the Climate Pioneer (est. 2010)

“The UNs climate science body needs stricter checks to prevent damage to the organisations credibility, an independent review has concluded.”

You can count on the fact that the public’s understanding of global warming is, at best, fragile.  The science has often been obfuscated by the aggressive lobby of well-paid climate change deniers who have played on the fact that the methodology for determining how our climate is warming is complicated and messy.  For these reasons, anything that merely captures the headlines about global warming tends to play a disproportionate role in shaping public opinion on the topic – for good or bad. When it comes to climate change, people very rarely get beyond the headlines.

For these reasons, the breaking news regarding the recommendations by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on tightening and improving future IPCC reports, came as a little unsettling.

Take for example this headline from the The Sunday Telegraph of London, which shouts, “IPCC told to stop lobbying and restrict role to explaining climate science.”  The headline appears directly above a somewhat scary looking picture of Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

How is it, the average reader is inclined to ask when encountering such a headline, that we are being asked to believe what the IPCC has to say about global warming on one hand, while on the other the IPCC has obviously strayed away from science into lobbying?

This is a question that could be handled by careful and balanced coverage from a media that was itself focusing more on the climate science behind global warming rather than the cultural wars engulfing it.  But alas, as we have found, the mainstream press has shown little such focus.

The dilemma is that in this age of “factual lies”, when speak first and think later is the order of the day, the headlines that pass in front of your eyes as you sip your coffee and flip on by to the sports or entertainment section, form the central impression that will probably remain with you and affect how you perceive that topic.

So, to get beyond the headline for a moment, what in fact was it that the IPCC did that lead to the IAC recommendations?  It turns out that in the IPCC Report, “Climate Change 2007″, the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, there were several significant and notable errors:

• That the mistaken projection that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035; the date may be more like 2350 (referred to by climate deniers as “Glaciergate”.)
• That 55 per cent of the Netherlands was vulnerable to flooding because it was below sea level; the actual figure is closer to 26%, although half may be subject to flooding from the sea and from rivers, and
• That up to 40 per cent of the Amazonian forests could damaged by global warming; these claims have been backed up by peer reviewed articles, and are contested by climate change skeptics (referred to also as “Amazongate.”)

Few would deny that the recommendations by the IAC to the IPCC appear to address the reasons why these errors occurred in the hopes of preventing them in the future.  We can all agree that errors never lend credibility to anything.  Scientists are always looking for flaws in their research, errors in logic, methodologies or practices that render conclusions either out-of-date, wrong, or obsolete in the face of  new information.  That is what scientists do, and the IAC recommendations are part of that scientific review process. But put in that perspective of the overall Climate Change 2007 document, the recommendations do not fundamentally alter the core scientific conclusions behind the report and behind easily over 99% of all scientists studying the environment today: that global warming is happening, and it is accelerating.

So will these recommendations finally lay to rest this controversy so that the real issues of global warming can be addressed in the forthcoming political season?  Or will they ironically lead to another silly season of climate bashing by the far right? Seth Borenstein, reporting in the Huffington post recently, believes that this may be a turning point:

“Climate change science took a parade of public hits last winter, starting with the release of hacked e-mails from a British climate center. Then there was the failure of a summit in Copenhagen to come up with mandatory greenhouse gas pollution limits, followed by the mistakes discovered in the IPCC report. On top of that, the winter seemed unusually cold in many places, undercutting belief in global warming.

“The mood seems different now. Several outside reports – including those by the British, Dutch and American governments – have upheld the chief scientific finding of the climate panel: that global warming is man-made and incontrovertible. This year, so far, is on target to be the hottest on record worldwide with a number of extreme weather events.”

One can only hope that he is right.  I wouldn’t hold my breath, however, given that we are moving into autumn when,  just as baseball yields to the gridiron here in the U.S, the weather cools and sure as magic, global warming just simply vanishes from view.  Goes away.  Out of sight, out of mind.

Well, doesn’t it? Hey, come on, it’s cooler out now!  And aren’t those snowflakes out my window? Crank up the SUV, let’s head to the mountains.  Those floods and hot weather – they were so yesterday!

Ah yes, there is much work to do.

Read more at BBC News – Stricter controls urged for the UNs climate body.

