August 2008 Archives

Gunns of Australia's controversial plans to build a huge pulp mill to make disposable consumer items largely from clearfelling ancients forests is close to failing, let us together make a final decisive push to warn off potential investors and environmental approvals and achieve its permanent withdrawal

TAKE ACTION! Plans by Australian woodchip giant Gunns Ltd., to continue clearcutting of Tasmania's ancient forests to feed a massive new paper pulp mill [search], appear to be near final collapse [ark]. Gunns is scrambling to raise the cash needed to build the AU$2 billion pulp mill and to meet a looming federal government environmental approval deadline. Chief executive of Leighton Holdings, the proposed builder of the mill, has even stated the project is dead. Join us in supporting massive local protests, and calling upon Australia's Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett to not extend the environmental approval process, and for the several European pulp interests to steer clear of funding the project or risk years of protest and conflict. Let's join together with local protests and ensure the Gunns pulp mill proposal is permanently withdrawn from consideration. TAKE ACTION!

The interesting and potentially life-defining question of "what if global warming is non-linear" [ark] is worthy of consideration. That is, if we continue to increase carbon emissions, global warming may increase exponentially -- ever resulting in more change per unit of pollution -- and causing crises much more rapidly. Such abrupt climate change is a rapid change in climate -- perhaps in a decade or less -- over a widespread area to which human and natural systems have difficulty adapting. In other words, death and destruction result.

The question of how quickly climate will change is of great interest to the Climate Change Blog as we are committed to emphasizing the potential for worst case climate change and other ecosystem collapse scenarios. There are many ways that this can happen, which we feel are as or more likely than other scenarios. Abrupt climate change can result from numerous positive feedbacks such as permafrost melt, Arctic albedo change and rainforest dieback; and/or in conjunction with land degradation, water scarcity, ocean decline and persistent toxics. These positive feedbacks and synergies with other elements of global change continue to be given short thrift, and this is worrying.

The Arctic's alarmingly rapid loss of summer sea ice [search] continues. The fact the ice has not totally melted this year is no consolation, as last year summer sea ice shrank to a record low, and total loss of sea ice -- which was predicted to occur in over sixty years only a few years ago -- now seems assured by 2030 and may even be imminent. Nine polar bears were spotted swimming in open ocean [ark] off Alaska's northwest coast, up to 65 miles offshore, indicating their difficulty in finding pack ice and food. In Northern Greenland, until now thought immune from global warming, the massive Petermann glacier [search] shows a growing giant crack [ark] -- 7 miles long and half a mile wide -- and an 11-square-mile chunk of ice is breaking off.

I am not sure how many more global ecological emergencies, indicative of abrupt and deadly climate change [search], I can stomach being disregarded with assurances that "scientists don't like to attribute single events to global warming, but... events fit a pattern." The patterns being repeated over and over again in front of our eyes include collapse of major global ecosystems [search] and societal myopic denial that the end of being is nigh. The hell emerging in the Arctic is the same force ravaging Australia with drought, California with wildfires and China with toxic pollution. We are witnessing the inevitable consequences of nearly seven billion humans consuming like there is no tomorrow ensuring there soon will not be one. Only profound revolutionary personal and social transformation can save us now.

We learned today that birds in France are unable to migrate [ark] fast enough to keep up with their habitat. And the Arctic tundra is being invaded by trees [ark]. Humans too are animals with specific heat, moisture and food requirements. Where will we run as we lose our habitat?

Climate change -- and the host of attendant ecological crises associated with too many humans consuming too many resources at the expense of life giving ecosystems -- will together not be some minor irritant. Climate-mediated global ecological collapse [search] will be gut-wrenching biological murder as conditions where you live become unable to sustain life.

Recently climate skeptics [search] and sympathetic press have claimed there has been no global warming for a decade. New Scientist does a marvelous job of debunking [ark] this selective misreading of climate data by lay skeptics. Using a powerful yet simple analogy, they illustrate that surface temperatures are only one measure of global heat increases.

Surface temperatures only reflect what is happening to the very thin layer where air meets the land and sea. But long-term how much heat is gained or lost by the entire planet, called the "top of the atmosphere" radiation budget, is what matters. Claims that global warming is non-existent is further confounded by the fact surface temperatures in the Arctic, the place on Earth where the greatest warming is occurring, is not measured by a permanent base. And 1998 was unusually warm due to El Nino conditions.

A major challenge in production of solar and other renewable energies [search] with the optimal environmental benefit is manufacture of equipment without using fossil fuels. Indeed, there is some question whether there exists enough material and energy to construct a global renewable energy infrastructure. Scientific American reports on a new method [ark] to produce solar photovoltaics without petroleum [search] using cotton and castor beans. It is noted most cotton has been genetically modified and depends upon petroleum based fertilizers. If solar cells and wind turbines are created using large amounts of polluting energy, the entire life cycle carbon benefits of these "renewable energies" is significantly reduced. It is important that the full lifetime costs of renewable energy infrastructure are getting more attention -- other examples will include recycling of components and allowing for modular design.

Bob Watson [search], former IPCC chief and leading climate scientist, has advised the UK government to start preparing [ark] for massive 4°C in warming. While not backing away from urgent policies to limit warming to 2°C warming, the sheer momentum of warming trends makes flood protection, agriculture and coastal erosion adaptations necessary. Chances for abrupt, run-away warming [search] have traditionally been given short-thrift in politically compromised international climate negotiations. Yet, even with a comprehensive global carbon deal, it is suggested there is at least a 50% probability that temperatures would exceed 2°C and a 20% probability they would exceed 3.5°C. And if trends in failed climate policy continue, and pollution goes unchecked for decades and even centuries, we can expect much worse.

Every day of delay by governments and individuals in reducing greenhouse gas emissions makes it increasingly likely the Earth will experience rapid, scorching heat and "global weirding" [search] where climate patterns chaotically break down. By definition predictions are guesses based upon the best available information. I would not be surprised if given continued surging global population and gross consumption, the atmosphere and other key ecosystems collapse making the Earth incapable of supporting advanced life. Or that the current climate and global change ecological science is significantly wrong in still unknown manners. Yet what choice do we have but to act upon the best knowledge currently available while seeking more, and what outcome other than catastrophe can result from destruction of ecological systems which we know are a requirement for all life?

For the eighth time the U.S. Republican Party -- the party of big oil and climate change -- has held future green energy hostage [ark] in the Senate to an insistence upon drilling every last bit of oil in every last wildernesses' intact ecosystems first. Given an American addiction to cheap fossil fuels necessary to power climate changing conspicuous consumption [ark] as the meaning of life, the public appears willing to fall lemming like into line with the myth that the "energy crisis" can be solved by drilling. Paying the full cost of energy including upon the environment is no crisis.

This comes as MIT researchers appear to have overcome a major technological limitation to economical solar energy storage [ark], perhaps removing the last major barrier to solar energy charged fuel cells [search] handling base energy loads. Green energy advances are being made constantly, and solar and wind energy is ready for wholesale introduction, but faces market obstacles that can be offset by renewing renewable energy tax credits similar to those enjoyed by traditional fuels. It is reprehensible that realistic opportunities to produce green energy locally while saving our shared atmosphere are being treated as no more than a political football. One can only wish a special place in the coming climate hell for these bad people.