Chance to rescue the world’s oceans from climate change is drifting away

Acehnese fishers are among the quarter of the world’s population who live on the coast, and for whom climate-driven changes to the oceans would make life much harder. Hotli Simanjuntak/EPA/AAP Image

by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Director, Global Change Institute, The University of Queensland, The Conversation, July 2, 2105

Until recently, you might be forgiven for thinking that the oceans were a trivial component of Earth’s climate system, and that the consequences of change were minimal. After all, only 5% of papers published on climate change involve ocean systems. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which evaluates the peer-reviewed scientific literature, did not devote a regional chapter to the ocean until its most recent major report.

Yet the ocean system could not be more important: it regulates the global temperature and atmosphere, feeds 3 billion people, and largely determines our weather. The ocean also has lots of “inertia” – which means that getting the ocean to change takes a lot of energy, but once it begins to change, slowing it down becomes more or less impossible.

A paper published today in Science (on which I am one of the authors) has issued a warning that our window of opportunity to save the oceans from major changes is in danger of slamming shut, bringing with it the risk that we will encounter planetary-scale tipping points in the behaviour of the climate. Building on the IPCC’s extensive assessment last year of the effects of climate change on the oceans, my co-authors and I have compiled the latest evidence and projections about the ocean under rapid human-driven climate change.

The news is not good. Failure to act on climate change will see warmer and more stagnant oceans, with declining oxygen levels and productivity in some regions, and the removal or modification of ecosystems in other areas. Fisheries and national economies are in the cross hairs in many regions. Rising seas and intensifying storms, plus a loss of critical coastal features, will make life on the shores of a rapidly changing ocean dangerously different to today.

The risks currently being experienced across the planet. Most, if not all, are set to increase. Gattuso et al.

Click to enlarge

A lot hinges on whether we can meet the globally agreed 2 C “warming guardrail,” but there are fears that this is impossible within current economic strategies, and that even this target is unsafe.

It would be fine to state this if we had a safe alternative, but we don’t. Consequently, the bar for the end-of-year Paris climate summit is set much higher than many understand. As I’ll explain below, we need a global deal that reduces global emissions to zero over the next 20 years, or else we will see momentous changes.

Calls to action

Thankfully, world leaders are beginning to wake up to the challenge facing our oceans. US Secretary of State John Kerry and Prince Albert II of Monaco, are among those who have spoken out against what many see as impending chaos.

The latest is Pope Francis, who became the first pontiff to warn of ocean warming, acidification and sea-level rise, pointing out in his recent encyclical that “a quarter of the world’s population lives on the coast or nearby, and … the majority of our megacities are situated in coastal areas.”

For the first time, the Vatican is fighting for the ocean. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Global Change Institute, University of Queensland

Our research adds to the already mounting evidence that these leaders are right when they say we need to act decisively on fossil fuel emissions and other drivers of climate change.

One of the most stunning conclusions from the IPCC’s report is the statement that “the current rate and magnitude of ocean acidification are at least 10 times faster than any event within the last 65 million years.” Given that periods of rapid acidification over tens of thousands of years – slow by our current human-driven standard – resulted in mass extinction and ecological collapse, this alone should be reason to act.

In a few regions, such as the North Sea, temporary increases in fisheries production are being reported, as the ice retreats, seas warm, and productivity increases. But these benefits are few and far between, and are likely to disappear over time as the ocean warms and acidifies further.

Coral reefs perhaps provide the perfect parable for the Pope’s encyclical. Everyone appreciates their beauty and value, but few may be aware of the crucial role that they play in terms of protecting coastlines, and supporting fisheries and other industries. They generate hundreds of billions of dollars each year and support some 500 million mostly poor people worldwide. Our report highlights the extreme sensitivity of these ecosystems to ocean warming and acidification.

Climate-driven changes in the oceans pose risks to organisms, ecosystems, people and industry. Gattuso et al.

