When we see records being broken and unprecedented events such as this, the onus is on those who deny any connection to climate change to prove their case. Global warming has fundamentally altered the background conditions that give rise to all weather. In the strictest sense, all weather is now connected to climate change. Kevin Trenberth
HIT THE PAGE DOWN KEY TO SEE THE POSTS
Now at 8,800+ articles. HIT THE PAGE DOWN KEY TO SEE THE POSTS
by Peter Sinclair, This Is Not Cool, February 26, 2015
Above, my newest “This is Not Cool” video focuses on the backstory behind “Merchants of Doubt,” the new documentary inspired by Naomi Oreskes’ and Eric Conway’s book of the same name. The centerpiece of the book is the story of how techniques of science denial perfected in the tobacco industry have been adapted to the broader war on inconvenient science.
It’s not insignificant that Gillis put the affair in a larger context, something that happens rarely in media coverage of the climate issue.
—
The documents shed light on the role of scientists like Dr. Soon in fostering public debate over whether human activity is causing global warming. The vast majority of experts have concluded that it is and that greenhouse emissions pose long-term risks to civilization.
Historians and sociologists of science say that since the tobacco wars of the 1960s, corporations trying to block legislation that hurts their interests have employed a strategy of creating the appearance of scientific doubt, usually with the help of ostensibly independent researchers who accept industry funding.
Fossil-fuel interests have followed this approach for years, but the mechanics of their activities remained largely hidden.
“The whole doubt-mongering strategy relies on creating the impression of scientific debate,” said Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University and the co-author of “Merchants of Doubt,” a book about such campaigns. “Willie Soon is playing a role in a certain kind of political theater.” —
I was able to include parts of detailed interviews from scientists who were very much a part of the story, including Dr. Oreskes, who was the target of a massive climate denier attack after she published a key paper on the scientific consensus around climate change, in 2004.
In addition, I include part of our interview with Dr. Ben Santer – who sheds light on the role of tobacco and climate science denier Fred Singer – and Stanton Glantz, who appears in the film and was an early, and combative, critic of the tobacco industry’s war on reality, and connects the tactics, and even the combatants, to the climate issue.
The movie adaptation of Dr. Oreskes’ book is due in theaters next week. I’ve seen it, and I think, especially in light of the recent revelations, it will become a starting point for a lot of conversations.
I’m sure that editors and reporters at the New York Times would have seen the movie and been aware of it too, so it causes one to wonder if there is a bit of calculation behind the recent story.
Wei-Hock Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, whose articles have been tied to corporate funding.Credit
Pete Marovich by Justin Gillis and John Schwartz, The New York Times, February 21, 2015 For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change
have bolstered their arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of
scientists who claim that greenhouse gases pose little risk to humanity.
One
of the names they invoke most often is Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a
scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who claims
that variations in the sun’s energy can largely explain recent global
warming. He has often appeared on conservative news programs, testified
before Congress and in state capitals, and starred at conferences of
people who deny the risks of global warming.
But
newly released documents show the extent to which Dr. Soon’s work has
been tied to funding he received from corporate interests.
He
has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel
industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of
interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has
published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of
those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the
journals that published his work.
Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, praising scientists like Dr. Soon.Credit
CSPAN
The
documents show that Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate
funders, described many of his scientific papers as “deliverables” that
he completed in exchange for their money. He used the same term to
describe testimony he prepared for Congress.
Though
Dr. Soon did not respond to questions about the documents, he has long
stated that his corporate funding has not influenced his scientific
findings.
The documents were obtained by Greenpeace, the environmental group, under the Freedom of Information Act. Greenpeace and an allied group, the Climate Investigations Center, shared them with several news organizations last week.
The
documents shed light on the role of scientists like Dr. Soon in
fostering public debate over whether human activity is causing global
warming. The vast majority of experts have concluded that it is and that
greenhouse emissions pose long-term risks to civilization.
Historians
and sociologists of science say that since the tobacco wars of the
1960s, corporations trying to block legislation that hurts their
interests have employed a strategy of creating the appearance of
scientific doubt, usually with the help of ostensibly independent
researchers who accept industry funding.
Fossil-fuel interests have followed this approach for years, but the mechanics of their activities remained largely hidden.
