Arquivo da tag: Mudanças climáticas

Notes from the Anthropocene #1 (The Brooklyn Rail)

12/02/2015UncategorizedAntropoceno, Desastre, Manifestações, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

Nov 5th, 2014

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

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

11/02/2015UncategorizedIPCC, Mudanças climáticas, Negacionismo, Políticarenzotaddei

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)

11/02/2015Uncategorizedciência, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, USPrenzotaddei

JC 5117, 11 de fevereiro de 2015

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)

11/02/2015Uncategorizedciência, Diplomacia climática, Estados Unidos, Geoengenharia, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

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)

10/02/2015Uncategorizedciência, Geoengenharia, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

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

Suzanne Goldenberg

Tuesday 10 February 2015 20.22 GMT

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)

09/02/2015UncategorizedAAA, Antropoceno, Antropologia, Mudanças climáticas, Teoria socialrenzotaddei

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.

Colbert on Republican climate-change denialism: “We’re not scientists”

07/02/2015UncategorizedConservadorismo, Humor, Mudanças climáticas, Negacionismo, Políticarenzotaddei

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

02/02/2015UncategorizedAntropoceno, Antropologia, Ciências sociais, Crise, Desastre, Filosofia, Mudanças climáticas, Teoria socialrenzotaddei

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)

30/01/2015UncategorizedAnsiedade, Depressão, Desastre, Mudanças climáticas, Saúde mentalrenzotaddei

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)

30/01/2015UncategorizedAntropoceno, Desastre, Geoengenharia, Mediação tecnológica, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

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)

26/01/2015UncategorizedDesastre, Estados Unidos, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Nevascarenzotaddei

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”

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.

“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:

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)

26/01/2015Uncategorizedágua, Desastre, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Previsão, São Paulo, Secarenzotaddei

Entrevista da 2ª – Carlos Nobre

26 de janeiro de 2015

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

MARCELO LEITE DE SÃO PAULO

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

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

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

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

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

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

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

Isso vale para a maior parte do Brasil?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

26/01/2015UncategorizedCOP, Desastre, Diplomacia climática, Incerteza, IPCC, Kyoto, Lima, Mudanças climáticas, Paris, Previsãorenzotaddei

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

por Bruno Felin

24/01/2015 | 11h23

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aumento da temperatura

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

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

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

Aumento do nível dos oceanos

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

Em gráfico, acompanhe o aumento do nível do mar:

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

Desmatamento

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

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

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

Massa de gelo

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

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

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

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

26/01/2015UncategorizedAnsiedade, Antropoceno, ciência, Depressão, Desastre, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Previsão, Saúde mentalrenzotaddei

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

Scientists write their feelings about climate change

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)

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

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

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

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

Can you relate to this grieving process?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Frustration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hope

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

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

She wasn’t alone.

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

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

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

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

Concern

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anger

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

The rest of his letter is worth reading in full:

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

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

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

“The Pivotal Psychological Reality of Our Time”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Affective Habitus, Environment & Emotions (Synthetic Zero)

25/01/2015UncategorizedDepressão, Ecologia, emoções, Fim do mundo, Mudanças climáticas, Saúde mentalrenzotaddei

By dmfant

January 24, 2015

“Ariel Salleh: The Vicissitudes of an Earth Democracy

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

Eileen Joy: Post/Apocalyptically Blue

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

O apagão do planeta (O Estado de São Paulo)

25/01/2015UncategorizedAstronomia, Desastre, Fim do mundo, Mudanças climáticas, Negacionistasrenzotaddei

Entrevista. Martin Rees

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

Ivan Marsiglia

24 Janeiro 2015 | 16h 00

GUILHERME CALDAS E OLAVO ROCHA/DIVULGAÇÃO

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

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

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

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

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

Em que medida isso é uma ameaça?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Que tipo de medidas poderiam reverter o aquecimento global?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

23/01/2015UncategorizedDesastre, Energia nuclear, Fim do mundo, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Previsão, Psicologiarenzotaddei

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

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

Credit: U.S. National Archives

The world is “3 minutes” from doomsday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The Fuse is Blown”. Glaciologist’s Jaw Dropping Account of a Shattering Moment (Climate Denial Crock of the Week)

23/01/2015UncategorizedAntártica, Desastre, Incerteza, Metano, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

January 22, 2015

Peter Sinclair

If you’ve missed the other segments of our interview with Glaciologist Eric Rignot – do not, repeat, do not, miss this one.

Rignot was a co-author of the “holy shit moment” paper from last spring, showing that large areas of the West Antarctic Ice sheet are now in “irreversible decline”.
That news made for one of my most harrowing videos of the last year, which you can, and should view if you have not – below the fold.

I’m keeping these clips from our interviews minimally edited – I want the raw video to speak for itself to current readers, and to historians, who will undoubtedly understand all too well why we were peeling our jaws off the floor after this one.

Why it’s good to laugh at climate change (The Guardian)

23/01/2015UncategorizedComunicação, Humor, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

Adam Corner

Climate gags are notable by their absence, but an RSA event on Tuesday night hopes to show that climate change comedy can raise laughs and awareness

Marcus Brigstocke will perform on tonight RSA live stream ;event : Seven Serious Jokes About Climate Change

Marcus Brigstocke will perform an RSA live stream event tonight: Seven Serious Jokes About Climate Change. Photograph: Andrew Aitchison/Corbis

Tuesday 20 January 2015 16.11 GMT

Did you hear the one about the climate policy analyst? Or the polar bear who walked into a bar?

Climate change is not generally considered a source of amusement: in terms of comedic material, the forecast is an ongoing cultural drought. But perhaps campaigners have missed a trick in overlooking the powerful role that satire and subversion can play in social change. Could humour cut through the malaise that has smothered the public discourse, activating our cultural antennae in a way that graphs, infographics and images of melting ice could never do?

This is the challenge that a panel of British comedians, including Marcus Brigstocke – a seasoned climate humourist, will take up at an event on Tuesday evening hosted by the RSA and the Climate Outreach and Information Network in London (the event is fully booked but it will be streamed live online). Maybe laughing about something as serious as climate change is just another form of denial. But perhaps its relative absence from the comedy realm is another warning sign: despite decades of awareness raising, the cultural footprint of climate change is faint, fragile and all-too-easily ignored.

The first example of a climate-policy parody was probably the ‘Cheat Neutral’ project: a slick spoof of the logic of carbon offsetting whereby people could pay someone else to be faithful, giving them the opportunity to cheat on their husband or wife. And there have other good video mockeries – including onewarning that wind farms will blow the Earth off-orbit – which have captured the comedy potential of bizarre debates about energy policy.

This year, Greenpeace teamed up with the surreal comedian Reggie Watts to promote the idea of a 100% renewably powered internet. There have been sporadic examples of climate change ‘stand-up’. And the ever-reliable Simpsonshas been occasionally willing to engage.

Reggie Watts yodels for a wind-powered internet.

But these are the exceptions that prove the rule: for the most part, climate gags are notable by their absence.

An ongoing challenge is the polarised nature of the climate debate, with climate scepticism closely pegged to political ideology. According to Nick Comer-Calder, of the Climate Media Net, getting people laughing is a good first step to getting them talking – even across political divides. One analysisfound that major US satirists, such as Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, have given more coverage to climate change than many of the news channels – although admittedly, this is a pretty low bar to clear.

But while online ridicule directed towards climate ‘deniers’ (generally portrayed as either too stupid to understand the science, or as conspiracy theorists) may appeal to the usual crowd, its hard to see how this kind of approach will breach the political divide. After all, the feeling of being laughed at by a sneering, left-leaning elite is not appealing. One notorious attempt by the 10:10 campaign and director Richard Curtis at ‘humorously’ marginalising opposition towards environmentalism backfired completely. It turns out that most people don’t find graphic depictions of children’s heads exploding all that hilarious after all…

What’s required is for climate change to seep into the fabric of satirical and humourous TV programming, in the same way that other ‘current affairs’ often provide the backdrop and context for creative output. Jokes ‘about’ climate change can in fact be ‘about’ any of the dozens of subjects – family disputes over energy bills, travel and tourism, or changing consumer habits – that are directly impacted by climate change.

Its an interesting irony that while the ‘pro-climate’ discourse can often feel po-faced and pious, climate sceptics have wasted no time in parodying the climate community. The Heretic, a play by Richard Bean, built its dramatic tension around the conflict between a sceptical climate scientist and her cynical departmental head who is suppressing her data in order to keep his grants flowing. The characters are overdrawn and instantly recognisable. And, as a result, it works: it is good drama, entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny.

While climate change itself is never going to be a barrel of laughs, we seem to be suffering from a collective lack of imagination in teasing out the tragi-comic narratives that climate change surely provides.

Thinking harder about how to plug climate change into our cultural circuits – not as ‘edutainment’ but simply as a target of satire in its own right – will be crucial in overcoming the social silence around the issue. The science-communicators don’t seem to be making much progress with the public: maybe its time to let the comedians have their turn.

Is a climate disaster inevitable? (Book Forum)

22/01/2015UncategorizedAntropoceno, Fim do mundo, Geoengenharia, Mercado, Mudanças climáticas, Previsão, Riscorenzotaddei

JAN 21 2015 3:00PM

From De Ethica, Michel Bourban (Lausanne): Climate Change, Human Rights and the Problem of Motivation; Robert Heeger (Utrecht): Climate Change and Responsibility to Future Generations: Reflections on the Normative Questions; Casey Rentmeester (Finlandia): Do No Harm: A Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Cultural Climate Ethics; and Norbert Campagna (Luxembourg): Climate Migration and the State’s Duty to Protect. Harvard’s David Keith knows how to dial down the Earth’s thermostat — is it time to try? Renzo Taddei (UNIFESP): Alter Geoengineering. Tobias Boes and Kate Marshall on writing the Anthropocene. People don’t work as hard on hot days — or on a warming planet. James West on 2014 was the year we finally started to do something about climate change. How much is climate change going to cost us? David Roberts investigates. Is a climate disaster inevitable? Adam Frank on what astrobiology can tell us about the fate of the planet. If we’re all headed for extinction anyway—AND WE ARE—won’t it be a lot more enjoyable to run out the clock with everyone looking a little more pleasant? Welcome to the latest exciting opportunity in the sights of investors: the collapse of planet Earth. You can download Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence by Christian Parenti (2011). You can download Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene by Joanna Zylinska (2014).

[Emphasis added]

Can Humanity’s ‘Great Acceleration’ Be Managed and, If So, How? (Dot Earth, New York Times)

19/01/2015UncategorizedDesastre, Incerteza, Limites do sistema terrestre, Meteorologia, Modelagem, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

By ANDREW C. REVKINJanuary 15, 2015 5:00 pm

Updated below | Through three-plus decades of reporting, I’ve been seeking ways to better mesh humanity’s infinite aspirations with life on a finite planet. (Do this Google search — “infinite aspirations” “finite planet” Revkin – to get the idea. Also read the 2002 special issue of Science Times titled “Managing Planet Earth.”)

So I was naturally drawn to a research effort that surfaced in 2009 defining a “safe operating space for humanity” by estimating a set of nine “planetary boundaries” for vital-sign-style parameters like levels of greenhouse gases, flows of nitrogen and phosphorus and loss of biodiversity.

The same was true for a related “Great Acceleration” dashboard showing humanity’s growth spurt (the graphs below), created by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program.

Who would want to drive a car without gauges tracking engine heat, speed and fuel levels? I use that artwork in all my talks.

Now, both the dashboard of human impacts and planetary boundaries have been updated. For more detail on the dashboard, explore the website of the geosphere-biosphere organization.

In a prepared statement, a co-author of the acceleration analysis, Lisa Deutsch, a senior lecturer at the Stockholm Resilience Center, saw little that was encouraging:

Of all the socio-economic trends only construction of new large dams seems to show any sign of the bending of the curves – or a slowing of the Great Acceleration. Only one Earth System trend indicates a curve that may be the result of intentional human intervention – the success story of ozone depletion. The leveling off of marine fisheries capture since the 1980s is unfortunately not due to marine stewardship, but to overfishing.

And all that acceleration (mostly since 1950, as I wrote yesterday) has pushed us out of four safe zones, according to the 18 authors of the updated assessment of environmental boundaries, published online today by the journal Science here: “Planetary Boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet.”

The paper is behind a paywall, but the Stockholm Resilience Center, which has led this work, has summarized the results, including the authors’ conclusion that we’re in the danger zone on four of the nine boundaries: climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change and alteration of biogeochemical cycles (for the nutrients phosphorus and nitrogen).

Their work has been a valuable prod to the community of scientists and policy analysts aiming to smooth the human journey, resulting in strings of additional studies. Some followup work has supported the concept, and even broadened it, as with a 2011 proposal by Kate Raworth of the aid group Oxfam to add social-justice boundaries, as well: “A Safe and Just Space for Humanity – Can We Live Within the Doughnut?”

But others have convincingly challenged many of the boundaries and also questioned their usefulness, given how both impacts of, and decisions about, human activities like fertilizing fields or tapping aquifers are inherently local — not planetary in scale. (You’ll hear from some critics below.)

In 2012, the boundaries work helped produce a compelling alternative framework for navigating the Anthropocene — “Planetary Opportunities: A Social Contract for Global Change Science to Contribute to a Sustainable Future.”

I hope the public (and policy makers) will realize this is not a right-wrong, win-lose science debate. A complex planet dominated by a complicated young species will never be managed neatly. All of us, including environmental scientists, will continue to learn and adjust.

I was encouraged, for instance, to see the new iteration of the boundaries analysis take a much more refined view of danger zones, including more of an emphasis on the deep level of uncertainty in many areas:

The authors, led by Will Steffen of Australian National University and Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Center, have tried to refine how they approach risks related to disrupting ecosystems – not simply pointing to lost biological diversity but instead devising a measure of general “biosphere integrity.”

That measure, and the growing human influence on the climate through the buildup of long-lived greenhouse gases are the main source of concern, they wrote:

Two core boundaries – climate change and biosphere integrity – have been identified, each of which has the potential on its own to drive the Earth System into a new state should they be substantially and persistently transgressed.

But the bottom line has a very retro feel, adding up to the kind of ominous, but generalized warnings that many environmental scientists and other scholars began giving with the “Limits to Growth” analysis in 1972. Here’s a cornerstone passage from the paper, reprising a longstanding view that the environmental conditions of the Holocene – the equable span since the end of the last ice age – is ideal:

The precautionary principle suggests that human societies would be unwise to drive the Earth System substantially away from a Holocene-like condition. A continuing trajectory away from the Holocene could lead, with an uncomfortably high probability, to a very different state of the Earth System, one that is likely to be much less hospitable to the development of human societies.

I sent the Science paper to a batch of environmental researchers who have been constructive critics of the Boundaries work. Four of them wrote a group response, posted below, which includes this total rejection of the idea that the Holocene is somehow special:

[M]ost species evolved before the Holocene and the contemporary ecosystems that sustain humanity are agroecosystems, urban ecosystems and other human-altered ecosystems….

Here’s their full response:

The Limits of Planetary Boundaries
Erle Ellis, Barry Brook, Linus Blomqvist, Ruth DeFries

Steffen et al (2015) revise the “planetary boundaries framework” initially proposed in 2009 as the “safe limits” for human alteration of Earth processes (Rockstrom et al 2009). Limiting human harm to environments is a major challenge and we applaud all efforts to increase the public utility of global-change science. Yet the planetary boundaries (PB) framework – in its original form and as revised by Steffen et al – obscures rather than clarifies the environmental and sustainability challenges faced by humanity this century.

Steffen et al concede that “not all Earth system processes included in the PB have singular thresholds at the global/continental/ocean basin level.” Such processes include biosphere integrity (see Brook et al 2013), biogeochemical flows, freshwater use, and land-system change. “Nevertheless,” they continue, “it is important that boundaries be established for these processes.” Why? Where a global threshold is unknown or lacking, there is no scientifically robust way of specifying such a boundary – determining a limit along a continuum of environmental change becomes a matter of guesswork or speculation (see e.g. Bass 2009; Nordhaus et al 2012). For instance, the land-system boundary for temperate forest is set at 50% of forest cover remaining. There is no robust justification for why this boundary should not be 40%, or 70%, or some other level.

