Climate Change Review – Final Report

The long-awaited, much-anticipated Final Report of the Garnaut Climate Change Review has now been released. As per its website, the review was set up to: “…examine the impacts of climate change on the Australian economy, and recommend medium to long-term policies and policy frameworks to improve the prospects for sustainable prosperity.” It is an independent study by Professor Ross Garnaut, which was commissioned by Australia’s Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments.

A draft report was released in June, and engendered much discussion in the media, as well as a vocal response from scientists. Here is what I had to say on it at the time:

The Garnaut Draft Review is an extensive document and very much a work in progress. But the key fundamentals are already there. It rightly points out that the scientific evidence for climate change, on which hard economic decisions must ultimately hinge, is already flashing some extremely worrying warning signals: carbon emissions and the impacts of climate change are tracking at or above the top end of predictions made a decade ago, tipping elements such as the Arctic sea ice and polewards expansion of the tropical weather systems are being crossed decades ahead of schedule, and because of amplifying carbon-cycle feedbacks, were are now close to the time at which this ‘diabolical problem’ runs away from us, and which point neither mitigation nor adaptation will be sufficient for us to cope.

Our great natural assets – the Great Barrier Reef, the wetlands of Kakadu, the enormously productive agricultural basin of the Murray-Darling system – will be severely degraded or all but eliminated within the lifetimes of current generations. As Garnaut said, we should have moved on this issue years or decades earlier, when potential impacts were already reasonable well understood and yet greater uncertainty about the extent of the problem existed, compared to today.

By explicitly recognising these harsh realities, the Garnaut Report positions the economic and social arguments within the right frame of reference – one in which urgent action is required, and where forward-looking domestic action from the developed world, especially nations that are exquisitely sensitive to climate change impacts, must be the trigger for international multilateral agreements – which are ultimately the only way to solve the problem, and at the same time spawn the energy revolution of the new century – renewables, not fossil carbon.

Unlike the most up-to-date climate modelling, which has recently been detailed by the IPCC, the full economic modelling of impacts will await a supplementary draft report in August. However, some clear points have already been made in this report:

• Scenarios that project a business-as-usual pathway towards a 700% increase in the size of the Australian economy, and a greater per capita wealth of the average Indian compared to Australians by 2100, are pure fantasy – there are not only insufficient fossil fuels available to meet the needs of this model scenario, but the multitude of damaging impacts that would be caused by the resulting catastrophic climate changes mean that societal collapse, rather than unconstrained growth, would be the order of the century, for the world economy in general and for Australia specifically.
  
• Scenarios which explicitly attempt to build in the costs of climate change impacts show major disruptions to our economic, environmental and social well being, amounting to, conservatively, hundreds of billions of dollars of additional economic burden each and every year. And these stated costs are an absolute minimum: rather than try to put a dollar value on the lives of future generations, or the irreplaceable loss of millions of species and natural treasures, or on the staggering potential costs of crossing run-away tipping points such as the collapse of the polar ice sheets, these are quite deliberately left out the Garnaut Report economic modelling. After all there is a price that goes well beyond what humanity is willing to pay, or indeed able to pay, to impacts that are impossible to pay for, or to build into economically rationalist thinking.

The Garnaut Review team has also released a variety of working papers on targets and trajectories, low emissions energy technologies, emissions trading schemes, land use and forestry, managing financial risks, and the need to develop new emissions scenarios to better reflect development in the so-called ‘Platinum Age’. They are definitely worth reading.

The Final Report is a huge document – both in coverage and implications – and it will obviously take time to digest the details. I’d be very interested in considered feedback on it from Brave New Climate readers – from all perspectives. This is clearly a critically important thing to get right, because the government is yet to write its policy white paper, which will give final form to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Now has never been a better time to make your voice heard! This Open Thread is one place where you can have a chance to debate these matters.

Update: My reaction to the Final Report (for other scientist’s views, read here).

The Garnaut Climate Change Review is a landmark achievement. The depth of thought and research that Garnaut and his team have given to the impacts and implications of climate change is profound, and there are many powerful insights given into how a cooperative global agreement might be reached – and what it could look like. Those convening the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009 should be grateful – much of the necessary intellectual groundwork for this key meeting has been laid out in the Final Report.

The impacts of unmitigated climate change, as modelled in the review’s ‘Platinum Age’ scenarios, are certainly frightening, both in terms of the staggering economic and environmental damage that will result. And that’s without ‘non-market costs’ being factored in. The abiding message from the review is clear – we cannot afford to go to the dark and unpleasant future that business-as-usual threatens to take us – so let’s instead work out how we best manage an alternative, low-carbon future, as soon as is physically and socially possible.