“The
whole doubt-mongering strategy relies on creating the impression of
scientific debate,” said Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at
Harvard University and the co-author of “Merchants of Doubt,” a book about such campaigns. “Willie Soon is playing a role in a certain kind of political theater.”
Environmentalists
have long questioned Dr. Soon’s work, and his acceptance of funding
from the fossil-fuel industry was previously known. But the full extent
of the links was not; the documents show that corporate contributions
were tied to specific papers and were not disclosed, as required by modern standards of publishing.
“What
it shows is the continuation of a long-term campaign by specific
fossil-fuel companies and interests to undermine the scientific
consensus on climate change,” said Kert Davies, executive director of
the Climate Investigations Center, a group funded by foundations seeking
to limit the risks of climate change.
Charles
R. Alcock, director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, acknowledged on
Friday that Dr. Soon had violated the disclosure standards of some
journals.
“I think that’s inappropriate behavior,” Dr. Alcock said. “This frankly becomes a personnel matter, which we have to handle with Dr. Soon internally.”
Dr. Soon is employed by the Smithsonian Institution, which jointly sponsors the astrophysics center with Harvard.
“I am aware of the situation with Willie Soon, and I’m very concerned about it,” W. John Kress, interim under secretary for science at the Smithsonian in Washington, said on Friday. “We are checking into this ourselves.”
Dr.
Soon rarely grants interviews to reporters, and he did not respond to
multiple emails and phone calls last week; nor did he respond to an
interview request conveyed to him by his employer. In past public
appearances, he has reacted angrily to questions about his funding
sources, but then acknowledged some corporate ties and said that they
had not altered his scientific findings.
“I
write proposals; I let them decide whether to fund me or not,” he said
at an event in Madison, Wis., in 2013. “If they choose to fund me, I’m
happy to receive it.” A moment later, he added, “I would never be
motivated by money for anything.”
The
newly disclosed documents, plus additional documents compiled by
Greenpeace over the last four years, show that at least $409,000 of Dr.
Soon’s funding in the past decade came from Southern Company Services, a
subsidiary of the Southern Company, based in Atlanta.
Southern
is one of the largest utility holding companies in the country, with
huge investments in coal-burning power plants. The company has spent
heavily over many years to lobby against greenhouse-gas regulations in
Washington. More recently, it has spent significant money to research ways to limit emissions.
“Southern
Company funds a broad range of research on a number of topics that have
potentially significant public-policy implications for our business,”
said Jeannice M. Hall, a spokeswoman. The company declined to answer
detailed questions about its funding of Dr. Soon’s research.
Dr.
Soon also received at least $230,000 from the Charles G. Koch
Charitable Foundation. (Mr. Koch’s fortune derives partly from oil
refining.) However, other companies and industry groups that once
supported Dr. Soon, including Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum
Institute, appear to have eliminated their grants to him in recent
years.
As the oil-industry contributions fell, Dr. Soon started receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars through Donors Trust,
an organization based in Alexandria, Va., that accepts money from
donors who wish to remain anonymous, then funnels it to various
conservative causes.
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
in Cambridge, Mass., is a joint venture between Harvard and the
Smithsonian Institution, housing some 300 scientists from both
institutions. Because the Smithsonian is a government agency, Greenpeace
was able to request that Dr. Soon’s correspondence and grant agreements
be released under the Freedom of Information Act.
Though
he has little formal training in climatology, Dr. Soon has for years
published papers trying to show that variations in the sun’s energy can
explain most recent global warming. His thesis is that human activity
has played a relatively small role in causing climate change.
Many
experts in the field say that Dr. Soon uses out-of-date data, publishes
spurious correlations between solar output and climate indicators, and
does not take account of the evidence implicating emissions from human
behavior in climate change.
Gavin A. Schmidt, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies
in Manhattan, a NASA division that studies climate change, said that
the sun had probably accounted for no more than 10 percent of recent
global warming and that greenhouse gases produced by human activity
explained most of it.
“The science that Willie Soon does is almost pointless,” Dr. Schmidt said.
The
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, whose scientists focus
largely on understanding distant stars and galaxies, routinely distances
itself from Dr. Soon’s findings. The Smithsonian has also published a statement accepting the scientific consensus on climate change.
Dr.
Alcock said that, aside from the disclosure issue, he thought it was
important to protect Dr. Soon’s academic freedom, even if most of his
colleagues disagreed with his findings.
Dr.
