Arquivo da tag: Mudanças climáticas

Nada cai do céu (Folha de S.Paulo)

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JC, 5124, 25 de fevereiro de 2015

Carlos Magno

Com ou sem chuva à vista, a população precisa entender que a água pode –e vai– acabar se não forem tomadas medidas preventivas

O racionamento a que pode ser submetida boa parte da população paulistana –e de outras cidades e Estados brasileiros– poderia ser evitado? A questão é muito mais complexa do que possa parecer e jamais deveria ser levada ao campo do flá-flu político. Afinal, todos que vivemos nessas áreas já somos e seremos ainda mais afetados.

O calor bate recordes no mundo. Dados recentes da Nasa e da Administração Oceânica e Atmosférica dos Estados Unidos (Noaa, sigla para o nome em inglês do órgão) apontam 2014 como o ano mais quente da história. A temperatura média no solo e nos oceanos aumentou 0,69 graus, superando recordes anteriores. Parece pouco, mas não é.

A cada 20 ou 30 anos, em média, o oceano Pacífico, a maior massa de água do planeta, sofre variações de temperatura, ficando mais quente ou mais frio do que o normal. Essas oscilações de longo período interferem nos ventos, na chuva e na temperatura em muitas regiões do globo. No Brasil, diversos Estados já sentem os impactos dessa alteração climática.

O verão passado foi um dos mais secos e quentes da história, não apenas na região da capital paulista e seu entorno mas também em grande parte do Sudeste, especialmente em Minas Gerais e no vale do Piracicaba, de onde vem a maior parte da água que abastece a região metropolitana de São Paulo, por meio do sistema Cantareira. Áreas dessa região chegaram a registrar anomalias de até 5 graus nas temperaturas máximas em janeiro de 2014.

Com pouca água e maior consumo, devido ao calor, os rios e represas que abastecem o sistema caíram aos menores níveis já registrados. Em São Paulo, por exemplo, desde 2012 o Cantareira vem sofrendo com chuva abaixo do normal. Nem mesmo as chuvas de fevereiro, que elevaram o nível dos reservatórios, são ainda suficientes para mudar o quadro de seca.

E as previsões não são as melhores. Segundo estudo da Climatempo, somente no verão de 2017 é que se poderá esperar por uma chuva normal ou acima da média, que vá colaborar para uma consistente recuperação do sistema.

Reverter a situação é um desafio. Trata-se de algo muito mais educativo do que meteorológico ou de obras faraônicas –que, se agora são necessárias, deveriam ter sido planejadas há pelo menos dez anos.

Desde o final de 2013, meteorologistas têm alertado sobre esse cenário crítico. Já se sabe que o quadro não é favorável, e há poucas chances de mudança em curto prazo.

Porém, em um planeta onde 1,4 bilhão de quilômetros cúbicos é ocupado por água, o ser humano ainda parece acreditar que ela nunca irá acabar.

Com ou sem chuva à vista, a população precisa entender que a água pode –e vai– acabar se não forem tomadas medidas preventivas. A conscientização sobre o consumo deve ser permanente.

Optar pelo reúso pode ser uma das soluções. Aliás, a ideia de cobrar uma sobretaxa para aqueles que consumirem mais água do que o normal nesse período está entre as boas medidas já tomadas –tão boa quanto os descontos anunciados desde o ano passado para quem economiza água.

Em São Paulo, a despoluição dos rios Tietê e Pinheiros também é um caminho. Mas esse parece ser um cenário utópico, sobretudo se lembrarmos que a ideia é citada há décadas pelo poder público.

O que nossas autoridades precisam entender é que não dá para passar uma vida acreditando na ajuda divina. É preciso arregaçar as mangas e se preparar. Há ainda muito a fazer e a investir. Porque nada cai do céu –nem mesmo a água tem caído ultimamente.

CARLOS MAGNO, 53, é meteorologista e presidente da Climatempo Meteorologia

Os artigos publicados com assinatura não traduzem a opinião do jornal. Sua publicação obedece ao propósito de estimular o debate dos problemas brasileiros e mundiais e de refletir as diversas tendências do pensamento contemporâneo. debates@uol.com.br

Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher (New York Times)

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By  and 

FEB. 21, 2015

Wei-Hock Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, whose articles have been tied to corporate funding. Pete Marovich 

For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of scientists who claim that greenhouse gases pose little risk to humanity.

