Why climate change probably cannot be stopped.

Excellent article by Alder Stone Fuller.

Not only do we need to do our utmost to reduce CO2 emmissions, we must start to actively prepare for adaptation to a hotter climate. We would add that an end to civilisation as we know it is no bad thing, and that we should be actively working towards that end as a means to reducing CO2 and all the other damage that this culture is doing. Living in cities within heirarchical social structures is not the normal state for humanity, and if we are really serious about reducing our impact as a species, and adapting to a sustainanable culture, we need to leave the cities in large numbers (while greening those cities for those who remain living there, and building truly local food systems) – this will require the removal of heirarchies and the elites at the top of them, as presently they ‘own’ and control almost all the land, and are unlikely to happily give up their privilege (which requires a continuation of the status quo).

The large majority of people – from scientists to policy makers – addressing the issue of climate change still assert that we can stop global heating by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. But is that a fact or an unsupported assumption? Why is it reasonable to assume that we can still stop global heating & resultant climate changes – which some estimate could be the largest climate change event in 50 million years, and will end civilization as we’ve known it – even with a 100% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, let alone 50% by 2050?

To my knowledge, no one has justified that assumption with any argument based in science. It appears to be an article of faith, grounded, perhaps in view that humans are in control of “the environment”.

And a small, but increasingly vocal minority of scientists addressing the climate issue – most notably James Lovelock – argue using very solid scientific models backed by credible evidence that climate change can no longer be stopped.

This is NOT to argue that we should end efforts to minimize greenhouse emissions. Quite the contrary, we should minimize carbon emissions immediately – not by 2050, but now – even if we cannot stop a large climate change event. Why? Even if we can’t stop it, we might slow it, and we may decrease the time for recovery to a more “normal” climate. However, if we continue to emit gases when climate is already destabilizing, we will surely do more damage.

But if the assumption is not supportable by science, then the way we are addressing this issue needs to change. Specifically, we need to spend at least as much time, money and energy planning for adaptability* to a climate shift as trying to slow it.

Here are the facts that must be addressed to evaluate the assumption that we can stop global heating and climate destabilization even with 100% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. One must not focus on any single piece of evidence, but on the whole.

1. Complex systems – including climate – exist stably in only a limited number of states (e.g., ice ages or interglacial between ice ages, like now, and a hotter state that last existed 55 million years ago called the PETM). However, the climate system will not stabilize between states any more than a brick will stabilize between upright and laying flat, or a human can exist for long between waking and sleeping. You are either awake or asleep, not half way in between.

Systems transition rapidly from one state to another via positive feedback processes at critical thresholds or “tipping points”. Research in recent years has verified that climate can shift from ice age conditions to temperate, interglacial conditions in as little time as a decade. (Heating events happen fast.) Positive feedbacks can amplify even small changes in the system, preventing normal negative feedbacks from stabilizing the system in the current state, causing acceleration of change towards a tipping point. That is, if temperature is increasing, positive feedback will cause temperature to increase faster.

2. CO2 levels are already significantly higher now – 390 ppm – than in the last 650,000 years. (Normal interglacial levels: 280 ppm; previous high: 300 ppm). Further, CO2 increase is accelerating. Past increases never exceeded 0.03 ppm/year. It is now increasing at 2 ppm/year. It is increasing now 100X faster than in the past.

3. Excess CO2 in the atmosphere now – and any added in the future – will remain there for at least a century, potentially much longer. This is referred to as residence time. This is because CO2 must be actively “pumped down” by biological processes – notably marine algae which transform CO2 into calcium carbonate shells, which become limestone on their death, removing CO2 from the atmosphere and oceans. Due to ocean heating and acidification, that natural pump down – healthiest in an ice age – is now extremely stressed. By adding more CO2, we are overwhelming the pump.

4. There is a 50-year lag between stabilization of atmospheric gases & cessation of heating because water heats more slowly than air. That means that even after we stop emissions, we will continue to heat for another 50 years.

