Climate Breakdown

Yesterday I went to an event to a public discussion ‘Climate Breakdown: Can it Be Controlled? Can We Prevent it?” arranged by the Pugwash Group. Pugwash is an international movement of scientists and others with a professional concern about the social impact of science and seeking ways to prevent its misuse (They are named after the site of their first meeting the village of Pugwash in Nova Scotia, and sadly have no connection to Captain Pugwash).

There were three speakers: Sir Crispin Tickell; Professor Peter Cox; and, (the big draw for me as well as other celeb spotters of the science world I suspect) Dr James Lovelock.

Lovelock spoke first on the theme ‘Global Heating: a hazard comparable to, or greater than, nuclear warfare’. I am pretty aware of Lovelock’s recent doomy prognostications despite not having read The Revenge of Gaia, nevertheless it was still quite sobering to hear what he openly described as his “apocalyptic view”.

He predicts that global warming (or global heating, as he pointedly referred to it throughout) will cause droughts, storms and floods that will make most of the world uninhabitable for humans. The resulting planet will “support only a remnant of current population” and they will be “driven to the Arctic”, “island refuges like the UK, New Zealand and Japan” and a “few continental oases” while the rest of the world becomes a “hot and barren desert”.

Lovelock believes that we must accept our limitations and realise that we are not qualified to become “climate regulators”, that it is “hubris” to think we can act as stewards or sustainable developers. International Agencies are not up to the task of dealing with the issue of global climate change and we must make efforts to “save ourselves” and make a proper managed retreat to the Arctic basin, island refuges and continental oases or else face the inevitable rout.

The other two speakers did not challenge Lovelock’s opinion, and one gathered that while he is at the extreme of current thinking – he is within current thinking. He may be using the most extreme modelling, but he is using modelling coming out of serious climate science.

Professor Peter Cox spoke on the theme ‘Climate change science: knowns and unknowns’ and provided a useful round-up of the certainties of contemporary climate science, the basis on which we make further extrapolations into the unknown. This was also pretty sobering stuff in itself, even when you’ve heard much of it before:

• Global mean temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees C since the late 19^th century. Most of this rise has occurred since 1980.
• The ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1990. 6 of the 7 warmest have occurred since 2000.
• No natural factors can explain the post 1980 warming. The warming is however consistent with anthropogenic effects.
• Tropical cyclones have increased in destructiveness over the last 30 years.
• A global rise in temperature of around 1.5 degrees C by 2030-2040 is now inevitable. Nothing we do now can stop that, decisions we make now will however decide the amount of temperature rise faced by future generations.
• Future modelling scenarios show that by 2100 warming will be between 2 degrees C and 5 degrees C.
• Realisation of many of the models, up to and including the one indicating a 5 degree C rise, would result in the total melt of the Greenland ice shelf and the concomitant sea level rise.
• The change in climate we are looking at is on the scale of the change between a glacial and interglacial period, but will happen 10 to 100 times faster.

The third speaker Sir Crispin Tickell spoke on ‘The Political and diplomatic hazards’, I have to admit I was a little tired by this point, but he did seem a bit dull and to spend a lot of time name dropping all the famous politicians he’d spoken with and foreign places he’d been. The most interesting parts were his description of Mrs Thatcher as an “eco hero”, and his musings on discussions between China and India regarding glacial ice melt in the Himalayas, changes in monsoon pattern, and sea level rise – all of which will impact both countries massively. In order for real change to occur, Tickell suggested we needed 3 things:

• Leadership from above.
• Pressure from below.
• A ‘benign’ catastrophe, which would prove cause and effect.

He hoped that those in the room would not be affected by the ‘benign’ catastrophe (I wonder how ‘benign’ a catastrophe he was considering). I used to think that a US based climate related catastrophe was the necessary tipping point in global consciousness, but how much has Katrina changed in the States?

I couldn’t stay for the discussion/question session unfortunately so I can’t report on that. I imagine that Lovelock’s support for nuclear would have come up. He did mention nuclear in his presentation, in a slightly contradictory sequence in which he suggested that the USA would respond to climate change with attempts at “techno-fixes” to buy time like sun shades in space or stratospheric particles. These, he said, would be attempts to carry on a business as usual model and wouldn't really be much help. He went straight on from this to promote the role of science and engineering in buying time for the habitability of the Earth and allowing civilization to continue – presenting nuclear energy as a techno-fix.

One thing I hope would have come up is the whole question of economic growth. There did seem to be an underlying belief amongst the speakers that “economic growth” should continue but within a low-carbon society. I think that this unspoken paradigm needed to be brought out in the open and discussed. Tickell did mention in passing that established models of GDP and GNP were misleading, that ‘externalities’ were ignored, and that we needed to think differently about economics, that the teaching of economics should be altered to reflect the global reality. He stopped short of saying what should take the place of what he thought should be removed however – hopefully this came up at question time.

So, all in all, a slightly depressing if informative experience. The solution part of the discussion was limited to Lovelock’s nuclear buy-time techno-fix, Cox’s get business on board with a 30 year business case model, and Tickell’s asides about a low-carbon society. Lovelock’s attitude regarding the ‘hubris’ of trying to act as stewards of the Earth, seemed to tar techno-fixers (Brown Tech and Green Tech in David Holmgren’s terms) and techniques for Earth recovery like Permaculture (Earth Steward-ship in Holmgren’s terms) with the same brush. To the questions the discussion title posed – can climate breakdown be controlled, and can we prevent it? I think the answers to both were “not really, but we may be able to slow things down”.

Never has the need for action been so pressing as now. Do what you can.