Soon has found a warm welcome among politicians in Washington and state
capitals who try to block climate action. United States Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who claims that climate change is a global scientific hoax, has repeatedly cited Dr. Soon’s work over the years.
In
a Senate debate last month, Mr. Inhofe pointed to a poster with photos
of scientists questioning the climate-change consensus, including Dr.
Soon. “These are scientists that cannot be challenged,” the senator
said. A spokeswoman for the senator said Friday that he was traveling
and could not be reached for comment.
As
of late last week, most of the journals in which Dr. Soon’s work had
appeared were not aware of the newly disclosed documents. The Climate
Investigations Center is planning to notify them over the coming week.
Several journals advised of the situation by The New York Times said
they would look into the matter.
Robert
J. Strangeway, the editor of a journal that published three of Dr.
Soon’s papers, said that editors relied on authors to be candid about
any conflicts of interest. “We assume that when people put stuff in a
paper, or anywhere else, they’re basically being honest,” said Dr.
Strangeway, editor of the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial
Physics.
Dr. Oreskes,
the Harvard science historian, said that academic institutions and
scientific journals had been too lax in recent decades in ferreting out
dubious research created to serve a corporate agenda.
“I
think universities desperately need to look more closely at this
issue,” Dr. Oreskes said. She added that Dr. Soon’s papers omitting
disclosure of his corporate funding should be retracted by the journals
that published them.
Where ice once capped the Sermeq Avangnardleq glacier in Greenland, vast expanses of the Arctic Ocean are now clear.Credit
Kadir van Lohuizen for The New York Times
by Justin Gillis, The New York Times, August 26, 2014
Runaway
growth in the emission of greenhouse gases is swamping all political
efforts to deal with the problem, raising the risk of “severe, pervasive
and irreversible impacts” over the coming decades, according to a draft
of a major new United Nations report.
Global
warming is already cutting grain production by several percentage
points, the report found, and that could grow much worse if emissions
continue unchecked. Higher seas, devastating heat waves, torrential rain
and other climate extremes are also being felt around the world as a
result of human emissions, the draft report said, and those problems are
likely to intensify unless the gases are brought under control.
The world may already be nearing a temperature at which the loss of the
vast ice sheet covering Greenland would become inevitable, the report
said. The actual melting would then take centuries, but it would be
unstoppable and could result in a sea level rise of 23 feet, with
additional increases from other sources like melting Antarctic ice,
potentially flooding the world’s major cities.
“Human
influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean,
in changes in the global water cycle, in reduction in snow and ice, and
in global mean-sea-level rise; and it is extremely likely to have been
the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,”
the draft report said. “The risk of abrupt and irreversible change
increases as the magnitude of the warming increases.”
The
report was drafted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a
body of scientists and other experts appointed by the United Nations
that periodically reviews and summarizes climate research. It is not
final and could change substantially before release.
The
report, intended to summarize and restate a string of earlier reports
about climate change released over the past year, is to be unveiled in
early November, after an intensive editing session in Copenhagen. A late
draft was sent to the world’s governments for review this week, and a
copy of that version was obtained by The New York Times.
Using
blunter, more forceful language than the reports that underpin it, the
new draft highlights the urgency of the risks likely to be intensified
by continued emissions of heat-trapping gases, primarily carbon dioxide
released by the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas.
The
report found that companies and governments had identified reserves of
these fuels at least four times larger than could safely be burned if
global warming is to be kept to a tolerable level.
That
means if society wants to limit the risks to future generations, it
must find the discipline to leave the vast majority of these valuable
fuels in the ground, the report said.
It
cited rising political efforts around the world on climate change,
including efforts to limit emissions as well as to adapt to changes that
have become inevitable. But the report found that these efforts were
being overwhelmed by construction of facilities like new coal-burning
power plants that will lock in high emissions for decades.
From
1970 to 2000, global emissions of greenhouse gases grew at 1.3% a
year. But from 2000 to 2010, that rate jumped to 2.2% a year,
the report found, and the pace seems to be accelerating further in this
decade.
A
major part of the jump was caused by industrialization in China, which
now accounts for half the world’s coal use. Those emissions are being
incurred in large part to produce goods for consumption in the West.
Emissions
are now falling in nearly all Western countries because of an increased
focus on efficiency and the spread of lower-emitting sources of
electricity. But the declines are not yet sufficient to offset rising
emissions in developing countries, many of whose governments are focused
on pulling their people out of poverty.
