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Thomas Goreau To all concerned about the future of coral reefs: Sorry, this is long but important, and worth reading through if you care about the survival of coral reefs. It is now becoming more and more clear to everyone except fossil fuel industry apologists that IPCC made a very serious mistake: they badly UNDERESTIMATED the long term impacts of climate change, the very opposite of what the highly paid oil/gas/coal funded deniers have been propagandizing. I published the first paper showing that IPCC had seriously underestimated the sensitivity of temperature and sea level to CO2 in 1990, right after the first IPCC report came out: http://www.globalcoral.org/Balancing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Paper.pdf That paper was totally ignored at the time, but now the top climate change scientists and economists have independently come to exactly the same conclusion as I did 23 years ago. See the articles just published with the comments of the former World Bank Chief Economist, who is regarded as the authority on economic impacts of climate change (at bottom of this message). Two important papers published this month show the costs of continued failure to act: 1) Thomas F. Stocker, 2013, The closing door of climate targets, SCIENCE, 339:280- 282 shows that it is already too late to reduce global warming by less than 1.5 degrees C (a level that he does not point out is death sentence for coral reefs) and every year of delay in reducing greenhouse gas emissions means that the warming will be even greater. He concludes: "As the emissions scenarios considered here illustrate, even well-intentioned and effective international efforts to limit climate change must face the hard physical reality of certain temperature targets that can no longer be achieved if too much carbon has already been emitted to the atmosphere. Both delay and insufficient mitigation efforts close the door on limiting global mean warming permanently. This constitutes more than a climate change commitment: It is the fast and irreversible shrinking, and eventual disappearance, of the mitigation options with every year of increasing greenhouse gas emissions." 2) Joeri Roegelj, David L. McCollum, Andy Reisinger, Malte Meinshausen, and Keywan Riahi, 2013, Probabilistic cost estimates for climate change mitigation, NATURE, 493:79-83 show that the costs rapidly escalate with every year of delay in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They conclude: "Our findings have implications for the ongoing international climate policy discussions, which foresee a global agreement coming into effect only in 2020. For this delay strategy to be successful, national and local governments would need to place far greater importance on concurrent demand-side solutions to climate protection (thus lowering energy demand growth), as well as on voluntary or revised near-term mitigation policies and measures that anticipate and are consistent with a future stringent climate agreement. Our model results show that robustly safeguarding the future achievement of the oft-discussed 2 oC objective requires that society embarks on a higher-efficiency, lower-energy-demand course well before 2020 in the context of sustained, concerted and coordinated mitigation efforts." In other words there is not a snowball's chance in hell that governments will act in time to save coral reefs from massive heat stroke mortality. Today I was in a meeting on tropical pasture restoration, and one participant told me that the top Geoengineering proponent at Harvard recently said "well if we lose coral reefs, so what?". That is what we are up against! Governments have knowingly decided to sacrifice coral reefs so they can continue their carbon addiction, and they don't think anyone will notice. How did we get to the point that the extinction of coral reefs by global warming is now inevitable? Because governments frittered away all the opportunities to do anything at all when there was still time to act. 23 years ago, when Ray Hayes and I showed the first data that coral reefs bleached at monthly temperatures only 1 degree C above the long term average in the warmest month, and could be predicted accurately from satellite HotSpot data, the handwriting was already on the wall unless governments reacted immediately. Governments refused to act to save coral reefs. In 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro I briefed the small island developing states delegations and warned that if they did not stop global warming then and there they would lose most of their corals in the next 20 years. They were bought off by the rich countries into accepting a death sentence by suicide pact, a climate change treaty that would kill their coral reefs and drown their low islands. Why did they do so? In large part because they were bamboozled by the deniers paid by the fossil fuel apologists. In 1990 Ray Hayes and I convinced NOAA to hold a meeting to discuss the implications of high temperature bleaching, and to develop an action plan to deal with it, but when the meeting we had originated was held in Miami we were specifically disinvited, and Bob Buddemeier and Chris Delia, who were given the conference we had been responsible for, announced a "consensus" that there was no evidence that high temperature had anything to do with coral bleaching, and they got an article published in SCIENCE saying that claims that high temperature caused bleaching were made by irresponsible publicity seekers whose wild claims had been refuted by the scientific community! NOAA, AIMS, and GBRMPA then spent millions over the next 20 years first denying that high temperatures cause bleaching, then paying hired guns to find any other possible cause. When they failed completely to find other causes they had wasted two decades and succeeded in preventing action to the point that it was too late, so they invented the fiction of "resilient coral reefs" to say that there was no need to act anyway! In other words, the coral reef funding establishment, and those who took their money for bandwagon "science", share a large part of the blame. Coral reefs will be the first ecosystem to be destroyed by global warming, but they won't be the last!