The recommendation that Australia should reduce its per capita emissions by 95% by 2050 is certainly one the government ought to openly address – do they agree with this assessment (and if not, why not?), and how are they going to meet such a target? This brings the issue back to the absolutely key question of how we achieve transformative change. That is, we could reach such ‘ambitious’ emissions reductions targets easily, because we’ve developed an entirely new and renewable energy infrastructure which delivers huge benefits to Australia and allows us to export this knowledge and huge amounts of clean energy to a worldwide market. Or we could continue to look backwards, to a Victorian Era style of coal-based energy investment, which leaves us far behind these lofty ambitions, and takes the planet to climate purgatory for bad measure.

Seems a clear enough choice to me.

Footnote: Garnaut on ‘Dissenters’… (Final Report, Introduction, pg xvii):

Scientific opinion and dissent
There is no doubt about the position of most reputed specialists in climate science, in Australia and abroad, on the risks of climate change (Chapter 2). There is no doubt about the position of the leaders of the relevant science academies in all of the major countries. The outsider to climate science has no rational choice but to accept that, on a balance of probabilities, the mainstream science is right in pointing to high risks from unmitigated climate change.

There are nevertheless large uncertainties in the science. There is debate and recognition of limits to knowledge about the times and ways in which the risk will manifest itself. Every climate scientist has views on some issues that differ from the mainstream in detail.

There are prominent dissenters on this matter, gathered under the rubric of ‘sceptic’. For the most part ‘sceptic’ is a misnomer for their position, because these dissenters hold strongly to the belief that the mainstream science is wrong. In a different category are a small number of climate scientists of professional repute who maintain that the mainstream science embodies misjudgments about quantities. These scientists, who accept the theory of the warming effects of higher concentrations of greenhouse gases, hold the view that these warming effects are relatively or even trivially small in comparison with many other causes of climate variations that are beyond the control of humans.

The dissent took a curious turn in Australia in 2008, with much prominence being given to assertions that the warming trend had ended over the last decade. This is a question that is amenable to statistical analysis, and we asked econometricians with expertise in analysis of time series to examine it. Their response—that the temperatures recorded in most of the last decade lie above the confidence level produced by any model that does not allow for a warming trend—is reported in Chapter 4 (Box 4.1).

Ongoing rise in global carbon emissions and the lazy audience

The Global Carbon Project just released their annual report (’Carbon Budget 2007‘), which makes for rather depressing reading, at least if you were hoping for a turn-around any time soon in global carbon emissions. The media release associated with the report is packed with good information, and so I’ll reproduce it at the end of this blog post. There have also been some news reports on this in the Australian and international media in which I am quoted, such as here, here and here.

My comments on the report, made to AusSMC, are as follows:

The carbon emissions growth story coming out of the latest Global Carbon Project analyses isn’t getting any brighter. At the average rate of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere over the last few years, we’ll reach a concentration of 450 parts per million by about the year 2040. And that’s an optimistic outlook under a business-as-usual economic scenario, if carbon ‘sinks’ in the ocean miraculously cease their decline in effectiveness, and industrial emissions growth somehow stagnates at the current output. A more realistic projection, accounting for further decline in carbon sinks and ramping up of industrial activity, suggests 2030 is a plausible timeline. But whatever the specific date, 450ppm CO2 commits us to >2 degrees C global warming and all the disastrous consequences this sets in train.

Of particular concern is that emissions from deforestation (mostly the burning of rain forest) in our nearest tropical neighbour region, Southeast Asia, continue to skyrocket. Not only is this damaging to this area’s rich biodiversity (because habitat is degraded and fragmented), but it also has a huge impact on the region’s carbon budget. Yet Southeast Asia, like Australia is particularly susceptible to the impacts of climate change from sea level rise and changes in rainfall patterns. Emissions from Southeast Asian forest loss now exceed those of Latin America or Africa – truly the global ‘hotspot’ of CO2 from deforestation. Australia’s regional role in abatement has never been clearer.

Each year that Australia’s industrial emissions and Southeast Asia’s forestry emissions continues to grow, our chances of avoiding the worst consequences of climate change diminish. Are we willing to continue to act like a lazy audience in a movie theatre, watching passively as a disaster film plays out in slow motion, in which we are the real-life actors? Who is going to ask the projectionist to turn off the reel before we get to the disturbing climax and the end credits start to roll?

This report is timely in the sense that it is a good lead in to another blog post I plan to make within the next few days, which will try to clarify the confusion around whether we are currently at atmospheric concentrations of 455 or 380 ppm CO2-equivalent. The answer is very much that… it depends…

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Carbon Budget 2007 Key Facts

(I also suggest you grab the PDF of their PowerPoint presentation, which has some excellent visuals)

[ppm = parts per million, 1 Pg = petagram (1 billion or 1000 x million tons), C = carbon (multiply by 3.6 to get mass in terms of CO2)].

