por exemplo, (o cientista dinamarquês) Bjørn Lomborg (autor do bestseller O Ambientalista Cético, Campus, 2002), estão de fato desconsiderando o que pode acontecer para além de 2050. Há, de fato, pouco risco de uma catástrofe dentro desse horizonte temporal – e assim não é surpresa que se queira minimizar a prioridade do combate às alterações climáticas. Mas se você se preocupa com quem vai viver no século 22 e depois dele, então pode considerar que vale a pena fazer um investimento agora. Para proteger as gerações futuras contra o pior cenário e prevenir o desencadeamento de mudanças de longo prazo, como o derretimento do gelo da Groenlândia.

O Brasil, um dos tão aclamados Brics, vive um momento dramático, com o sistema elétrico saturado e possibilidade real de colapso total da água em São Paulo, a maior metrópole do País. Podemos assistir em breve a um cenário de colapsos econômicos e evacuação de cidades?

Vivemos num mundo interconectado cada vez mais dependente de energia e tecnologias avançadas. Embora eu não esteja familiarizado o bastante para falar sobre São Paulo, as “megacidades” são especialmente vulneráveis. No curto prazo, a prioridade absoluta é assegurar energia elétrica confiável para todos. Esse problema é muito maior em países como a Índia, onde milhões usam madeira ou estrume como combustível para cozinhar, sofrendo em consequência abalos na saúde. No longo prazo, todas as nações deveriam adotar políticas de baixo carbono. Políticos não gostam de defender medidas que tragam mudanças de vida indesejadas – especialmente se os benefícios dessas medidas só venham a aparecer daqui a décadas. Mas há três medidas políticas realistas que deveriam ser impulsionadas. A primeira é os países promoverem ações que poupem dinheiro, mais eficiência energética, melhor isolamento dos prédios, etc. A segunda é concentrar esforços em reduzir poluentes, metano e carbono negro. São substâncias que não agravam tanto o aquecimento global, mas sua redução, diferentemente da de CO2, traz mais benefícios locais. A terceira e mais importante é incrementar a pesquisa e desenvolvimento de todas as formas de energia limpa – incluindo, a meu ver, a energia nuclear. Por que a pesquisa energética não é feita numa escala comparável à pesquisa médica? Nesse campo, o Brasil, já um inovador em biocombustível e outros tipos de energia, poderia tornar-se um líder mundial.

Um outro estudo divulgado há poucos dias pelo Goddard Space Flight Center, da Nasa, alerta para a perspectiva de a civilização industrial entrar em colapso nas próximas décadas por causa da exploração insustentável de recursos e da distribuição desigual de riqueza – uma abordagem que poderia estar em seu livro dez anos antes. É realista imaginar o mundo caminhando em outra direção?

Robôs estão substituindo humanos na indústria manufatureira. Vão ocupar cada vez mais nossos empregos, não apenas no trabalho manual. Mas a grande pergunta é: o advento da robótica será como o ocorrido com outras novas tecnologias – a do carro, por exemplo -, que criavam tantos empregos quanto eliminavam? Ou desta vez será diferente? As atuais inovações podem gerar riquezas imensas, mas será preciso haver maciça redistribuição, via impostos, para garantir a cada um pelo menos um “salário de sobrevivência”. Não existem impedimentos científicos para se chegar a um mundo sustentável e seguro em que todos tenham um estilo de vida melhor que o do Ocidente de hoje. Podemos ser “tecnologicamente otimistas”, embora o equilíbrio tecnológico exija redirecionamento e se guie por valores que a ciência em si não pode prover. Mas a aridez da política e da sociologia – o abismo entre potencialidades e o que ocorre na realidade – indica pessimismo. Políticos pensam em eleitores e nas próximas eleições. Investidores esperam lucro no curto prazo. Fingimos ignorar o que ocorre neste exato momento em países longínquos. E minimizamos fortemente os problemas que deixaremos para as novas gerações. Sem uma perspectiva mais ampla, sem aceitar que estamos juntos neste mundo congestionado, governos não vão priorizar projetos políticos de longo prazo, mesmo que esse longo prazo seja apenas um instante na história do planeta. A “Nave Terra” está vagando pelo espaço. Seus passageiros estão ansiosos e divididos. O mecanismo de suporte de vida deles é vulnerável a rupturas e colapsos. Mesmo assim, há pouco planejamento, pouca observação do horizonte, pouca consciência dos riscos de longo termo. São problemas que não podem ser resolvidos pelo mercado: exigem intervenção governamental e ação internacional.