While the stated objective of the PB framework is to “guide human societies” away from a state of the Earth system that is “less hospitable to the development of human societies”, it offers little scientific evidence to support the connection between the global state of specific Earth system processes and human well-being. Instead, the Holocene environment (the most recent 10,000 years) is assumed to be ideal. Yet most species evolved before the Holocene and the contemporary ecosystems that sustain humanity are agroecosystems, urban ecosystems and other human-altered ecosystems that in themselves represent some of the most important global and local environmental changes that characterize the Anthropocene. Contrary to the authors’ claim that the Holocene is the “only state of the planet that we know for certain can support contemporary human societies,” the human-altered ecosystems of the Anthropocene represent the only state of the planet that we know for certain can support contemporary civilization.

Human alteration of environments produces multiple effects, some advantageous to societies, such as enhanced food production, and some detrimental, like environmental pollution with toxic chemicals, excess nutrients and carbon emissions from fossil fuels, and the loss of wildlife and their habitats. The key to better environmental outcomes is not in ending human alteration of environments but in anticipating and mitigating their negative consequences. These decisions and trade-offs should be guided by robust evidence, with global-change science investigating the connections and tradeoffs between the state of the environment and human well-being in the context of the local setting, rather than by framing and reframing environmental challenges in terms of untestable assumptions about the virtues of past environments.

Even without specifying exact global boundaries, global metrics can be highly misleading for policy. For example, with nitrogen, where the majority of human emissions come from synthetic fertilizers, the real-world challenge is to apply just the right amount of nitrogen to optimize crop yields while minimizing nitrogen losses that harm aquatic ecosystems. Reducing fertilizer application in Africa might seem beneficial globally, yet the result in this region would be even poorer crop yields without any notable reduction in nitrogen pollution; Africa’s fertilizer use is already suboptimal for crop yields. What can look like a good or a bad thing globally can prove exactly the opposite when viewed regionally and locally. What use is a global indicator for a local issue? As in real estate, location is everything.

Finally, and most importantly, the planetary boundaries are burdened not only with major uncertainties and weak scientific theory – they are also politically problematic. Real world environmental challenges like nitrogen pollution, freshwater consumption and land-use change are ultimately a matter of politics, in the sense that there are losers and winners, and solutions have to be negotiated among many stakeholders. The idea of a scientific expert group determining top-down global limits on these activities and processes ignores these inevitable trade-offs and seems to preclude democratic resolution of these questions. It has been argued that (Steffen et al 2011):

Ultimately, there will need to be an institution (or institutions) operating, with authority, above the level of individual countries to ensure that the planetary boundaries are respected. In effect, such an institution, acting on behalf of humanity as a whole, would be the ultimate arbiter of the myriad trade-offs that need to be managed as nations and groups of people jockey for economic and social advantage. It would, in essence, become the global referee on the planetary playing field.

Here the planetary boundaries framework reaches its logical conclusion with a political scenario that is as unlikely as it is unpalatable. There is no ultimate global authority to rule over humanity or the environment. Science has a tremendously important role to play in guiding environmental management, not as a decider, but as a resource for deliberative, evidence-based decision making by the public, policy makers, and interest groups on the challenges, trade-offs and possible courses of action in negotiating the environmental challenges of societal development (DeFries et al 2012). Proposing that science itself can define the global environmental limits of human development is simultaneously unrealistic, hubristic, and a strategy doomed to fail.

I’ve posted the response online as a standalone document for easier downloading; there you can view the authors’ references, as well.

Update, 9:40 p.m.| Will Steffen, the lead author of the updated Planetary Boundaries analysis, sent this reply to Ellis and co-authors tonight:

Response to Ellis et al. on planetary boundaries

Of course we welcome constructive debate on and criticism of the planetary boundaries (PB) update paper. However, the comments of Ellis et al. appear to be more of a knee-jerk reaction to the original 2009 paper than a careful analysis of the present paper. In fact, one wonders if they have even read the paper, including the Supplementary Online Material (SOM) where much methodological detail is provided.

One criticism seems to be based on a rather bizarre conflation of a state of the Earth System with (i) the time when individual biological species evolved, and (ii) the nature and distribution of human-altered terrestrial ecosystems. This makes no sense from an Earth System science perspective. The state of the Earth System (a single system at the planetary level) also involves the oceans, the atmosphere, the cryosphere and very important processes like the surface energy balance and the flows and transformation of elements. It is the state of this single complex system, which provides the planetary life support system for humanity, that the PB framework is concerned with, not with fragmentary bits of it in isolation.

In particular, the PB framework is based on the fact – and I emphasise the word “fact” – that the relatively stable Holocene state of the Earth System (the past approximately 11,700 years) is the only state of the System that has allowed the development of agriculture, urban settlements and complex human societies. Some argue that humanity can now survive, and even thrive, in a rapidly destabilizing planetary environment, but that is a belief system based on supreme technological optimism, and is not a reasoned scientifically informed judgment. Also, Ellis et al. seem to conflate human alteration of terrestrial environments with human alteration of the fundamental state of the Earth System as a whole. These are two vastly different things.

