Letter to climatologist James E. Hansen after his visit to Houston

I loved the “Temperature of Science” piece.  I can only imagine the patience with which you all are making the data public as well as doing your regular job of making the data!  So sorry about the police escort here in Houston, but better safe than sorry.  I nearly came to blows in the street when debating climate change and future use of fossil fuels with downtown coworkers.

How we all wish it were as easy to get started on an alternative path as it would have been even twenty years ago...begun forty years back, cakewalk might seem an operative term.  Unfortunately the natural positive climate feedbacks have been kicking in all the while we have waited for our better angels.  You know the drill - Less ice cover, more melting tundra, eventually the recovery of normal solar output, reduction of aerosols aloft due to cleaner technology in China or various economic disasters, saturation of carbon sinks, increased natural burnings of forests (including cities) and coal seams, potential explosions of a few methane hydrate deposits:  the list could go on.  The effect is a diminishing return on human climate protection effort of any kind, or conversely a multiplier of human climate protection effort that will be required over time, even as formidable adaptive expenses mount. 

It would be interesting if Dr. Hansen et. al. could hazard a projection of about when natural feedbacks can be expected to marginalize human efforts to mitigate climate change.  I don’t know if “marginalize” means the point when actual emissions equalize between all anthropogenic and all natural (feedback) sources, or the crossing of a tipping point that locks in massive natural increases in GHG, or even when the trajectory of likely total anthropogenic and natural emissions makes crossing a tipping point unavoidable. I remember reading somewhere that natural releases of CO2e recently amounted to 2 billion tonnes per year, which would have been close to 5% of the total anthropogenic GHG emissions in 2005. 

Many of us have taken literally the idea that only a decadal window remained open to achieve serious reversal of the trajectory of anthropogenic GHG emissions.  Recall Michael Jackson's mention in rehearsal captured for the motion picture "This Is It" of the fact "we have four years left," if I remember the dialog during his beautiful “Save the World” song properly.  Yet the picture of an immediate abrupt turnaround into a drastic linear reduction of GHG emissions painted at both Kyoto and Copenhagen seems on its face patently impossible.

Figure 1 Proposed GHG Reductions (secondary sources available in original spreadsheet, and please forgive the obvious amateurishness of my work)

A fairly straight line logarithmic projection of the global trend in GHG emissions established 1995-2005 which I think may be reasonable based on expected human population growth puts us around 60 billion tonnes anthropogenic GHG emissions per year by mid-century, half again higher (negative 50% on the above graphic) than in 1990 if we allow ourselves to burn that much fossil fuel.  How will natural (positive feedback) emissions compare during this period?  Doubtless they will increase.  But when will natural emissions then outweigh whatever humans can or will do going forward?  That point surely is coming.  It seems to me, if identifiable, to form the natural endpoint of human mitigation efforts, and marks a full move into utter survival mode for civilization and many millions of human beings.

Perhaps better than any U-N temperature rise by any date certain, certainly better than any Chinese energy intensity measure, the day that natural feedback GHG emissions probabilistically trump human emissions could serve as a meaningful endpoint against which to measure mitigation and adaptation alternatives and options, especially such human processes as urban planning and reconstruction, refugee resettlement and assimilation rates, typical warfare blooms and technology adoption rates.  Call it a “futility point” or an “end of game” or a “new age begins here”, it is this invisible windmill against which we tilt!  Is there any way to know approximately when that point may be reached in the real world?

Thanks so much for all you guys do!!!!

Paul M. Suckow,

Senior Planner

Harris County

Community Services Department

8410 Lantern Point

Houston, TX  77054

T - 713.578.2018

F - 713.578.2990

C - 832-231-8373

paul.suckow@csd.hctx.net

Discouraged to see climate change denial still with us.

Have you graphed how the failed COP15 "Copenhagen plan" would have looked versus the failed Kyoto Protocol, accounting for proposed reductions against recent increases and current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gasses (GHG)? I have, and especially in light of poor counties' criticisms that neither plan went far enough to give the world a 50/50 chance of avoiding catastrophic climate changes, I must regretfully express sincere doubts that any such turnaround is possible at all constrained by a growing population within our free market global economy as it exists today.