We’ve all heard about “peak oil” by now – that point at which we reach the maximum rate of oil extraction, after which the amount extracted from the environment decreases.  Less familiar is the notion of “peak coal” – the idea that following the same pattern as with oil, coal reserves may soon be reaching their maximum rates of extraction. The following is a quote from a recent article on the topic of peak coal, written by David Roberts in the blog, Grist:

“The prevailing conventional wisdom is that the U.S. has a “200-year supply” of coal — sometimes jacked up to “400-year” by industry enthusiasts. If thats true, theres obviously an enormous incentive to build the infrastructure to keep using it. Such is the essential argument for carbon capture and sequestration: coal will always be abundant and cheap, so we “have to” keep burning it, so we have to find some way of burying its carbon pollution.But what if were overestimating the amount of coal left? What if its actually going to get scarce and expensive in the near- to mid-term?”

The answer to this rhetorical question posed is quite simple – If we have less coal than once thought was available and coal reserves may be in fact running out, we probably have less to worry about on the global warming front than may have once been thought. Obviously, if the primary culprit in global warming will soon cease to be a major carbon emitter – so the argument goes – this is good news for the environment:

“If there’s much less coal than widely assumed, climate change may not be humanity’s biggest problem. Most of the more dire IPCC climate change scenarios assume endlessly rising energy demand and use, and thus endlessly rising CO2 emissions. But those models tend not to pay heed to the physical world. If some of the new research on coal reserves is accurate, it is mathematically impossible to emit as much as the high-end IPCC scenarios. There just won’t be enough fossil fuels.”

To his credit, Mr. Roberts acknowledges that this argument must be made carefully lest we either play in some strange way into the twisted logic of global warming skeptics, or perhaps slip into a kind of self-induced complacency.

Still, the issue of whether coal has “peaked” in the same manner that oil is or soon will be peaking, is meaningless in the context of any meaningful discussion of how to stop global warming, and here is why:

The reality of global warming is that in order to reduce carbon dioxide equivalent levels from our current 390 parts per million (ppm) to a level that will preserve life as we know it, or 350 parts per million, we must begin phasing out coal use now, not worrying about when it will run out.  This is what responsible leadership would be pushing for if we had such a thing in Congress at this time, but unfortunately when it comes to climate change it appears that all the adults have left the room.   As Dr. James Hanson writes,

“In reality, governments are not phasing out existing coal emissions, instead coal emissions are increasing. And governments are allowing unconventional fossil fuels to be developed. Thus it is inconceivable that government “goals” or “targets” for carbon dioxide emission reduction will be met. Governments stating such goals are lying to the public with a straight face.”

In his remarks given at the Sophie Prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway, in June, 2010, Dr. Hanson continues his thinking:

“Our planet today is close to climate tipping points. Ice is melting in the Arctic, on Greenland and Antarctica, and on mountain glaciers worldwide. Many species are stressed by environmental destruction and climate change. Continuing fossil fuel emissions, if unabated, will cause sea level rise and species extinction accelerating out of humanity’s control. Increasing atmospheric water vapor is already magnifying climate extremes, increasing overall precipitation, causing greater floods and stronger storms.

“Stabilizing climate requires restoring our planet’s energy balance. The physics is straightforward. The effect of increasing carbon dioxide on Earth’s energy imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of ocean heat gain. The principal implication is defined by the geophysics, by the size of fossil fuel reservoirs. Simply put, there is a limit on how much carbon dioxide we can pour into the atmosphere. We cannot burn all fossil fuels. Specifically, we must (1) phase out coal use rapidly, (2) leave tar sands in the ground, and (3) not go after the last drops of oil.”

What really matters at this point is not whether there are sufficient coal reserves to last 50, or 100, or even 200 years into the future.  We do not have the luxury of that much time.  What does in fact matter, however, is that we begin burning less coal tomorrow than we do today, that the irresponsible neglect of politicians who have turned their back on meaningful cap and trade legislation and the hard work of pushing forward a renewable energy policy be be turned around once and for all, and that the public be put on full alert to the inexorable – and dare I say it,  inconvenient – truth of what is staring us all in the face: the slow and inevitable destruction of life as we know it on this planet if we do not take bold action to stop global warming immediately.

For God’s sake, this is our home.  This is the one tiny piece of hope we have in the entire universe.  It has been entrusted to us to protect and nourish for future generations.  So -what if there is less coal than we once thought?

So what, indeed.