Solving the Climate Change Stalemate

J. V. Siry, Ph. D. Climate Policy Analysis; 2016.          

Overview

A. Isotopes don't lie; the problem we created is real.^1.

B. The Pentagon recognizes causes & long-term threats from climate change; shouldn't Congress & the Courts?

1. The Department of Defense with 29,819,492 acres worldwide among more than 720 bases has long recognized the enormous problem global warming generates worldwide.

2. Extended supply lines and casualties defending supplies of fuel in Afghanistan has led military planners to deploy renewable energy both domestically & overseas.

3. National security and international stability requires planning for aggravated problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions that threaten stability in a number of countries, according to a report the Defense Department.”Dated 28 July 2015.

"climate change is a security risk, Pentagon officials said, because it degrades living conditions, human security and the ability of governments to meet the basic needs of their populations." 

C. Controversy keeps us from using the remedies of stabilization, conservation, & prevention.

D. Damage, disruption, destruction aid our foes; distraction from preventing loss of life.

E. Emerging government-led consensus on the steps to take legally relies on two sources internationally:

1. COP: Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC] reaching, as yet elusive, pledges on carbon emissions reduction or pollution fees – UNFCCC-COP 21; Paris 2015, ²& the
2. Montreal Protocol -- short-term can handle half the volatile sources of heat trapping gases.
3. Current government targeted reductions are not adequate; allowing temperatures to increase from 3.4 C to 3.6˚ C by the end of the century.
4. Ocean acidification (at current emission levels) will take centuries to stabilize.
5. Nations are moving in the correct direction too slowly to reduce risks. ³
6. What's the difference in half a degree of Celsius for the planet?
   1. Two degrees C
   2. 1.5 degrees C

F. Forging a consensus on the science and social science in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); five reports since 1992.

1. The science is clear; we have disrupted the atmosphere.
2. The politics is cloudy; the policy consensus has been slow to assemble, mobilize, and maneuver.
3. CPO-21s goal is to hold warming “to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.”
4. Federal use of "renewable energy" in seventy-five + projects.

Closing window of opportunity.

The small window of opportunity to act is closing representing limitations on preventive actions.

Abrupt climate change due to global warming is the paramount ecological, economic and ethical challenge of our times requiring the spread of existing solutions that both reduce pollution (called mitigation) and enhance resilience (called adaptation) to the apparent and unforeseen consequences of rising carbon and nitrogen levels in the atmosphere.

There is an existing window of opportunity within which to address these integrated problems that is rapidly closing thereby reducing our options for effective preventive action.

With such limited opportunities the arguments over the causes of abrupt climate change are a devastating distraction from the real work in which we must engage one another to prepare, prevent, and prevail against a common conundrum. The shared impacts of abrupt climate change are primarily generated and further exacerbated by consumption of goods and services that depend on the combustion of oil, gas, coal, or charcoal. The conundrum lies in this disconnect between populations causing and everyone receiving the perilous impacts of warming, acidified oceans and hazardous extremes of weather accompanying abrupt climate change. To start effectively to promote existing and widespread means to address the problem a clear method of thinking through some of the more daunting and intractably related threats from global warming is needed to isolate food, fuel, and resource related remedies.

Electricity from ultraviolet radiation in the U.K and exposure maps of Eurasia & US.

Clear Thinking Method

The extent, persistence, and rate of increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is but one measure of our need to act quickly, deliberately, and enduringly if we are to avoid the worst impacts of abrupt climate change. Carbon comes in three isotopes and their ratio indicates combustion is the source of "heavy" carbon.

These already apparent challenges come in the form of desertification, flooding, deforestation, loss of tundra, permafrost and ice cover, oceanic plankton declines, and disruption of keystone species; not to mention damages to soil, food, water, and health resources.

All construction could have water heated by the sun.

Prevention, mitigation, and adaptation are and will continue to be the paramount means to enable people to more widely spread existing practices, implements, and policies that reduce the risks from global warming to people's health and standards of living.

Rhetoric Replacement Strategy

Climate change, abrupt climate change, global warming

The extent, persistence, and rate of increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is but one measure of human disruption due to combustion, land-use changes, and pollution.

