TURNING THE CLIMATE CLOCK BACK 3.3 MILLION YEARS

"BY 2025, CO2 LEVELS WILL BE HIGHER THAN THEY'VE BEEN FOR THE LAST 3.3 MILLION YEARS" [Nature Scientific Reports July 10, 2020]

Let's see. What was going on 3.3 million years ago?

--Humans like us were just a gleam in evolution's eye. The most promising potential ancestor around then was Australopithecus, an apelike creature living in southern Africa who may have been the first to use shaped stones to smash open bones for their marrow. 

--Earth wouldn't enter the current geologic epoch, the Holocene, for another 3,288,000 years. It was then in the middle Pliocene. 

--North and South America hadn't yet collided and connected. 

--North America sported two elephant-like species, hyenas, small, three-toed ancestors of modern horses, bone-crushing dogs, giant bears and three species of huge, saber-toothed cats. 

Smilodon populator--one of North America's

Pliocene saber-toothed cats

Credit: Charles Knight/American Museum of Natural History

--Humans wouldn't set foot on the continent for another 3.27 million years.

--Crucially, from our point of view, atmospheric CO2 levels were comparable to today's (somewhere between 381 and 427 parts per million), yet global temperatures were 2 to 3 degrees C (3.6 to 5.4 degrees F) higher than they are now, and sea levels were 25 meters (82 feet) higher. 

Equally crucially, because of those nearly equal CO2 levels, the period tells us what our world may look like all too soon.  "We studied this particular interval in unprecedented detail because it provides great contextual information for our current climate state," says Elwyn de la Vega, researcher at the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science, in the UK, and lead author of the Nature Scientific Reports study.

The Southampton research team was able to pin down those ancient CO2 levels by studying the fossilized shells of foraminifera--millimeter-sized sea creatures protected by carbon-rich shells. The ratios of boron isotopes in the shells correlate with atmospheric CO2 levels at the time the shells formed.

Clearly, we're not going to see a return of saber-toothed cats or giant bears. But we, or our children or grandchildren, may well have to deal with a Pliocene climate--much hotter, lacking most of the Northern Hemisphere's ice cover, and with rapidly rising sea levels.

Why aren't we already living in mid-Pliocene conditions? Simply because there hasn't been time for the full impact of the greenhouse gases we've already pumped into the atmosphere to warm the oceans and melt most of Earth's ice. Geochemist Gavin Foster, also at the University of Southampton explains:

... it takes a while for Earth’s climate to fully equilibrate (catch up) to higher CO2 levels and, because of human emissions, CO2 levels are still climbing. Our results give us an idea of what is likely in store once the system has reached equilibrium.

To get a sense of what things will be like when Earth has reached that Pliocene-like equilibrium, picture your favorite coastal city under 80 feet of water. According to recent research, coastal flooding could displace hundreds of millions of people and cost the global economy trillions of dollars by the end of this century if we don't get a grip on climate change now.

Keeling curve--atmospheric CO2 1960-2020

Credit: Scripps Research Insitute

Right now we're at 413 parts per million of atmospheric CO2, and rising, and the curve is getting steeper. We're running as fast as we can towards a very inhospitable past.

--REA

ANIMATED GRAPH OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2 OVER THE LAST 800000 YEARS AND INTO THE FUTURE

The animated graph linked to below is well worth watching--several times, slowing it down at the end:

https://mobile.twitter.com/OceansClimateCU/status/1237069561364545537?s=20&utm_source=NSDAY&utm_campaign=19fa2fe1ef-NSDAY_110320&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1254aaab7a-19fa2fe1ef-373908631

Credit for the above goes to Kris Karnauskas, who leads the Oceans and Climate Lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

If we follow the steepest two curves, it really will be the end.

This graph credit: Wikimedia Commons

REA

EARTH'S VITAL SIGNS: THREE VERY SCARY GRAPHS

For anyone who is not being paid or propagandized to deny global heating, these three graphs say everything that needs to be said:

 Atmospheric CO2 over the last 800,000 years

Credit: NASA

Atmospheric CO2 over the last 60 years

Note that the rate of increase is speeding up!

Credit: ESRL

 Credit: NASA GISS

By the way, today--2/12/20--the Mauna Loa CO2 observatory clocked the highest ever concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere--416.08 parts per million (ppm). Scientists tell us that the safe level is 350 ppm or less.

And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that Earth just experienced the hottest January on record.

