Call for High-Level Risk Assessment

There is a rapid and accelerating decline of Arctic and Far North snow and summer albedo cooling, with the Arctic summer sea ice past tipping point. Several potentially catastrophic (to huge human populations and all future generations) Arctic changes are happening decades ahead of model projections. This is potentially a United States and world food security emergency, and an Arctic methane feedback planetary emergency. The pace is outstripping the capacity of the international published climate modeling science to assess the risks. The climate science assessment process is unable to rapidly assess all the risks and the combined risk of all risk factors.

In 2008 and again in 2012, after the large drops in summer sea ice extent, James Hansen made a public statement that the world is a state of planetary emergency. Starting in 2006 John Holdren presented the scientific evidence that we are beyond dangerous interference with the climate system and challenged to prevent catastrophic interference.

The problem is that the summer sea ice cover, Arctic frozen methane and world food security are not projected by the assessments to be a serious problem for many decades. This despite the fact that for many years scientists have warned that the loss of the Arctic summer sea ice cover would result in a large boost in warming, and that this would cause the release of the vast Arctic stores methane to start. Scientists call the Arctic summer sea ice cover the air conditioner of the entire Northern hemisphere.

We are seeing a multi-year heat and drought situation affecting the world’s top Northern hemisphere food producing regions of the U.S., Russia and China. Increasing drought affecting these regions is projected, but the situation developing right now may be due to the loss of Arctic albedo affecting the weather of the normally temperate climate zone of the Northern hemisphere, on top of sustained direct greenhouse gas warming.

All Arctic sources of global warming vulnerable methane are emitting more methane with the amplified increasing Arctic warming. This includes the destabilization of the methane that is contained in the form of hydrates and free gas in the Arctic seabed. Atmospheric methane is now on a renewed sustained increase - this time due to planetary methane emissions.

Without getting a rapid risk assessment of this situation there seems no hope of any measures to address it. The UN climate negotiations for world emissions reductions are on hold till 2020. Emissions have never been higher and are increasing and the only plan is to burn more fossil fuels and of the worst kind.

Leading climate experts say we are now committed to a warming over 2C, probably to 3C and possibly 4C. We are on track for 6C by 2100. Even an all out emergency scale response would not see any reduction of atmospheric GHGs for many decades.

We call for an urgent high-level risk assessment to capture all these adverse trends and situations. An Arctic climate risk assessment is needed to address the unprecedented risks that are threatening the security of the U.S., the Northern hemisphere and the world at large, and the well-being of both current and future generations.

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Above call for a high-level risk assessment was initiated by Dr. Peter Carter of the Climate Emergency Institute. Please try and improve this message and see that it finds its way to the people who need to see this and take action, including leading climate scientists, doctors, politicians and those holding public office positions with a duty of care.

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Accelerated Arctic Warming

The Arctic is warming much faster than the rest of the world, as illustrated by the NASA image below.

global temperature anomalies averaged from 2008 through 2012, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

The interactive image below (no longer functioning, ed.) shows temperature anomalies for the different latitudional zones over time.

The Arctic shows the strongest warming over time, while accelerating in recent years. The best fit for this warming in the Arctic is a fourth order polynomial trendline, as added to the data on the image below.

This accelerated warming in the Arctic is threatening to destabilize the methane in the seabed and trigger runaway global warming within a decade. Effective action needs to be taken before it's too late!

Remarks at the White House - by James Hansen

Remarks at the White House¹

15 January 2013

James Hansen, screenshot

Let us return for a moment to election night 2008. As I sat in our farm house in Pennsylvania, watching Barack Obama's victory speech, I turned my head aside so my wife would not see the tears in my eyes. I suspect that millions cried. It was a great day for America.

We had great hopes for our new President. It is appropriate, it is right, in a period honoring Martin Luther King, to recall the hopes and dreams of that evening, and the hopes and dreams that we…will… never  -  give up.

We have a dream – that our President will understand the intergenerational injustice of human-made climate change – that he will recognize our duty to be caretakers of creation, of the land, of the life on our planet – and that he will give these matters the priority that our young people deserve.

We have a dream – that our President will understand the commonality of solutions for energy security, national security and climate stability – and that he will exercise hands-on leadership, taking the matter to the public, avoiding backroom crippling deals with special interests.

We have a dream – that the President will stand as firm as Abraham Lincoln when he faced the great moral issue of slavery – and, like Franklin Roosevelt or Winston Churchill, he will speak with the public, enlisting their support and reassuring them.

It is not easy to find an Abraham Lincoln or a Winston Churchill. But we are here today looking to find that in you, Mr. President. And until you summon it within yourself, let me assure you that we will return, and our numbers will grow.