What is global warming?
Global Warming is an unstable condition of the atmosphere, when excessive heat from solar radiation is stored by the increasing amount of heat trapping vapor-gases, or so-called greenhouse gas emissions that are not absorbed by the oceans, vegetation, or life processes. The sharp spike in carbon dioxide levels in the air is a signal that global warming has and will continue to disrupt global circulation patterns of winds, currents, and air masses for centuries to come.

Recent ice core analysis reveals lower levels of carbon dioxide for longer periods into geological prehistory.

Irony

This problem is not in the future but abrupt climate change exists now.

In science a small amount has a large impact.

400 parts per million currently.

350 parts per million fifty-five years ago.

"the rate worldwide is now one million tons per hour, faster than experienced on earth for tens of millions of years." ³

Current levels of carbon dioxide could generate a three degree Celsius [3˚C] rise in the Earth's average temperature, if we do not stabilize these heat trapping gas emissions within a decade.

carbon exists as a solid and a gas which has a variable residence time in the air and oceans. This period of time when carbon dioxide vapor-gas is active lasts from decades up to centuries in the air and longer in oceans unless absorbed by plants and animals.

Ocean thermal expansion will continue for centuries into the end of this millennium because sea water's physical properties.

Contextual Comments

Abrupt climate change due to global warming is among the most serious, yet solvable problems of our times:

Solar thermal for water heating, geothermal for space heating & electricity, or wind to make electricity need to be more widespread.

1. The convergence of a rising population growth rate, with increasing electricity demands and transportation needs that use polluting fuels, during this period of unprecedented carbon dioxide accumulation in the air and oceans is the alarm we have to heed to forestall the loss of lives, property, and opportunities for both developing nations and coming generations.

2. We are all facing the most daunting, yet quiet and enduring dilemma since radioactive fallout from the testing of nuclear weaponry in the 1950s. Because the residence time of carbon dioxide in the air and ocean persists for centuries, we have set our planet on a course of rising temperatures for generations to come. Unless we begin to stabilize, if not reverse, the level of pollution from industrial sources by implementing geothermal, solar, and wind sources for electricity the consequences will be very costly, irremediable, and prolonged.

   

3. Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, 2006, UK.

   Sir Nicholas Stern advocated a decade ago that "The economic, social and environmental consequences of climate change in both developed and developing countries, taking into account the risks of increased climate volatility and major irreversible impacts, and the climatic interaction with other air pollutants, as well as possible actions to adapt to the changing climate and the costs associated with them"

   "a global externality requires global cooperation, international emissions trading lowers costs for all nations, and emissions pricing is the key to the development of new, climate-friendly technologies. Such thinking clearly shaped the design of the Kyoto Protocol, a climate change treaty negotiated by more than 140 nations that establishes a global emissions trading system for greenhouse gases...."

    

Finance for Renewable Energy

First Green Bank of Florida is meeting the funding needs of the renewable energy community.

 

Background facts

By nature the greenhouse effect has a threshold – a point around which a control device, like a thermostat in an air conditioner, stabilizes the temperature. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air is the Earth's thermal control device that records the ability of the air as a heat sink to absorb long-wave radiation before the temperature rises.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air is measured in parts per million.

404 ppm peaked in May 2015 parts per million measure of carbon dioxide in the air.

1. 400 ppm has not been experienced on Earth for millions of years.
2. 8 inch rise globally in sea surface since 1880; 12 inch sea rise in Miami. Archer

Areas of flooding on 10-29-2012. Twelve feet of water was measured in Battery Park, Manhattan, and 19 feet of tidal surge in Seabright New Jersey from that tropical storm.

• Sea surface temperature increases cause water to expand. Sea level rise is due to ocean thermal expansion.

• Storm surges are not the same as rising sea levels due to ocean thermal expansion, but come on top of sea level rise.

"Super Storm Sandy in New York and New Jersey in 2012 resulted in over 14,000 DoD personnel mobilized to provide direct support, and at least an additional 10,000 who supported the operation in various capacities in the areas of power restoration, fuel resupply, transportation infrastructure repair, water and meal distribution, temporary housing and sheltering, and debris removal."

 "NATIONAL SECURITY IMPLICATIONS OF CLIMATE-RELATED RISKS AND A CHANGING CLIMATE." (23 July 2015), p.4.