Atmospheric CO2 growth
Annual mean growth rate of atmospheric CO2 was 2.2 ppm per year in 2007 (up from 1.8 ppm in 2006), and above the 2.0 ppm average for the period 2000-2007. The average annual mean growth rate for the previous 20 years was about 1.5 ppm per year. This increase brought the atmospheric CO2 concentration to 383 ppm in 2007, 37% above the concentration at the start of the industrial revolution (about 280 ppm in 1750).  The present concentration is the highest during the last 650,000 years and probably during the last 20 million years.

Emissions from land use change
Land use change was responsible for estimated net emissions of 1.5 PgC per year to the atmosphere. This is largely the difference between CO2 emissions from deforestation and CO2 uptake by reforestation. Emissions for 2006 and 2007 were extrapolated from the previous 25-year trend of 1.5 PgC per year. Land use change emissions come almost exclusively from deforestation in tropical countries with an estimated 41% from South and Central America, 43% from South and Southeast Asia, and 17% from Africa. An estimated 160 PgC were emitted to the atmosphere from land use change during the period 1850-2007.

Emissions from fossil fuel and cement
Emissions increased from 6.2 PgC per year in 1990 to 8.5 PgC in 2007, a 38% increase from the Kyoto reference year 1990. The growth rate of emissions was 3.5% per year for the period of 2000-2007, an almost four fold increase from 0.9% per year in 1990-1999. The actual emissions growth rate for 2000-2007 exceeded the highest forecast growth rates for the decade 2000-2010 in the emissions scenarios of the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change, Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (IPCC-SRES). This makes current trends in emissions higher than the worst case IPCC-SRES scenario. Fossil fuel and cement emissions released approximately 348 PgC to the atmosphere from 1850 to 2007.

Regional fossil fuel emissions
The biggest increase in emissions has taken place in developing countries, largely in China and India, while developed countries have been growing slowly. The largest regional shift was that China passed the U.S. in 2006 to become the largest CO2 emitter, and India will soon overtake Russia to become the third largest emitter. Currently, more than half of the global emissions come from less developed countries. From a historical perspective, developing countries with 80% of the world’s population still account for only 20% of the cumulative emissions since 1751; the poorest countries in the world, with 800 million people, have contributed less than 1% of these cumulative emissions.

Carbon intensity of the economy
After decades of improvements, the carbon intensity of the global economy, the carbon emitted per unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), was stalled during the period 2003-2005. This change was largely caused by China’s rapidly growing share in economic output and carbon emissions. Since 2005 China’s energy intensity (which underpins carbon intensity) has decreased (improved) by 1.2% in 2006 and 3.7% in 2007 compared to 2005 levels (according to the National Energy Administration in China).

CO2 removal by natural sinks
Natural land and ocean CO2 sinks have removed 54% (or 4.8 PgC per year) of all CO2 emitted from human activities during the period 2000-2007. The size of the natural sinks has grown in proportion to increasing atmospheric CO2. However, the efficiency of these sinks in removing CO2 has decreased by 5% over the last 50 years, and will continue to do so in the future. That is, 50 years ago, for every ton of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere, natural sinks removed 600 kg. Currently, the sinks are removing only 550 kg for every ton of CO2 emitted, and this amount is falling.

Natural Ocean CO2 sinks
The global oceanic CO2 sink removed 25% of all CO2 emissions for the period 2000-2007, equivalent to an average of 2.3 PgC per year. The size of the CO2 sink in 2007 was similar to that in the previous year but lower by 0.1 PgC compared to its expected increase from atmospheric CO2 growth. This was due to the presence of a La Nina event in the equatorial Pacific. The Southern Ocean CO2 sink was higher in 2007 compared to 2006, consistent with the relatively weak winds and the low Southern Annular Mode (a circumpolar pressure oscillation between Antarctica and southern mid-latitudes). An analysis of the long term trend of the ocean sink shows a slower growth than expected of the CO2 sink over the last 20 years.

Natural Land CO2 sinks
Terrestrial CO2 sinks removed 29% of all anthropogenic emissions for the period 2000-2007, equivalent to an average of 2.6 PgC per year. Terrestrial ecosystems removed 2.9 PgC in 2007, down from 3.6 Pg in 2006, largely showing the high year-to-year variability of the sink. An analysis of the long term trend of the terrestrial sink shows a growing size of the CO2 sink over the last 50 years.

Conclusions. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have been growing about four times faster since 2000 than during the previous decade, and despite efforts to curb emissions in a number of countries which are signatories of the Kyoto Protocol. Emissions from the combustion of fossil fuel and land use change reached the mark of 10 billion tones of carbon in 2007. Natural CO2 sinks are growing, but more slowly than atmospheric CO2, which has been growing at 2 ppm per year since 2000. This is 33% faster than during the previous 20 years. All of these changes characterize a carbon cycle that is generating stronger climate forcing and sooner than expected.

Target atmospheric CO2 levels, not vague emissions reductions

Some climate scientists choose not to talk specifically about emissions reductions. Dr James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University is one of them. Prof John Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research is another. Instead they refer to a level of atmospheric CO2 (plus other greenhouse gases that together constitute a total forcing) that would be required to re-establish a ’safe’ climate.