When graphed by year, both reduction curves roughly resemble a checkmark based in year 1990 with a curved lower limb reaching into negative territory until bouncing at about -20% between 2008 and 2012, and then sharply inclining toward 2050 at about 70% or 80% reduction from the 1990 starting point.
80% reduction by 2050 is what older climate change science said would be necessary to achieve a 50% chance of avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with earth climate systems. Very few of us would board an elevator or a space shuttle with a 50% chance of catastrophic failure. The 80% figure was based on early assumptions with looser climate sensitivity that totalled 450 ppm, up from preindustrial 270 ppm CO2e in the air, as being a sufficient margain of safety for civilization. Actual levels already measure 390 ppm in places today. The more recent estimates would require deeper cuts more quickly, for the atmosphere already overran the apparent limit for climate stability at around 350 ppm CO2 way back in 1988, and we know of no near or mid term mechanism for pulling all that carbon "back into the bottle." The Kyoto Protocol, if extended through 2050, and the more recent Copenhagen plan appear so similar in trajectory as to be nearly indistinguishable from each other.
In either case the departure from business as usual at the bottom of the checkmark is just too stark and too acutely linear to be believed by anyone with a University of Michigan knowledge of politics, economics, or human sciences. I'll be happy to send my MS Excel spreadsheet for review or criticism to anyone with an email address.

The time for debating what to do about the problem of increasing anthropogenic carbon-equivalent emissions would now appear to have ended effectively around 1988. And contrary to much opinion, the hard questions were seriously voiced around mid-century: In 1959 none other than the real-life Dr. Strangelove, celebrated American nuclear scientist Edward Teller directly addressed the assembled oil industry elite with convincing explanation and concern about "global heating" as one reason to move beyond fossil fuels at latest before 1990. Dr. Teller was documented as one of the four speakers invited to the 100th anniversary of Colonel Drake's 1859 petroleum well, a symposium grandly titled "Energy and Man" (copyright 1960 by the Trustees of Columbia University, City of New York), and I'll also be happy to provide a link to anyone wishing to view it for personal and educational purposes.

The hard political and economic answers, partly due to the unwelcome obstruction of denialists, are still forthcoming.

Copenhagen commitment and comment

The actual transcript of President Obama's speech about the most important issue of our lifetime is under the link above.  The President's prepared text and my brief commentary follows in end notes:

A day that so far lives in infamy

Another December Seventh is upon us, but this is not just any other Dec. 7th.

Surprise attack on the main American fleet at Hawaii resulted from broken faith and secret negotiations.  Believing the Russians untrustworthy, President Teddy Roosevelt at the turn of the past century became convinced that Japan should rule the Asian continent just as the United States had taken the American continents as its own.  However, this conviction was not the result of open negotiations and broad global consensus, but a behind-closed-doors promise that could not be kept.  After all, no one else knew about Theodore Roosevelt’s promise of Asian hegemony to Japan, and many powers including the USA and Britain (then still of some account) continued imperially to vie for control of North Asia, until Japan called the Anglo-American’s bluff in their horrible attack on the base of the Pacific Fleet.  Along these lines, for me, the 19th Century Monroe Doctrine puts the subsequent ambitions of Hitler for European hegemony and Hirohito for Asian hegemony into a starkly different context, and subjects America’s recent sole claim to superpower statecraft to harsh questioning.

The climate change negotiations (COP15) opened in Copenhagen today, December 7, 2009. 

Will this day ever stand for desperation and treachery, or will transparent, clear negotiations begun this day, mindful of a zero-tolerant nature for climate stability beyond 350 ppm CO2, slow our descent into endless climate violence, human chaos and governmental strain?  The world’s approaches to mitigation of and adaptation to climate change are about to be settled.  Beginning this December 7, the remaining trajectory of all human history become clear.  COP15 is that important.

President Obama’s input to the process was planned to play to his strengths, a speechmaking opportunity to charge the hill of high moral ground on the issue of anthropogenic climate change.  Obama’s appearance in Copenhagen has beneficially been delayed to coincide with the more meaningful nitty-gritty of negotiations, rather than today’s perhaps overzealous kickoff session.  Last Friday, largely as a result of grass-roots efforts by American climate activists, the President quietly promoted webcast interaction between his cabinet-level advisors and the concerned youth of our nation.  I’d like to think it was direct feedback from that national meeting on climate change that led to the announcement this morning that his speech at Copenhagen will be postponed for a week to coincide with the actual negotiations.  Friday’s online meeting clearly highlighted Washington’s continuing accommodation of topical debate, which in the case of climate action may have already cost us the world.  However, thinking of that infamous December 7th reminds us how important public and transparent dealings become in the course of history.   Even if we have to wade through the heartfelt pleadings of 200 sovereign states and hear the objections of powerful staid interests and those who cannot accept that the day has finally come, our world must now turn this day which has lived in infamy into a rough ploughshare that hews straight across undoubtedly rocky terrain toward as much climate stability as is yet possible.   Let’s get to it.