One of the names they invoke most often is Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who claims that variations in the sun’s energy can largely explain recent global warming. He has often appeared on conservative news programs, testified before Congress and in state capitals, and starred at conferences of people who deny the risks of global warming.

But newly released documents show the extent to which Dr. Soon’s work has been tied to funding he received from corporate interests.

He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.

The documents show that Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his scientific papers as “deliverables” that he completed in exchange for their money. He used the same term to describe testimony he prepared for Congress.

Though Dr. Soon did not respond to questions about the documents, he has long stated that his corporate funding has not influenced his scientific findings.

The documents were obtained by Greenpeace, the environmental group, under the Freedom of Information Act. Greenpeace and an allied group, the Climate Investigations Center, shared them with several news organizations last week.

The documents shed light on the role of scientists like Dr. Soon in fostering public debate over whether human activity is causing global warming. The vast majority of experts have concluded that it is and that greenhouse emissions pose long-term risks to civilization.

Historians and sociologists of science say that since the tobacco wars of the 1960s, corporations trying to block legislation that hurts their interests have employed a strategy of creating the appearance of scientific doubt, usually with the help of ostensibly independent researchers who accept industry funding.

Fossil-fuel interests have followed this approach for years, but the mechanics of their activities remained largely hidden.

“The whole doubt-mongering strategy relies on creating the impression of scientific debate,” said Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University and the co-author of “Merchants of Doubt,” a book about such campaigns. “Willie Soon is playing a role in a certain kind of political theater.”

Environmentalists have long questioned Dr. Soon’s work, and his acceptance of funding from the fossil-fuel industry was previously known. But the full extent of the links was not; the documents show that corporate contributions were tied to specific papers and were not disclosed, as required by modern standards of publishing.

“What it shows is the continuation of a long-term campaign by specific fossil-fuel companies and interests to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change,” said Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center, a group funded by foundations seeking to limit the risks of climate change.

Charles R. Alcock, director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, acknowledged on Friday that Dr. Soon had violated the disclosure standards of some journals.

“I think that’s inappropriate behavior,” Dr. Alcock said. “This frankly becomes a personnel matter, which we have to handle with Dr. Soon internally.”

Dr. Soon is employed by the Smithsonian Institution, which jointly sponsors the astrophysics center with Harvard.

“I am aware of the situation with Willie Soon, and I’m very concerned about it,” W. John Kress, interim under secretary for science at the Smithsonian in Washington, said on Friday. “We are checking into this ourselves.”

Dr. Soon rarely grants interviews to reporters, and he did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls last week; nor did he respond to an interview request conveyed to him by his employer. In past public appearances, he has reacted angrily to questions about his funding sources, but then acknowledged some corporate ties and said that they had not altered his scientific findings.

“I write proposals; I let them decide whether to fund me or not,” he said at an event in Madison, Wis., in 2013. “If they choose to fund me, I’m happy to receive it.” A moment later, he added, “I would never be motivated by money for anything.”

The newly disclosed documents, plus additional documents compiled by Greenpeace over the last four years, show that at least $409,000 of Dr. Soon’s funding in the past decade came from Southern Company Services, a subsidiary of the Southern Company, based in Atlanta.

Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, praising scientists like Dr. Soon. CSPAN 

Southern is one of the largest utility holding companies in the country, with huge investments in coal-burning power plants. The company has spent heavily over many years to lobby against greenhouse-gas regulations in Washington. More recently, it has spent significant money to research ways to limit emissions.

“Southern Company funds a broad range of research on a number of topics that have potentially significant public-policy implications for our business,” said Jeannice M. Hall, a spokeswoman. The company declined to answer detailed questions about its funding of Dr. Soon’s research.

Dr. Soon also received at least $230,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. (Mr. Koch’s fortune derives partly from oilrefining.) However, other companies and industry groups that once supported Dr. Soon, including Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute, appear to have eliminated their grants to him in recent years.

