The Future Climate of Earth
We’ll need much more than
renewable energy to halt climate
change
The Greenhouse Effect from CO2
• The Sun is not giving us more heat. It’s giving us the same
heating rate as always, with only tiny 0.1% peak-to-trough
variations over the 11 year sunspot cycle
• But by raising our CO2 content 44% (and rising) above preindustrial levels, we’re reducing the ability of the sunheated Earth to radiate an equal amount of energy back
out into space, so that our global temperature might then
stay constant
• That’s the Greenhouse Effect. It’s like throwing more and
more blankets each year over the Earth
• Because we continue to add more CO2, we’re continually
out of balance by +0.58 watts/square meter around the
Earth.
If the Earth could radiate as much heat back out to space as
it receives from the sun, the Earth would be in “Radiative
Equilibrium”, and temperatures would stop rising
But, Earth is NOT in Radiative Equilibrium
• We are not able to radiate back to space the full amount of
incoming solar heating, because rising CO2 and consequent
rising humidity are increasingly blocking outgoing infrared
radiation by the warm Earth.
• The Earth system is massive, and takes of over a century to
come to equilibrium once thermal forcing changes finally
stop.
• Below: blockage of outgoing heat - by CO2 (lavender) and
water vapor (gray). Pretty effective in blanketing the infrared
spectrum at the wavelengths corresponding to Earth’s
temperature
Think of a cast iron skillet on an
electric stove
Push the “High” button …
• … and the skillet remains cold for the moment
• Little “climate denialist” microbes on the skillet will scoff at the
evidence that there’s trouble ahead…. What, just because
someone came into the kitchen and pushed a button – Hah! As
if!!
• Hey, besides it’s so HARD to try and fund a team to climb the
edges of the skillet and figure out a way to turn OFF the
button, and no one wants to raise taxes to pay for such a big
expedition when there’s still food scraps here to be had.
• So they tell themselves little lies, saying that since the skillet is
cold, it proves all that fancy thermal physics is a lot of hooey,
and maybe the button didn’t even get pushed anyway.
• All those bugs who show the solid evidence someone pushed
the button are probably just scheming to get funding for this
lark of an expedition!
Soon…
• It seems the skillet maybe is feeling warmer
• But the little denial-bugs are ideologically
committed to their position, and say it’s just
probably the room’s gotten warmer because
the room temperature’s not really constant
anyway, and it’s nothing to get worked up
about
• But it keeps getting warmer…
More and more bugs get up out of
their comfy little positions,
• …where they’ve been eating the scraps from
the last meal cooked here
• Maybe a button really was pushed....
• OK, but we don’t KNOW that the Master
pushed the “high” button, even if those
snooty science-bugs say he did.
• We can wait till we’re full from our little meals
and then think about a low-budget expedition
to see about this button thingy
It’s definitely getting hot in here!
• Finally, the little bugs decide to drop what they’re
doing and try to strategize
• But those snooty science-bugs have been saying
it’ll take 10 full minutes to get an expedition
equipped, ladder’d out of the skillet, and up to
the stove top and even then it’s not clear they
can get that button pushed “off”
• And in 5 minutes, the thermal physics says they’ll
be cooked.
Saved!
?
• Just then, the Master walks in and pushes the
“off” button, and walks back out. (Guess he
decided to cook later)
• Saved!
• But… the bugs look at each other nervously and
soon nod… the skillet is still getting hotter… and
hotter
• And before the little bugs can figure out what to
do (what CAN they do, anyway?)… it’s “Game
Over”
I guess the bugs were brown. Or, at least, they are now
This Graph is Not CO2 Content in the Atmosphere – it’s
Worse. It’s our RATE of Addition of CO2 per year, into the
Atmosphere. And Even The RATE itself is Accelerating
Yes, Renewables are Rising… But not
as Fast as Fossil Fuel Burning.
The Atmospheric CO2 Rise Rate (slope)
has TRIPLED Since 1960 - And so,
Thermal Forcing is Accelerating
Suppose We Could Hold Atmospheric CO2 Levels
Constant… (This Would Require an Immediate
~75% Cut in Carbon Emissions Rate)… But if We
Could, What Then?
• Then the Earth would STILL heat up, because we’re NOT
YET in RADIATIVE EQUILIBRIUM
• Temperatures would still continue to rise for another 1-2
centuries! (see graph later), albeit at a much reduced rate
• Our current heat imbalance is +0.58 watts/square meter of
heating (Hansen et al. 2012)
•
• This is what intuitive physics says, and it’s also what millionlines-of-code computer GCM’s (Global Climate Models) say
too, as we’ll see…
• So that’s not a good enough strategy.