But surely targeting a safe level of CO2 is basically the same thing as aiming for an emissions cut of X% of some baseline year in Y years (e.g. 80% global reduction in emissions compared to 1990 levels by 2050)? Well, sort of, but not really. Both approaches certainly aim for a reduction in human-caused climate forcing, as the figure to the right indicates. Yet the difference between the two strategies is subtle but important.

To once again use an archery analogy (yes, I like these), aiming for a target CO2 concentration is like fixing your sights directly on the bullseye. That gold circle is what you want your arrow to hit, so you shoot for it. There’s a chance that you’ll miss, of course, but you use your past shooting experience, your training, and some good old ‘gut feeling’ to estimate where to aim – and are prepared to adjust your shooting hand up or down as the wind changes.

Alternatively, aiming for a given level of emissions reduction is like estimating the distance to the target butt, knowing the draw weight of the bow, the shaft stiffness of the arrow, and so on, and then using some ballistics theory to calculate the angle of launch you require in order for the arrow trajectory to rise and descend to the target according to the appropriate mathematical parabola. You don’t look at the target when you shoot, and have no real chance to adjust your aim should the wind direction or speed change.

Spot the difference? One is an explicit aim, the other is implicit. That difference might matter, it might not.

There is an article in the Guardian today which explains Schellnhuber’s position in some detail. To quote:

Roll back time to safeguard climate, expert warns

[A return to pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide urged as the only way to prevent the worst impacts of global warming]

Scientists may have to turn back time and clean the atmosphere of all man-made carbon dioxide to prevent the worst impacts of global warming, one of Europe’s most senior climate scientists has warned.

Professor John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, told the Guardian that only a return to pre-industrial levels of CO2 would be enough to guarantee a safe future for the planet. He said that current political targets to slow the growth in emissions and stabilise carbon levels were insufficient, and that ways may have to be found to actively remove CO2 from the air.

Schellnhuber said: “We have to start pondering that it might not be enough to stabilise carbon levels. We should not rule out that it might be necessary to bring them down again.”

Carbon levels have fluctuated over the last few hundred thousand years, but have rarely gone much beyond 280 parts per million (ppm), which is commonly referred to as the pre-industrial concentration. Over the last few centuries, human emissions of greenhouse gases have forced that concentration up as high as 387ppm, and it is rising at more than 2ppm each year.

World governments are currently trying to agree a deal that would restrict emissions and stabilise carbon levels at 450ppm, in an effort to limit global temperatures to 2C warmer than pre-industrial times.

Schellnhuber, who has advised the German government and European Commission on climate, said: “It is a compromise between ambition and feasibility. A rise of 2C could avoid some of the big environmental disasters, but it is still only a compromise.”

He said even a small increase in temperature could trigger one of several climatic tipping points, such as methane released from melting permafrost, and bring much more severe global warming.

“It is a very sweeping argument, but nobody can say for sure that 330ppm is safe,” he said. “Perhaps it will not matter whether we have 270ppm or 320ppm, but operating well outside the [historic] realm of carbon dioxide concentrations is risky as long as we have not fully understood the relevant feedback mechanisms.”

To read the full article, click here.

A recent study in the final throes of peer review, by Hansen and 9 co-authors, undertakes a detailed analysis of past climate responses to greenhouse gas forcing to show that the safe ‘target CO2′ to aim at is between 300 and 350 ppm CO2. Now given that we are already at ~387ppm in 2008 and rising at 2ppm per year, it’s clear on this basis that we’ve already overshot. All logic says that it’s time to nock another arrow to the bowstring and shoot again at the target – as quickly as possible – and be prepared to shoot again if we miss.

But instead, we’ve turned our back on the archery range and are running in the opposite direction…

What if the sun got stuck?

“We’re heading into a new [little] ice age!”. This meme
is a favourite of the denialosphere, I suppose because it is considered
by them to be the ultimate counter to global warming. An inactive sun
is fingered as the potential culprit in this alternative-universe prognostication hypothesis. But just how likely is such solar-driven cooling? What if the sun really did shut off its 11-year sunspot cycle for some reason, and move into a new extended (multi-decadal) period of low activity like was observed during the Maunder Minimum
- would this be sufficient to offset the warming induced by an
increased build-up of long-lived greenhouse gases from recent human
industrial output and land use change?

The basic answer (”no, an inactive sun will not cause an ice age“) is actually remarkably easy to demonstrate. Jim Hansen did this recently in his occasional blog. This ‘trip report’ (printable
PDF) covers a wide range of topics – why coal is the climate lynchpin,
what industrial nations are (not) doing, what palaeoclimate tells us
about climate sensitivity, and the prospects for fourth-generation
nuclear power – and is worth reading for all of these gems. But given
the prevalance with which the ice age meme appears in non-greenhouse theorist Op-Eds these days, I’ll reproduce his section on solar forcing here in full:

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Figure
4. Seasonal-mean global and low-latitude surface temperature, based on
an update of the analysis of Hansen et al. (J. Geophys. Res. 106,
23947, 2001).