The
new report found that it was still technically possible to limit global
warming to an internationally agreed upper bound of 3.6 degrees
Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial level. But
continued political delays for another decade or two will make that
unachievable without severe economic disruption, the report said.
The
draft report comes a month before a summit of world leaders in New York
that is meant to set the stage for a potential global agreement on
emissions that would be completed next year. However, concern is growing
among climate experts that the leaders may not offer ambitious
commitments in their speeches on September 23, a potential continuation of
the political inaction that has marked the climate issue for decades.
The
draft report did find that efforts to counter climate change are
gathering force at the regional and local level in many countries. This
is especially clear in the United States, where Congress is paralyzed
and the national government has effectively ceded leadership on climate
to states like California, New York and Massachusetts.
President
Obama, using his executive authority under the Clean Air Act, is
seeking to impose national limits on emissions of greenhouse gases, but
he faces profound legal and political challenges as he seeks to put his
policy into effect before leaving office in early 2017.
The
draft report found that past emissions, and the failure to heed
scientific warnings about the risks, have made large-scale climatic
shifts inevitable. But lowering emissions would still slow the expected
pace of change, the report said, providing critical decades for human
society and the natural world to adapt.
“Continued
emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and
long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing
the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people
and ecosystems,” the report said.
The
earth has so far warmed by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit above the level
that prevailed before the Industrial Revolution, the report found, and
that seemingly modest increase is causing the effects already being seen
around the world.
A
continued rapid growth of emissions in coming decades could conceivably
lead to a global warming exceeding 8 degrees Fahrenheit, the report
found. The warming would be higher over land areas, and higher still at
the poles.
Warming
that substantial would almost certainly have catastrophic effects,
including a mass extinction of plants and animals, huge shortfalls in
food production, extreme coastal flooding and many other problems, the
report found.
The
report noted that severe weather events, some of them linked to human
emissions, had disrupted the food supply in recent years, leading to
several spikes in the prices of staple grains and destabilizing some
governments in poorer countries.
Continued
warming, the report found, is likely to “slow down economic growth,
make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security, and
prolong existing poverty traps and create new ones, the latter
particularly in urban areas and emerging hot spots of hunger.”
A man struggled to move a
submerged vehicle after torrential rain hit the metropolitan area in
Seoul in July 2013, flooding roads and homes.Credit
Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press.
by Justin Gillis, "By Degrees," The New York Times, May 12, 2014
The
acid test of a scientific theory is whether it makes predictions that
eventually come true. So consider this old prediction, from a pair of
researchers in Australia and New Zealand. They were summarizing the
results of then-primitive computerized forecasts about global warming:
“The
available evidence suggests that a warmer world is likely to experience
an increase in the frequency of heavy precipitation events, associated
with a more intense hydrological cycle and the increased water-holding
capacity of a warmer atmosphere.”
That was published in 1995, and it was based on research going back to the 1980s. Fast forward to 2014.
In the National Climate Assessment,
published last week, researchers in the United States reported that
“large increases in heavy precipitation have occurred in the Northeast,
Midwest and Great Plains, where heavy downpours have frequently led to
runoff that exceeded the capacity of storm drains and levees, and caused
flooding events and accelerated erosion.”
The future, it would seem, has arrived.
Climate
is a difficult branch of science, full of ambiguities and
uncertainties. But scientists can justly claim to have demonstrated some
predictive skill about many of the potential implications of the human
release of greenhouse gases.
Their track record actually goes back to 1896, when a Swede named Svante Arrhenius first predicted
that emissions of carbon dioxide would cause the planet to warm. It
took more than 80 years to be sure he was right. At roughly the same
time that realization was taking hold, climate scientists running
computer models of the atmosphere began to focus on the likelihood of
heavier rains in a future climate.
Many
people are still catching up with the science, but it is hard to miss
the ubiquity of these heavy rainstorms in recent years.
People in the Florida Panhandle recently had to dodge flash floods after two feet of rain fell in 26 hours. Torrential rains caused a Washington State hillside to collapse and bury a community earlier this year. Tumultuous rainstorms and floods overwhelmed Colorado last year, and sudden floods swept through Nashville in 2010, and Atlanta in 2009.
We’re seeing a pattern here.