• Suppose we do MORE ……
Let’s Push Optimism to the Red-Line,
Maximum Overdrive Limit
• We’ll convert the entire planet to solar and wind energy
with zero fossil fuel burning, and we’ll do it tomorrow
• We’ll pour concrete over the entire Arctic Permafrost
region to keep CO2 and methane from escaping.
• We’ll seal every methane leak from every oil well, and we’ll
terminate fracking.
• We’ll end deforestation, which contributes about 25% of
our carbon emissions.
• We’ll eat existing cattle and other ruminant livestock and
not grow new ones, so their methane emissions will stop.
• We’ll have ZERO CO2 and Methane Emissions. THAT would
solve things, Right?
If We Stop Hurting the Earth – The
Earth Will Heal… Right?
• That would be wonderful…
• …. But no, the Earth will not heal on any time scale
relevant to human society
• There are two reasons….
• #1: The Oceans have soaked up 93% of our
Greenhouse heating, and that soaked-up heat is not
going away any time soon.
• #2: The Earth system is not in radiative equilibrium.
Earth’s surface needs to be hotter before we can
radiate as much as we get from the sun, given the
CO2 content we already have.
• Let’s look at these….
#1: Ocean Heat: 93% of the Greenhouse Heating From Our 44% rise
in CO2 content, Has Transmitted from Our Thin Atmosphere into the
Thick, 700 Times More Thermally Massive Oceans (blue).
Water Has an Amazing Property
• Because of its molecular bonds, it is able to absorb a
lot of energy (heat) and yet not raise its temperature
very much while doing so.
• Basically, the heat is stored mostly as internal motion
within the vibrating rubbery molecular bonds, and
less as motion of the entire molecule
• We say it has “High Thermal Capacitance”
• It’s why coastal climates are so mild and have so little
seasonal temperature change compared to inland
deserts.
• The ocean’s surface temperature rise has been only
½ that of the land surface temperature rise, during
Global Warming.
If We Didn’t Have the Oceans to
Absorb All Our Greenhouse Heating…
• …. so that the heat energy instead had to
remain entirely in the atmosphere, then the
surface temperatures on Earth would have gone
up not the +1.5F we’ve observed, but +65F !
• A 65 degrees Fahrenheit temperature rise would
kill most life on Earth, including you and me.
• So we LOVE the Oceans! They’ve Saved us from
Ourselves!
Saved! But… Our debt to the Oceans
is Unfortunately on a Credit Card
• That ocean heat is still there, and since the ocean
has 700 times more thermal capacity than our
thin, ethereal atmosphere, that warmer ocean
will prevent air temperatures from being able to
go back down.
• A credit card with interest – that additional heat
lowers the ability of the ocean to absorb further
heat and also absorb further CO2
• The ocean giveth, and the ocean taketh away
• So back to our question – what if we end ALL CO2
emissions, what would happen?
You’re Thinking CO2 Levels Would
Drop – and You’re Right - They Would!
• The Ocean would be able to soak up some
existing CO2, and so would land plants and
roots, as they currently do (oceans, land, and
land plants absorb almost half of the annual
CO2 we emit).
• So, global atmospheric CO2 levels would
slowly drop… this is confirmed by many
studies
Solomon et al. 2009 – Modelled Global CO2 and
Temperatures After Ceasing All CO2 Emissions
• Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – chief
publication of our top scientific institution.
• Start with our actual 2%/year CO2 growth rate, then terminate all
emissions – we find indeed, CO2 levels drop some, then level off, after
ceasing emissions at 450ppm, or 550 ppm, or 650 ppm, etc.
But the Hot Oceans Prevent Temperatures from Going Back Down.
Next slide… Redone by Port et al. with more Complete Modelling and
Found…
Port et al. 2012 Studied the Effect of Including Vegetation
DYNamics to added CO2 (absorption, sequestration,
reflectivity, etc), using the Earth System Climate Model
computer code. Result: Slightly Worse Temperatures
•
black curve - DYN: includes effects above. No further human change to land use; let
Nature adapt land to assumed rising CO2. No Arctic permafrost methane
assumptions included. And, “business as usual” modelled till 2120, 6K (=10F) temp
rise, then end all emissions. Result – temperatures don’t go down at all - flat!
Key Findings of Port et al. 2012
• No Arctic methane release included in these models, and no
further human interference with land cover and use, (so this
is an optimistic assumption. Reality may be worse.)
• Trees and grasslands extend northward, converting Arctic
tundra “desert” into forests and grasslands.
• Significant additional carbon sequestered by vegetation: 40
ppm CO2 from atmosphere into plants, when including
vegetation dynamics (red vs. black curves on left graph)
• Also, lower reflectivity of trees vs. current shrub-dominated
north, leads to enhanced warming of Arctic
• But – temperatures hardly change; only 0.4 F cooler when
vegetation included, and temperatures STILL do not go back
down after CO2 emission stops, in agreement with other
studies
Mathews and Weaver 2010. Constant CO2 Levels (top) mean
Continued Rising Temperatures for 200 years. Truly ZERO Emissions
(middle) Result in flat, CONSTANT Temperatures, for centuries.
(BERN2.5CC model assumes aggressive atmospheric CO2 removal)
But The Authors and IPCC Climate Scientists
Acknowledge Even This Graph is Too Optimistic
• (see response #20 by IPCC climatologist Gavin Schmidt)
• The reason is that humans do TWO things with their carbon burning…
• 1. They produce CO2, which has a strong warming forcing to climate (that, of
course, you already knew)
• 2. That CO2 burning puts sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere (smog!) and
aerosols reflect sunlight both directly, and also indirectly by enhancing low
cloud formation.
• It is the second most powerful climate forcing – and is a COOLING forcing
(next slide)
• So, If we instantly went cold turkey on all carbon burning, the aerosol cooling
forcing also would go cold-turkey, and warming due to newly clean air would
be nearly instantaneous and sharp.
• This is because aerosols stay in the lower atmosphere for only days or weeks
before settling or raining out, and even in the stratosphere for only a couple
of years at most
• The previous papers did NOT include aerosol removal as they should have. If
they had, the heat forcing would be significantly higher (roughly 60% higher)
and temperatures would STILL rise, even with zero emissions, and rise
powerfully early on and for a while.
The Biggest Forcing is Greenhouse Gases (green), a
WARMING. But the Second Biggest is HumanCaused Aerosols (light blue), which COOL
But There’s Yet Another Reason These
Zero Emission Models are Too Optimistic
• Zero emissions means zero emissions. But not all CO2
emissions are now under our control
• The Arctic permafrost is melting, due to loss of Arctic Ice.
• Even the lower temperatures of the past 60 years on
average, have been enough to melt through nearly all the
Arctic Ocean permanent (10+ ft thick) ice, so that what
remains is only thin seasonal ice which melts quickly during
spring and summer
• Without significantly dropping temperatures, this ice will
not re-form, and the dark ocean now revealed will continue
to absorb heat vastly faster than the reflective white ice.
• This is very much a RECENT forcing, because whether thick
or thin, summer ice WILL reflect sunlight. AND THE ARCTIC
OCEAN ICE COVERING ONLY MELTED COMPLETELY
THROUGH IN THIS CENTURY.
The Arctic Ocean has melted much faster than IPCC
models, which neglect too many positive feedbacks
The Now Darkened Absorptive Arctic
Ocean will Send Warmth Southward
Across the Permafrost as far as 1500 km
• This is not just theory, it’s verified by paleoclimate
records. Climate scientists used an ingenious method
to determine when the permafrost is melted or frozen.
• Vaks et al. 2013 (and full text available here) looked at
the growth of stagmites/stalactites in limestone caves
across the Siberian permafrost for the past 450,000
years. These grow only when the permafrost is melted.
• They find that global temperatures barely higher than
today’s (+1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures) are
sufficient to melt essentially all of this permafrost
• This permafrost contains twice the carbon that the
atmosphere does already, although it would escape
only slowly
Siberian Permafrost Zones
Permafrost: Twice as Much Carbon as
in the Atmosphere
•
• The carbon in our atmosphere is in the form almost
entirely of CO2: 402 parts per million
• The atmosphere has only 1800 parts per BILLION of
methane, only 1/250 that of CO2
• The carbon in the permafrost is believed to be mostly
in the form of methane
• Whether it will escape as methane, or be converted
to CO2 by microbes before reaching the surface, is
poorly known
• The escape should be slow, since heat transfer
through solid permafrost is very slow. A century or
three?