Temperature and Solar Data (extract from Hansen 2008: Trip Report, p11-14)

Figure 4 updates global and low latitude temperature at seasonal
resolution. Red rectangles, blue semi-circles and green triangles at
the bottom of the plot show the timing of El Ninos, La Ninas and large
volcanic eruptions. Oscillation from El Ninos to La Ninas is the main
cause of the big fluctuations of low latitude temperature. These
fluctuations are also apparent, albeit muted, in the global mean
temperature change.

The most recent few seasons (Figure 4) have been cool relative to
the previous five years, on average ~0.25°C cooler. If one takes the
recent peak (early 2007) and recent low point (early 2008), the change
is about -0.5°C. This drop is the source of recent contrarian
assertions that all global warming of the past century has been lost
and the world is now headed into an ice age. Figure 4 reveals that it
is silly to use a peak and valley as an indication of the trend. Peak
to valley drops and rises of 0.3-0.5°C in seasonal mean temperature
anomalies are common (Figure 4), usually associated with ENSO (El Nino
Southern Oscillation) fluctuations.

The recent La Nina was strong, but tropical temperatures in mid-2008
have returned nearly to ENSO neutral conditions and global temperature
is heading back to the high level of the past few years. The low
temperatures in the first half of 2008 lead us to estimate that the
mean 2008 global temperature will be perhaps in the range about 10th to
15th warmest year in our record.

A majority of the critical e-mails asserted emphatically that global
temperature change is due mainly to solar changes, not human-made
effects. They also state or imply that, because of ongoing solar
changes, the Earth is entering a long-term cooling period (following
the warming of the past 30 years, which they presume to be due to
increases of solar energy). One e-mail virtually shouted: “THE SUN IS
GOING OUT!”

Figure
5. Comparison of the sun at solar minimum (right side, July 2008) and
at solar maximum (left, August 2002) as seen in extreme ultraviolet
light from SOHO (Solar Heliospheric Observatory). Active regions during
solar maximum are producing a number of solar storms. The sun in 2008
is quiet, with no active regions, part of the normal 11-year solar
cycle.

Images from SOHO (Figure 5) might be the basis for that conclusion.
The sun is inactive at the present, at a minimum of the normal ~11 year
solar cycle. The solar cycle has a measureable effect on the amount of
solar energy received by Earth (Figure 6). The amplitude of solar cycle
variations is about 1 W/m2 at the Earth’s distance from the sun, a bit
less than 0.1% of the ~1365 W/m2 of energy passing through an area
oriented perpendicular to the Earth-sun direction.

The Earth absorbs ~235 W/m2, of solar energy, averaged over the
Earth’s surface. So climate forcing due to change from solar minimum to
solar maximum is about ¼ W/m2. If equilibrium climate sensitivity is
3°C for doubled CO2 (¾°C per W/m2), the expected equilibrium response
to this solar forcing is ~0.2°C. However, because of the ocean’s
thermal inertia less than half of the equilibrium response would be
expected for a cyclic forcing with ~11 year period. Thus the expected
global-mean transient response to the solar cycle is less than or
approximately 0.1°C.

Is there some way that the small variations of energy coming from
the sun could be amplified, so that the ‘solar exponents’ are actually
correct and the sun is driving our climate changes? There are indirect
effects of solar variability, e.g., solar radiation varies most at
ultraviolet wavelengths that affect ozone. Indeed, empirical data on
ozone change with the solar cycle and climate model studies indicate
that induced ozone changes amplify the direct solar forcing (J.
Geophys. Res. 102, 6831, 1997; ibid 106, 77193, 2001), but the
amplification is by a factor of one-third or less.

Other mechanisms to amplify the solar forcing have been
hypothesized, such as induced changes of atmospheric condensation
nuclei and thus changes of cloud cover. However, if such mechanisms
were effective, then an 11-year signal should appear in temperature
observations (Figure 4). In fact a very weak solar signal in global
temperature has been found by many investigators, but only of the
magnitude (~0.1°C or less) expected due to the direct solar forcing. So
the sun is only a minor contributor to the temperature fluctuations in
Figure 4.

The possibility remains that the sun could be an important cause of
climate change on longer time scales. (The source of nuclear energy at
the sun’s core is essentially continuous, in fact increasing at a rate
of about 1% in 100 million years, which is a negligible rate of change
for our purposes. But the photosphere, the upper layers of the sun, can
slightly impede or speed the emission of energy as the strength of
magnetic fields fluctuates.) Perhaps the normal solar cycle evidenced
in Figure 6 is about to be interrupted. Sunspots seemed to nearly
disappear for a long period in the 17th century, which may have
contributed (along with volcanic eruptions) to the “little ice age”.
And the current solar minimum is already longer than the previous two
(Figure 6). Perhaps the e-mailer who shouted “THE SUN IS GOING OUT!” is
correct!