• Ocean acidification is a 30 percent decrease in pH in 200 years. This was caused by over a quarter of the atmosphere's carbon dioxide being absorbed by the marine waters covering 71 percent of the Earth's surface.
• September 2015 was the warmest month (average) ever recorded & 2015 the second warmest year on record.
• 2016, first winter hurricane in the Atlantic hit the Azores islands since 1938.

Planetary Analogies

Tampering with the earth's functional controls.

thermostat: regulates the air temperature's set point; these are the heat-trapping gases

air conditioner: This is the Antarctic ice sheet's reflective capacity of clean ice cooling the planet.

heat pump: This is the Himalayan plateau – generating the East Asian monsoon.

heat sink: Oceans retain heat and the Southern Ocean Oscillation [ENSO] transfers this thermal storage from Asia to the Americas; water bodies retain heat and release (conductivity) heat more slowly than does the land over a longer period of time.

Acid-base balance is a sensitive test that reveals the extent to which tampering with small amounts of vapor-gases such as nitrogen and carbon dioxide alter entire systems on which life depends.

litmus test: Ocean's pH shifted

The oceans are losing their capacity to take up more carbon and corroding the calcium shells needed by many varieties of marine life. These physical and chemical conditions are selecting for algal reefs rather than calcium-based oyster, clam, or coral reefs.

"We are acidifying the ocean and fundamentally changing its remarkably delicate geochemical balance."

At the cost of marine life due to rapidly escalatinting acid levels the oceans are absorbing excess carbon dioxide in the air but at a pace slower than necessary to retain the same pH.

 

Ocean Acidification. Peter G. Brewer, "Rising Acidity in the Ocean: The other CO2 Problem." Scientific American, Septemper 1, 2008.

These thirteen steps are a decade overdue:

13 reported findings from 2006 in the Stern Commission's executive summary:

1. Strong early action on global warming driven climate change is preferred to delay; the longer the delay the greater the costs.
2. Evidence mounts that we cannot continue as we have (BAU), disorder is exacerbated.
3. The risks are great "threatens the basic elements of life for people around the world – access to water, food production, health, and use of land and the environment's ecological disruption: food chains - keystone species, invasive species.
4. Poor will pay the heaviest costs & bear the greater burden than will the polluters responsible for the disruption of the ocean / atmosphere chemical-thermal equilibrium.
5. There are good and bad impacts of GW/CC
6. The total impact of global warming on the economy is greater if nothing is done soon.
7. Stabilization of heat trapping gas emissions is compatible with continued economic growth.
8. Strong action is needed now to not exceed 500-550 ppm in decades to come.
9. Changing to a low-carbon economy entails competitive disadvantages and commercial opportunities if high efficiency technologies are promoted widely and soon.
10. A price for carbon is the optimal solution to creating a broad similar price internationally to signal carbon-finance options with effective means of reducing polluting industries, land-use practices, and losses.
11. Adaptation is crucial for coping and must be used more widely in developing economies than currently.
12. International collective action is the cornerstone of effective actions & responses.
13. If immediate actions are taken, (decade) the worst impacts may be avoidable.

"Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change" – PDF format

Sources

Footnotes

1. Heavy carbon, nitrogen, & oxygen isotopes are the product of combustion, not organisms.

2. Meinhard Doelle, "The Paris Climate Agreement: Historic Breakthrough in Spite of Shortcomings," December 13, 2015. MARINE & ENVIRONMENTAL LAW NEWS

"the Paris Agreement is being hailed as a success. You will likely be concerned to learn that it accepts inadequate targets and financial commitments from many Parties.  These commitments collectively get the world to about a 3 degree increase in global average temperature, even if fully implemented. What’s more, you may be surprised to learn that these inadequate national commitments are not formally part of the legally binding agreement, and that the compliance system is limited to facilitation.".

3. "Editorial," Nature; Climate Change. Vol. 5, #12. December 2015. p. 1021.

• Causes of Climate Change

• Defining terms

• Ocean losses

Barbara Juncosa, “Suffocating Seas”, Scientific American, 299:4, (October, 2008), pp. 20-22.

Spencer R. Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming, (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 2003).

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis,

Summary for Policymakers, Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report,” pp. 8, 14-18.

More recent findings

Anderson & Bows | Archer conclusion | Christianson | Crowley | Gelbspan | Lackoff | Leggett | Lohman | McKibben | Prinn | Siry | James Hansen, 04 : Hansen 06 | Weart | Wigley | Wilson

Who are key players?