As the oil-industry contributions fell, Dr. Soon started receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars through DonorsTrust, an organization based in Alexandria, Va., that accepts money from donors who wish to remain anonymous, then funnels it to various conservative causes.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, Mass., is a joint venture between Harvard and the Smithsonian Institution, housing some 300 scientists from both institutions. Because the Smithsonian is a government agency, Greenpeace was able to request that Dr. Soon’s correspondence and grant agreements be released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Though often described on conservative news programs as a “Harvard astrophysicist,” Dr. Soon is not an astrophysicist and has never been employed by Harvard. He is a part-time employee of the Smithsonian Institution with a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering. He has received little federal research money over the past decade and is thus responsible for bringing in his own funds, including his salary.

Though he has little formal training in climatology, Dr. Soon has for years published papers trying to show that variations in the sun’s energy can explain most recent global warming. His thesis is that human activity has played a relatively small role in causing climate change.

Many experts in the field say that Dr. Soon uses out-of-date data, publishes spurious correlations between solar output and climate indicators, and does not take account of the evidence implicating emissions from human behavior in climate change.

Gavin A. Schmidt, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, a NASA division that studies climate change, said that the sun had probably accounted for no more than 10 percent of recent global warming and that greenhouse gases produced by human activity explained most of it.

“The science that Willie Soon does is almost pointless,” Dr. Schmidt said.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, whose scientists focus largely on understanding distant stars and galaxies, routinely distances itself from Dr. Soon’s findings. The Smithsonian has also published a statement accepting the scientific consensus on climate change.

Dr. Alcock said that, aside from the disclosure issue, he thought it was important to protect Dr. Soon’s academic freedom, even if most of his colleagues disagreed with his findings.

Dr. Soon has found a warm welcome among politicians in Washington and state capitals who try to block climate action. United States Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who claims that climate change is a global scientific hoax, has repeatedly cited Dr. Soon’s work over the years.

In a Senate debate last month, Mr. Inhofe pointed to a poster with photos of scientists questioning the climate-change consensus, including Dr. Soon. “These are scientists that cannot be challenged,” the senator said. A spokeswoman for the senator said Friday that he was traveling and could not be reached for comment.

As of late last week, most of the journals in which Dr. Soon’s work had appeared were not aware of the newly disclosed documents. The Climate Investigations Center is planning to notify them over the coming week. Several journals advised of the situation by The New York Times said they would look into the matter.

Robert J. Strangeway, the editor of a journal that published three of Dr. Soon’s papers, said that editors relied on authors to be candid about any conflicts of interest. “We assume that when people put stuff in a paper, or anywhere else, they’re basically being honest,” said Dr. Strangeway, editor of the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics.

Dr. Oreskes, the Harvard science historian, said that academic institutions and scientific journals had been too lax in recent decades in ferreting out dubious research created to serve a corporate agenda.

“I think universities desperately need to look more closely at this issue,” Dr. Oreskes said. She added that Dr. Soon’s papers omitting disclosure of his corporate funding should be retracted by the journals that published them.

A version of this article appears in print on February 22, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher.

Negacionistas do clima e da evolução não são ‘céticos’ (Folha de S.Paulo)

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POR MAURÍCIO TUFFANI

21/02/15  13:53

Página de petição provida pelo CSI (Comitê para Investigação Cética). Imagem: ReproduçãoPágina de petição provida pelo CSI (Comitê para Investigação Cética). Imagem: Reprodução

Já conta com quase 23 mil assinaturas de cientistas a petição “Negadores não são céticos”, promovida nos Estados Unidos em apelo à  imprensa para deixar de chamar de “céticos” os negadores do aquecimento global antropogênico, isto é, provocado pela ação humana e além do efeito estufa natural. Organizada pelo CSI (Comitê para Investigação Cética) em dezembro do ano passado, a iniciativa pretende alcançar 25 mil assinaturas de pesquisadores.

O comitê foi criado em 1976, tendo entre seus objetivos o de “promover a pesquisa por meio da investigação objetiva e imparcial em áreas onde ela for necessária”. O grupo reúne cerca de 100 pesquisadores de projeção internacional, inclusive ganhadores do Prêmio Nobel, como os físicos norte-americanos Murray Gell-Mann (1969), Steven Weinberg (1979) e o químico britânico Harry Kroto(1996). Na petição, os membros do conselho executivo do CSI afirmam:

“estamos preocupados por as palavras ‘cético’ e ‘negador’ terem sido confundidas pela mídia popular. O verdadeiro ceticismo promove a investigação científica, a investigação crítica e do uso da razão ao examinar alegações controversas e extraordinárias. Ele é fundamental para o método científico. A negação, por outro lado, é a rejeição a priori de ideias sem consideração objetiva.”