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REA

A BIT OF GOOD NEWS FOR THANKSGIVING

If you've been following the escalating climate crisis, you know that decarbonization of the global economy is a crucial part of achieving a sustainable world. The good news is that the U.S. is moving in the right direction. The latest assessment of how much carbon was injected into the atmosphere from US electricity generation shows that the carbon intensity--pounds of carbon dioxide per MW-hour--dropped 9 percent since this time last year. Total generation fell by 4 percent in the same period. Even better, that's a 40 percent reduction in carbon intensity of power generation in just the last 15 years. 

Carbon emissions per MW-hour in U.S. 2001-2019

Credit: Power Sector Carbon Index, 

Scott Institute for Energy Innovation 

"The U.S. electricity sector is continuing to get cleaner, and both carbon intensity and overall emissions are dropping," said Costa Samaras, assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and co-director of Carnegie Mellon's Power Sector Carbon Index.

The researchers say that this encouraging and continuing trend is due to the decline of coal-powered electricity generation, the increase in power from natural gas, and from renewables such as wind and solar. "We're in the middle of an energy transition right now, and the biggest part of that story in the U.S. is how swiftly coal has been declining over the past decade," said Samaras. "The decline of coal can be attributed to the rise of natural gas, the continued improvement of renewables, and energy efficiency efforts."

There's lots of room for improvement, however. Wind, solar and hydropower still account for less than 20 percent of U.S. electricity, just about equal to nuclear, the other zero-emissions source of power.

The goal, the experts point out, is to continue to produce abundant power while emitting less and less carbon, and also to grow the use of zero- or low-emission electricity in transportation, buildings and industry.

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REA

ORWELL STRIKES AGAIN, THIS TIME AT THE US DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

In his prescient novel, 1984, George Orwell introduced the world to Newspeak, a minimized and simplified revision of English designed to make nuanced, reasoned, independent thought impossible.

Inspired by our current president and his climate-change denial, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)--the agency whose mission is to guide and enhance American agriculture, conserve and improve the rural environment, and help feed America and the world--has decided to outlaw phrases such as "climate change," "climate change adaptation," "reduce greenhouse gases," and "sequester carbon." Newspeak is alive and well at the USDA.

Flooding in New Orleans--yet again

Credit: www.goodfreephotos.com

Those now-forbidden terms are to be replaced in official communication by what Orwell would call "goodthink"--terms approved by the all-powerful Party. "Climate change" becomes "weather extremes" or "intense weather events," "climate change adaptation" becomes "resilience to weather extremes," while "reduce greenhouse gases" and "sequester carbon" become "build soil organic matter" or the mind-numbing "increase nutrient use efficiency."

Wildfire, Black Forest, Colorado, June 12, 2013
Credit: DoD--photo by Master Sgt. Christopher DeWitt, U.S. Air Force

In Oldspeak--plain old English--it's at least possible to think and speak clearly about the global problem of climate change and ways to minimize or adapt to it. But, in Newspeak, in Trump's Department of Agriculture, that's now a thoughtcrime, or, better yet, simply unthinkable.

The flash drought that's currently decimating the high plains' wheat crop is simply an isolated weather extreme. It can't be linked to the raging wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, flooding in New Orleans, the fact that Virginia's Tangier Island is washing away or that Death Valley just experienced the hottest month ever measured anywhere on Earth. The concept that ties these "weather extremes" together no longer exists, at least at the USDA.

You can see this in action at the EPA, where scientists explaining how climate change has added to the destructive power of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey are being accused of politicizing the storm. In other words, understanding is politicizing. Remaining ignorant is the right thing to do.

 Credit: Stephen Bettany

One of the three guiding slogans of the Party in 1984 was "Ignorance is Strength." If that's true, Trump's USDA is certainly flexing its muscles.

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You can read environmentalist Bill McKibben's comments  on this issue here.

You can read about an outbreak of Trump-mandated Newspeak at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) here, or at this URL.Newly banned words and phrases include "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based," and "science-based." I, for one, start to feel pretty vulnerable when concepts like "evidence-based" and "science-based" are banned. What will replace them? The Republican party line? Trump's latest whim?

Part of the CDC's "Pledge to the American People" is to "Base all public health decisions on the highest quality scientific data that is derived openly and objectively." They should amend that to read, "Base all public health decisions on the current political directives from the President and his appointees, derived behind closed doors to advance a partisan agenda."

And you can see how far this fascist penchant for censoring words and ideas can go in this recent news item about the censorship of words, phrases and internet search terms in China. Just to put the cork in the bottle, they've banned references to George Orwell, 1984 and Animal Farm.