The criticisms show further misunderstanding of the nature of complex systems like the Earth System and how they operate. For example, Ellis et al. claim that a process is not important unless it has a threshold. Even a cursory understanding of the carbon cycle, for example, shows that this is nonsense. Neither the terrestrial nor the marine carbon sinks have known large-scale thesholds yet they are exceedingly important for the functioning of the climate system, which does indeed have known large-scale thresholds such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Sure, it is more challenging to define boundaries for processes that are very important for the resilience of the Earth System but don’t have large-scale thresholds, but it is not impossible. The zone of uncertainty tends to be larger for these boundaries, but as scientific understanding improves, this zone will narrow.

An important misrepresentation of our paper is the assertion that we are somehow suggesting that fertilizer application in Africa be reduced. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, if Ellis et al had taken the time to read the SOM, the excellent paper by Carpenter and Bennett (2011) on the P boundary, the equally excellent paper by de Vries et al. (2013) on the N boundary, and the paper by Steffen and Stafford Smith (2013) on the distribution and equity issues for many of the PBs, including N and P, they wouldn’t have made such a misrepresentation.

Finally, the Steffen et al. (2011) paper seems to have triggered yet another misrepresentation. The paragraph of the paper quoted by Ellis et al. is based on contributions from two of the authors who are experts in institutions and governance issues, and does not come from the natural science community. Nowhere in the paragraph quoted, nor in the Steffen et al. (2011) paper as a whole, is there the proposal for a “a scientific expert group determining top-down global limits…”. The paragraph reprinted by Ellis et al. doesn’t mention scientists at all. That is a complete misrepresentation of our work.

We reiterate that we very much welcome careful and constructive critiques of the PB update paper, preferably in the peer-reviewed literature. In fact, such critiques of the 2009 PB paper were very helpful in developing the 2015 paper. Knee-jerk reactions in the blogosphere make for interesting reading, but they are far less useful in advancing the science.

Update, Jan. 16, 2:09 p.m. | Johan Rockström and Katherine Richardson, authors of the boundaries analysis, sent these additional reactions to the Ellis et al. critique:

We are honored that Erle Ellis, Barry Brook, Linus Blomqvist and Ruth DeFries (Ellis et al.) show such strong interest in our Planetary Boundaries research. The 2015 science update draws upon the over 60 scientific articles that have been published specifically scrutinizing different aspects of the Planetary Boundaries framework (amongst them the contributions by all these four researchers), and the most recent advancements in Earth System science. This new paper scientifically addresses and clarifies all of the natural science related aspects of Ellis et al.’s critique. It can also be noted that Ellis et al.’s critique simply echoes the standpoints regarding Planetary Boundaries research that the same group (Blomqvist et al., 2012) brought forward in 2012. Now, as then, their criticisms seem largely to be based on misunderstandings and their own viewpoints:

(1) We have never argued that there are planetary scale tipping points for all Planetary Boundary processes. Furthermore, there does not need to be a tipping point for these processes and systems in order for them to function as key regulators of the stability of the Earth system. A good example here is the carbon sink in the biosphere (approximately 4.5 Gt/year) which has doubled over the past 50 years in response to human emissions of CO₂ and, thus, provides a good example of Earth resilience at play;

(2) Establishing the Planetary Boundaries, i.e. identifying Earth System scale boundaries for environmental processes that regulate the stability of the planet, does not (of course) contradict or replace the need for local action, transparency and democratic processes. Our society has long accepted the need for local – and to some extent regional- environmental management. Scientific evidence has now accumulated that indicates a further need for management of some environmental challenges at the global level. Many years of multi-lateral climate negotiation indicate a recognized need for global management of the CO₂ emissions that occur locally. Our Planetary Boundaries research identifies that there are also other processes critical to the functioning of the Earth System that are so impacted by human activities that they, too, demand management at the global level. Ours is a positive – not a doomsday – message. It will come as no surprise to any reader that there are environmental challenges associated with all of the 9 Earth System functions we examine. Through our research, we offer a framework that can be useful in developing management at a global level.

It is important to emphasize that Ellis et al. associate socio-political attributes to our work that do not exist. The Science paper published today (16^th January 2015), is a natural science update and advancement of the planetary boundaries framework. It makes no attempt to enter the (very important) social science realm of equity, institutions or global governance. The implications attributed to the PB framework must, then, reflect Ellis et al.’s own normative values. Furthermore, Ellis et al. argue that the “key to better environmental outcomes is not ending human alteration” but “anticipating and mitigating the negative consequences” of human environmental perturbation. While Planetary Boundaries research does not dictate how societies should use the insights it provides, “anticipating negative consequences” is at the absolute core of our approach!

Regarding Earth system tipping points. As Will Steffen points out in his earlier response, it would have been scientifically more correct for Ellis et al. to refer not only to their own assessment of uncertainties regarding a potential biosphere tipping point but also to the response to their article by Terry Hughes et al. (2014). These researchers presented the current state of empirical evidence concerning changes in interactions and feedbacks and how they can (in several cases do!) trigger tipping points at ecosystem and biome scale, and that such non-linear dynamics at local to regional scale can add up to impacts at the Earth system scale.

A different worldview. The Ellis et al. critique appears not to be a scientific criticism per se but rather is based on their own interpretation of differences in worldview. They do not substantively put in question the stability of the Earth system as a basis for human development– see Will Steffen’s response. Thus, it appears that we and Ellis et al. are in agreement here. Of course species and ecosystems have evolved prior to the Holocene but only in the stable environment of the Holocene have humans been able to exploit the Earth system at scale (e.g., by inventing agriculture as a response to a stable hydro-climate in the Holocene).