MARTIN REES É ASTROFÍSICO E PROFESSOR DE COSMOLOGIA DA UNIVERSIDADE DE CAMBRIDGE

Doomsday Clock Set at 3 Minutes to Midnight (Live Science)

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by Megan Gannon, News Editor   |   January 22, 2015 01:25pm ET

Mushroom cloud over Nagasaki
A gigantic mushroom cloud billowed over Nagasaki, Japan, when an atomic bomb was dropped on the city in 1945.

Credit: U.S. National Archives

The world is “3 minutes” from doomsday.

That’s the grim outlook from board members of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Frustrated with a lack of international action to address climate change and shrink nuclear arsenals, they decided today (Jan. 22) to push the minute hand of their iconic “Doomsday Clock” to 11:57 p.m.

It’s the first time the clock hands have moved in three years; since 2012, the clock had been fixed at 5 minutes to symbolic doom, midnight. [End of the World? Top Doomsday Fears]

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists doesn’t use the clock to make any real doomsday predictions. Rather, the clock is a visual metaphor to warn the public about how close the world is to a potentially civilization-ending catastrophe. Each year, the magazine’s board analyzes threats to humanity’s survival to decide where the Doomsday Clock’s hands should be set.

Experts on the board said they felt a sense of urgency this year because of the world’s ongoing addiction to fossil fuels, procrastination with enacting laws to cut greenhouse gas emissions and slow efforts to get rid of nuclear weapons.

“We are not saying it is too late to take action but the window for action is closing rapidly,” Kennette Benedict, executive director of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said in a news conference this morning in Washington, D.C. “We move the clock hand today to inspire action.”

For instance, if nothing is done to reduce the amount of heat-trapping gasses, such as carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere, Earth could be 5 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to 8 degrees Celsius) warmer by the end of century, said Sivan Kartha, a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Some people might not feel alarmed when they see those numbers; they might normally experience that kind of temperature swing in the course of a single day, Kartha said. But, he said a temperature increase of that magnitude was enough to bring the world out of the last ice age, and it will be enough to “radically transform” the Earth’s surface in the future.

Sharon Squassoni, another board member and director of the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said nuclear disarmament efforts have “ground to a halt” and many nations are expanding, not scaling back, their nuclear capabilities. Russia is upgrading its nuclear program, India plans to expand its nuclear submarine fleet, and Pakistan has reportedly started operating a third plutonium reactor, Squassoni said.

She said the United States has good rhetoric on nuclear nonproliferation, but at the same time is in the midst of a $335 billion overhaul of its nuclear program. (That figure seems to come from a Congressional Budget Office report from December 2013.)

“The risk from nuclear weapons is not that someone is going to press the button, but the existence of these weapons costs a lot of time, effort and money to keep them secure,” Squassoni said, adding that there have been troubling safety discrepancies reported in recent years at power plants.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by scientists who created the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project and wanted to raise awareness about the dangers of nuclear technology. The Doomsday Clock first appeared on a cover of the magazine in 1947, with its hands set at 11:53 p.m.

The clock’s hands shifted quite a bit over the following seven decades. They were closest to midnight in 1953, set at 11:58 p.m., after both the United States and the Soviet Union conducted their first tests of the hydrogen bomb. The clock’s hands were pushed all the way back to 11:43 p.m., 17 minutes to midnight, in December 1991, after the world’s superpowers signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which at the time, seemed like a promising move toward nuclear disarmament.