Mau uso

A expressão “céticos do clima” e suas variações passaram a ser usadas mais intensamente a partir de 2001 com o lançamento do livro “O Ambientalista Cético”, do estatístico dinamarquês Bjorn Lomborg. Em 2003, o Comitê Dinamarquês sobre Desonestidade Científica concluiu que essa obra se enquadrava em seus critérios de má-conduta na pesquisa, pois seus dados argumentos se baseados em pesquisas não foram contrapostos por fontes semelhantes, mas praticamente só por reportagens.

Os autores do abaixo-assinado têm razão ao apontar esse mau uso do termo “cético”. De fato, não há problema em usar a palavra para se referir a pesquisadores que, por razões exclusivamente acadêmicas, e sem ser recorrer a más-condutas científicas, contestam o aquecimento global antropogênico.

Lobbies

O problema é que entre os mais atuantes contestadores da mudança climática tem sido difícil encontrar exemplos de interesse exclusivamente científico, que são minoria na comunidade científica e mal aparecem na imprensa. Desse modo, o rótulo tem sido muito mais aplicado a políticos e também a acadêmicos e especialistas comprometidos com lobbies da indústria do petróleo e de grupos atrasados do agronegócio.

Esses grupos são contrários às ações propostas pelo IPCC (Painel Intergovernamental de Mudanças Climáticas das Nações Unidas) para reduzir as emissões de gases estufa, especialmente pelo uso de combustíveis fósseis. Por essa razão eles rejeitam as conclusões cientificas do painel da ONU sobre a origem humana do aumento de 0,85ºC da temperatura média global de 1888 a 2012 e de sua previsão de até 2100 a elevação a partir de agora ultrapassar 2ºC, podendo chegar a 4,5ºC.

Um exemplo desses lobbies é o do American Enterprise Institute, que recebe recursos do grupo Exxon, como mostrou a reportagem “Crescem pedidos de quebra de sigilo de climatologistas dos EUA“, publicada pela Folha na quinta-feira (19.fev). Entidades que atuam da mesma forma e também têm suporte de empresas petrolíferas são o Energy & Environmental Legal Institute, dos EUA, e a GWPF (Fundação da Política do Aquecimento Global), sediada em Londres, no Reino Unido.

Rótulos

A petição do CSI finaliza dizendo:

“Somos céticos que dedicaram grande parte de nossas carreiras para praticar e promover o ceticismo científico. Pedimos aos jornalistas que tenham mais cuidado ao reportarem sobre aqueles que rejeitam a ciência do clima, e mantenham os princípios da verdade nessa classificação. Por favor, parem de usar a palavra ‘cético’ para designar negadores.”

Na verdade, faltou ao CSI nessa reclamação ser realmente crítico, pois o mau uso condenado pelo comitê não é exclusivo dos meios de comunicação. Além de muitos pesquisadores, inclusive em artigos científicos, até mesmo autoridades das Nações Unidas também têm empregado o rótulo dessa forma, como o próprio secretário-geral Bam Ki-Moon, que em um pronunciamento em setembro do ano passado afirmou:

“Vamos reunir esforços para empurrar para trás céticos e interesses entrincheirados.”

Na língua portuguesa já tem sido usado o neologismo “negacionistas” para designar esses negadores com segundas intenções, entre elas a rejeição às metas de redução da emissão de gases estufa, previstas no protocolo de Kyoto, criado em 1997 no âmbito da Convenção das Nações Unidas sobre Mudança Climática e vigente desde 2005.

Muitos jornalistas têm adotado o cuidado de usar aspas ao reportarem sobre negacionistas. Foi o que fiz na segunda-feira (16.fev) ao publicar neste blog o post “O ciclo do carbono e os ‘céticos’ do clima”. Outro recurso também tem sido fazer referência a eles como “os autodenominados” ou “os chamados céticos”.