Ellis et al. argue that the only constructive avenue is to “investigate the connections and trade-offs between the state of the environment and human well-being in the context of the local setting..:”. This is clearly not aligned with current scientific evidence. In the Anthropocene, there is robust evidence showing that we need to address global environmental change at the global level, as well as at the regional, national and local contexts, and in particular understanding cross-scale interactions between them.

On global governance. It seems hardly surprising, given the Ellis et al.’s misunderstanding of the Planetary Boundaries framework that their interpretation of the implications of operationalizing the framework rests also on misunderstandings. They claim the Planetary Boundaries framework translates to an “ultimate global authority to rule over humanity”. No one would argue that the current multi-lateral climate negotiations are an attempt to establish “ultimate global authority over humanity” and this is certainly never been suggested by the Planetary Boundaries research. In essence, the Planetary Boundary analysis simply identifies Earth System processes that – in the same manner as climate – regulate the stability of the Earth System, and if impacted too far by human activities potentially can disrupt the functioning of the Earth System. The Planetary Boundaries is, then, nothing more than a natural sciences contribution to an important societal discussion and which presents evidence which can support the definition of Planetary Boundaries to safeguard a stable and resilient Earth system. How this then translates to governance is another issue entirely and important social science contributions have addressed these (Galaz et al 2012). As our research shows, there is natural science evidence that global management of some environmental challenges is necessary. From the social science literature (Biermann et al., 2012) as well as from real world policy making, we see that such global scale regulation is possible to construct in a democratic manner and does establish a safe operating space, e.g. the Montreal protocol, a global agreement to address one of the identified planetary boundaries and which, to our knowledge, is never referred to as a “global authority ruling over humanity”. As noted above, the UNFCCC process is also fundamentally concerned with establishing the global “rules of the game” by which society can continue to develop within a climate planetary boundary. The Aichi targets (within the UN Convention on Biological Diversity) of setting aside marine and terrestrial areas for conservation are also good examples of the political translation of a science based concern over global loss of biodiversity. The coming SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) framework includes a proposed set of four goals (oceans, climate, biodiversity and freshwater), which is a de-facto example of applying planetary boundary thinking to create a global framework for safeguarding a stable environment on the planet for societies and communities across the world. We find it interesting – and encouraging – that societies and the world community are already developing management tools within several “planetary boundary domains”. In all cases, this is happening in good democratic order and building upon bottom-up processes and informed by science. This ought to be reassuring for Ellis et al. who portray implementation of Planetary Boundary thinking as a dark force of planetary rule.

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[Reaction]

The Limits of Planetary Boundaries 2.0 (Brave New Climate)

Back in 2013, I led some research that critiqued the ‘Planetary Boundaries‘ concept (my refereed paper, Does the terrestrial biosphere have planetary tipping points?, appeared in Trends in Ecology & Evolution). I also blogged about this here: Worrying about global tipping points distracts from real planetary threats.

Today a new paper appeared in the journal Science, called “Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet“, which attempts to refine and clarify the concept. It states that four of nine planetary boundaries have been crossed, re-imagines the biodiversity boundary as one of ‘biodiversity integrity’, and introduces the concept of ‘novel entities’. A popular summary in the Washington Post can be read here. On the invitation of New York Times “Dot Earth” reporter Andy Revkin, my colleagues and I have written a short response, which I reproduce below. The full Dot Earth article can be read here.

The Limits of Planetary Boundaries
Erle Ellis, Barry Brook, Linus Blomqvist, Ruth DeFries

Steffen et al (2015) revise the “planetary boundaries framework” initially proposed in 2009 as the “safe limits” for human alteration of Earth processes(Rockstrom et al 2009). Limiting human harm to environments is a major challenge and we applaud all efforts to increase the public utility of global-change science. Yet the planetary boundaries (PB) framework – in its original form and as revised by Steffen et al – obscures rather than clarifies the environmental and sustainability challenges faced by humanity this century.

Steffen et al concede that “not all Earth system processes included in the PB have singular thresholds at the global/continental/ocean basin level.” Such processes include biosphere integrity (see Brook et al 2013), biogeochemical flows, freshwater use, and land-system change. “Nevertheless,” they continue, “it is important that boundaries be established for these processes.” Why? Where a global threshold is unknown or lacking, there is no scientifically robust way of specifying such a boundary – determining a limit along a continuum of environmental change becomes a matter of guesswork or speculation (see e.g. Bass 2009;Nordhaus et al 2012). For instance, the land-system boundary for temperate forest is set at 50% of forest cover remaining. There is no robust justification for why this boundary should not be 40%, or 70%, or some other level.

While the stated objective of the PB framework is to “guide human societies” away from a state of the Earth system that is “less hospitable to the development of human societies”, it offers little scientific evidence to support the connection between the global state of specific Earth system processes and human well-being. Instead, the Holocene environment (the most recent 10,000 years) is assumed to be ideal. Yet most species evolved before the Holocene and the contemporary ecosystems that sustain humanity are agroecosystems, urban ecosystems and other human-altered ecosystems that in themselves represent some of the most important global and local environmental changes that characterize the Anthropocene. Contrary to the authors’ claim that the Holocene is the “only state of the planet that we know for certain can support contemporary human societies,” the human-altered ecosystems of the Anthropocene represent the only state of the planet that we know for certain can support contemporary civilization.

