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”

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has in a preliminary report has concluded that last year the global mean temperature was 14.3 °C which makes 2008 “the tenth warmest year on a record that dates back to 1850.”

“The ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1997. Global temperatures for 2000-2008 now stand almost 0.2 °C warmer than the average for the decade 1990–1999.”

Climate scientists at the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at University of East Anglia says that the global mean temperature for 2008 “is slightly down on earlier years” due to La Nina, an ocean-atmosphere phenomenon that has a cooling effect on the earth.

“Climate scientists at the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at University of East Anglia maintain the global climate record for the WMO. They say this figure is slightly down on earlier years this century partly because of the La Niña that developed in the Pacific Ocean during 2007.

La Niña events typically coincide with cooler global temperatures, and 2008 is slightly cooler than the norm under current climate conditions. Professor Phil Jones at the CRU said: “The most important component of year-to-year variability in global average temperatures is the phase and amplitude of equatorial sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific that lead to La Niña and El Niño events”.”

I wrote about La Nina and the cooling effect it had for global temperatures during the first half of 2008 in September last year. Back then John Kennedy, climate monitoring and research scientist at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, expected that 2008 would be the 10th warmest year since 1850.

“2008 will still be significantly above the long-term average,” and that “there’s been a strong upward trend in the last few decades, and that’s the thing to focus on,” Kennedy said back then. And it seems he was correct.

The new report concludes that “human influence, particularly emission of greenhouse gases, has greatly increased the chance of having such warm years”.

“Dr Peter Stott of the Met Office says our actions are making the difference: “Human influence, particularly emission of greenhouse gases, has greatly increased the chance of having such warm years. Comparing observations with the expected response to man-made and natural drivers of climate change it is shown that global temperature is now over 0.7 °C warmer than if humans were not altering the climate.”

Calculating the changing risk attributable to human influence is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Met Office Hadley Centre and the University of Oxford. Commenting on the dramatically increased odds of such warm years because of human induced climate change, Dr Myles Allen from Oxford University said: “Globally this year would have been considered warm, even as recently as the 1970s or 1980s, but a scorcher for our Victorian ancestors.”

Beneath the underlying warming, temperature continues to fluctuate from year to year as a result of natural variations. Stott added: “As a result of climate change, what would once have been an exceptionally unusual year has now become quite normal. Without human influence on climate change we would be more than 50 times less likely of seeing a year as warm as 2008.”"

So there you have it. The science, yet again, says that the planet continues to warm up and that human activities are to be blamed.

Photo credit: masonvotes

Sarah Palin, Republican candidate for the Vice Presidency and running mate with John McCain, ignores basic climate science by claiming that climate change is not man-made and that weather patterns are to be blamed instead. And during an interview in Las Vegas two days ago Sarah Palin couldn’t name a single man-made cause that contributes to climate change.

Q: I’ve also heard you hint that you do think there might be some man-made causes that are contributing to this. Can you describe what those are?

PALIN: Right, well what I have said about this is really the debate at some point, had better shift to, no matter the cause, whether it all be attributed to man’s activities or just the natural cycle of climate changes in our earth’s history. We have seen this before.

Watch the interview below:

Either Sarah Palin is totally clueless, about anything, or she refuses to acknowledge man-made climate change because she is bought by the oil and coal industry. Either way it’s bad. Really bad.

Just like Joe Biden said, the Democratic Vice President candidate: “if you don’t understand what the cause is, it’s virtually impossible to come up with a solution.”