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STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Reaching a substantive global agreement in Copenhagen, at the U.N.-sponsored climate-change conference this December, on reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a necessary step, but it is not sufficient. In order to avoid catastrophic tipping points, we need to effectively manage key earth system processes, and we need to do it now.
In the run-up to the climate negotiations in Copenhagen, it is easy to get the impression that as long as we reduce emissions of greenhouse gases we will be safe from dangerous, or even disastrous, outcomes for humanity.
But mounting scientific evidence strongly suggests that is very unlikely.
For decades, we have lived in the predominant belief that environmental change occurs in an incremental, linear and predictable fashion.
But growing evidence indicates that this may be the exception not the rule, and that long periods of gradual change can eventually push us past thresholds that result in abrupt and potentially disastrous changes.
In fact, we can no longer exclude the possibility that we are crossing hard-wired thresholds at the planetary level, threatening the self-regulating capacity of the planet to remain in the stable and favorable state in which human civilizations and societies have developed during the past 10,000 years.
Compared with the 200,000 years or so that we humans have roamed around on planet Earth, this Holocene state has been extraordinarily stable from an environmental perspective, providing humanity with the precondition for human development as we know it, from the rise of agriculture to the modern industrial societies of today.
In a recent article presented in the scientific journal Nature, my colleagues and I make a first attempt to identify and quantify the Earth System processes and potential biophysical thresholds that, if crossed, could generate unacceptable environmental change for humanity, such as irreversible loss of inland glaciers, a transition of rainforests to savannas, massive destruction of tropical coral reefs, desertification of current agricultural land, and the shift in the Indian and African monsoon systems.
For each of the processes we identified, we also propose planetary boundaries that should be respected in order to reduce the risk of crossing these thresholds and moving into an undesired state for humanity on planet Earth.
We identified nine critical Earth System processes including climate change, depletion of stratospheric ozone, land use change, freshwater use, rate of biological diversity loss, ocean acidification, amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to the biosphere and oceans, air pollution from aerosol loading and chemical pollution.
Our scientific proposition, based on this new concept, is that as long as we stay within the boundaries for these nine, we give ourselves a long-term safe operating space for human development on Earth. We thereby stand a good chance of keeping planet Earth within the stable Holocene state for, at least, another couple of thousand years, providing ample opportunities to support long-term social and economic development in the world.
Climate change is, not surprisingly, one of the nine proposed boundary processes, and here we build on the latest climate science, which indicates that we may have to stabilize the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million (ppm) in order to avoid non-linear and potentially irreversible environmental change.
We are already at approximately 390 ppm, i.e., we are already in a danger zone.
But when it comes to climate change, our research shows that focusing on emissions reduction without putting in place mechanisms to maintain the integrity of current "carbon sinks" in oceans and on land will prevent us from making any significant gains in greenhouse-gas reductions.
This is because to date, nature has been doing us a huge favor.
Land and oceans have been providing a free ecosystem service, in the form of sinks that store carbon dioxide. As much as 50 percent of today's carbon dioxide emissions are absorbed by terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
But the capacity of this ecosystem service may now be decreasing due to temperature increases, acidification of oceans and land use changes.
And if we continue to warm and acidify the oceans and cut down forests, we risk not only collapsing ecosystems followed by increased human starvation, but also reducing or even reversing this free service nature provides us with. If the planet turns from friend to foe, i.e., from sink to source, when eroding the resilience of the biosphere, we will enter a potentially disastrous domain of runaway climate change. To avoid such outcomes will require radical action not only on emission reductions but also on active stewardship of the world's ecosystems.
The boundaries are in other words tightly coupled; transgressing the boundaries for nitrogen, land, water, oceans, ozone and biodiversity will all threaten the ability to stay within the safe space of the climate system. An example of this is that freshwater determines the amount of biomass growth, i.e., the amount of carbon captured from the atmosphere in trees and plants, which in turn determines the amount of organic matter, i.e., carbon, in the worlds soils. The world's soils hold some 1,500 billion tons of carbon, compared to the annual global emissions of some 9 billion tons of carbon.
Whether or not humanity will be able to stabilize climate within safe levels depends upon our ability to reduce emissions and constructively manage a number of critical natural systems on the planet.
This profoundly changes the agenda on solving the problem of anthropogenic climate change, as it indicates the need for an Earth Systems approach to climate mitigation.
This is a rather depressing conclusion given the worrying state of the current climate negotiations, where the rift continues to widen between what science shows is needed to solve the human-induced climate problem and what is considered politically possible to do.
But if the best available science is telling us that the Earth System is in serious jeopardy of tipping into an unfavorable state for human development, should today's political realities dictate how we define success?
Unfortunately, in this drama there are no second chances. Nature does not do bailouts.