Human alteration of environments produces multiple effects, some advantageous to societies, such as enhanced food production, and some detrimental, like environmental pollution with toxic chemicals, excess nutrients and carbon emissions from fossil fuels, and the loss of wildlife and their habitats. The key to better environmental outcomes is not in ending human alteration of environments but in anticipating and mitigating their negative consequences. These decisions and trade-offs should be guided by robust evidence, with global-change science investigating the connections and tradeoffs between the state of the environment and human well-being in the context of the local setting, rather than by framing and reframing environmental challenges in terms of untestable assumptions about the virtues of past environments.

Even without specifying exact global boundaries, global metrics can be highly misleading for policy. For example, with nitrogen, where the majority of human emissions come from synthetic fertilizers, the real-world challenge is to apply just the right amount of nitrogen to optimize crop yields while minimizing nitrogen losses that harm aquatic ecosystems. Reducing fertilizer application in Africa might seem beneficial globally, yet the result in this region would be even poorer crop yields without any notable reduction in nitrogen pollution; Africa’s fertilizer use is already suboptimal for crop yields. What can look like a good or a bad thing globally can prove exactly the opposite when viewed regionally and locally. What use is a global indicator for a local issue? As in real estate, location is everything.

Finally, and most importantly, the planetary boundaries are burdened not only with major uncertainties and weak scientific theory – they are also politically problematic. Real world environmental challenges like nitrogen pollution, freshwater consumption and land-use change are ultimately a matter of politics, in the sense that there are losers and winners, and solutions have to be negotiated among many stakeholders. The idea of a scientific expert group determining top-down global limits on these activities and processes ignores these inevitable trade-offs and seems to preclude democratic resolution of these questions. It has been argued that (Steffen et al 2011):

Ultimately, there will need to be an institution (or institutions) operating, with authority, above the level of individual countries to ensure that the planetary boundaries are respected. In effect, such an institution, acting on behalf of humanity as a whole, would be the ultimate arbiter of the myriad trade-offs that need to be managed as nations and groups of people jockey for economic and social advantage. It would, in essence, become the global referee on the planetary playing field.

Here the planetary boundaries framework reaches its logical conclusion with a political scenario that is as unlikely as it is unpalatable. There is no ultimate global authority to rule over humanity or the environment. Science has a tremendously important role to play in guiding environmental management, not as a decider, but as a resource for deliberative, evidence-based decision making by the public, policy makers, and interest groups on the challenges, trade-offs and possible courses of action in negotiating the environmental challenges of societal development (DeFries et al 2012). Proposing that science itself can define the global environmental limits of human development is simultaneously unrealistic, hubristic, and a strategy doomed to fail.

Siberian Arctic permafrost decay and methane escape (Climatestate)

19/01/2015UncategorizedÁrtico, Desastre, Gases de efeito estufa, Metano, Mudanças climáticas, Química atmosféricarenzotaddei

Added by Chris Machens on January 18, 2015

Siberian Arctic permafrost decay and methane escape

Widespread seafloor gas release from the seabed offshore the West Yamal Peninsula, suggests that permafrost has degraded more significantly than previously thought. Gas is released in an area of at least 7500 km²in water depths >20 m.(1)

Tromsø, Norway: Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate (CAGE): It was previously proposed that the permafrost in the Kara Sea, and other Arctic areas, extends to water depths up to 100 meters, creating a seal that gas cannot bypass. Portnov and colleagues have found that the West Yamal shelf is leaking, profoundly, at depths much shallower than that.

Significant amount of gas is leaking at depths between 20 and 50 meters. This suggests that a continuous permafrost seal is much smaller than proposed. Close to the shore the permafrost seal may be few hundred meters thick, but tapers off towards 20 meters water depth. And it is fragile.

Evolution of permafrost

Portnov used mathematical models to map the evolution of the permafrost, and thus calculated its degradation since the end of the last ice age. The evolution of permafrost gives indication to what may happen to it in the future.

Basically the permafrost is thawing from two sides. The interior of the Earth is warming the permafrost from the bottom up, called geothermal heat flux – an ongoing process. Thus, if the bottom ocean temperature is −0,5°C, the maximal possible permafrost thickness would likely take 9000 years to thaw. But if water temperature increases, the process would go much faster, because the thawing would also happen from the top down.

“If the temperature of the oceans increases by two degrees as suggested by some reports, it will accelerate the thawing to the extreme. A warming climate could lead to an explosive gas release from the shallow areas.”(2)

Impact study

Another study based on a coupled climate–carbon cycle model (GCM) assessed a 1000-fold (from <1 to 1000 ppmv) methane increase – within a single pulse, from methane hydrates (based on carbon amount estimates for the PETM, with ~2000 GtC), and concluded it would increase atmospheric temperatures above >6°C within 80 years. Further, carbon stored in the land biosphere would decrease by >25%, suggesting a critical situation for ecosystems and farming, especially in the tropics.(3)

Though, in reality it is reasonable to assume that larger methane spikes will be in the 1-2 digit Gt ball park, which are still considerable amounts. The PETM, 55 mil years ago, is marked by several larger spikes. Even if there aren’t larger spikes, the current deglaciation in the northern hemisphere will considerably contribute – increase the current atmospheric carbon budget. Hence, it is vital to reduce emissions now, to slow or even reverse processes before things get out of control.