This is only an interim stop gap measure to save reefs until the world can REVERSE CO2 increase. The fundamental flaw in the Stocker and Roegilj et al. papers cited above, and in Sir Nicholas Stern's comments below, is that they consider only emissions reductions, that is to say CO2 supply side measures, and completely fail to understand the importance of CO2 demand side measures. The only way to reduce CO2 to safe levels cost-effectively is to store it in tropical soils: T. J. Goreau, 1987, The other half of the global carbon dioxide problem, NATURE, 328: 581-582 That is easily done with existing technologies, which will be covered in the book on innovative methods for soil fertility restoration, carbon sequestration, and reversing CO2 increase that I am now editing with Ron Larson and Joanna Campe, which will be published later this year. If we don't tax carbon at a price that pays for the real costs of its removal, and simply play economic games with conventional market mechanisms to price carbon, we will get the absurd market failures that have made the European Carbon Market total nonsense and have resulted in INCREASED emissions rather than reductions. Instead of making pollution permits costly, they simply gave them away free to the biggest polluters, and they issued far more permits for CO2 emissions than the polluters were even capable of producing! The pathetic result is that the market price collapsed to levels so low that pollution is basically free, with no incentive to reduce it. In the last few weeks, since the start of 2013, the price has further collapsed to record lows (see below, note these are in Euros per tonne of carbon). Consider that the cost of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) by separating CO2 from fossil fuel emissions and pumping it underground where you pray that it never leaks out, is more than $200 per ton, and you will realize that nobody would waste time getting rid of their CO2 pollution when it costs 40 times more than the carbon credits they could gain for doing the right thing!
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/27/nicholas-stern-climate-change-davos
>
>Nicholas Stern: 'I got it wrong on climate change it's far, far worse'
>
>Author of 2006 review speaks out on danger to economies as planet
>absorbs less carbon and is 'on track' for 4C rise
>
>Heather Stewart and Larry Elliott
>
>The Observer, Saturday 26 January 2013 20.24 GMT
>
>Lord Stern, author of the government-commissioned review on climate
>change that became the reference work for politicians and green
>campaigners, now says he underestimated the risks, and should have been
>more "blunt" about the threat posed to the economy by rising
>temperatures.
>
>In an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Stern, who is now
>a crossbench peer, said: "Looking back, I underestimated the risks. The
>planet and the atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we
>expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly. Some of the effects
>are coming through more quickly than we thought then."
>
>The Stern review, published in 2006, pointed to a 75% chance that
>global temperatures would rise by between two and three degrees above
>the long-term average; he now believes we are "on track for something
>like four ". Had he known the way the situation would evolve, he says,
>"I think I would have been a bit more blunt. I would have been much
>more strong about the risks of a four- or five-degree rise."
>
>He said some countries, including China, had now started to grasp the
>seriousness of the risks, but governments should now act forcefully to
>shift their economies towards less energy-intensive, more
>environmentally sustainable technologies.
>
>"This is potentially so dangerous that we have to act strongly. Do we
>want to play Russian roulette with two bullets or one? These risks for
>many people are existential."
>
>Stern said he backed the UK's Climate Change Act, which commits the
>government to ambitious carbon reduction targets. But he called for
>increased investment in greening the economy, saying: "It's a very
>exciting growth story."
>
>David Cameron made much of his environmental credentials before the
>2010 election, travelling to the Arctic to highlight his commitment to
>tackling global warming. But the coalition's commitment to green
>policies has recently been questioned, amid scepticism among Tory
>backbenchers about the benefits of wind power, and the chancellor's
>enthusiasm for exploiting Britain's shale gas reserves.
>
>Stern's comments came as Jim Yong Kim, the new president of the World
>Bank, also at Davos, gave a grave warning about the risk of conflicts
>over natural resources should the forecast of a four-degree global
>increase above the historical average prove accurate.
>
>"There will be water and food fights everywhere," Kim said as he
>pledged to make tackling climate change a priority of his five-year
>term.
>
>Kim said action was needed to create a carbon market, eliminate fossil-
>fuel subsidies and "green" the world's 100 megacities, which are
>responsible for 60 to 70% of global emissions.
>
>He added that the 2012 droughts in the US, which pushed up the price of
>wheat and maize, had led to the world's poor eating less. For the first
>time, the bank president said, extreme weather had been attributed to
>man-made climate change. "People are starting to connect the dots. If
>they start to forget, I am there to remind them.
>
>"We have to find climate-friendly ways of encouraging economic growth.
>The good news is we think they exist".
>
>Kim said there would be no solution to climate change without private
>sector involvement and urged companies to seize the opportunity to make
>profits: "There is a lot of money to be made in building the
>technologies and bending the arc of climate change."