Mr. President, we will be here until the promise of a safe world for our children and grandchildren, and your children and grand children – is not a dream. We will be here until we are assured that the history books will rightfully record – that you were the person we were looking for  - the person who turned these dreams…into reality.

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¹ Interfaith Moral Action on Climate, Pray-in at NY Ave. Presbyterian Church and the White House
(www.interfaithactiononclimatechange.org) on Martin Luther King's birthday.
"We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now…" Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Arctic sea ice volume 2012

Above images show Arctic sea ice volume data up to and including the year 2012. On the right, monthly data - click on the image to view data in more detail. On the left, annual minimum data with trendline added.

Details of minimum data (as on the image on the left) - Big changes in Arctic within years
Further albedo changes in the Arctic - Albedo changes in the Arctic
Discussion of some of the implications - Getting the picture
Policies to change the climate back - President Obama, here's a climate plan!

President Obama, here's a climate plan!

President Obama, now is the time to act on climate change! Climate change won't wait. There are encouraging signs indicating that a summit is being organized, to be hosted at the White House, to launch a comprehensive climate action plan with broad-based and bipartisan support.

What plan? Well, here's a climate plan!



The first line of action of most climate plans is to cut emissions. Two types of feebates, working separately, yet complimentary, can cut emissions most effectively and can be implemented locally in a budget-neutral way, without requiring complicated international agreements:

1. energy feebates (pictured above) in sectors such as electricity, heating and transport, and 
2. feebates in sectors such as agriculture, land use, waste management and construction (pictured below).

Pictured on the left are feebates that impose fees on sales of Portland cement, nitrogen fertilizers and livestock products. This will make further cuts in emissions.

The revenues are then used to fund rebates on clean construction and on soil supplements containing biochar and olive sand, which will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in buildings, soil, river banks, roads and pavement.

Working seperately, yet complimentary, energy feebates and feebates in agriculture and other sectors can dramatically bring down carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and oceans; as a result, atmospheric carbon dioxide could be brought back to pre-industral levels of around 280ppm by the end of the century.

For further discussion, also see Towards a Sustainable Economy

Thus, these two feebates will be effective on two lines of action, i.e. on cutting emissions and on reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and oceans.

Even with these measures, temperatures will keep rising for some time, as excess ocean heat will get transferred to the atmosphere over the years and as aerosols (particularly sulfur) fall away that are currently emitted when fuel is burned and thus mask the full wrath of global warming.

Continued warming comes with numerous feedbacks. Combined, these feedbacks threaten to trigger runaway global warming, i.e. warming that will cause mass death, destruction and extinction.

How to avoid mass-scale death, destruction and extinction

This means that, in addition to the first two lines of action, further lines of action will be necessary, i.e. Solar radiation management, and Methane management and further action. Further action includes regulatory measures such as ending commercial flights over the Arctic and support for pyrolysis to avoid burning of biomass. The image below pictures several methods of Arctic methane management that should get high priority, given the threat of hydrate destabilization in the Arctic.

Arctic Methane Management

Fees imposed on commercial flights could fund solar radiation management, while the feebates described above will also be most effective in further lines of action, i.e. in Arctic methane management and further action.

Dark Snow Project - Research into soot on Greenland

Fossil fuel combustion creates carbon emissions that increase atmospheric thickness, warming climate. The occurrence of wildfire increases with climate warming, increasing soot loading of the atmosphere. Some of this soot is transported through the atmosphere and is deposited on glaciers, lowering their reflectivity, increasing solar energy absorption, increasing melt rates.

image from DarkSnowProject.org

In parts of Greenland where winter snow loss during each melt season exposes impurity-rich bare ice, the surface reflectivity drops from 85% to 30%. Consequently, most of the 24-hour sunlight goes into ice melt. In this Dark Zone, the impact of soot manifests strongest in a self-reinforcing feedback loop that research by Jason Box has shown to have doubled melt rates in the past decade.

High on the inland ice sheet where melting is rare, satellite data show surface darkening making the researchers suspect that wildfire and industrial soot are to blame. Darkening here promotes snowpack heating, bringing earlier melt, keeping melt going longer. Here is where this feedback is changing the ice sheet in surprising ways, leading to complete surface melting in year 2012.

To measure the extent to which soot particles enhance melting, Jason Box is organizing a Greenland ice sheet expedition for 2013. The Dark Snow Project expedition is to be the first of its kind, made possible by crowd-source funding.