Figure
6. Solar irradiance from composite of several satellite-measured time
series based on Frohlich & Lean (1998;
http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant)

Fortunately, we can compare quantitatively the climate forcing due
to the sun (if its irradiance does not recover from its present
minimum) and the forcing due to human-made greenhouse gases. Solar
irradiance seems to be slightly less at its current minimum than in
earlier minima (Figure 6), but, at most, the decrease from the mean
irradiance of recent decades is ~0.1% yielding a climate forcing of
about -0.2 W/m2. The current rate of atmospheric CO2 increase is ~2
ppm/year, yielding an annual increase of climate forcing of about +0.03
W/m2 per year.

Thus if the sun remains “out”, i.e., stuck for a long period in the
current solar minimum, it can offset only about 7 years of CO2
increase. The human-made greenhouse gas climate forcing is now
relentlessly, monotonically, increasing at a rate that overwhelms
variability of natural climate forcings. Unforced variability of global
temperature is great, as shown in Figure 4, but the global temperature
trend on decadal and longer time scales is now determined by the larger
human-made climate forcing. Speculation that we may have entered a
solar-driven long-term cooling trend must be dismissed as a pipe-dream.

—————————

Another good read which explains the solar cycle is this news feature from NASA,
which shows that there is nothing particularly remarkable about the
current solar cycle, and so there is no reasonable expectation that we
are heading into a new Maunder Minimum anyway.

Paying the climate change piper

Guest Post by Tony Kevin.

Tony Kevin served as an Australian diplomat in Moscow (1969–71), UN New York (1973-76), and as Australian Ambassador in Poland (1991–1994). This opinion piece was originally published in Eureka Street.

Ross Garnaut’s important public statement was largely overwhelmed by the welter of federal and state political news. It was a world away from his impassioned, ethically challenging, first public report on 4 July.

Quietly, government has narrowed the goalposts back to a safe world of can-do politics, of short-term realism at the expense of long-term responsibility. Unnerved by the hostile reaction of powerful stakeholders to the July report, it now seeks a conventional balance between the demands of a worried population, and a decision-making elite uniting corporate and trade unions in high-emitting industries and sympathisers in parliament.

Garnaut’s sombre, low-key second report recommends a narrow range of possibilities for greenhouse gas emissions limitations by Australia to 2020, likely to have minimal impacts on the Australian economy. It won cautious decision-makers’ approval. It is politically achievable, despite disappointed green lobbies.

Unlike epic debates over industry protectionism in the 1970s–1980s, we do not have a visionary Keating and Button driving necessary change. I see no comparable passion in Rudd or Wong.

Now, Australia’s decision-making elite believe deep down — if indeed they think it through, and I suspect many are instinctive climate change denialists at bottom — that Australia is rich enough to insulate itself against climate change.

They live on higher ground in the green coastal zone. Food and utility costs are a small part of their budgets. If it gets too hot, they will turn up the air conditioning.

For these status-quo people, the issues that matter are macroeconomic — dividends, high salaries, superanuation earnings. They want to keep the economy we have now. The desertification of the Murray-Darling and the dying of the Barrier Reef do not affect them directly, and they lack imagination to conceive of polar icemelt sufficient in their lifetimes to inundate fertile populated coastal areas of Australia. Apres nous, le deluge.

Garnaut says Australia should establish its emissions reduction framework within an agreed global target to stabilise atmospheric carbon at between 450 and 550 parts per million (ppm): the present level is 387 ppm.

Australia should advocate international agreement to stabilise atmospheric carbon at 450ppm, but one set at 550 ppm is more likely initially. A world of 550 ppm atmospheric carbon is, according to informed scientific consensus, a horror scenario in which global warming already underway would cause irreversible polar icemelt and major inundations of global human settlements.

Garnaut defends his lowered expectations. There is no point in Australia doing more now if the world does not follow. A country of high immigration, Australia needs special latitude. I doubt this argument will win us credit at the next global climate meeting in Copenhagen.

Lost is Garnaut’s firm July advocacy that developed countries must set the example even if major developing countries China and India do not immediately follow. We are back in the realist world where nobody moves much unless everybody moves.

Garnaut defends his proposed ‘first stage’ aim of stabilising atmospheric carbon at 550 ppm: it was his ‘reluctant conclusion that a more ambitious international agreement is not possible at this time … My aim is to nurture the slender chance that humanity can get its act together.’

His sadness bespeaks a man overcome by the selfish myopia of political realism. Scientific truth and a sense of society’s accountability to future generations have been overwhelmed. (For example consider Paul Kelly’s triumphant view on Sunday’s ABC Insiders that the debate in Australia is now over, and that anyone seeking an Australian emissions reduction target higher than 5 pet cent or 10 per cent lives in a fantasy world.)