Click to enlarge

Work to do at the Paris summit

As we progress down the road to Paris, paved with skeletons of these important organisms, there is little doubt about the amount of work that needs to be done in Paris. Analysis of the world’s “carbon budget” (see here and here suggest that we can emit about another 500–800 billion tonnes (gigatonnes) of carbon dioxide before we push global temperatures beyond 2 C above the pre-industrial average. This gives us about 20 years before net global emissions have to fall to zero – a tall order indeed.

There is hope. The recent US–China climate deal is one reason to be optimistic that negotiations in Paris will be smoother than at the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009. But I wonder whether leaders are aware of the true scale of the work that needs to be done to avoid catastrophe. Perhaps the fact that China this week made clear the strength of its new climate commitments is evidence of this.

Yet here is a sobering calculation: imagine that the rest of the world falls into line with the US and Chinese climate targets. How much of the world’s budget would we burn?

The answer would be that the world had emitted 1,400 gigatonnes of CO₂, or 175–280% of our remaining budget, dragging average global warming to 3C and beyond (see the orange line on the graph below). This would be disastrous for us and our children, and many of the benefits of our oceans (coral reefs, fisheries, coastal living) would be transformed beyond recognition.

The relationship between cumulative carbon dioxide emissions and future average global temperatures. IPCC

Click to enlarge

An ethical response

Mention of “us and our children” brings us back to Pope Francis and the importance of not reducing everything to a dollar value. Yet even in pure economic terms, given that the IPCC calculates that keeping atmospheric CO₂ below about 450 parts per million (which would give us a good chance of staying within the 2 C guardrail) would cost just 0.06% of global consumption growth per year, one is left wondering why we are not jumping right in and solving this problem.

Pope Francis made an important observation:

In a word, businesses profit by calculating and paying only a fraction of the costs involved. Yet only when “the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations,” can those actions be considered ethical.

Once can only hope the leaders heading to Paris will heed his words and drive their efforts in a new direction.

https://theconversation.com/new-report-the-chance-to-rescue-the-worlds-oceans-from-climate-change-is-drifting-away-43257

The One-Two Punch of Climate Change on the Great Barrier Reef

x x

"Limiting global warming to 2 °C is unlikely to save most coral reefs," by K. Frieler et al., Nature Climate Change, 3 (2013); doi: doi:10.1038/nclimate1674

Nature Climate Change, 3 (2013) 165-170; doi: doi:10.1038/nclimate1674

Limiting global warming to 2 °C is unlikely to save most coral reefs

• K. Frieler,
• M. Meinshausen,
• A. Golly,
• M. Mengel,
• K. Lebek,
• S. D. Donner and
•  O. Hoegh-Guldberg

Abstract

Mass coral bleaching events have become a widespread phenomenon causing serious concerns with regard to the survival of corals. Triggered by high ocean temperatures, bleaching events are projected to increase in frequency and intensity. Here, we provide a comprehensive global study of coral bleaching in terms of global mean temperature change, based on an extended set of emissions scenarios and models. We show that preserving >10% of coral reefs worldwide would require limiting warming to below 1.5 °C (atmosphere–ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs) range: 1.3–1.8 °C) relative to pre-industrial levels. Even under optimistic assumptions regarding corals’ thermal adaptation, one-third (9–60%, 68% uncertainty range) of the world’s coral reefs are projected to be subject to long-term degradation under the most optimistic new IPCC emissions scenario, RCP3-PD. Under RCP4.5 this fraction increases to two-thirds (30–88%, 68% uncertainty range). Possible effects of ocean acidification reducing thermal tolerance are assessed within a sensitivity experiment.

At a glance

• Figures

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Link: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n2/full/nclimate1674.html

Australian scientists write to President Obama in defense of Dr. Charles Monnett (Peter Tait, Stephan Lewandowsky, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, and Michael Ashley)

Dear Mr President,  


We are scientists from Australia and have been following the investigation by the U.S. Bureau 
of Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation and Enforcement's inspector general's office, into 
alleged mis-administration by Dr Charles Monnett, of that Federal agency, and we are very 
concerned to hear about the manner in which the investigation of Dr Monnett is being 
undertaken.  


Our concerns include: 


 Despite claims that this is an administrative investigation, the investigators are placing a 
lot of weight on the 2006 article in Polar Biology about observed deaths of four polar 
bears. This is despite the considerable scientific literature on the ecological impacts of 
climate change on polar bears and other Arctic fauna. 