References

- Fire and Ice: Wildfires Darkening Greenland Snowpack, Increasing Melting (News Release from Byrd Polar Center)
http://bprc.osu.edu/~jbox/DS/20121205_news_release_CALIPSO_etc.pdf

- The DarkSnowProject
http://darksnowproject.org

-Video: Sampling Greenland, the Dark Snow Project, by Peter Sinclair, produced at Greenman Studio, Midland, MI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT6H7HPWkqU

- Where there’s fire there’s smoke - Blog by Jason Box, the Meltfactor.org

http://www.meltfactor.org/blog/?p=766

Further reading

- Greenland is melting at incredible rate
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/07/greenland-is-melting-at-incredible-rate.html

- Turning forest waste into biochar
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/01/turning-forest-waste-into-biochar.html

- Glaciers cracking in the presence of carbon dioxide
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/10/glaciers-cracking-in-the-presence-of-carbon-dioxide.html

- Aviation Policies
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/aviation-policies.html

Anthropogenic Arctic Volcano can calm climate

by Paul Beckwith

Paul Beckwith, B.Eng, M.Sc. (Physics),
Ph.D. student (Climatology) and
Part-time Professor, University of Ottawa 

Rational decision making requires realistic risk assessments of alternatives. Humanity is now choosing default door A, which is no change in behavior with fossil fuel energy sourcing and a continuance of rapidly rising anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).

Abrupt collapse of Arctic albedo due to collapsing terrestrial snow cover (area dropping 17.6% per decade for past three decades) and collapse of sea ice cover (area dropping 49% below 1979 to 2000 long term average) is occurring (NOAA 2012 Arctic Report Card from last week).

The destination is an ice free condition within a few years (by 2015 with PIOMAS volume projections); well before the 30 to 60 year timeframe of the most sophisticated climate change models which are a big FAIL on sea ice. The risk (= probability of occurrence x significance of occurrence) is enormous through door A. Probability of occurrence is 50% within 3 years and significance to human farming, water availability, temperatures and weather extremes is clearly massive.

A recent widely-respected DARA report states that Today climate change is directly/indirectly reducing global GDP by 1.6% and attributing to 400,000 human deaths globally (to increase to 2.6% and 500,000 in about 20 years). A recent UN report is warning of global food shortages in 2013. There is no end in sight to the U.S. drought (climate models predict such droughts can last 20 or 30 years, hopefully they are wrong as they are with sea ice).

I prefer door B - create an Anthropogenic Arctic volcano to calm the climate. Give me two large airplanes with pilots, some sulfur in solution, and a few large nozzles from your local ski hill; they are not needed anyway since the ski industry has estimated losses of $1 Billion over the last decade (about 8% of total revenues); adaptation to zip lining and water parks is possible. With this equipment I will fly into the stratosphere (above the weather) near the North Pole and spread sulfur dust/aerosols to reflect incoming sunlight and rapidly cool the Arctic for several years. This will restore sea ice, straighten the jet streams, and restore a “normal” climate.

Very little sulfur is needed relative to huge emissions from smokestacks into the lower atmosphere from coal burning power plants. It will work; powerful erupting volcanoes that aim upwards (like Pinatubo in 1991) and not sideways (like Mt. St. Helens in 1980) have cooled the climate by a degree or more for 2 to 3 years. They do this by injecting sulfur up into the upper atmosphere, like our aircraft will do.

Door B has two important sub-doors, B-Bad and B-Good. Door B-B is using the sulfur injections to calm climate and continuing the fossil-fuel energy sourcing with rapidly accelerating GHGs. This door will be a false reprieve since the GHGs will continue to rapidly acidify the ocean and destroy the base of the food chain; by the way, ocean phytoplankton levels have dropped 40% since 1950.

Wikipedia image: UN jet with humanitarian relief supplies

Luckily for us, Door B-G exists. Door B-G is using the sulfur injections to calm climate and rapidly slashing fossil-fuel energy sourcing by ramping up conservation, efficiency renewables as fast as is humanly possible; I am talking about retooling on the scale of the Manhattan Project or Apollo Programs. Or even having a U.S. president (or a Chinese one) getting all the CEOs of car manufacturers together in a room and telling them they will produce no cars for 3 years, only wind turbines, geothermal heat exchangers, and solar panels. Is this possible? In WWII the meeting occurred and for the next 3 years only war materials were produced. And keep in mind the industrial revolution of World War Two ushered in one of longest eras of prosperity humanity has known.

Of course there is a caveat with Door B-G. We must start the sulfur injections when the sun rises in the Arctic in the spring in early 2013. Waiting for more sea ice collapse will decrease the odds of success at obtaining Arctic snow cover and sea ice regrowth. Give me a plane, pilot, nozzle, and sulfur and I can calm the climate.

Originally posted January 10, 2013, at Sierra Club Canada; posted here with author's permission