5. The poles – Arctic and Antarctic – have heated more & faster than any other places on Earth. Summer Arctic ice has decreased more than 30% in less than 3 decades. A recent study demonstrates that the extent of sea ice at the end of the summer season 2010 was lower than at any time in the last few thousand years. Further, the winter ice is thinner, allowing faster melting the following year, and break up by storms. Greenland’s ice sheet melting is also accelerating. Loss of ice accelerates warming. Why? Because whereas ice reflects more than 80% of solar radiation, cooling a region, dark ocean water absorbs more than 80% of solar radiation, accelerating ice loss, a positive feedback.

6. Most of the heat trapped during the last few centuries is in the oceans, causing a decrease & poleward redistribution of marine algae (because they don’t like warm water). This is a HUGE problem because they play a MAJOR role in CO2 pump down and sequestration – far greater than terrestrial plants – and the production of clouds that reflect sunlight which cools the oceans by reflecting sunlight. Thus, loss of phytoplankton is another positive feedback.

7. Methane – an important greenhouse gas that threatens to become more important than CO2 – is also at a record levels: 2.5 times higher than “normal” interglacial levels. Vast regions of permafrost near the Arctic – 20% of Earth’s land area – are thawing, releasing huge quantities of methane, some of which has been stored there since the last ice age, some of which is now being produced by anaerobic bacteria that are decomposing organic matter previously frozen. This phenomenon has been called a “sleeping giant”. Vast quantities of methane are also stored on the ocean floor, but will destabilize and be released as gas as oceans warm. We are already seeing significant methane bubbling in the Artic ocean. Increasing methane will cause more heating, which will produce more methane: another positive feedback.

8. Forest ecosystems – especially rain forests in the Amazon – that have previously been carbon sinks are now becoming carbon sources as drought and heat waves cause forest die-off, releasing carbon via decomposition and burning. The sizes of forest fires across the Earth have increased notably in size in recent decades. For example, summer, 2010 saw massive wild land fires in Russia. As heating continues, this, too, will become a positive feedback.

9. There are no known negative feedback processes operating to stop these positive feedbacks from slinging Earth’s climate into a new, hotter state.

10. In reality, we are already hotter than we think we are. Why? We are being cooled by sulfur aerosols in the atmosphere, mostly resulting from burning fuels. Under proper conditions – an economic decline or – paradoxically – a reduction of fossil fuel use – aerosols would wash out of the atmosphere in weeks, increasing the global average temperature by as much as we heated in the entire 20th century.

In summary, because: 1) climate shifts rapidly from one state to another; 2) CO2 residence time in the atmosphere insures that we will continue to heat for at least a century, probably much longer; and 3) multiple positive feedbacks are accelerating heating towards a new state of the climate, so that, even if humans entirely stop producing CO2 today – a highly unlikely event given economic and political realities – Earths’ climate system will transition to a new hotter state, reminiscent of the state that existed 55 million years ago.

The argument supports the assertion that it is too late to stop global heating. We might be able to slow it by huge reductions in gas emissions, but we can’t stop it. Heating can only be stopped by stopping the multiple, global scale positive feedback processes described above, but no one has yet explained how that can occur.

The scale, speed and severity of this climate change will threaten civilization as we know it by turning most continents into deserts, preventing agriculture as we know it. Therefore, we should spend equal time, money and effort planning how to adapt to a hotter state with a radically different climate regime that hasn’t existed on Earth for 55 million years that will likely turn oceans and continents outside of the polar regions into deserts.

Why? Simple physics: once ocean surfaces exceed 10C, they stratify, preventing upwelling of nutrients to feed algae. This has already occurred in tropical zones, which is why tropical oceans are so clear. Once soil temperatures exceed 79F, they require daily rainfall (or irrigation) for any but desert-adapted plants.)

Our preparations to increase adaptability should include personal & community planning to facilitate a transition to a new kind of civilization that promotes planetary healing (but not geoengineering) as well as planning for water, food, shelter, health care, energy, transportation and security in a world with a climate that humans have never experienced in our million year history characterized by the words extreme, chaotic, unpredictable and violent.

(Think I’m being too extreme in my views about climate change? Please read my comment about this on my FAQ page.)