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CLIMATE CODE RED
The Public Interest Research Centre is preparing a UK edition of Climate Equity’s “Climate Code Red” (Australia) report for publication. Piecing together snippets of press releases and other reports by some of the contributors I advise you to be prepared for bad news, really bad news.
Jersey like many other governments has set CO2 reduction targets to meet Kyoto protocol agreements. These are predicated on 2 degrees Celcius global temerature rise being ‘safe’. It was thought we have a couple of decades to get our act together, and the effects wouldn’t kick in until the end of the century. No hurry. 2 degrees is something around 550 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere.
Some time ago NASA scientist James Hansen and others revised their view of ‘safe’ to 450 ppm, around 1.7 degrees temperature rise. Now Hansen doesn't believe in 450 ppm any more. That figure was chosen partly because it seemed impossible to stop the rise in carbon dioxide before that and it seemed relatively safe. Latest reports and findings suggest that the precautionary safe level is in fact 0.5 of one degree temperature rise.
Hansen said: "Recent greenhouse gas emissions place the Earth perilously close to dramatic climate change that could run out of our control, with great dangers for humans and other creatures. There is already enough carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere for massive ice sheets such as West Antarctica to eventually melt away, and ensure that sea levels will rise metres in coming decades. Climate zones such as the tropics and temperate regions will continue to shift, and the oceans will become more acidic, endangering much marine life. We must begin to move rapidly to the post-fossil fuel clean energy system. Moreover, we must remove some carbon that has collected in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.” So James Hansen is now spearheading a campaign to get 350 ppm recognized as the real long-term target we should be aiming at.
We are already at 378 and adding 3ppm per year. You don’t need to do the maths. We have passed the tipping point on this basis. If this is correct the challenge now is to remove CO2 from the atmosphere or somehow cool the planet artificially. There are many putative geoengineering schemes to do this – stratospheric seeding, treating oceans with iron, giant space mirrors, letting of a few nuclear warheads (seriously !) and so on and so on. Not one of these is sufficiently well understood to know the full effects, side- effects and eco implications. Its like playing a hand of poker, and the stakes are life or extinction.
It rather makes our local C02 reduction targets look pathetic. We revised the Strategic plan 4 years early because it didn’t fit the facts, but our emisssion reduction plans are untouched, despite also clearly being out of touch with the latest facts. As for the local threat of sea level rise of meters in decades, we simply have no adequate response in place. Our Council of Ministers are to hold an emergency meeting on fuel and food price rises, but ignore this more pressing emergency that will have repercussions much more severe than price rises.
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has a handy table showing the contribution to climate change from key emissions.
http://www.sepa.org.uk/climate/science.h
Gas | Primary Source contributing to global warming | Percentage contribution to global warming | Effective lifetime | Increase in concentration circa 1750 to 2005 | Global Warming Potential |
Carbon dioxide CO2 | Fossil fuel use Land-use change (about 20 to 25%) | 65% | 100 years | 280 to 379 parts per million (ppm) | 1 |
Methane CH4 | Agriculture | 20% | 12 years | 715 to 1774 parts per billion (ppb) | ~25 |
Nitrous oxide N2O | Agriculture | 15? | 114 years | 270 to 319 ppb | ~300 |
It’s clear enough to me. We have to tackle CO2 right enough, but we cannot ignore the other third of emissions contributions to climate change. Methane output is primarily farm animals, notably bovines. Nitrous Oxides is mostly artificial fertilizers where there is also a link to fossil fuel usage through the production process.
Changing agriculture has an important part to play, both directly and indirectly. Change our diet –much less meat and animal products, and the methane emissions should drop. Make the agriculture we do organic and the nitrous oxide emissions should also fall. The extra area of land freed up from growing a predominantly vegetarian diet should be reforested with mixed indigenous species. Unlike other geo-engineering approaches we know that is not catastrophic to the eco system. Indeed its putting the landscape back towards what it was a before humans started chopping down every tree in sight.
In our island where we have an unusually large dairy herd for our population size, and CO2 emissions rates nearly twice those of the European average, we have a lot to do. Starting with diet and agriculture is something we can and must do now.