Filosofia

Além do significado científico apontado pelo CSI, o termo “cético” teve inicialmente um sentido filosófico. O ceticismo é a corrente cujo maior expoente na Antiguidade foi Pirro de Élis (c. 360-275 a.C.), cujo pensamento foi resgatado na obra “Hipotiposes Pirrônicas”, de Sexto Empírico (c. 160-210 d.C.). Pirro propunha a ataraxia, que em grego significa a imperturbabilidade diante de questões controversas, como explica o professor de filosofia Plínio Junqueira Smith, da Unifesp (Universidade Federal de São Paulo):

“A terapia pirrônica, tal como no-la descreve Sexto, faz-se por meio da oposição de discursos e razões e supõe que os dogmáticos sofrem de precipitação e arrogância, que se manifestariam na adesão apressada a um discurso argumentativo e a uma tese em detrimento da tese e discurso argumentativo opostos. O problema do dogmático não consiste na adoção desta ou daquela tese filosófica, mas numa atitude que se caracteriza pela precipitação e pela arrogância. É essa atitude, segundo Sexto, que deve ser tratada. Além disso, a idéia pirrônica é que essa atitude dogmática é fonte de perturbação e de uma vida pior.”
(Plínio Junqueira Smith, “Ceticismo dogmático e dogmatismo sem dogmas”, revista “Integração”, nº 45, abr/mai/jun 2006, págs. 181-182.)

Enfim, os negacionistas não têm nada a ver com o ceticismo, seja no sentido científico ou no filosófico. Além disso, pouco importa para eles que as ações propostas para reduzir as emissões crescentes de gases estufa estão também diretamente relacionadas à prevenção de outros impactos ambientais, como a poluição do ar e das águas e a devastação de áreas de vegetação nativa, que trazem prejuízos cada vez maiores para a capacidade de o planeta atender às necessidades humanas atuais e das futuras gerações.

O pior de tudo é que também existem negacionistas da teoria da evolução das espécies por meio da seleção natural. E eles já começaram a se autodenominar “céticos da evolução” ou “céticos de Darwin”. Só falta essa impostura ser consagrada pelo uso!

Quebra de protocolo (Folha de S.Paulo)

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19/02/2015

O Protocolo de Kyoto –controverso tratado de 1997 para conter a mudança do clima– teve escasso sucesso. A melhor evidência disso está no fato de as negociações internacionais sobre o tema tomarem hoje rumo muito diferente.

Nada assegura, no entanto, que uma trilha bem-sucedida se iniciará na decisiva conferência de Paris, a ser realizada em dezembro.

Neste fevereiro faz dez anos que o protocolo entrou em vigor, após a ratificação por 189 países. O acordo estabelecia que 37 nações industrializadas reduziriam suas emissões de gases do efeito estufa em 5% no período de 2008 a 2012, tomando por base o ano de 1990.

A meta foi alcançada com folga. Os países comprometidos cortaram em 22,6% a poluição que aprisiona radiação solar na atmosfera, aquecendo-a além da conta. Assim, falar em fracasso parece mesquinho.

Ocorre que as emissões globais subiram 16,2% até 2012. O clima mundial seguiu firme na rota do aquecimento porque não participavam do tratado os dois maiores poluidores, China e Estados Unidos.

O primeiro, por ser um país em desenvolvimento –e que desenvolvimento: sua economia cresceu a taxas próximas de 10% ao ano. O segundo, por força da política doméstica, uma vez que a eleição do presidente democrata Barack Obama foi incapaz de reverter o veto congressual a qualquer acordo que excluísse a China.

Ao final do primeiro período de Kyoto, em 2012, tentou-se em Doha (Qatar) um novo e mais ambicioso objetivo: reduzir em 18% as emissões até 2020. Apenas 23 nações aderiram à meta até agora.

O fracasso da via aberta em 1997 e pavimentada em 2005 foi sobretudo político. Obter consenso entre diversos países em torno de objetivos que possam ser monitorados e cobrados por uma instância internacional parece cada vez mais inviável, assim como a transferência de recursos e tecnologia, anátema entre potências desenvolvidas.

