Climate change- the last word?

The UK’s Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences have joined forces to produce a summary of what is known about climate change. They say: ‘This document explains that there are well-understood physical mechanisms by which changes in the amounts of greenhouse gases cause climate changes. It discusses the evidence that the concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere have increased and are still increasing rapidly, that climate change is occurring, and that most of the recent change is almost certainly due to emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activities. Further climate change is inevitable; if emissions of greenhouse gases continue unabated, future changes will substantially exceed those that have occurred so far. There remains a range of estimates of the magnitude and regional expression of future change, but increases in the extremes of climate that can adversely affect natural ecosystems and human activities and infrastructure are expected.’  It doesn’t get any more authoritative than that!

No doubt some contrarians will haggle, disputing the evidence or the analysis, or both. Or go off in odd tangents: www.spectator.co.uk/features/9057151/carry-on-warming/  It’s good for us! That's a line that also seems to be taken by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, who also say that, if it turns out to be real and significant, we can deal with climate change best by adaptation rather than what they see as expensive mitigation, using renewables. It’s recent report on sea level changes said  ‘It is the height of folly, and waste of money, to attempt to ‘control’ the size or frequency of damaging natural events by expecting that reductions in human carbon dioxide emissions will moderate climate ‘favourably’, whether that be putatively sought from a moderation in the frequency and intensity of damaging natural events or by a reduction in the rate of global average sea-level rise.’

Overall the GWPF rails against what they see as unwarranted  climate extremism and points to the scientific uncertainties.  They are apparently not convinced that climate change is very serious, or much to do with human activities, and what there is has in any case slowed and can be dealt with fairly easily. www.thegwpf.org/

For its part, the RS/NAS report says  ‘It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth’s climate. The atmosphere and oceans have warmed, accompanied by sea-level rise, a strong decline in Arctic sea ice, and other climate-related changes. The evidence is clear. However, due to the nature of science, not every single detail is ever totally settled or completely certain. Nor has every pertinent question yet been answered. Scientific evidence continues to be gathered around the world, and assumptions and findings about climate change are continually analysed and tested. Some areas of active debate and ongoing research include the link between ocean heat content and the rate of warming, estimates of how much warming to expect in the future, and the connections between climate change and extreme weather events’.

It’s a useful report, much more accessible than the IPCC’s massive tomes: www.ipcc.ch

See: http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/climate-change-evidence-causes.pdf  Though IPCCs new impacts report is also worth looking at. The American Association for the Advancement of Science has also published a report on climate change, highlighting the risks of inaction: whatweknow.aaas.org/get-the-facts/    We are not short if warnings.

So what next? The policy debates and attempted negotiations will continue  at the global Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change, COP 20, in Peru later this month, and then, for a big attempt at a wrap up, at COP21 in Paris in late 2015, although these days expectations that the COPs will lead to much of significance are low.  A loose commitment to a Kyoto II protocol has been thrashed out but it is not legally binding.  The stumbling blocks have chiefly been the US and China, who have seemed happy enough to commit to ramping up green technology (in competition with each other) but not to accept binding constraints on emissions. But with air quality an urgent issue in China, emission limits now seem likely (though not certain) and the USA, under Obama, evidently is now serious about reducing emissions from coal (by 30% by 2030), COP 20 might be a bit more productive. There are of course deviants, like Japan, which after Fukushima, reneged on its emission reduction targets, and Australia, which has experienced if anything even more severe extremes of weather recently than the US , but is heading off in the opposition direction- cutting just about all its climate policies and initiatives. The EU remains on message, and is making progress on its renewable and climate targets, but is constrained from going further and faster both economically and politically, by the left-overs of the recession and the swing to the right.  The rest of the world? Understandably most developing countries want help from rich industrial nations to meet the cost of limiting emissions and unsurprisingly aid of that sort is something that has only been agreed in rather broad terms.

So there is a way to go. As the World Energy Council and the International Energy Agency keep saying, the window of opportunity is narrowing, but globally we are making little progress, with overall coal burn increasing and wiping out gains from renewable energy’s expansion, while nuclear is mostly dead in the water and the progress hoped for by some on Carbon Capture technology remains illusive. Meanwhile, tragically, energy efficiency remains the Cinderalla option.  Unless fuel prices rise, or are raised by energy taxes, it’s hard to see how the latter will change– and politically it is very hard to win support for higher energy prices. Most people think they are already too high.  Some of that is due to the large subsidies enjoyed by fossil and nuclear, vastly more than renewables are given.  The renewables lobby can argue that fossil and nuclear energy will become in increasingly expensive as fuel sources deplete, while renewables are getting steadily cheaper and can meet all our energy needs in time, with no, or low, emissions. But initially a switch over might cost more as the new technology gets up to speed.  Some fear that, given the resistance to change, we may have climate change forced on us, and have to adapt, very painfully to it, or risk wild, expensive global geo-engineering experiments, which may actually make the overall situation worse.  We ought to be able to do better than that.  Some say that we can leave it to the market, which will drive the necessary new technology forward. For example Roger Pielke from the University of Colorado wrote to the FT saying  ‘advances in technology are what will reduce emissions, not arbitrary targets and timetables for reductions’, but surely carbon caps and targets create the pressure for technological innovation and change?  Market-based carbon trading may not be the best idea though, and certainly, unless there are tight caps, they plainly don't work, as the EU has found with its ETS systems. We need something more effective. But don't expect too much from COP 20!

The UN Sustainable Energy for All programme may be a bit more hopeful as a way ahead: http://www.iisd.ca/energy/se4all/2014f/html/crsvol181num7e.html and the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate  has produced a positive report ‘Better  Growth, Better Climate’  claiming that we can have green growth: http://newclimateeconomy.report/.  So has DECC: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prosperity-and-growth-hand-in-hand-with-carbon-reduction   Will that convince hard pressed developing countries? And is it really viable long-term, on a planet with finite resources?