 This seems like the type of anti-science action that would have occurred under your 
predecessor and is similar to actions more expected in the pre-1989 Soviet Union. 


In short, we view the manner and process of this investigation as both bringing the integrity 
of the investigating office into disrepute, and adversely reflecting on the ability of the USA to 
pursue publicly funded science in an honest and transparent manner. 


We ask Mr. President, that you intervene to ensure that Dr Monnett’s investigation is put onto a more just and transparent pathway, and is rapidly concluded so as not to drag on and 
interrupt his professional career. 


We look to you making it clear that your commitment to removing political interference in the conduct of science, expressed in your 2009 presidential order, is taking effect.


We support the call for a full inquiry into Dr Monnett’s suspension.


Yours sincerely, 


Dr Peter Tait, MBBS, FRACGP, MClimateChange 


Stephan Lewandowsky, 
Winthrop Professor of Psychology, University of Western Australia 
Australian Professorial Fellow 


Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Director, Global Change Institute, University of Queensland and 
Queensland Smart State Premiers Fellow (2009-2013) 


Prof. Michael Ashley, Professor of Physics at the University of New South Wales 


cc Dr John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the 
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President's 
Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

Graham Readfearn, The Drum: Australia's place in the global web of climate denial

Australia's place in the global web of climate denial

by Graham Readfearn, The Drum, ABC Australia, June 29, 2011


Climate sceptics, deniers, contrarians – call them what you like – are engaged in a fight for column inches, radio waves, TV talk-time and community sentiment.


In Australia, the issue has turned decidedly unsavoury, with climate scientists revealing inboxes chock-full of hate and Government advisors being slurred as Nazis.


But as a memo from US Republican communications guru Frank Luntz revealed in 2003, the most important aspect of climate change denial is not to throw hate, but to sow doubt.

Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.


Doubt is the product of the climate change denial industry – an industry which is tightly knit, well resourced and globally linked.


Hot on the heels of climate sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton's visit, part-funded by the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies and supported by mining billionaire Gina Rinehart, will be Václav Klaus.


The president of the Czech Republic, a long-time denier of the evidence of climate change, is being flown to Australia to talk about the "mass delusion" of climate change.


Then, once president Klaus has done his bit for the cause, in comes yet another denier of the risks associated with human-caused climate change – Lord Lawson.


This conveyor belt of climate denial is no unhappy coincidence. Australia is an important hub in a long-standing global assault on climate science coordinated by a network of think tanks and front groups, many with links to fossil fuel and mining companies.


Earlier this week in The Age newspaper, Professor Bob Carter, an adjunct (unpaid) research fellow at James Cook University in Queensland, wrote one of his many columns questioning global warming.


Despite the fact that the World Meteorological Organisation has declared the decade just gone to be the warmest on record, Professor Carter claimed the world had gone through a "slight cooling."


Writing in The Age today, John Cook, founder of the blog Skeptical Science, explains the methods Professor Carter uses to confuse readers, such as employing half-truths, cherry-picking data and conveniently ignoring other multiple lines of evidence.


Earlier this month in The Conversation, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, searched the leading science journals for peer-reviewed papers on climate change written by Professor Carter and other sceptics, and found only one.


The paper had claimed that natural variation in the climate could account for most of the observed global warming, but when a group of genuine climate change researchers examined the paper they found it seriously flawed. The conclusions made in the paper, wrote a group of eminent scientists in a response in the same journal, were "not supported by their analysis or any physical theory."


In other words, Professor Carter and his co-authors had come to a conclusion which even their own analysis had failed to support. With this being Professor Carter's only foray into the peer-reviewed literature, it is odd that he should be held up as a climate expert.


Yet he is touted as an expert, regularly, and not just here but in the United States and the UK by numerous organisations that deny the risks or even the very existence of human-caused climate change.


As well as being the sole science advisor to Australia's Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), Professor Carter is also listed as an advisor at the US-based Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) where Lord Christopher Monckton is the chief policy advisor.