Related

An Arctic methane worst-case scenario http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/01/an-arctic-methane-worst-case-scenario/
An online model of methane in the atmosphere http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/01/an-online-model-of-methane-in-the-atmosphere/
Methane gas release from ocean might have led to AirAsia flight crash, expert speculates http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Methane-gas-release-from-ocean-might-have-led-to-AirAsia-flight-crash-expert-speculates/articleshow/45913234.cms

Teaser image via http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/methane-bubbles-thiessen/

Atmospheric rivers, cloud-creating aerosol particles, and California reservoirs (Science Daily)

19/01/2015UncategorizedAtmosfera, Califórnia, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsão, Rios atmosféricos, Secarenzotaddei

Date: January 17, 2015

Source: University of California, San Diego

Summary: In the midst of the California rainy season, scientists are embarking on a field campaign designed to improve the understanding of the natural and human-caused phenomena that determine when and how the state gets its precipitation. They will do so by studying atmospheric rivers, meteorological events that include the famous rainmaker known as the Pineapple Express.

An atmospheric river reaches the San Francisco Bay Area, Dec. 11, 2014. Credit: University of Wisconsin

In the midst of the California rainy season, scientists are embarking on a field campaign designed to improve the understanding of the natural and human-caused phenomena that determine when and how the state gets its precipitation. They will do so by studying atmospheric rivers, meteorological events that include the famous rainmaker known as the Pineapple Express.

CalWater 2015 is an interagency, interdisciplinary field campaign starting January 14, 2015. CalWater 2015 will entail four research aircraft flying through major storms while a ship outfitted with additional instruments cruises below. The research team includes scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, NOAA, and NASA and uses resources from the DOE’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility — a national scientific user facility.

The study will help provide a better understanding of how California gets its rain and snow, how human activities are influencing precipitation, and how the new science provides potential to inform water management decisions relating to drought and flood.

“After several years in the making by an interdisciplinary science team, and through support from multiple agencies, the CalWater 2015 field campaign is set to observe the key conditions offshore and over California like has never been possible before,” said Scripps climate researcher Marty Ralph, a CalWater lead investigator. “These data will ultimately help develop better climate projections for water and will help test the potential of using existing reservoirs in new ways based on atmospheric river forecasts.”

Like land-based rivers, atmospheric rivers carry massive amounts of moisture long distances — in California’s case, from the tropics to the U.S. West Coast. When an atmospheric river hits the coast, it releases its moisture as precipitation. How much and whether it falls as rain or snow depends on aerosols — tiny particles made of dust, sea salt, volatile molecules, and pollution.

The researchers will examine the strength of atmospheric rivers, which produce up to 50 percent of California’s precipitation and can transport 10-20 times the flow of the Mississippi River. They will also explore how to predict when and where atmospheric rivers will hit land, as well as the role of ocean evaporation and how the ocean changes after a river passes.

“Climate and weather models have a hard time getting precipitation right,” said Ralph. “In fact, the big precipitation events that are so important for water supply and can cause flooding, mostly due to atmospheric rivers, are some of the most difficult to predict with useful accuracy. The severe California drought is essentially a result of a dearth of atmospheric rivers, while, conversely, the risk of Katrina-like damages for California due to severe ARs has also been quantified in previous research.”

For the next month or more, instrument teams will gather data from the NOAA research vessel Ronald H. Brown and two NOAA, one DOE, and one NASA research aircraft with a coordinated implementation strategy when weather forecasters see atmospheric rivers developing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. NASA will also provide remote sensing data for the project.

“Improving our understanding of atmospheric rivers will help us produce better forecasts of where they will hit and when, and how much rain and snow they will deliver,” said Allen White, NOAA research meteorologist and CalWater 2015 mission scientist. “Better forecasts will give communities the environmental intelligence needed to respond to droughts and floods.”

Most research flights will originate at McClellan Airfield in Sacramento. Ground-based instruments in Bodega Bay, Calif., and scattered throughout the state will also collect data on natural and human contributions to the atmosphere such as dust and pollution. This data-gathering campaign follows the 2009-2011 CalWater1 field campaign, which yielded new insights into how precipitation processes in the Sierra Nevada can be influenced by different sources of aerosols that seed the clouds.

“This will be an extremely important study in advancing our overall understanding of aerosol impacts on clouds and precipitation,” said Kimberly Prather, a CalWater lead investigator and Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry with appointments at Scripps Oceanography and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UC San Diego. “It will build upon findings from CalWater1, adding multiple aircraft to directly probe how aerosols from different sources, local, ocean, as well as those from other continents, are influencing clouds and precipitation processes over California.”

“We are collecting this data to improve computer models of rain that represent many complex processes and their interactions with the environment,” said PNNL’s Leung. “Atmospheric rivers contribute most of the heavy rains along the coast and mountains in the West. We want to capture those events better in our climate models used to project changes in extreme events in the future.”

Prather’s group showed during CalWater1 that aerosols can have competing effects, depending on their source. Intercontinental mineral dust and biological particles possibly from the ocean corresponded to events with more precipitation, while aerosols produced by local air pollution correlated with less precipitation.

The CalWater 2015 campaign is comprised of two interdependent efforts. Major investments in facilities include aircraft, ship time, and sensors by NOAA. Marty Ralph, Kim Prather, and Dan Cayan from Scripps, and Chris Fairall, Ryan Spackman, and Allen White of NOAA lead CalWater-2. The DOE-funded ARM Cloud Aerosol Precipitation Experiment (ACAPEX) is led by Ruby Leung from PNNL. NSF and NASA have also provided major support for aspects of CalWater, leveraging the NOAA and DOE investments.

Uma (in)certa antropologia

An (un)certain anthropology