I believe Garnaut now modestly seeks two things: getting an Australian carbon trading system into operation and accustoming industry to it, while waiting for mounting scientific evidence of destructive climate change to penetrate the resistance of decision-makers. As Gwynne Dyer recently observed, drowning polar bears and disappearing polar icecaps will not suffice:

‘The regrettable reality is there will not be a critical mass of people willing to act decisively on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the developed countries where most of the cuts must be made until some really big natural disaster kills a lot of people in one of those countries.’

Nor, I might add, will the slow death of the Murray-Darling Basin and the human settlements depending on its water supply. I’ll be criticised for saying this, but we may need such a disaster as a Class 5 tropical cyclone slamming into Brisbane to jolt us into decisive action. Meanwhile, our decision-makers live on in a bland limbo-land of short-term complacency. They do not even react when the chairman of the Coleambally Irrigation Co operative suggests selling off this whole Riverina town and its water rights for $3.5 billion, so the people can decently relocate!

I’m strongly reminded of the cautionary fable of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. A greedy town council, faced with terrible threat, tries to buy a solution on the cheap, refusing to pay a fair price for what needs to be done. It is not until they lose their children that they realise, too late, the cost of their greed and stupidity.

I pray that Garnaut’s second report, by keeping the carbon trading ball in play and keeping Australia however imperfectly in the international debate, will protect the Australian people from the short-sighted ‘realism’ of our decision-making classes.

Reflections on the Garnaut Review emissions trajectories

The Australian report on the economic impact of global warming, known as the Garnaut Climate Change Review, has just released its supplementary draft report on targets and trajectories. I’ve provided some commentary for the Australian Science Media Centre. These are only initial thoughts based on a preliminary read, and I will to develop these ideally more fully at the bravenewclimate blog over the coming months, but this is hot and ready for the press:

Garnaut’s Targets and Trajectories report describes a fateful choice – do we act now with every means at our disposal, or do we permit business-as-usual carbon emissions to so disrupt the global climate system that the very fabric of our civilisation is ripped to shreds within the lifetime of people alive today?

Yet there is stark irony underlying the modelling which supports the emissions targets by 2020 and 2050. It is this: the Garnaut review team readily admits that even the 450ppm CO2 target – almost implausibly difficult given the current explosive growth of emissions in the developing world – will lead to a crisis situation with untenable levels of global warming.

So, given the gross inadequacy of even the best case scenario, why bother with this approach at all?

My personal view is that arguing about whether we should be aiming for a 10%, 20% or even 90% emissions reduction target by 2020 is pointless and circular. The target is irrelevant without knowing how we hit it.

It’s a bit like setting up a shooting target on a firing range at 300m and being told by the marshal to hit the bullseye. You ask: ‘Okay, but what am I shooting with, a rifle or a bow and arrow?’ The marshal says: ‘That’s irrelevant, just focus on hitting the bullseye’. But of course the weapon is highly relevant – it is almost impossible to hit a target at 300m with a bow and arrow.

So the key to unlock this ‘diabolical problem’ is to focus on the energy technologies, as urgently as humanly possible. Design a capital works programme, lead by a forward-looking government, to start laying out solar thermal, wave, wind, geothermal and microalgal biodiesel liquid fuels on a massive scale. Define a REAL 2020 goal, such as to have 80% of Australia’s power met by renewables by 2020, instead of some abstract target that is reliant on an unenforceable multilateral global agreement which will never eventuate.

Clean Energy Council submit on Govt Green Paper

On Sept 12th the Clean Energy Council responded to the Federal Government’s Green Paper.

The Clean Energy Council (the Council) is Australia’s national clean energy industry peak body, formed in 2007 through the merger of the Australian Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) and the Australian Wind Energy Industry Association (Auswind). With a membership of several hundred businesses, the Council covers a quarter of Australia’s total electricity production including gas, wind, hydro and bioenergy; and the spectrum of business in the low-emission energy and energy efficiency sectors including solar PV, solar hot water, biomass, geothermal and cogeneration. Clean Energy Council members are committed to tackling climate change, while developing financially viable businesses operating and a robust clean energy industry.

An accompanying letter from Clean Energy Council CEO, Rosemary Warnock, summarises:

“Measures are needed to complement the CPRS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme), to ensure that the abatement is achieved quickly, safely, and at least cost with minimal disruption to the economy and quality of life of everyday Australians. In order to achieve the Government’s goals it will be necessary to rapidly deploy the additional mechanisms promised by the Government including:
• significant additional Research and Development (R&D) funding of key areas including:

• renewable energy technologies;
• energy efficiency innovations; and
• other low emission energy options (including clean coal and gas technologies).

• expansion of the Renewable Energy Target to achieve 20% renewable energy production by 2020;
• nationally consistent gross metered feed-in tariffs for solar PV and other small scale renewable energy generators;
• a national energy efficiency target; and
• further regulations, demonstrations, funding and incentives to overcome non-price based barriers to energy efficiency and embedded generation.