The SPPI emerged from another [faux] think tank – the Centre for Science and Public Policy (CSPP) – which Greenpeace has discovered was launched with a grant from oil giant Exxon. Robert Ferguson, the SPPI president, was the executive director for CSPP and Lord Monckton an advisor.


Professor Carter is also the chief science advisor to the Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), where again he teams up with Lord Monckton , who is a policy advisor.


Australian Viv Forbes is also an ICSC advisor, as well as being an advisor to the Australian Climate Science Coalition and chairman of his own Carbon Sense Coalition. The Carbon Sense Coalition also includes former cat palmist Ken Ring amongst its advisors.


When long-serving coal-industry director Mr Forbes isn't advising to organisations spreading misinformation on climate science, he is serving as a director at coal export business Stanmore Coal.


On Friday, Professor Carter will be in Washington with a swag of contrarians as a keynote speaker at a conference dedicated to climate denial – mis-titled the Sixth International Conference on Climate Change.


The conferences, which started in 2008, have been organised and sponsored by the Heartland Institute – a free-market [faux] think tank which has been heavily funded by fossil fuel companies including Exxon, the oil and gas billionaires the Koch brothers and the oil and banking family the Scaifes.


Professor Carter was also a key speaker at the first conference in New York, the second also held in New York, the third in Washington, the fourth in Chicago and the fifth in Sydney.


These have included Alan Moran, a researcher at the Institute of Public Affairs, Professor Ian Plimer, a geologist and mining entrepreneur and South Australian Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi. Lord Monckton has also spoken at two of the conferences.


Alongside Heartland, Australia-based groups have given sponsorship. The IPA has sponsored three conferences and the Lavoisier Group, Carbon Sense Coalition and the Australian Libertarian Society (ALS) have each sponsored twice.


The ALS treasurer is Tim Andrews, who in 2009 spent a year in the US with the Koch Associate Program – set up by the same Koch brothers which have helped fund climate denial and the "grassroots" [astroturf] Tea Party movement in the US.


A series of Greenpeace USA reports have claimed that the companies, foundations and trusts of Charles and David Koch, of the oil and gas company Koch Industries, have plowed more than $US55 million into think tanks and groups which challenge human-caused climate change.


The Lavoisier Group, which was founded by Hugh Morgan, former head of Western Mining Corporation, is an organisation devoted to climate denial. Mr Morgan is currently a member of the Liberal-led Coalition's business group advising on its climate policy.


The Competitive Enterprise Institute, another free-market US [faux] think tank receiving funding from Exxon, co-ordinates the Cooler Heads Coalition, which includes the Lavoisier Group among its members.


In Australia, one of the most enthusiastic supporters of climate denial has been the IPA which is not required to reveal its funders. Lavoisier founder Mr Morgan is a former director of the IPA and his son William is currently on the board.


In its latest attempt to confuse the public on climate change, the IPA will bring Czech Republic president Václav Klaus to Australia late next month.


President Klaus gives away some subtle clues to his long-held position on climate change in the titles of his talks.


Perth gets "Threats to freedom in the 21st century"; Sydney gets "Climate change the dangerous faith"; Melbourne enjoys "The mass delusion of climate change"; and Brisbanites get to hear "Climate change a new ideology." 


After president Klaus flies out with his measured analysis still ringing in the ears, Australians will then be treated to climate sceptic Lord Lawson, president of the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation – yet another think tank devoted to confusing the public about climate change. 


Presumably Lord Lawson will not be too concerned at missing president Klaus' talk, given that last October he gave the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) annual lecture in Cambridge. 


GWPF also has friends in Australia. Professors Plimer and Carter are both on its "academic advisory council." 


The IPA also brought Lord Lawson to Australia in 2007 (Lord Monckton's sister is Rosa Monckton, who is married to Dominic Lawson – Lord Lawson's eldest son). This time, the debate, to be held in Sydney in about five weeks time, is being organised by The Spectator magazine and its editor Tom Switzer, a long-time researcher at the IPA. 