>
>-------------
>
>http://www.technologyreview.com/qa/424380/nicholas-stern/
>
>Nicholas Stern
>
>The World Bank’s former top economist took heat when he called for huge
>investments to head off climate change. Now he says he underestimated
>how much is needed.
>
>By David Rotman on June 21, 2011
>
>The Stern Review, published five years ago this fall, framed the threat
>of climate change in stark, even shocking, economic terms. The 700-page
>analysis, which was commissioned by the U.K. government and authored by
>Nicholas Stern, an economic adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair and a
>former chief economist of the World Bank, estimated that the costs of
>climate change, if not addressed, will be equivalent to losing 5
>percent (and potentially as much as 20 percent) of the global gross
>domestic product (GDP) “each year, now and forever.” Hundreds of
>millions of people could be threatened with hunger, water shortages,
>and severe economic deprivation. Climate change, Stern wrote, “is the
>greatest market failure the world has ever seen.”
>
>The report concluded that staving off such crises would require
>immediate investments equivalent to 1 percent of global GDP over each
>of the next 10 to 20 years, before the window of opportunity to
>mitigate the biggest impacts of climate change closes. And it argued
>that governments need to set a price on carbon dioxide emissions,
>through either a tax, a trading scheme, or direct regulations.
>
>The report received much attention from the public and from policy
>makers, but reaction from economists was mixed. A number criticized its
>methods, arguing that it improperly calculated the value of today’s
>investments relative to the same unit of investment in the future. The
>seemingly esoteric debate over what economists call “discounting” has a
>critical implication: it greatly affects conclusions about how rapidly
>investments in addressing climate change need to be made.
>
>William Nordhaus, a professor of economics at Yale University, was one
>of the most vocal critics of Stern’s methodology, disagreeing with the
>Review’s conclusions on the magnitude and pace of investments needed to
>combat climate change. Still, the Stern Review has “been enormously
>influential” since its publication, Nordhaus says now, and it has
>“sharpened my thinking about the major issues.”
>
>Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political
>Science, now heads the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change
>and the Environment. In May, TR’s editor, David Rotman, visited him at
>his home, about 100 kilometers south of London.
>
>TR: How has the debate evolved over the five years since the Stern
>Review was published?
>
>Stern: More people have accepted its arguments. The idea that the
>economics should be framed in terms of managing enormous risk has
>gained [acceptance] in the public discussion and the professional
>discussion.
>
>TR: The fact that climate change poses such enormous risks affects how
>you do the economic analysis?
>
>Exactly. You can’t assume some underlying growth story on top of which
>climate change is laid. It fundamentally changes the whole growth story
>and could indeed radically reverse growth in what is a quite short
>period of time—50 or 100 years. Climate change over the course of the
>century could create environments so hostile it would reverse
>development and force the movement of hundreds of millions and possibly
>billions of people. You have to think about making policy to manage
>risks of that magnitude. Since the Review, I think the idea that the
>scale of the risk fundamentally influences the analytic methods you
>must use has been increasingly understood.
>
>TR: How have the politics around global warming changed?
>
>In 2005, apart from [French president Jacques] Chirac and Blair,
>leaders just weren’t interested in climate change. Now it is a
>political subject around the world. If you look at how dramatically
>China has changed over the last two years, it’s quite extraordinary.
>Politics in China, politics in India, have changed. In the U.S. it is
>highly controversial; in other countries, much less so. In the U.K.,
>all the major political parties see that strong action is necessary.
>The politics have changed profoundly.
>
>TR: Do you think that by framing climate change as an economic problem,
>the Review has helped clarify the issue?
>
>It has reduced the amount that people discuss it only in terms of “Do
>you want income or do you want the environment?” It has become less
>often expressed as a trade-off. That is a very important shift in the
>business world and, increasingly, in the government world.
>
>Businesses are all looking at a carbon-constrained world—some with
>enthusiasm and some with worry about their own vested interests. But
>they are looking very hard at a carbon-constrained world and planning
>on that basis. There is enough intensity in the policy discussion, even
>though it is not won, that people making investments think about what
>the policy will be like in 10 years. High carbon is, in everyone’s
>mind, quite risky now—and good, because it is quite risky. People think
>of the low-carbon stuff as risky—and there are risks because you don’t
>know exactly how the costs will turn out. But low carbon is risky and
>getting less risky, and high carbon is risky and getting more risky.
>
>TR: You called climate change the greatest market failure in history.
>
>It’s a market failure because the price we pay for products and
>services that involve emissions of greenhouse gases does not reflect
>the costs they cause through damage to the climate. Economists like me
>think market systems have a tremendous amount to offer if you correct
>the failure by putting a price on carbon.
>
>TR: But in the U.S., at least, schemes for carbon pricing have failed.