A alternativa surgida na tortuosa negociação diplomática sobre mudança do clima, após o fiasco da Cúpula de Copenhague (2009), foi afrouxar compromissos. Eles podem agora ser voluntários, e cada nação propõe quando planeja alcançá-lo e com base em qual ano.

Há amplo ceticismo, porém, quanto à chance de que a estratégia desvinculante produza o resultado esperado, a saber, impedir que o aquecimento ultrapasse 2°C neste século. Além desse limite, a ciência indica risco acentuado de desastres como secas duradouras e enchentes avantajadas.

Todas as atenções se voltam para o fim do outono em Paris.

*   *   *

Kyoto, 10, engatinha

16/02/2015

Protocolo, que entrou em vigor em 2005, fracassou em reduzir emissões mundiais de gases-estufa; para piorar, novas metas, traçadas em 2012, só tiveram 23 adesões

MAURÍCIO TUFFANI

COLABORAÇÃO PARA A FOLHA

Dez anos após ter entrado em vigor, o Protocolo de Kyoto tem um diagnóstico claro: o acordo fracassou em reduzir as emissões mundiais de gases-estufa, que cresceram 16,2% de 2005 a 2012.

O pacto internacional, porém, não foi de todo inócuo e teve certo sucesso em conscientizar a sociedade e implantar projetos ambientais, tecnológicos e de desenvolvimento econômico para prevenir o agravamento do aquecimento global.

Concluído em 1997 em Kyoto, no Japão, o protocolo estabelecia metas de redução das emissões de gases-estufa. Só em 2005 ele adquiriu força para entrar em vigor, com a ratificação pela Rússia.

O protocolo teve 189 ratificações, entre elas a do Brasil, em 2002. Mas suas novas metas de redução de emissões de 2013 a 2020, estabelecidas em 2012 no Qatar, só tiveram até agora 23 adesões.

Em um balanço, a secretaria da Convenção-Quadro das Nações Unidas sobre Mudança Climática (UNFCCC) destacou que 37 países, a maioria da União Europeia, superaram sua meta de reduzir em 5% suas emissões até 2012.

A agência, contudo, deixou de lado os números do aumento global das emissões e o alerta enfático feito em 2014 por seu braço científico, o IPCC (Painel Intergovernamental sobre Mudança Climática): não há mais tempo para reduzir a concentração de gases-estufa para que o aumento médio da temperatura da superfície terrestre até 2100 seja inferior a 2º C.

Essa elevação traria como consequência mais secas, derretimento de geleiras e inundações de zonas costeiras pela elevação dos oceanos.

Para evitar esse cenário, seria preciso reduzir as emissões em 80% até 2050.

PERDAS E GANHOS

“Estou convencida de que sem o protocolo de Kyoto não estaríamos avançados como hoje na crescente penetração das energias renováveis”, disse Christiana Figueres, secretária-executiva da UNFCCC.

Figueres também destacou cerca de 7.800 projetos de apoio a países em desenvolvimento, envolvendo benefícios de até US$ 13,5 bilhões para reduzir emissões por desmate e para “sequestro de carbono” da atmosfera por meio de recuperação e ampliação de florestas.

“Se olharmos quantitativamente para as emissões, o protocolo falhou. Mas sem ele a União Europeia não teria atingido grandes avanços nas reduções”, diz Carlos Nobre, que acaba de assumir o cargo de diretor do Cemaden (Centro de Monitoramento e Alerta de Desastres Naturais).

Nobre ressalta que a Alemanha mostrou que é possível reduzir os gases-estufa sem diminuir seu PIB. “Vejo com otimismo esse efeito pedagógico”, disse Nobre.

Já para o físico da USP e membro do IPCC Paulo Artaxo, ainda que o tratado tenha aumentado a adesão de novas tecnologias e a conscientização para o que ele chama de “problema mais sério já enfrentado pela humanidade”, houve, além do aumento da concentração de carbono na atmosfera, acúmulo de CO2 nos oceanos, o que pode causar desequilíbrios para a vida marinha.

PERSPECTIVAS

Segundo Carlos Rittl, secretário-executivo do Observatório do Clima, a próxima conferência do clima, em dezembro, em Paris, poderá ter avanços graças ao recente acordo entre EUA (que assinaram mas não ratificaram o Protocolo de Kyoto) e China.