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HOW TO DRILL AND BURN OUR WAY BACK TO THE TRIASSIC

I know that not many of us--and certainly not the President or our representatives in Congress--are thinking past the next vote or at most the next election.

Still, for those who care about the next few generations, here's a heads-up from a trio of earth scientists in the U.S. and the U.K., writing in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.

They warn that if we burn all available fossil fuel reserves within the next few hundred years, the combination of high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and more intense radiation from the sun will turn up the heat to levels not seen on Earth since the Triassic period, 220 million years ago, or perhaps ever.

In case you don't remember the details, the Triassic featured one giant continent called Pangea. The poles were ice-free. It was hot and steamy near the coasts, baking desert inland, and Earth was dominated by the reptilian ancestors of dinosaurs, birds, mammals, and, way in the distance future, us. An interesting place for a quick visit, but not where most of us would want to live.

Postosuchus, a Triassic archosaur

Credit: Dallas Krentzel, Museum of Texas Tech University

Steamy as it was with atmospheric CO2 around 2000 parts per million, it wasn't as hot as it will be by 2250 AD if we've boosted CO2 to that same level. The reason is that the sun is gradually getting hotter. The increase in solar radiation over the course of the past 220 million years means that the combined impact--a dense greenhouse atmosphere and a hotter sun--would push Earth--and anyone still around then--into an unprecedented and unpredictable climate zone.

"Such a scenario," the authors write, "risks subjecting the Earth to a climate forcing that has no apparent geological precedent, for at least the last 420 Myrs [million years]."

So, if the first line of our business-as-usual mantra continues to be "drill, baby, drill," the next line is even more likely to be "burn, baby, burn."

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WE'VE ALREADY HIT THE 1.5 DEGREE C GLOBAL WARMING CEILING THAT WE'VE AGREED NEVER TO GO BEHOND

Meeting in Paris last year, representatives from 195 nations agreed to work together to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) above the temperature that prevailed before the industrial revolution. Scientists and policy members agreed that global warming beyond that level creates unacceptable levels of risk to the environment and civilization--much like revving your car's engine into the red zone. The Paris Agreement (Accord de Paris) went into effect in November of 2016.

Negotiators celebrate Paris Agreement 4/22/16

Credit: UN

In what should serve as a three-alarm wake-up-call, researchers at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, a prestigious independent intergovernmental organization, reports that Earth hit that 1.5 degree C ceiling for the first time in February of 2016 (see section 10 in the above link).

Global Temperatures 1880 to Present

Credit: NASA GISS

The researchers are quick to note that the early months of 2016 were exceptionally warm, following a strong El Niño, and that Earth has cooled approximately 0.3 degrees C (0.5 degrees F) since then. However, with the levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere continuing to rise, it's only a matter of time before we don't just bump against the 1.5 degree ceiling, but crash through it.

And not much time. The Berlin-based Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) calculates that under the most optimistic assumptions, we have only 4 years before we lock in more than 1.5 degrees C of warming, and under the most pessimistic assumptions, just one year.

Atmosperic CO2 levels over the last 500,000 years/Credit NASA

"It is salutary that the world touched the 1.5 degree C level less that twenty years after touching the 1 degree C level in the record-breaking year of 1998," says Adrian Simmons, the study's lead author. 

"Salutary" is a polite, understated, British way of saying that if we value Earth's health and our own, we'd better pay attention and take action.

(Note 1/10/17: I hate to be pessimistic, but it's clear from Trump's own statements and his appointees that the US government will be leading a climate-change charge, but in exactly the wrong direction--away from wind and other renewable sources of energy, and back towards coal and other greenhouse-gas belching technologies.)

OBIT FOR AUSTRALIA'S GREAT BARRIER REEF

The Great Barrier Reef is considered Earth's largest living structure. It has survived and grown for 25 million years, providing shelter for thousands of species and uncountable billions of organisms. In recent years rising ocean temperatures and ocean acidification--both driven by the CO2 that we are pouring into the atmosphere--have caused repeated bleaching events, in which the coral-building organisms expel the photosynthesizing algae that feed them. The longer the water around them remains too warm, the more likely the reef-building corals are to starve and die.

It now appears that with more heating and acidification locked in due to the CO2 we've already pumped into the atmosphere, and with CO2 emissions still soaring, the 25-million-year-old Great Barrier Reef is doomed.

Environmental (and food) writer Rowan Jacobsen has written the reef's obituary. It's a must read for anyone who cares about the future of life on Earth--including our own.