>
>I think you have to take the long view. I think it will get there in
>the end, but regulations are okay too. You probably need a combination
>of these things. We didn’t go from leaded to unleaded petrol by putting
>a price on lead. We did it mostly through regulations.
>
>TR: Has technology changed in the five years since the Review was
>published?
>
>Technology has moved faster than I had anticipated. We’ve seen
>tremendous progress with car technologies. Five years ago, you wouldn’t
>have thought General Motors would be making electric cars now; you
>wouldn’t have thought the argument now would be “How fast can you bring
>down the costs of electric cars to be competitive?” Wherever you look
>now, you have quite remarkable progress—from the most imaginative kind,
>like algae [biofuels] and [new types of] batteries, to engineering,
>just making a diesel engine much more efficient, much better. So the
>technology has changed faster than I had expected. I find it quite
>encouraging.
>
>TR: But carbon pricing would surely help speed up the commercialization
>of these new technologies.
>
>It takes a combination of things. If you ask about market failure, then
>carbon pricing is the big one. It will be hard to do it without that.
>But I would also emphasize the importance of regulations as well. Let’s
>not have a simplistic approach by thinking, “Set a price on carbon and
>the wonderful entrepreneurship processes will do the whole lot for
>you.”
>
>TR: Support for R&D falls into the category of smart policies?
>
>Yes. And support for deployment also.
>
>TR: The Review expresses a sense of urgency about the next five to 10
>years.
>
>That’s one place where I think our arguments have not been successful
>enough: to get people to realize just how important the next five and
>10 years are. If we wait until people really start to see the full
>horror of severe climate change, it will be very difficult to pull out.
>And that is where the great challenge in communication lies.
>
>TR: Is there a point where if things haven’t ramped up, you would
>become discouraged? Is there a deadline for action?
>
>I think action has to accelerate now. China is accelerating its effort.
>It’s quite remarkable. They have seven key industries which [its
>leaders] are marking to grow from 3 percent of the economy to 15
>percent in the next 10 years. And the economy itself will likely
>double, from $6 trillion to $12 trillion. The investment they will need
>to do that is probably a half a trillion a year for each industry.
>Three of these industries are renewables, energy efficiency, and clean
>technologies. Why? Because [the leaders] see China as extremely
>vulnerable to climate change, they see China as big enough to affect
>its own future on the climate side, and they see these industries as
>growth stories in the future. A remarkable change, and it is not just
>in China. But I still worry that it is not fast enough. We have to
>accelerate.
>
>TR: How has the science changed since the publication of the Review?
>
>The science looks more worrying. There are some very nasty feedbacks
>[that are increasing the pace of climate change] that we left out five
>years ago because they are very difficult to model. A lot of the
>drivers seem to be bigger and faster, and the feedback loops even more
>worrisome.
>
>TR: Given that, how would you change the findings of the original
>report?
>
>I suspect that I underdid the costs of the impact of unabated climate
>change. I suspect, looking back, you would want to argue that the risks
>are a good deal greater. And because of the rapid technical progress,
>the costs of action may be a bit lower. But I don’t want to suggest
>that it is an easy no-brainer decision. You have to make big
>investments now to manage the risks in the future and lay the
>foundation for low-carbon growth.
>
>TR: The Review estimates that it would take 1 percent of GDP annually
>to mitigate climate change.
>
>I would up that now. I would say 1 to 2 percent now, because I think we
>have to act more strongly than I suggested in the Review, because the
>risks are bigger. But I would emphasize that for that 1 to 2 percent of
>GDP, we get not just risk reduction but tremendous innovation,
>creativity, learning, and discovery.
>
>TR: What does 1 to 2 percent of GDP mean? Will people feel the pain?
>
>The investment is significant, but it’s not that difficult to see why
>it is needed—particularly when you recognize that growth is likely to
>accelerate over 10 to 15 years as these learning processes kick in.
>And, of course, it is a very important point that the time to do your
>long-term investments is at a time of slack in the economy. There is
>less pressure on resources, and interest rates are low. Now is the time
>to start investing in some of these grid structures and other
>infrastructure.
>
>TR: But can we afford it?
>
>It is an investment. You have got to recognize it as an investment,
>which it is. And now is the moment to make those investments. You can’t
>afford not to make those investments: the risks are too great, and the
>rewards are high if you do.
Thomas J. Goreau, PhD President, Global Coral Reef Alliance President, Biorock International Corp. Honorary Research Fellow, Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory, Centre for Marine Sciences, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies 37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge MA 02139 617-864-4226 Skype: tomgoreau
No one can change the past, every one can change the future
Thomas J. Goreau, PhD President, Global Coral Reef Alliance President, Biorock International Corp. Honorary Research Fellow, Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory, Centre for Marine Sciences, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies 37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge MA 02139 617-864-4226 Skype: tomgoreau
No one can change the past, every one can change the future
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