With all of this noise being generated in the coming weeks over climate change, Australians could be forgiven for thinking there is a genuine debate over the causes of rising global temperatures, melting ice-sheets, retreating Arctic ice, acidifying oceans, rising sea-levels or the many other direct consequences of increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.


No doubt there is a debate and no doubt, either, that it is being manufactured. 


Graham Readfearn is a freelance journalist and writer covering the environment and sustainability.


http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2775298.html

Richard Black, BBC: World's oceans in 'shocking' decline ["The findings are shocking," said Alex Rogers, scientific director of the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO)]. Ocean species undergoing rapid mass extinction

World's oceans in 'shocking' decline

By Richard BlackEnvironment correspondent, BBC News, June 20, 2011

Coral reefs are subject to "multiple stressors" that could destroy many within a human generation

Continue reading the main story

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The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists.

In a new report, they warn that ocean life is "at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history".

They conclude that issues such as over-fishing, pollution and climate change are acting together in ways that have not previously been recognised.

The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity.

The panel was convened by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), and brought together experts from different disciplines, including coral reef ecologists, toxicologists, and fisheries scientists.

Its report will be formally released later this week.

"The findings are shocking," said Alex Rogers, IPSO's scientific director and professor of conservation biology at Oxford University.

"As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the oceans, the implications became far worse than we had individually realised.

"We've sat in one forum and spoken to each other about what we're seeing, and we've ended up with a picture showing that almost right across the board we're seeing changes that are happening faster than we'd thought, or in ways that we didn't expect to see for hundreds of years."

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

The challenges are vast; but unlike previous generations, we know what now needs to happen”

Dan LaffoleyIUCN

These "accelerated" changes include melting of Arctic sea ice and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, sea level rise, and release of methane trapped in the sea bed.

But more worrying than this, the team noted, are the ways in which different issues act synergistically to increase threats to marine life.

Some pollutants, for example, stick to the surfaces of tiny plastic particles that are now found in the ocean bed.

This increases the amounts of these pollutants that are consumed by bottom-feeding fish.

Plastic particles also assist the transport of algae from place to place, increasing the occurrence of toxic algal blooms - which are also caused by the influx of nutrient-rich pollution from agricultural land.

In a wider sense, ocean acidification, warming, local pollution and overfishing are acting together to increase the threat to coral reefs - so much so that three-quarters of the world's reefs are at risk of severe decline.

Carbon deposits

Life on Earth has gone through five "mass extinction events" caused by events such as asteroid impacts; and it is often said that humanity's combined impact is causing a sixth such event.

Some marine fish are already fished way beyond their limits - and may also be affected by other threats

The IPSO report concludes that it is too early to say definitively.

But the trends are such that it is likely to happen, they say - and far faster than any of the previous five.

"What we're seeing at the moment is unprecedented in the fossil record - the environmental changes are much more rapid," Professor Rogers told BBC News.

"We've still got most of the world's biodiversity, but the actual rate of extinction is much higher [than in past events] - and what we face is certainly a globally significant extinction event."

The report also notes that previous mass extinction events have been associated with trends being observed now - disturbances of the carbon cycle, and acidification and hypoxia (depletion of oxygen) of seawater.

Levels of CO2 being absorbed by the oceans are already far greater than during the great extinction of marine species 55 million years ago (during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum), it concludes.

Blue planet

The report's conclusions will be presented at UN headquarters in New York this week, when government delegates begin discussions on reforming governance of the oceans.

In the long run, greenhouse gas emissions must be cut to conserve ocean life, the report concludes

IPSO's immediate recommendations include:

• stopping exploitative fishing now, with special emphasis on the high seas where currently there is little effective regulation
• mapping and then reducing the input of pollutants including plastics, agricultural fertilisers and human waste
• making sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon dioxide levels are now so high, it says, that ways of pulling the gas out of the atmosphere need to be researched urgently - but not using techniques, such as iron fertilisation, that lead to more CO2 entering the oceans.

"The challenges for the future of the ocean are vast; but unlike previous generations, we know what now needs to happen," said Dan Laffoley, marine chair of the World Commission on Protected Areas and an adviser to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

"The time to protect the blue heart of our planet is now."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13796479