This is why reaching a substantive global agreement in Copenhagen on reducing greenhouse -gas emissions is necessary, but not sufficient for steering clear of catastrophic, irreversible tipping points in the Earth System.
To reduce the risk of tipping into the unknown, we need a new global deal for sustainable development.
Copenhagen should be viewed as a first necessary step toward this new deal.
COPYRIGHT 2009 GLOBAL VIEWPOINT NETWORK/TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES
Jessy Tolkan: Five Things Obama Should Say in Friday's MIT Climate Change Speech
This is a critical time for President Obama to weigh in on climate change, as the coming months will have a lasting impact on our policy, security and quality of life going forward.
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Americans Want Strong Leadership and Action on Climate Change, Poll Finds
A recent Harris poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans want the President to initiate strong action on climate change.
The Harris Poll has a new survey involving climate issue opinions in several different countries. These questions relate to the upcoming Copenhagen meeting.
To the statement: Would pay more taxes to cut green-house gas emissions, the percent of persons answering yes was:
United States: 21%, Great Britain: 16%, Germany: 15%, and France: 15%.
To the statement: Climate change poses a large threat to the world:
United States: 27%, Great Britain: 31%, Germany 23%, and France: 46%.
"Poll finds most would pay to curb climate change"
"Millions of people around the world are willing to make personal sacrifices, including paying higher bills, to help redress climate change, a global survey said on Monday."
"The survey found 83 percent of those questioned believed lifestyle changes would be necessary to cut emissions of climate warming carbon gases."
"The survey, conducted by two polling organisations for the BBC World Service, covered 22,000 people in 21 countries.
"In 14 of the 21 countries from Canada to Australia, 61 percent overall said it would be necessary to increase energy costs to encourage conservation and reduce carbon emissions.
""People around the world recognise that climate change requires that people change their behaviour," said Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes which conducted the poll with GlobeScan.
""And that to provide incentives for those changes there will need to be an increase in the cost of energy that contributes to climate change," he added."
"Scientists say carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport will push global average temperatures up by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century, causing floods, famines and violent storms putting millions at risk."
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Here is the whole October 2009 poll from Harris:
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Why misinform about a poll?
When asked “How big a threat does climate change pose to the world?”
"There is a consensus among Europeans on the harmful impact of climate change on the world. More than 90% of adults across the five largest countries in Europe and a little less in US see climate change as at least some threat to the world. Almost half of Italians and French, around a third of Spaniards and Britons and around 1 in 4 Americans and Germans view climate change as a large threat."
How much of a priority should signing a new treaty be at the climate change conference in Copenhagen?”
At least 3 in 5 Europeans and just over half of Americans believe that signing a new treaty at the climate change conference in Copenhagen should be a top or one of the top priorities.
“How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements? – If there is no agreement in the climate change conference in Copenhagen in December, the world will be in a worse position for dealing with climate change.”
More than half of adults in all 5 European countries believe that if there is no agreement in the climate change conference in Copenhagen in December, the world will be in a worse position for dealing with climate change. In the US the proportion of adults who agree with this is lower (45%).
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The Chamber of Commerce has seen its influence rapidly decline with its anti-science climate change position.
"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is taking on water for advocating a climate change position that even its own members find irresponsi
"That campaign is a central -- unavoidable -- theme in Climate Cover-up, the book that I have recently written with Richard Littlemore. It details four years of research on climate change misinformation and especially on the work of a powerful alliance of lobbyists and industry front groups who have set back the fight against climate change -- and the push for clean energy independence -- by two decades."
"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a leading player from the outset, is finally suffering mainstream exposure, as major companies abandoned ship in protest against the Chamber's climate policy. Apple, Exelon, PNM Resources, PG&E, PSEG, Levi Strauss & Co, and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce have all quit; and Nike stepped down from the Chamber board of directors. All cited embarrassment over Chamber climate policy as the cause."
"They've taken a real hit this year," a prominent Democratic lobbyist told Politico this week. "In the White House and on the Hill, among the people who run things, they are radioactiv
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The interesting question is what caused the steep change in temperature rise, whereby the decade of the 2000s is going to be the hottest decade in the temperature record, much warmer than the decade of the 1990s, which at the time was the hottest decade on record.
There is no compelling evidence that CO2 is forcing climate change in the 21st Century. So why are the government officials meeting in Copenhagen even planning to talk amount brutal measures to reduce CO2 releases? Why don't they meet to discuss doing something useful?
Yes, why don't they discuss future Martian invasions? Everyone knows that that is the real threat!
The tide station data from the Copenhagen harbor indicates that the long term sea level rise is equal to about 2 inches per 100 years. This rate of increase has been reasonably steady over the decades. This rate of increase is also far lower than the most recent predictions from the IPCC.