“The Clean Energy Industry is excited about the developments that will lead to a low carbon future and is poised to lead the development of Australia’s huge clean energy potential. The Council has already identified renewable energy investments totalling over 14,000MW (around 40,000GWh pa) already under consideration and at least 53,000GWh pa of easily identified energy efficiency savings by 2030.
To realise the full potential of renewable energy and energy efficiency within Australia and to meet substantial emissions reduction goals, it is crucial a suite of complementary measures are introduced quickly and that the full environmental costs of carbon are reflected in retail energy prices.
Only a CPRS price cap set well above the expected maximum permit price will allow this transition to occur. Setting a price cap that is not sufficiently above the expected carbon price, as implied by a soft-start approach, will encourage non-compliance, risk the environmental integrity of the scheme and see no change to business-as-usual. The Council recommends that if the price cap is not set well above the maximum expected permit price then a make-good provision must apply to maintain the CPRS’s objective of reducing domestic greenhouse gas emissions.
The Council supports five key principles to guide the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme market design. These are:
• efficiency;
• effectiveness;
• equity;
• simplicity; and
• predictability.
Finally, the Australian public has demonstrated a desire to go beyond the Government imposed measures on the abatement of greenhouse gasses through voluntary mechanisms such as GreenPower and Greenhouse Friendly™ and individual, business and Government moves towards carbon neutrality. The CPRS should be designed to allow additional voluntary action to drive Australia’s emissions to even lower levels. The final design needs to
include provisions for such voluntary additional action to reduce the number of permits available to the market.”

Click here to read the Clean Energy Council’s full report

Reliance on coal could scuttle us

THE Rudd Government’s green paper on a “carbon pollution reduction scheme”, and the methods to achieve this reduction, have some strongly innovative elements. But there is a continued emphasis on investment in offsets and abatement from large-scale carbon capture projects to significantly extend the life of our coal industry. This poses three huge risks to the Australian economy. Are we sure that we want our children to shoulder them?

The first big risk is that carbon capture and storage isn’t proven. Experts believe it may take until 2015 or later to prove the technology, if then. The second big risk is that it may not prove cost-effective. Evidence is accumulating that carbon capture and storage may prove uneconomic because renewables such as solar, geothermal power and wind are falling in price very rapidly.

But the biggest argument of all for caution – yet hardly ever spoken – is that there simply may not be enough coal to go around. This could lead to global shortages, price spikes, economic disruption and a rush to other energy sources – meaning billions of dollars of stranded investments.

Incredibly for an energy resource that the world depends on, global coal statistics are shockingly poor. Take China. Since 1992, the nation has mined roughly 20% of its reported reserves. Yet, China hasn’t changed its reported reserve figures since that year. The United States and Australia have reasonably credible reserves, but other nations with large reported coal assets are Russia, India and South Africa. How reliable are their figures?

Put bluntly, neither the world nor Australia should commit to carbon capture and storage until there is a better global accounting of the underlying energy resource. This matters. The world, led by China, is rapidly consuming coal. China is now a net importer of coal despite being the world’s largest coal producer. What would happen to all those new Chinese coal-fired power stations (now opening at the rate of one a week) if domestic reserves turn out to be inadequate to meet demand?

One outcome could be a scramble for coal resources at any price. That, in turn, could mean a queue of coal ships off Newcastle in NSW of 100 ships, or maybe 200 instead of 50 to 60 now. It could mean blackouts and brown-outs in China with huge implications for global supply chains. If an energy crunch induced by a coal shortage happened in China, there could be a global contractionary contagion effect, similar to that which the world is seeing as a result of American subprime mortgages, except potentially much bigger.

One response to such a risk would be to bet on the “Lucky Country” scenario, in which Australia would be blissfully unaffected by this international energy turmoil, because it has large coal supplies relative to domestic consumption.

That may be true. But Australia operates in a global market. If bad global coal reserve figures lead to inadequate future capacity planning, which then leads to global shortages, resultant price spikes may bring short-term windfall gains in Australia’s terms of trade. But it will do so at the risk of worsening global economic short-term pain and would probably drive coal prices so high that other countries – unable to source adequate coal at any price – turn to quick-to-construct renewable energy resources such as wind, wave, solar and geothermal power. And we are left behind.

In the end, the global economy will adapt. The question is how fast, how smartly, and with how much pain. It would be far smarter to spend the next few years expanding Australia’s real, proven and commercially operating renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and geothermal power.

This is a key element that the Government and Ross Garnaut must be thinking harder about driving forward. The time to think about carbon capture and storage will be when the underlying reserve is proven and credible and certain to be around for long enough to justify the investment. That certainty isn’t there right now.

Barry Brook is Sir Hubert Wilkins professor of climate change and director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide.