http://socialistaction.org/scientists-end-fossil-fuel-emissions-now/
Scientists say: End fossil fuel use now!
Published September 8, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
Sept. 2014 ClimateCanc
By CHRISTINE FRANK
In a recent climate study published by James Hansen and 16 colleagues,
the world was warned that two degrees of warming could lead to a rapid,
catastrophic melting of land-based ice sheets and a sea-level rise of
three meters or 10 feet in 50 years if fossil fuel combustion does not
cease immediately. That large a rise in sea level would flood most
coastal cities and render them uninhabitable, forcing millions of people
to flee inland.
The report was released four months before the UN climate summit in
Paris, where nations are to formulate a binding agreement to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate climate change, which is reaching
runaway proportions.
Hansen and his team are convinced that the warming limit of two degrees
Celsius, which was decided upon with no scientific basis whatsoever, is
a formula for ecological disaster and economic collapse.
With warming of only 0.9 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,
there is already an enormous loss of the planet’s ice masses, with
widespread effects on natural and human systems—weather, species
behavior and biodiversity, food production, water resources, and health.
It is a crime to cultivate the delusion that we can adapt to climate
change while continuing to burn hydrocarbons for the sake of convenience
and the private profit of the Carbon Barons.
Low-lying, small-island nations have long demanded a one-degree Celsius
limit, whereas, a total of 100 nations support a ceiling of 1.5. So
then, what should it be?
Looking at paleoclimatic evidence from the warm interglacial period
prior to this one, the researchers found that sea levels rose five to
nine meters while the global temperature was less than one degree
centigrade warmer than today. We must remember that the human climate
forcing of fossil-fuel combustion is much stronger than that of the
natural alterations in Earth’s orbit and axial tilt, which are what
influenced the flux and flow of the great ice masses of the past.
The study also draws upon geological evidence in the Bahamas that
powerful storms in the North Atlantic were caused by increased
temperature, pressure, and moisture gradients as the planet warmed and
the ice melted. In addition, a good deal of the paper focuses on how the
Gulf Stream that warms Britain and Western Europe was shut down in
ancient times due to the injection of freshwater from melting land ice
that dramatically changed seawater salinity and affected the
thermo-haline circulation of the ocean.
Both of these conditions could be repeated if Earth’s energy
imbalance—more heat trapped by greenhouse gases, with consequently less
being released into space—is not corrected soon.
The main thing to understand as we get close to the Paris summit is that
greenhouse gas emissions have risen 2.6% per year since 2000, compared
with 1.5% from 1973-2000. Turning the atmosphere into a waste dump for
carbon pollution has led to carbon dioxide concentrations of 400 parts
per million, over 40% more than pre-industrial levels.
When we consider that paleoclimate CO2 of 450 ppm was enough to melt
most of Antarctica, and that current growth rates have more than doubled
since the 1960s, we are perilously close to an irreversible cataclysm.
That is why Hansen declared an overshoot several years ago when he
maintained that atmospheric concentrations over 350 ppm are too high,
hazardously so, and called for a drawdown to 350 or lower.
The world continues to feel the heat. Only nine months into 2015, it is
safe to say that it will probably be the warmest year on record given
the temperature records that have been broken around the globe so far.
The El Nino will undoubtedly be adding to the trend. Temperatures have
climbed steadily upward from 1950 to 2010, and there has been no hiatus
or slowdown in warming over the last 15 years, as some have thought.
As far as the status of the cryosphere is concerned, all we need do is
take a serious look at the present to see what the future will bring.
New observations since the last IPCC report show the world’s ice masses
in serious and irreversible decline. There has been a 50% loss in Arctic
sea ice over the last decade. The 2015 winter maximum Arctic sea ice
extent was the lowest on record in February and came 15 days earlier
than usual. The lowest summer minimum was in 2012.
In the warm season, thick, old multi-year ice is being exported out of
the region through the Fram Strait between northwest Greenland and
Canada and into the Beaufort Gyre, where it meets its doom.
Consequently, the North Polar ice cap has lost a tremendous amount of
mass as it becomes increasingly thinner, younger, and vulnerable to melting.
A warmer Arctic is also having a strong influence on weather patterns in
temperate regions because of the heat imbalance between the North Pole
and the Equator, affecting the behavior of the Jet Stream and Polar
Vortex. Most importantly, the dramatic loss of albedo or reflectivity
due to there being less white ice and more dark water constitutes a
positive feedback that is further warming the region and melting yet
more ice.
Seasonal snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere, which has been below
average for 10 years in a row, plays an important role in how much solar
energy is reflected or absorbed. Snow cover reflects 90% of the sunlight
that reaches it, whereas, snow-free land and dark ocean absorb so much more.
The timing of seasonal snow melt also affects the length of the growing
season, the dynamics of spring river runoff, permafrost thawing, and
wildlife populations. Evidence is emerging that over the long term,
amplified warming of the Arctic is driving the rate of snow cover loss
and other ecosystem responses. The rate of loss in the Northern
Hemisphere has been 19.8% per decade, which exceeds the rate of summer
sea ice loss.
The state of the permafrost is another serious matter. It comprises one
quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere and stores massive
amounts of carbon as CO2 and methane. The upper active layer that
seasonally thaws has been growing with rising temperatures and losing
its label “permanent.” As a result, coastlines are collapsing.
On Alaska’s North Slope, researchers found that 55% of the soil carbon
floating in rivers is being oxidized into carbon dioxide as bacteria
devour organic matter and belch CO2 . Methane is rising from lakes in
plumes. On the continental shelves around the Arctic Circle, thawing
methane hydrates are becoming increasingly unstable as sea ice melts,
triggering unprecedented emissions from submarine sediments beneath the
seafloor.
Russian scientists have found methane hotspots in the Laptev Sea, and
over 250 plumes were seen rising near Spitsbergen due to a one-degree
centigrade temperature increase in the current. In autumn, over the
Eurasian and North American shelves, methane levels are between 20 and
25 parts per billion. The release of these greenhouse gases from the
tundra and seabed are a positive feedback that can erupt into an
enormous carbon bomb if things keep heating up.
Ordinarily, the Greenland Ice Sheet is frozen to its land base. However,
rivers of melt-water are cutting walls and steep canyons into the ice,
and water is plunging into moulins or sinkholes, causing the ice to slip
from its moorings underneath and toward the sea. The volume of
melt-water into the ocean from the Isortoq, a terrestrial river, is
astonishing, over twice the flow of the Colorado River.
Superglacial lakes can also drain in hours, releasing up to 30 million
cubic meters of freshwater to the sea. The continent is actively
deglaciating. There has been a marked speed-up since 2010, with a 2-3%
increase each summer in the acceleration rate.
Antarctica is another story. Although its sea ice extent has been
increasing recently, it does not cancel out the losses in the Arctic
Ocean, which are much greater than the gains around the South Pole. The
increase in sea ice there is due to westerly winds in the Southern
Hemisphere forcing the ice away from the continent, pushing the edges
out, and creating spaces for more ice-making. This is occurring,
ironically, because global warming has increased the temperature
gradients between the pole and the Equator, making the westerlies stronger.
Also, the ozone hole over the region has had an impact. Normally, the
ozone layer absorbs sunlight, which makes the stratosphere warmer, but
now that the ozone is damaged and depleted, it makes the stratosphere
colder and the area below as well.
The real problem facing the continent is the steady and rapid
disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). Its two largest
glaciers—the Pine Island and the Thwaite—are in trouble because the
grounding lines that pin the ice shelves to the bedrock are below sea
level. Warm seawater has been steadily eating away at the floating ice
and its underpinnings. As the ice shelves lose mass and their buttresses
erode, their ability to hold back the land-based glaciers, which are the
source of sea-level rise, is greatly weakened. It is believed that the
WAIS glaciers are past the point of no return since they have been
speeding up for the last 40 years.
Because mountain peaks are warming faster than valleys and plains,
alpine glaciers are in long-term retreat on every continent in every
climate—temperate, tropical, and polar—a trend that became apparent in
the 20th century. Several hundred of the world’s glaciers are losing
between one-half and one meter of thickness per year, two times the
average loss of the last century.
Glacier National Park had 150 of its namesake formations in 1850. The
number has been reduced to 25, and Alaska is losing ice at the rate of
75 billion tons annually. The disappearance of mountain glaciers, which
feed many of the major rivers of the world, has undermined the storage
and timed release of water, threatening freshwater and food supplies.
Moreover, the thawing of these land-based glaciers adds to sea level and
accounts for one-third of its rise.
From paleo evidence, Hansen et al. conclude that sea-level rise came in
pulses and occurred quickly and that ice sheets can melt at a non-linear
rate—that is, exponentially, not incrementally—shedding enormous amounts
of mass in decades rather than millennia, as the more conservative IPCC
holds.
The UN panel has said that sea levels will rise three feet by 2100, a
gross underestimation in comparison and a view long held in suspicion by
others because existing climate models are underestimating the impacts
of ice sheet melt. In contrast, Hansen believes that Greenland and
Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than currently predicted.
The time of relatively stable climate since the last Ice Age is known as
the Holocene, but because of powerful human influences on the climate,
it has been labeled the Anthropocene by some. With the birth of
agriculture and the clearing of forests for crops, humans were already
influencing the climate 10,000 years ago. With the intensification of
capitalist industrialization and mechanized warfare at the beginning of
the 20th century, that process became even more intense. That is why
Hansen now refers to the present as the Hyper-Anthropocene, and he
believes that the very fabric of civilization will be torn to pieces if
a serious and concerted effort is not made to meet this planetary crisis
head on.
Unfortunately, Hansen’s solutions are still on the weak side, demanding
the mild reform of a carbon fee or tax, although we would not object to
taxing polluters clean out of existence if it were possible. His call
for nuclear reactors powered by thorium are completely unacceptable as well.
The only way to stop further environmental devastation by a greedy
capitalist class that refuses to give up its fossil-fuel-based economy
is to nationalize the entire energy industry and put it under democratic
workers’ control. At the same time, we must ensure a just transition
with retraining, union wages, and full benefits for all workers making
the shift from the production of dirty fuels to clean, renewable energy.
There is not one capitalist politician who supports such sweeping
change. In fact, every short-sighted, self-serving vote hustler running
in the elections this year is for maintenance of the status quo because
their interests are tied hand and foot to the Energy Giants. That is why
climate crisis activists and those struggling against environmental
racism in their communities and on tribal lands must take their protests
to the streets.
We must create a powerful movement for ecological and social change, and
one of the best ways to do that is to build on the momentum of the
People’s Climate March of last year and organize huge mass
demonstrations demanding real action to cut greenhouse gas emissions
from all sources to zero as soon as possible.
Plans for protests are already underway in many parts of the world
leading up to the November-December climate talks, and we encourage all
those wanting to save Mother Earth for human habitation and future
generations to dedicate themselves to that effort.
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Posted in Environment, Uncategorized. | Tagged climate, global warming,
Hansen.
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