In
the National Climate Assessment, the experts reported huge increases
since the mid-20th century in the amount of precipitation falling in
very heavy rainstorms: up 71% in the Northeast, 37% in the
Midwest and 27% in the Southeast. The effect was seen on a
smaller scale west of the Mississippi River, too, even in parts of the
country where the climate is drying out over all.
What led the researchers to expect this long before it actually happened?
Initially, the forecast was based on simple physics
from the 19th century. As we pour carbon dioxide into the air, the
lower atmosphere has to warm. As it does, it is able to hold more
moisture, and as the surface of the ocean also warms, more moisture
tends to evaporate from it.
In
the United States, the increase in water vapor has been on the order of
3 or 4 percent since the 1970s (most of the human-caused global
warming has occurred since then). That may not sound like a big jump,
but the effect is enormous.
That
extra water has to fall as rain or snow. But from the elementary
physics, it was long unclear whether this would mean more rainy days
over all, or more intense rains, or both.
It
was the computer models of the climate that suggested, starting in the
late 1980s, that the answer would be the latter, and so it has turned
out. One way to think of it is that even with a lot of moisture in the
air, conditions are not always right for rain, but when they are right,
the skies have a lot more water to dump.
“It rains harder than it used to,” said Dr. Trenberth, who could not resist adding: “When it rains, it pours.”
Researchers
sponsored by the Australian government were the first to really drill
into the implications of the finding. In their 1995 overview paper,
A. M. Fowler of the University of Auckland in New Zealand and K. J.
Hennessy of Australia’s national research program warned that society
needed to start thinking about the risks. They suggested toughening
standards for the designs of levees and dams, and hardening roads and
culverts against the possibility of more flash floods.
Society
responded by ignoring them. For someone sitting in Pensacola, Fla.,
wondering why the roads were washed out the other day, that longstanding
refusal to confront reality might be a good part of the answer.
The warming of the planet has slowed
in recent years, but scientists think that is likely temporary. They
expect it to get much, much warmer as this century progresses, and that
can only mean that the rains will fall harder still.
So
if you are still a little amazed at what these heavy downpours have
been doing to communities around the country, the message from science
is pretty blunt: Get used to it.
by Justin Gillis and Kenneth Chang, The New York Times, May 12, 2014
The
collapse of large parts of the ice sheet in West Antarctica appears to
have begun and is almost certainly unstoppable, with global warming
accelerating the pace of the disintegration, two groups of scientists
reported Monday.
The
finding, which had been feared by some scientists for decades, means
that a rise in global sea level of at least 10 feet may now be
inevitable. The rise may continue to be relatively slow for at least the
next century or so, the scientists said, but sometime after that it
will probably speed up so sharply as to become a crisis.
“This
is really happening,” said Thomas P. Wagner, who runs NASA’s programs
on polar ice and helped oversee some of the research. “There’s nothing
to stop it now. But you are still limited by the physics of how fast the
ice can flow.”
Two
papers scheduled for publication this week, in the journals Science and
Geophysical Research Letters, attempt to make sense of an accelerated
flow of glaciers seen in parts of West Antarctica in recent decades.
Various measurements have
captured the West Antarctic ice sheet changing very rapidly in the
region where it flows into the Amundsen Sea.Credit
Landsat
In this graphic, the red
regions are areas where temperatures have increased the most during the
last 50 years, particularly in West Antarctica, The dark blue regions
have had a lesser degree of warming. Temperature changes are measured in
degrees Celsius [per decade].Credit
NASA/GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio.
Both
papers conclude that warm water upwelling from the ocean depths has
most likely triggered an inherent instability that makes the West
Antarctic ice sheet vulnerable to a slow-motion collapse. And one paper
concludes that factors some scientists had hoped might counteract such a
collapse will not do so.
The
new finding appears to be the fulfillment of a prediction made in 1978
by an eminent glaciologist, John H. Mercer of the Ohio State University.
He outlined the uniquely vulnerable nature of the West Antarctic ice
sheet and warned that the rapid human release of greenhouse gases posed
“a threat of disaster.” He was assailed at the time, but in recent years
scientists have been watching with growing concern as events have
unfolded in much the way Dr. Mercer predicted. (He died in 1987.)
Scientists
said the ice sheet was not melting because of warmer air temperatures,
but rather because of the relatively warm water, which is naturally
occurring, from the ocean depths. That water is being pulled upward and
toward the ice sheet by intensification of the winds around Antarctica.