Bleached coral, Keppel Islands, Great Barrier Reef: Credit Wikipedia

As many of you may know, Jacobsen's obituary for the Great Barrier Reef has gone viral. It has raised the ire of many scientists, who point out that the reef--while suffering the worst bleaching event in history and clearly threatened--is not in fact dead, and potentially can be saved. I think we can safely assume that Jacobsen knows all that, and is thrilled that his premature obit may in fact galvanize people to face up to the life-or-death climatic challenges it, and we, face.

CO2 RISING--THE SOUNDTRACK

We're currently pumping 2.4 million pounds of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere per second!

Earth's atmosphere is pretty big, but human activity is measurably changing it.

The longest run of measurements of atmospheric CO2 was started by American scientist Charles Keeling in 1958, from an observatory atop Hawaii's Mauna Loa.

The Keeling Curve--Atmospheric CO2 1958-2015

Credit: By Delorme - Own work. Data from Dr. Pieter Tans, NOAA/ESRL and Dr. Ralph Keeling, Scripps Institution of Oceanography., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40636957

Keeling was the first to document irrefutably that atmospheric CO2 was rising, we now know due to the burning of fossil fuels and other human enterprises such as agriculture and deforestation.

That record of the concentration of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere is known as the Keeling Curve. It shows clear yearly cycles as vegetation absorbs and releases CO2 with the changing seasons.

But it also shows the dramatic rise in CO2 levels from 315 parts per million (ppm) in 1958 to today's levels of more than 400 ppm.

Two University of Washington atmospheric scientists, doctoral student Judy Twedt and Prof. Dargan Frierson, decided to dramatize what we're doing to the atmosphere by transforming the Keeling Curve into music.

You can hear and see the resulting YouTube video here. It speaks for itself.

To view a striking visualization of rising CO2 levels, check out item 3 at this URL.

Ignorance is even more blissful if you're sure you know

We at the institute want to draw attention to a notable victory in the battle for the hearts and minds of Americans.

A just-released Gallup poll finds that 96 percent of Americans believe that they know "something" or "a great deal" about global warming and climate change.

Contrast that 96 percent figure with the results of a Yale University study last year that found that 92 percent of Americans would receive a C, D or F on what they actually know about climate change. Fifty-two percent would flat-out fail.

For example, 55 percent don't know that carbon dioxide traps heat being radiated from the Earth's surface, 43 percent don't know what the greenhouse effect refers to, and 75 percent have never heard of ocean acidification or coral bleaching.

It's a great example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive defect that blinds people to their own deficiencies.

From a PR point of view, it's an accomplishment to convince people of your message--yet after all, that's what they get paid to do. But it's a work of art to convince people of a lie and also make them think they really know the truth.

Too bad there's no Oscar, Emmy or Nobel Prize for the dedicated people who have pulled this off!

Nobel Medal          Credit Chris Campbell/Creative Commons

High fives all around!

Human activities emit far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that volcanoes do


A new study in Eos, published by the American Geophysical Union, shows that human activities currently pump 135 times more CO2 into Earth's atmosphere than volcanoes do in an average year. In fact, our yearly production of CO2 equals that of one or two supereruptions like the one that created Yellowstone two million years ago, every year.You can read the details on Suite101.


Robert Adler
for the institute

December's Deadly Forest Fire in Israel Confirms Climate Change Predictions in 2000 Report

Smoke from Mt. Carmel fire, from Haifa, Israel

A raging forest fire early this month killed 42 people, destroyed hundreds of homes, and consumed much of the forest that carpeted Mt. Carmel, near Haifa, Israel. The deadly fire was a predictable--and clearly predicted--effect of human caused global warming and climate change, according to the author of an official climate change report that was submitted to the U.N. in the year 2000.

The 2000 report said that rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases would create overall hotter and drier conditions around the Mediterranean, with delayed winter rains and a shorter rainy season, but also cause more extreme climate events such as heat waves, heavy downpours and floods. Combined, the predicted changes would significantly increase the risk of severe fires, like the one of December, 2010, threatening the survival of many forests in the Mediterranean region.

More about the 2000 report and the current comments of its co-author, Guy Pe'er at Ben Gurion University, at this Suite101 page.

In my opinion, it's long past time for climate change deniers worldwide to shut up. But even for those of us who have been following the climate change research and "debate" for years, it's time to stop piously saying that we need to act now to protect our children and grandchildren. We need to act now to protect ourselves.

Robert Adler
for the institute

avandia

How much atmospheric CO2 can we live with?

That’s the question James Hansen, director of the NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies, addressed on October 7 at the Joint Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America, in Houston, Texas.