Isn't the tide station data evidence for incremental, normal change in a major climate related measurement? Isn't this evidence that the earth's climate is not changing in an alarming way?
Also, isn't this data consistent with the observation in the BBC that the earth's temperature hasn't warmed over the past ten years?
The rise of sea levels alone in the last 100 years in Copenhagen and everywhere else has been 7 inches. In the this century, sea level rise is expected to be another three feet. One can not explain sea level rise alone by looking at tidal stations because the land they rest on has risen as the glaciers have retreated. One must do calculations to subtract glacial rebound from sea level rise. Sea-level rise estimates from satellite altimetry since 1992 (about 2.8 mm/yr) exceed those from tide gauges.
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Yes, sea levels have warmed a good deal. According to NOAA,
-The June-August worldwide ocean surface temperature was also the warmest on record at 62.5 degrees F, 1.04 degrees F above the 20th century average of 61.5 degrees F.
-The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the June-August season was 61.2 degrees F, which is the third warmest on record and 1.06 degrees F above the 20th century average of 60.1 degrees F.
The BBC did ask "what happened to the warming?" Only it was a strange article because we are living in the hottest decade in recorded history? My question is what happened to the BBC's fact checking?
http://cli
Agreed. While I agree with you on many levels I'd like to point out that man is a mere pimple on the backside of an elephant. Miltun Malankovich proved that precession was at work in all of the earth's warming and coolings. Precession is little known and is more powerful than all of mankind and its tinkering. We will as a planet warm and cool for many centuries whether we do anything or not. I'm a "tree hugger" and believe trees are the most important thing we can do for this planet and as humans! Trees scrub the air of pollutants and provide oxygen. Stop deforestation! It may not save the planet. But it will slow the warming and cooling. The earth is dying and as humans we can do little or nothing to stop it!
''catastrophic tipping points''..
from diminishing feedbacks?
roflmao
Denmark - the Happiest Place on Earth...
Did you stop and figure out how many humans get to live on your engineered unnatural world at existing technological levels?
Is staying in the holocene natural? Desirable for humanity undoubtably but is it natural to attempt to artificially maintain the climate of our planet in stasis at the most beneficial point for our species survival? No it isn't. Self serving but not natural. Indeed you seem to be arguing we should manipulate the world intentionally for human survival where It's fair to say carbon energy interests did it for profit largely clueless to their artificial impacts on the system.
If we do cross that tipping point I'm pretty sure humanity will survive. probably in france beside a nuclear reactor but we'll survive. And it will end up being an evolutionary boon for whatever species comes after us. And nature will go on.
Johan,
This is the ultimate battle of sovereignty. Are "we" humans sovereign over this earth?? Or is something higher, a sovereign GOD. Because if GOD is sovereign, it does not matter if every person on the planet drives a Hummer and lives in a 20,000sq foot huge carbon consuming mansion. GODs will be done. GOD will decide our fate.
If we believe WE are sovereign, we are like those in the Torah who built a tower to reach GOD.
" At one time, the whole Earth spoke the same language. It so happened that as they moved out of the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled down. They said to one another, "Come, let's make bricks and fire them well." They used brick for stone and tar for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let's build ourselves a city and a tower that reaches Heaven. Let's make ourselves famous so we won't be scattered here and there across the Earth." God came down to look over the city and the tower those people had built. God took one look and said, "One people, one language; why, this is only a first step. No telling what they'll come up with next—they'll stop at nothing!" Gn 11:1-6
This article sounds grand in scope, but doesn't even begin to do anything more than lightly outline some possible issues.
It's been discussed that even if Obama signs this treaty it must be ratified by the Senate before it goes into effect. Well, not necessarily and there's a list of non-Senate ratified treaties. This is another step into the direction of a Global Economy, Global World Government. People, I want you to get out there and read up on this stuff. Find out for yourself.
www.whatsu
As I read this, there's a clear need for a strategy promoting the consumption of greenhouse gasses back out of the atmosphere. Merely sequestering the CO2 will not do the trick, as we could use that oxygen returned to the air. Personally, I'm highly in favor of air.
What we need is a massive investment in both biotechnology and nanotechnology, with the aim of using solar energy at the micro-scale to eat CO2, exude O2 and lay down massive quantities of pure carbon (preferably as graphite) for human use.
Much of this new carbon supply could be used as the ultimate 'clean coal' (e.g., coke) in existing power plants. Some could be used in the growing applications of carbon-composite materials. Innovators will find other uses.
The crucial problem with our use of fossil fuels, especially coal is that the cycle is currently open-ended and so it's disruptive and destructive. if we close the cycle we can heal the earth and make a lot of money in new industries while doing so.
A major benefit of all this: replacing the use of mined coal in power plants. The pollution from that burning comes from the many other elements in the coal, besides carbon. Clean graphite fuel will be free of such pollutants.
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