West Antarctic Glacier Ice Flows and Elevation ChangeVideo by NASA.gov
Most
scientists in the field see a connection between the stronger winds and
human-caused global warming, but they say other factors are likely at
work, too. Natural variability of climate may be one of them. Another
may be the ozone hole over Antarctica, caused by an entirely different
environmental problem, the human release of ozone-destroying gases.
The
basic problem is that much of the West Antarctic ice sheet sits below
sea level in a kind of bowl-shaped depression the earth. As Dr. Mercer
outlined in 1978, once the part of the ice sheet sitting on the rim of
the bowl melts and the ice retreats into deeper water, it becomes
unstable and highly vulnerable to further melting.
Richard
B. Alley, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University who was
not involved in the new research but has studied the polar ice sheets
for decades, said he found the new papers compelling. Though he has long
feared the possibility of ice-sheet collapse, when he learned of the
new findings, “it shook me a little bit,” Dr. Alley said.
He
added that while a large rise of the sea may now be inevitable from
West Antarctica, continued release of greenhouse gases will almost
certainly make the situation worse. The heat-trapping gases could
destabilize other parts of Antarctica as well as the Greenland ice
sheet, causing enough sea-level rise that many of the world’s coastal
cities would eventually have to be abandoned.
by Justin Gillis, The New York Times, March 30, 2014
Greenland's immense ice sheet is melting as a result of climate change.Credit
Kadir van Lohuizen from The New York Times.
YOKOHAMA,
Japan — Climate change is already having sweeping effects on every
continent and throughout the world’s oceans, scientists reported Monday,
and they warned that the problem is likely to grow substantially worse
unless greenhouse emissions are brought under control.
The report
by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations
group that periodically summarizes climate science, concluded that ice
caps are melting, sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, water supplies
are coming under stress, heat waves and heavy rains are intensifying,
coral reefs are dying, and fish and many other creatures are migrating
toward the poles or in some cases going extinct.
The
oceans are rising at a pace that threatens coastal communities and are
becoming more acidic as they absorb some of the carbon dioxide given off
by cars and power plants, which is killing some creatures or stunting
their growth, the report found.
Organic
matter frozen in Arctic soils since before civilization began is now
melting, allowing it to decay into greenhouse gases that will cause
further warming, the scientists said.
Rajendra K. Pachauri, center,
chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, speaks
during a press conference in Tokyo on Monday.Credit
Shizuo Kambayashi/Associated Press
And
the worst is yet to come, the scientists said in the second of three
reports that are expected to carry considerable weight next year as
nations try to agree on a new global climate treaty. In particular, the
report emphasized that the world’s food supply is at considerable risk —
a threat that could have serious consequences for the poorest nations.
“Nobody
on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate
change,” Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the intergovernmental panel,
said at a news conference here on Monday.
The
report was among the most sobering yet issued by the intergovernmental
panel. The group, along with Al Gore, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007
for its efforts to clarify the risks of climate change.
The report
released on Monday in Yokohama is the final work of several hundred
authors; details from the drafts of this and of the last report in the series, which will be released next month, leaked in the last few months.
The
report attempts to project how the effects will alter human society in
coming decades. While the impact of global warming may actually be
outweighed by factors like economic or technological change, the report
found, the disruptions are nonetheless likely to be profound.
It
cited the risk of death or injury on a widespread scale, probable
damage to public health, displacement of people and potential mass
migrations.
“Throughout
the 21st century, climate-change impacts are projected to slow down
economic growth, make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode
food security, and prolong existing and create new poverty traps, the
latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hotspots of hunger,” the
report declared.
The
report also cites the possibility of violent conflict over land or
other resources, to which climate change might contribute indirectly “by
exacerbating well-established drivers of these conflicts such as
poverty and economic shocks.”
The
scientists emphasized that climate change is not just some problem of
the distant future, but is happening now. For instance, in much of the
American West, mountain snowpack is declining, threatening water
supplies for the region, the scientists reported. And the snow that does
fall is melting earlier in the year, which means there is less
meltwater to ease the parched summers.
In
Alaska, the collapse of sea ice is allowing huge waves to strike the
coast, causing erosion so rapid that it is already forcing entire
communities to relocate.
