Hansen and the Apocalypse

I'm indebted to Joe Romm for drawing my attention to the latest paper from James Hansen and some of his colleagues. It's all about what happens if we carry on burning fossil fuels until they're exhausted, thereby tripling or quadrupling the CO2 in the atmosphere compared with pre-industrial levels.

The received wisdom was, and perhaps still is, the notion that people don't get motivated by apocalyptic visions. That doesn't apply to me. If there's anything that motivates me to make my own modest contribution to saving humanity's life-support system, it's the thought that our addiction to fossil fuels may bring about a premature end to all human life.

IPCC reports have tended to limit their time horizon to the end of this century. My own hunch is that, if we don't mend our ways, by the end of the century we'll see catastrophic consequences for some people but life carrying on much as before for others. Those of us living in high latitudes may be OK if we manage to grow enough food for ourselves (a big if) and defend our territory against the starving masses trying to escape the unbearable heat nearer the Equator.

Unfortunately, it won't stop there. According to the new paper by Hansen et al, we are heading, perhaps on a longer timescale, to a situation where most of the world is uninhabitable.

Read Joe Romm's posting first and go on to the paper itself if you can.

More from James Hansen

As you will have gathered I tend to hang on James Hansen's every word. You can find lots of his recent words in his latest missive.

I was particularly interested to read about his latest thinking on the Venus Syndrome - towards the end of the missive.

The end of an era - Hansen retires from NASA

You can read the full story on the BBC News website.

Hansen has been a big influence on me, particularly since I read his Storms of my Grandchildren, which brought home to me the idea that man-made global warming could trigger a process that brings to an end all life on Earth. In talking about the Venus Syndrome he goes beyond what is currently supported by evidence and he may in time be proved wrong. The problem is that the science doesn't yet seem to have progressed far enough to prove him wrong and so the ultimate catastrophe of the Venus Syndrome is there on the table as a risk we have to take into account.

Yet more on the flatlining

An interesting and disturbing paper from James Hansen et al. The message I get from this is that aerosol pollution has increased since 2000, mainly from increased coal-burning, and this has reduced global warming. The CO2 from the coal burning stays in the atmosphere for centuries but the aerosols fall out after about five days. This means that if we were to stop burning coal, or simply clean up the aerosol emissions from burning coal, the rate of global warming would increase immediately. However, if we don't stop burning coal, longer-term global warming will be all the greater because of the increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Aerosol pollution is one possible contributor to the reduction in surface warming but there remain major uncertainties around the size of this contribution. These uncertainties would have been reduced by measurements from a satellite designed to measure aerosol concentrations. Unfortunately, the launch of this satellite failed and there are no plans to replace it.

Inequality

In my last post but one I said I was trying to set up a local study group on sustainability issues. Since then we have had our first meeting and it went well. We decided to devote our next meeting to the subject of inequality. This was partly because the New Economics Foundation (nef) put on an event on the subject recently and one of our number attended it. A resume of the nef take on inequality can be found here.

What has inequality got to do with energy descent and sustainability - apart from the fact that they both appear to be causes associated with the left rather than the right in British politics? My gut feeling is: quite a lot.

More on the flatlining global temperature

I've commented before on the flatlining global surface temperature. This week I have found two very pertinent articles: first, from the website of The Economist, an extended discussion on that and related matters; second, on the Sceptical Science website, an article claiming that, far from flatlining, global warming has accelerated in recent years. The article, reporting a new paper by Balmaseda, Trenberth, and Källén, explains how much of the surplus heat from the sun is to be found deep in the oceans.

This would appear to confirm what some scientists were predicting five years ago, that natural fluctuations in ocean currents could depress the global surface temperature for about a decade.

Gross Domestic Problem

Oh dear, it's over a month since I last managed to post anything. It's been a very busy month, including attendance at two book launches, organised by the New Economics Foundation (nef). Following the first one, I arranged with a fellow nef supporter that we would try and organise a local study group in London, where I spend half my time. The idea is to make the study of sustainability issues a more communal activity. Our first meeting is next Wednesday but I've no idea as yet how many people will turn up. My feeling is that if we get four or five people who want to meet up on a regular basis, this will be a success.

The books, incidentally, were Gross Domestic Problem - the politics behind the world's most powerful number by Lorenzo Fioramonti and Cancel the Apocalypse by Andrew Simms.