Para ele, um dos grandes desafios para os governos, inclusive o do Brasil, é o planejamento econômico e energético. Ele afirma que isso ainda é feito sem assimilar as mudanças climáticas, e a atual crise energética e hídrica do país é prova disso.

Fabio Feldmann, secretário-executivo do Fórum Paulista de Mudanças Climáticas e de Biodiversidade e ex-secretário estadual do Meio Ambiente de São Paulo, afirma ainda que a redução de desmatamentos no Brasil criou uma “falsa impressão” de que o país pode continuar com os mesmos níveis de emissões em outros setores.

De fato, enquanto as emissões por desmates no país diminuíram 64% de 2005 a 2013, as das atividades agropecuárias e do consumo de energia cresceram, respectivamente, 6% e 42%, segundo o Observatório do Clima.

Guerra do clima (Folha de S.Paulo)

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Pedidos de quebra de sigilo de cientistas crescem com a proximidade da Cúpula do Clima de Paris e acentuam embate sobre aquecimento global nos EUA

RAFAEL GARCIA

19/02/2015

ENVIADO ESPECIAL A SAN JOSE (EUA)

A animosidade entre climatologistas e grupos que questionam a atribuição do aquecimento global às emissões de CO2 tem crescido, e uma nova guerra pelo controle da informação começa a ser travada nos bastidores, principalmente nos EUA.

Os métodos usados nesse embate, porém, são diferentes daquele usado às vésperas da Cúpula do Clima de Copenhague, em 2009, quando diversos cientistas tiveram e-mails roubados e vazados na internet.

Agora, céticos do clima usam pedidos formais, baseados em leis de acesso à informação, para tentar quebrar o sigilo de correspondência dos pesquisadores.

“Veremos uma escalada similar à medida que a Cúpula do Clima de Paris se aproxima, no fim de 2015”, disse o climatologista Michael Mann, da Universidade do Estado da Pensilvânia, em palestra no encontro da AAAS (Associação Americana para o Avanço da Ciência), em San Jose.

Do encontro em Paris deve sair um novo acordo internacional para combater o aquecimento global, no lugar do Protocolo de Kyoto.

“Vai haver um esforço para confundir o público e os formuladores de politicas”, afirmou Mann.

As petições que buscam quebrar o sigilo de e-mail e anotações de cientistas em geral alegam suspeita de fraude e se baseiam em leis de transparência de informações que garante acesso a documentos produzidos por funcionários de governo.

Segundo um novo relatório da ONG Union of Concerned Scientists, esse tipo de abordagem a climatologistas cresce desde 2010, quando o promotor Ken Cuccinelli intimou a Universidade da Virgínia a liberar e-mails e anotações de Mann, que trabalhou para a instituição.

O processo se estendeu por quatro anos e, mesmo com decisão favorável ao cientista, longas horas foram consumidas para discussões com a própria universidade –que ameaçava liberar os dados temendo ser punida.

Mann foi o único a travar uma disputa pública. Mas, segundo a AGU (União Americana de Geofísica), questionamentos do tipo têm se direcionado a cientistas de instituições como Nasa, NOAA (agência oceânica e atmosférica) e o Departamento de Energia. Alguns desistem de travar a batalha legal.

Steven Dyer, da Universidade Commonwealth da Virgínia, achou que passar mais de 100 horas compilando mensagens para responder a petições seria menos dispendioso e interrompeu seu período sábatico para fazê-lo.

A entidade autora da petição –o centro de estudos conservador American Tradition Institute– passou então a exigir seus “livros de registro”. Essa e outras entidades recebem verbas da indústria do petróleo.

“Eles acham que temos um livro onde os pós-graduandos relatam o que estão fazendo”, diz Michael Helpern, autor do relatório da Union of Concerned Scientists.

Desde 2011, o congresso anual da AGU tem centro jurídico a disposição de cientistas de clima, que os orienta sobre como agir nesses casos.

“No último ano, tive muito trabalho”, conta a advogada Lauren Kurtz. Ela dirige agora o Fundo para Defesa Legal da Ciência do Clima, que levanta recursos para atender a cientistas assediados.

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.

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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.