The world must cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2020 to avert catastrophe, according to paleoclimate scientist Dr Dr Andrew Glikson (Australian National University) in an interview broadcast by Radio Australia (for the interview see “Carbon emissions must be cut by 80 percent [by 2020]: scientist“) .

This expert opinion telescopes the time frame for requisitely dealing with the worsening climate disruption, climate emergency and climate genocide from half a century to a decade.

Dr Andrew Glikson is an Earth and paleoclimate scientist, Visiting Fellow, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Research School of Earth Science and Institute of Planetary Science, Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, ACT, Australia.

Dr Andrew Glikson interviewed by taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio Australia, 2009, in response to the question ”what has to be done?” stated (in part):

“extremely rapid reduction in emissions … I would say, 80 percent within the next ten years or so … people like me have been looking at the evidence about this on a day to day basis and we have been doing it for years, and to look in to the abyss at this length is a daunting task.”

Dr Glikson’s plea is consonant with the dire views of Professor Kevin Anderson and Dr Alice Bows, climate scientists at the prestigious Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester, UK.

Professor Kevin Anderson and Dr Alice Bows, in a key paper in the prestigious Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 2008, stated:

“According to the analysis conducted in this paper, stabilizing at 450 ppmv [carbon dioxide equivalent = CO2-e, atmospheric concentration measured in parts per million by volume; roughly the present level at 390 ppm CO2] requires, at least, global energy related emissions to peak by 2015, rapidly decline at 6-8% per year between 2020 and 2040, and for full decarbonization sometime soon after 2050 …Unless economic growth can be reconciled with unprecedented rates of decarbonization (in excess of 6% per year), it is difficult to envisage anything other than a planned economic recession being compatible with stabilization at or below 650 ppmv CO2-e … Ultimately, the latest scientific understanding of climate change allied with current emissions trends and a commitment to “limiting average global temperature increases to below 4oC above pre-industrial levels”, demands a radical reframing of both the climate change agenda, and the economic characterization of contemporary society” (see: Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows, Proc. Trans. Roy. Soc, A, 2008).

Indeed Dr Glikson’s interpretation of the data of Anderson and Bows is “The ocean/atmosphere system is fast tracking to conditions similar to those of an ice-free earth .. [we need] Urgent deep reductions in carbon emissions, on the scale of at last 5% per year, relative to 1990 … The alternative to urgent fast tracked mitigation efforts does not bear contemplation” (see Andrew Glikson, “21st century carbon blueprints: perspective from the recent history of the atmosphere”, July 2009 – to see this and a related expertly written power point lecture scroll down at “Dr Andrew Glikson: earth and paleoclimate scientist: reduce GHG emissions by 80% by 2020”).

A layperson’s take on what Dr Glikson is saying is provided by the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) summary of the interview with Dr Andrew Glikson: “Despite urgent global warming warnings, there’s little hope that December’s Copenhagen climate change meeting will secure an international agreement. Even domestic measures are subject to bitter politics and trade-offs, like the Australian government’s plans to cut emissions by five-to-15 per cent by the year 2020. Even if such measures did pass, one expert [Dr Glikson] says it’d be like giving aspirin to a cancer patient. He says nothing less than 80 per cent emissions cuts over the next ten years will avert catastrophe”.

Dr Glikson’s dire warning is consonant with warnings from other climate change analysts .For a compilation of such opinions see the website “Cut carbon emissions 80% by 2020”.

Thus Sam Carana’s Change Our World, 2008 says: “James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist, says in “Target CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?” (see Target CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim? ) that the EU target of 550 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 – the most stringent in the world – was not good enough, as this would cause the world to warm by 6C, rather than the previous estimate of just 3C. Hansen says targets should be slashed to 350 ppm … As the Environmental Protection Agency’s inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks 1990-2005 (see: inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2005 ) shows, well over 80% of US emissions are caused by fossil fuel – the mining of fossil fuel and burning it in power plants and in transportation. So, if we switched to electric vehicles over a period of a dozen years and to electricity produced in clean and safe ways, such as with wind and solar power, this would achieve an 80% cut by 2020 “ (see: Sam Carana, “Reduce emissions by 80% by 2020, Symptoms of global warming”, Change Our World, 2008).

The prestigious Earth Policy Institute (EPI) is an environmental organization founded in 2001 by Lester R. Brown, based in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., and dedicated to building a sustainable future and informing the public about climate change, population expansion, mass species extinction and other threats impacting upon Humanity (see Wikipedia and Earth Policy Institute).

Thus Lester R. Brown and colleagues, “Time for Plan B. Cutting emissions 80 percent by 2020”:

“When political leaders look at the need to cut carbon dioxide emissions to curb global warming, they ask the question: How much of a cut is politically feasible? At the Earth Policy Institute we ask a different question: How much of a cut is necessary to avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change? … Cutting CO2 emissions 80 percent by 2020 will take a worldwide mobilization at wartime speed. First, investing in energy efficiency will allow us to keep energy demand from increasing. Then we can cut carbon emissions by one third by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources for electricity and heat production. A further 14 percent drop comes from restructuring our transportation systems and reducing coal and oil use in industry. Ending net deforestation worldwide can cut CO2 emissions another 16 percent. Last, planting trees and managing soils to sequester carbon [biochar] can absorb 17 percent of our current emissions. None of these initiatives depends on new technologies. We know what needs to be done to reduce CO2 emissions 80 percent by 2020. All that is needed now is leadership“ (see Lester R. Brown, Janet Larsen, Jonathan G. Dorn, and Frances C. Moore, “Time for Plan B. Cutting emissions 80 percent by 2020”, Earth Policy Institute).

Even big business has wised up to the realities. Thus British Telecom (BT) is the major UK telecommunications company (see Wikipedia). According to Earth2tech, 2 June 2008: “British Telecom (BT) said today it plans to reduce its carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020. The UK-based incumbent telecom operator is already on its way to meeting that aggressive target, and last October said it would invest close to half a billion dollars in wind farms that could supply close to 25 percent of the company’s power needs by 2016. That was the largest investment in renewable power by a non-power company in the UK … BT also says the company has created a new tool called the Climate Stabilisation Intensity (CSI) Target to measure and track carbon emissions” (Katie Fehrenbacher, Earth2tech, “British Telecom (BT) to cut carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020”, 2 June 2008).

In horrible contrast to these expert views that we must “reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2020”, world governments talk of a notional “80% off 2000 GHG emissions by 2050” but mostly, as predicted by Drs Anderson and Bows, show no sign of taking anything like the requisite steps.

Thus, for example, climate criminal Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter and is a world leader in GHG pollution on a per capita basis. As of 2008, “annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution” in units of “tonnes CO2-equivalent per person per year” (2005-2008 data) is 0.9 (Bangladesh), 2.2 (India), 5.5 (China), 6.7 (the World), 11 (Europe), 27 (the US) and 30 (Australia; or 54 if Australia’s huge Exported CO2 pollution is included (see Wikipedia, “List of countries by greenhouse gas emissions per capita”).

However climate criminal Australia has offered a derisory “5% off 2000 GHG pollution by 2020” and”60% off 2000 GHG pollution by 2050”, these offerings IGNORING Australia’s enormous annual Exported GHG pollution that is about half of the total annual Domestic and Exported GHG pollution of Australia (see “Australia’s “5% off 2000 GHG pollution by 2020” endangers Australia, Humanity and the Biosphere“).

We are running out of time – so what can decent folk do in the face of greedy, corrupt, climate racist, climate genocidal, climate criminal intransigence?

Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. In the words of Dr Andrew Glikson, informed people are now staring into “the abyss”. Decent, responsible people must (a) inform everyone they can and (b) advocate intra-national and international sanctions, boycotts, green tariffs, reparations demands and criminal prosecutions against people, corporations and countries (notably climate Australia) complicit in the worsening climate disruption, climate emergency and climate genocide that is predicted to kill 10 billion people this century.

Photo credit: smallislander

The major threat to Australia and the World is from man-made global warming that according to top UK climate scientist Professor James Lovelock FRS will kill all but 500 million humans this century. However underlying this impending catastrophe is a fundamental cultural pathology in the Western Murdochracies of IGNORING and of partisan, “might is right” LYING by commission and omission. [1]

Thus top UK climate scientists Professor Kevin Anderson and Dr Alice Bows of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester, recently estimated that to save the Planet from catastrophe a DECREASE in greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution of 8% per year is required. [2]

However Mainstream media and politician LYING has meant that Australia (the world’s biggest coal exporter, the OECD’s worst annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) polluter and a world leader in per capita GHG pollution) intends to continue to INCREASE Domestic and Exported GHG pollution by about 2% per year. [3]

Similarly, outstanding Jewish American law professor and President of the US National Lawyers Guild, Marjorie Cohn, has exposed the genocidal blockade and bombing war crimes being committed by Apartheid Israel in its brutal naval, army and air force attacks on what top US conservative Pat Buchanan and top Vatican official Cardinal Renato Martino both call an Israeli “concentration camp” and which outstanding Jewish American scholar Professor Noam Chomsky (at 63-Nobel-Laureate MIT) calls a “huge Prison”. [4]

However Goebbelsian, Orwellian, racist Zionist propaganda via Mainstream media and politicians regards the current Gaza Massacre (so far over 1,000 Gaza dead versus 9 Israelis killed by Gazans) as a “war” involving Israeli “self-defense” against rockets from blockaded Gaza (notwithstanding NO Israeli deaths from Gaza rockets in the preceding year; 28 Israeli deaths from Gaza missiles in the last 8 years; and 5,600 Occupied Palestinian violent deaths and 35,000 non-violent avoidable deaths from deprivation under Occupation in the last 8 years versus 1,200 Israelis killed by Palestinians in the same period). [5]

Media and politician LYING and IGNORING is deadly – whether it is over impending Climate Genocide of most non-Europeans in the coming century or US and Israeli state terrorism and mass murder in the on-going Palestinian Genocide, Iraqi Genocide and Afghan Genocide (9-11 million violent and non-violent avoidable deaths associated, so far, with the Zionist-promoted Bush wars, 1990-2009). [6]

In my own country Australia, racist Zionist dual citizens and other supporters of Apartheid Israel are complicit in horrendously violent Israeli state terrorism against not only Indigenous Palestinians and Arabs (Semites) but also against relatives of Australians and actual Australian citizens (25,000 of whom were bombed in Lebanon in mid-2006 with the support for the Israelis from both the Liberal-National Party and Labor Party, the major party so-called Lib-Labs) – yet they are free to come and go, donate to support Apartheid Israeli war crimes, personally kill and mangle Australians in the Middle East and endanger Australia while not even being investigated under anti-terrorism laws that prescribe up to life imprisonment for financial support for terrorism and up to 25 years for other terrorist involvement. [7]

The lying, genocidal racist Bush-ites (RBs) and racist Zionists (RZs) should be urgently exposed, prosecuted and sidelined in Western public life (as have been Nazis, neo-Nazis and the KKK; indeed outstanding Jewish American philanthropist and Holocaust hero George Soros has demanded “de-Nazification” of Bush America) – they represent a major threat to Australians, to decent anti-racist Jews and to the whole World in their anti-Arab anti-Semitic support for horrendously deadly, racist, genocidal US and Israeli state terrorism and for their egregious promotion of a “might is right” Culture of Lying that pre-empts rational risk management in the face of the mounting Climate Emergency. [8]

References

1. Gideon Polya, “Climate Emergency, Exceptionalism & Ignoring Downunder. Letter to eminent Australians over Public Honesty”
2. Kevin Anderson & Alice Bows, “Reframing the climate change challenge in light of post-2000 emission trends”, Proc. Trans. Roy. Soc, A, 2008
3. Gideon Polya, “Good and Bad Climate News”
4. Marjorie Cohn, “Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza”
5. Gideon Polya, “Palestinian-Israeli death ratio. Nazi-style Israeli Gaza war crimes”
6. Gideon Polya, “9-11 excuse for US global genocide. The real 9-11 atrocity: millions dead (9-11 million) in Bush Wars (1990-2009)”
7. Australian Anti-terrorism Act 2005
8. Gideon Polya, “George Soros – Bush America needs de-Nazification”

The BAD NEWS is that top UK climate scientists, Professor Kevin Anderson and Dr Alice Bows of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester, made the following shocking conclusions in a 2008 paper in the prestigious Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: “According to the analysis conducted in this paper, stabilizing at 450 ppmv [carbon dioxide equivalent = CO2-e, atmospheric concentration measured in parts per million by volume] requires, at least, global energy related emissions to peak by 2015, rapidly decline at 6-8% per year between 2020 and 2040, and for full decarbonization sometime soon after 2050 …Unless economic growth can be reconciled with unprecedented rates of decarbonization (in excess of 6% per year), it is difficult to envisage anything other than a planned economic recession being compatible with stabilization at or below 650 ppmv CO2-e … Ultimately, the latest scientific understanding of climate change allied with current emissions trends and a commitment to “limiting average global temperature increases to below 4oC above pre-industrial levels”, demands a radical reframing of both the climate change agenda, and the economic characterization of contemporary society.” [1]

Yet, for example, Australia remains the world’s biggest coal exporter, the OECD’s worst annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) polluter and a world leader in per capita GHG pollution. Extrapolating from US Energy Information Administration data on Australian coal and liquid natural gas exports in the last decade, the recent decisions of the Australian Federal Government mean that Australia’s annual Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution will actually INCREASE by 40% over the 2000 value by 2020 and by 80% by 2050. [2]

The Australian Great Barrier Reef will die above 450 ppm CO2 due to ocean acidification and warming. Professor James Hansen (top US climate scientist, head, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies): “We face a climate emergency”. Australian Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty: “We are in real danger.” Professor David de Kretser AC (eminent medical scientist and Governor of Victoria, Australia) “There is no doubt in my mind that this is the greatest problem confronting mankind at this time and that it has reached the level of a state of emergency.” Dr Andrew Glikson (palaeo-climate scientist, ANU, Canberra): “The continuing use of the atmosphere as an open sewer for industrial pollution has … raised CO2 levels to 387 ppm CO2 to date, leading toward conditions which existed on Earth about 3 million years (Ma) ago (mid-Pliocene), when CO2 levels rose to about 400 ppm, temperatures to about 2–3 degrees C and sea levels by about 25 +/- 12 metres.” Top UK climate scientist Professor James Lovelock FRS predicts that only 500 million people will survive this century as a result of unaddressed, man-made climate change – Climate Genocide. [3]

And yet the GOOD NEWS is that the best non-carbon and renewable energy options (solar, wind, geothermal, wave, tide and hydro-electric) currently yield power at roughly the same market price as coal burning-based power. [4]

It is NOT necessarily too late to urgently cease carbon pollution and apply existing non-carbon energy technologies, re-afforestation and returning carbon to soil as biochar in order to necessarily REDUCE atmospheric CO2 to below 350 ppm as urgently advocated by leading climate scientists. Please send this message and the One-page summary “Climate Emergency Facts and Required Actions” of the Melbourne-based Yarra Valley Climate Action Group to everyone you can. [5]

References

[1] Kevin Anderson & Alice Bows, Proc. Trans. Roy. Soc, A, 2008

[2] “Australia’s 5% off 2000 GHG pollution by 2020” endangers Australia, Humanity and Biosphere”

[3] Climate Emergency Facts Sheets of the Yarra Valley Climate Action Group

[4] “Hope – best renewables now cost same as coal power. “One Day Pathétique” Symphony painting”

[5] One-page “Climate Emergency Facts and Required Actions”