Sir Nicholas Stern conducted an economic study nearly a decade ago (October 2006) calculating the costs of damages and disruptions predicted to have been aggravated or exacerbated by climate change. The report estimated costs of up to $9 trillion due to abrupt climate change and recommended immediate actions to reduce growing risks from increasingly obdurate forms of pollution due to widespread and inflexible behavior patterns.

"Reflections on the Stern Review"

Stern Review in UK National Archives
2nd Floor, Room 35/36, HM Treasury, 1 Horse Guards Road
London, SW1A 2HQ
16 December 2005

California Energy market reforms

James Hansen, NASA-Goddard expert who warned about rising carbon dioxide level's consequences in the 1980s. He warned in 2004 and again in 2006 that the abrupt rise in carbon dioxide levels was unprecedented, could not be quickly reversed, and would have long-term consequences that we were unable to address given the opposition form fossil fuel interests and their political allies.

Angela Merkel, German Chancellor (and scientist) who has championed the need to act decisively to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while ridding Germany of old nuclear powered fuel plants.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is the sort of leader with vision.

Germany, with less sun exposure annually than the USA, has chosen to incentivize solar electricity thus converting a roof into an asset rather than a liability.

"...climate change is accelerating. It threatens our well being, our security, and our economic development. It will lead to uncontrollable risks and dramatic damage if we do not take resolute countermeasures."

With respect to climate change due to global warming she said: "It's not five minutes to midnight. It's five minutes after midnight."

Of Germany's transformation: "I think we can say our energy system will be the most efficient and environmentally friendly in the world.

Siry

Joseph V. Siry, Preserving Biological Diversity Despite Losses Due to Abrupt Climate Change.

Economic opportunities exist to solve global ecological problems
Air pollution, biological fragmentation, climate change, and water quality demise are cross boundary problems that are diminishing the value of ecosystem ...

Defining global warming in five succinct bullets
Just what is global warming? The exaggerated and accelerated response of radiation absorbing or heat (long wave radiation) trapping gases in the air that ...


New global warming solutions to old Ecological literacy blindness.
"Why are we so slow, especially in the United States, to see the great peril that faces civilization? What stops us from realizing that the fever of global heating is ...


Global Warming as a misunderstood deduction
The Discovery of Global Warming, (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 2003); ... The idea that humans were influencing global climate by emitting CO2 sat on the ...


Speed of Glacial melt signals the existence of global warming
The increased speed of glacial melt is the signal that global warming has arrived and we brought it on with our pollution and inefficient use of fossil fuels.

National Security

NOAA Sea level rise maps

Climate and National Security

Climate and National Security Watchdog Group

Green Technology News

Best climate blog

Guide to Technical climate facts on the web

We created the problem, so we must act to remedy these widening consequences.

"We must now seize every opportunity to make renewable energy accessible for every person and every community. We must use it more efficiently. And we must implement smart climate policies faster and more broadly."

AOSIS Statement, COP-21 December 12, 2015

 

"Tomorrow's Climate is Today's Challenge"

We are at a crossroads for turning comprehensive understanding into deliberate, effective, and enduring action. There exist solutions throughout the world today that need to be adopted widely to generate more reliable sources of energy for electricity, transportation, and development.

In our hands are the means to protecting a warmer world.

Outline

Title

1. Overview; A through F.
   1. E), the pledges
   2. F), the means
2. COP-21: the promise and the challenges.
3. Rapidly closing window of opportunity.
   1. The problem in brief is immediate, real, & unrelenting.
   2. Clear Thinking Method.
4. Rhetorical redefinition of these problems {replacement strategy]
5. Irony
   1. In science a small amount has a large impact.
   2. Carbon cycle disturbances are disruptive.
6. Background facts:
7. Contextual situation of these entwined challenges three related points limit exposure.
8. Planetary analogies for beginners.
9. Thirteen overdue steps from the Stern Commission [2006] UK.
10. Who are key players?
11. We made it we fix it.
12. Bibliographic information:
    1. Sources
    2. Expertise
    3. Blog & links

More information?

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Presented 25 January 2016; by J. Siry to Florida A & M University Law School, Orlando, FA.