His short answer is less than 350 parts per million—the level Hansen believes will preserve Earth’s ice sheets, mountain glaciers, and head off a devastating sea-level rise.

The fact that we have now surged past 387 parts per million of CO2, with no effective control in sight, is alarming. 

A state of emergency

“I believe we’ve reached a state of emergency,” Hansen said, “although it’s not easy to see. But if you look at the science, it becomes clearer and clearer.”

It’s enough of an emergency to force him to rethink nuclear power, an issue on which he’s previously been “an agnostic.” Renewable energy alone in sufficient quantities, he said, would be too costly.

 

Hansen walked the audience through the science—ice cores that reveal CO2 levels over the past 800,000 years, microscopic shells from under the sea floor that track ocean bottom temperature and salinity for the past 35,000,000 years, reconstructions of past glaciations and sea levels, the current rates at which the Earth is warming and its ice sheets disintegrating, and computer models of the climate system.

The bottom line is that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere drives Earth’s climate, and that we are driving CO2 off the charts.

“All we have to do is graph the greenhouse gas forcing over the past several hundred thousand years,” says Hansen. “When we choose the right scale, it’s a hand and glove fit. Humans are now completely in charge of the composition of the atmosphere. CO2 and methane are far outside the range they’ve been in for millions of years.”

We’re in charge but out of control

Did you catch that—“Humans are now completely in charge of the composition of the atmosphere.” In charge, but out of control, like airplane without a pilot.

We’re not even close to heading in the right direction. Even countries that signed on to the Kyoto Accord have increased their carbon emissions. There’s more CO2 in the atmosphere than at any time in the last 650,000 years, and the rate at which it’s increasing is itself increasing.

“The actual actions of countries worldwide are inconsistent with stopping the CO2 rise,” Hansen said. “Energy departments around the world are assuming we can burn all the remaining fossil fuel. That will double or triple atmospheric CO2.”

What that means, he said, is that unless global carbon emissions are cut drastically, and soon, we’re headed for “. . . a completely different planet than the one that’s existed in the past. Obviously, it would be an ice-free planet, warmer than it’s been in any of the recent interglacials.” 

Among other impacts Hansen foresees is the disappearance of glaciers in the Himalayas, Rockies, and Andes within the next few decades, threatening the water and food supplies of hundreds of millions of people. 

Hmm. Where would they go, and what kinds of upheavals would that kind of mass migration cause?

Irreversible tipping points

Hansen also warned about climatic and environmental tipping points, “where the dynamics of the system take over and you don’t need any more forcing and there’s the potential to lose control.”

One example is the disintegration of the ice sheets. “It takes thousands of years to build up an ice sheet from snowfall,” he said. “If we cause the West Antarctic ice sheet to disintegrate, that’s essentially irreversible.”

“I think that the metric for what is dangerous should be headed by these irreversible effects, such as the extermination of species,” he said. “We know that when there have been warmings of several degrees in the past, more than half of the species on Earth at that time went extinct.”

Remarkably, Hansen remains optimistic about our ability to push CO2 levels back below 350 parts per million and turn this looming catastrophe around. The keys are technology and public policy.

One necessary ingredient, he says, is to cut back immediately on the burning of coal as well as other fossil fuels. “We could say that we’ll only use coal at power plants where we will capture and sequester it,” he said.

Hansen also wants to see carbon emissions taxed. “The public has to understand that we have to put a price, a tax, on carbon emissions,” he said. “That has to be given back, so the person who reduces his carbon emissions more than average will make money.”

Hansen is now re-examining nuclear power. In principle, he says, fourth generation reactors can burn nuclear fuel far more efficiently than in the past, while generating much less--and less dangerous--waste.

“I think we should be doing the research on nuclear power and having a trial of fourth generation technology, because that may very well be necessary,” he said.

Crimes against humanity and nature

From Hansen’s point of view, business-as-usual versus re-stabilizing the climate is an intergenerational conflict with enormous moral and legal implications.

“It’s an inequity and an injustice for the young and the unborn,” he said. I think it raises ethical and legal questions about liability. There has been intentional misinformation of the public, which makes the companies that engage in that and fund the contrarians to misinform the public ethically and I think legally liable for what I call crimes against humanity and nature.”

Hansen does not believe that the free market alone can or will solve this problem. “The profit motive seems to be so strong that I don’t think we can rely on their conscience to change things,” he said. “We have to rely on public policy.”

Hansen has consistently and courageously advocated on behalf of a stable climate and a viable future for our children. We need to make sure our leaders know he's not alone, and that this may be our last chance to act.