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The Two Degrees Show - Climate Code Red

Climate Radio | 09.07.2008 19:22 | Climate Camp 2008 | Climate Chaos | World

Part two of our recap on the recent science including the work of Dr James Hansen and his team.

The Two Degrees Show - Climate Code Red - mp3 27M


The most eminent US scientist and head of Nasa, Dr James Hansen, has said that we have passed the tipping point for Arctic and Greenland ice loss. This has dramatic implications for the possible accelaration of the rate of climate change. He suggests we now need to stabilise levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 350 parts per million (ppm) – lower than they are today (ca. 387 ppm). We discuss James Hansen’s recent findings and their implications with Dr Stuart Parkinson, Executive Director of Scientists for Global Responsibility who was a reviewer on the IPCC’s 2001 Report; and with Richard Hawkins of the Public Interest Research Centre who is preparing a UK edition of Climate Equity’s “Climate Code Red” report for publication. We consider whether our programme needs a new title in the light of the latest scientific findings.

Note on the programme title: Two Degrees Centigrade is the level that the European Union has denoted as a maximum level of global average temperature rise that should not be breached since beyond this there will be sufficient adverse impacts to constitute “dangerous climate change”.

Climate Radio
- e-mail: phil@switch-off.co.uk
- Homepage: http://www.climateradio.co.uk

Additions

Links/references for this week's programme

10.07.2008 12:27

Dr James Hansen Presentation
 https://admin.emea.acrobat.com/_a45839050/p89418435

James Hansen on tipping points
 http://www.carbonequity.info/docs/hansen.html

James Hansen, etc "Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim?"
 http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126

Climate Code Red
 http://www.climatecodered.net/

Public Interest Research Centre
 http://www.pirc.info/

George Monbiot "The Real Climate Censorship"
 http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/04/10/the-real-climate-censorship

David Wasdell - "Political Corruption of the IPCC?"
 http://www.meridian.org.uk/Resources/Global%20Dynamics/IPCC/contents.htm

Climate Radio
- Homepage: http://www.climateradio.co.uk/


See also...

10.07.2008 12:41

Last weeks show -- The Two Degrees Show: Climate Science Recap
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/07/402496.html

Climate Code Red: the Case for a Sustainability Emergency
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/392071.html

The Price of Business-as-Usual - UK Abandons 2°C Target
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/06/400908.html

Campaign to raise awareness of 350ppm C02 target
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/06/400444.html

Chris


Comments

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Last exit for the Holocene

09.07.2008 23:10

A (rare) decent article from the corporate media follows... see also:  http://350.org/

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Dyer: Last exit for the Holocene: What follows is a place unfit for the human race

Gwynne Dyer


"Damn! I think we just passed the last exit for the Holocene!"

"I'm sorry, honey, I wasn't looking."

"We have to get off this highway. What's the next exit?"

"It's a long way ahead. Goes to somewhere called Perdition."

(Ragged chorus from the back seat) "Are we there yet, Daddy?"

The Holocene era is that blessed time of stable, warm climate (but not too hot) and unchanging sea levels in which human civilization was born and grew to its present size. In 10,000 years our numbers have increased about a thousandfold - but we may be about to leave the Holocene, and that would be too bad. No other climatic state would let us maintain our current numbers, and massive die-offs are no fun at all.

James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in New York, is one of the most respected scientists working in the field of climate studies. It was his famous speech to the U.S. Congress 20 years ago that put climate change on the U.S. political agenda, and led indirectly to the Earth Summit and the Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. Now he has something else to say.

For most of the past decade, Hansen adhered to the emerging consensus among climate scientists that the maximum permissible concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 450 parts per million. That was believed to give us a 50 percent chance of getting away with an average global temperature only 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than it was at the beginning of the 1990s.

Now Hansen doesn't believe in 450 ppm any more. That figure was chosen partly because it seemed impossible to stop the rise in carbon dioxide before that - we're already at 387 ppm, and going up almost 3 ppm per year - and partly because it seemed relatively safe. But 7.2 degrees hotter would turn a lot of sub-tropical land into desert, cause bigger hurricanes and turn most of Asia's big rivers into seasonal watercourses that are empty in summer. But it would not melt the icecaps. At least that's what they thought, although everybody knew that the numbers were soft.

You can do a lot with climate models, but the Earth hasn't actually seen a carbon dioxide concentration as high as 450 ppm since about 35 million years ago. So Hansen and some colleagues went to work on exactly that period, and came back with some bad news. If you leave the world at even 425 ppm for very long, all the ice will probably melt: Greenland, Antarctica, the lot. And the sea level will go up 240-270 feet.

How do they know? Because the world was very hot and completely ice-free for a long time until 35 million years ago, but the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was falling gradually. When it reached 425 ppm, Antarctica began to freeze over. So if that's where the first permanent ice appeared while CO2 was on the way down, it's probably where the last permanent ice will disappear when CO2 is on its way back up.

Now, there's a big margin of error when you are dealing with 35 million years ago: Plus or minus 75 ppm, in this case. That means that the fatal number when all the ice disappears could be as high as 500 ppm - or it could be as low as 350 ppm. If that is the range within which all the world's ice will eventually melt, and you like living in the Holocene, then you probably should not put all your money on a 450 ppm ceiling for CO2.

So James Hansen is now spearheading a campaign to get 350 ppm recognized as the real long-term target we should be aiming at. Tricky, since we are already at 387 ppm and rising fast, but last week, when I spoke to him at the Tallberg Forum's annual conference in Sweden, he explained: "To figure out the optimum is going to take a while, but the fundamental thing about the 350 [ppm target], and the reason that it completely changes the ball game, is precisely the fact that it's less than we have now."

"Even if the optimum turns out to be 325 or 300 or something else, we've go to go through 350 to get there. So we know the direction now that we've go to go, and it's fundamentally different. It means that we really have to start to act almost immediately. Even if we cut off coal emissions entirely, CO2 would still get up to at least 400, maybe 425, and then we're going to have to draw it down, and we're almost certainly going to have to do it within decades."

But there is time. The oceans and the ice-sheets react so slowly to changes in the air temperature that you can overshoot the limit for a while, so long as you get the temperature back down before irreversible changes set in. Stop at 450 ppm in 25 years' time, then get back below 400 in another 25, and down to 350 by, say, 2075.

It could work: There is still one last exit for the Holocene.

---
* GWYNNE DYER's new book, After Iraq, was published in the United States by Thomas Dunne Books.

Chris
- Homepage: http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_9820177


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