“Now
we are at the point where there is so much information, so much
evidence, that we can no longer plead ignorance,” said Michel Jarraud,
secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization.
The
experts did find a bright spot, however. Since the group issued its
report in 2007, it has found growing evidence that governments and
businesses around the world are starting extensive plans to adapt to
climate disruptions, even as some conservatives in the United States and
a small number of scientists continue to deny that a problem exists.
“I
think that dealing effectively with climate change is just going to be
something that great nations do,” said Christopher B. Field, co-chairman
of the working group that wrote the report, and an earth scientist at
the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, Calif.
Talk
of adaptation to global warming was once avoided in some quarters, on
the grounds that it would distract from the need to cut emissions. But
the past few years have seen a shift in thinking, including research
from scientists and economists who argue that both strategies must be
pursued at once.
Tracks were flooded at Grand Central Station in October 2012, after Hurricane Sandy hit New York.Credit
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
A
striking example of the change occurred recently in the state of New
York, where the Public Service Commission ordered Consolidated Edison,
the electric utility serving New York City and some suburbs, to spend
about $1 billion upgrading its system to prevent future damage from
flooding and other weather disruptions.
The
plan is a reaction to the blackouts caused by Hurricane Sandy. Con Ed
will raise flood walls, bury some vital equipment and launch a study of
whether emerging climate risks require even more changes. Other
utilities in the state face similar requirements, and utility regulators
across the United States are discussing whether to follow New York’s
lead.
But
with a global failure to limit greenhouse gases, the risk is rising
that climatic changes in coming decades could overwhelm such efforts to
adapt, the panel found. It cited a particular risk that in a hotter
climate, farmers will not be able to keep up with the fast-rising demand for food.
The
poorest people in the world, who have had virtually nothing to do with
causing global warming, will be high on the list of victims as climatic
disruptions intensify, the report said. It cited a World Bank estimate
that poor countries need as much as $100 billion a year to try to offset
the effects of climate change; they are now getting, at best, a few
billion dollars a year in such aid from rich countries.
The
$100 billion figure, though included in the 2,500-page main report, was
removed from a 48-page executive summary to be read by the world’s top
political leaders. It was among the most significant changes made as the
summary underwent final review during a days-long editing session in
Yokohama.
The
edit came after several rich countries, including the United States,
raised questions about the language, according to several people who
were in the room at the time but did not wish to be identified because
the negotiations are private.
The
language is contentious because poor countries are expected to renew
their demand for aid this September in New York at a summit meeting of
world leaders, who will attempt to make headway on a new treaty to limit
greenhouse gases.
Many
rich countries argue that $100 billion a year is an unrealistic demand;
it would essentially require them to double their budgets for foreign
aid, at a time of economic distress at home. That argument has fed a
rising sense of outrage among the leaders of poor countries, who feel
their people are paying the price for decades of profligate Western
consumption.
Two
decades of international efforts to limit emissions have yielded little
result, and it is not clear whether the negotiations in New York this
fall will be any different. While greenhouse gas emissions have begun to
decline slightly in many wealthy countries, including the United
States, those gains are being swamped by emissions from rising economic
powers like China and India.
For
the world’s poorer countries, food is not the only issue, but it may be
the most acute. Several times in recent years, climatic disruptions in
major growing regions have helped to throw supply and demand out of
balance, contributing to price increases that have reversed decades of
gains against global hunger, at least temporarily.
The
warning about the food supply in the new report is much sharper in tone
than any previously issued by the panel. That reflects a growing body
of research about how sensitive many crops are to heat waves and water
stress.
David
B. Lobell, a Stanford University scientist who has published much of
that research and helped write the new report, said in an interview that
as yet, too little work was being done to understand the risk, much
less counter it with improved crop varieties and farming techniques. “It
is a surprisingly small amount of effort for the stakes,” he said.
Timothy
Gore, an analyst for Oxfam, the anti-hunger charity that sent observers
to the proceedings, praised the new report for painting a clear
picture. But he warned that without greater efforts to limit global
warming and to adapt to the changes that have become inevitable, “the
goal we have in Oxfam of ensuring that every person has enough food to
eat could be lost forever.”
This week’s media firestorm centering on Dr. Willie Soon, a high-profile prop at many a gathering of climate deniers, was kicked off by Justin Gillis’ piece in the New York Times on Sunday.
Posts