Methane is a MUCH more powerful
Greenhouse Gas
• Methane has 4 hydrogen bonds, and it has many
more internal motion possibilities to absorb
infrared outgoing radiation than CO2 or water
vapor. Pound for pound, it’s about 50 times more
potent a greenhouse gas, depending on release
rate
• Fortunately, methane will oxidize into CO2 and
water vapor over time (still greenhouse gases,
but not as powerful)…
• But, oxidation takes time, even longer in the cold
Arctic than at the room temperature rate shown
on the next graph
A given emitted mass of methane has 120 times the
GWP (Global Warming Potential) as CO2
• This quickly decays to 100 times after 5 years,
because some converts to CO2 and water, but it is
still 25 times higher even a century later after release
Current methane levels dwarf the
levels over the past 800,000 years
Methane – more than doubled since pre-industrial
Methane Bubbles Beneath Shallow
Frozen Arctic Lake Surfaces
Permafrost Temperatures are already
Rising, Melting, Even at Today’s +0.8C
Temperature Above Pre-Industrial
And re-accelerating upward in the past decade as Arctic
Ocean summer ice breaks up and warms the permafrost
(see next slide for fuller explanation of this chart)
Recent Methane Trends Explained?
• This NASA study (Blake et al. 2012) use some detective work to find
that methane growth rates were falling for the late 20th century for
two reasons…
• 1. Methane was increasingly captured and sold as a fuel (i.e. burned
before entering the atmosphere) as technology improved. Earlier,
much of it was ignored and entered as “fugitive emissions”.
• 2. Methane will naturally oxidize, so that a constant emission rate
would show as a slightly decelerating upward trend.
• But today, methane levels are re-accelerating, despite the
recognition it is a valuable commodity.
• While fracking has increased, and while emission rates from wells
are higher than industry says, the RATE of increase in atmospheric
methane appears too high to make this the likely culprit.
• Work from Shahkova, Walters, and others (e.g. Dlugokencky et al.
2009) suggest methane from the Arctic is the main reason.
• Note too the dramatic fall in Arctic Ocean ice cover coincides with
the sharp change in slope of methane levels.
By 2100: “Control” (left) included no permafrost melt
processes. “Permafrost” (right), does. It makes a difference,
and IPCC Models did NOT include permafrost melt
Methane Apocalypse? Not Likely
• There’s a lot of apocalypsic YouTube videos
and bloggers centered around Arctic Methane
• These got their start from the discovery of
much methane trapped in Arctic Lakes, and
the guesstimates of massive amounts of
methane hydrates which could possibly be destabilized.
• See the work of Shakovha and also Walter in
2010
But We’ve Had Time to Do Some
Calculations Since Then
• Methane hydrates are stabilized by low
temperature and high pressure
• They could only form in the Arctic at depths of
300m or more. But this is much deeper than is
the shallow Arctic Ocean, so that for heat to get
to them, it would have to conduct through much
solid ground, which is a very slow process.
• But what about the rising amounts of methane
seen coming from the Arctic Ocean?
• The amounts are still a tiny fraction of the
methane sources from flooded tropical areas
But Guy McPherson Says They’re
Rising Exponentially and Will Kill
Humanity in the next Few Decades
• No. The “exponential” claim is from bogus extrapolated
curve-fitting using polynomials.
• You NEVER curve fit a limited dataset to a high-order
polynomial and then take seriously the extrapolation
decades beyond the data!
• Climatologist David Randall has studied the issue and
the most likely source of the methane seeping from the
Arctic plumes is melting permafrost at the bottom of
the Arctic, caused by the flooding of the Arctic Basin by
warm waters after the last Ice Age. These seeps have
most likely been seeping for thousands of years, and
were only recently discovered.
But What About the Explosive
Methane Craters Showing Up All over
Siberia?
• A calculation of the methane explosion which
could produce these, finds it would take millions
of such craters to double existing methane levels
in our atmosphere. We’ve discovered about 20.
• But there’s no doubt that methane escape from
the Arctic is increasing and this is a positive
feedback to climate. The Arctic is warming at
more than twice the rate of the lower latitudes.
Melting Permafrost Releases
Subsurface Methane,
So Putting it All Together…
• Even if we in the rich U.S. stopped all carbon
emission instantly, went to war to prevent other
countries from using their carbon, because
after all, they want to be rich like us…
• Temperatures would still rise. This would seem
to only accelerate carbon release from the
Arctic, raising greenhouse warming in a positive
feedback cycle.
• This Vaks et al. permafrost study came out in
2013 – it appears to me that the true
implications have not sunk in yet. It’s not gotten
the wide notice it should receive…
West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Has
Thinned by Warm Water from
Underneath
• And this thinning has lifted the bottom off the
last anchoring sub-surface ridge
• There is now nothing to hold back the ice
flowing off the higher elevation glaciers
• WAIS is judged now to be in irreversible
collapse, and will raise sea levels by up to 10
meters over the coming century or two
• May 2014 papers
Greenland is the Next Largest Ice
Reservoir
• Melting Greenland would raise sea levels by an additional
24 feet
• A new and more thorough modelling of Greenland ice
stability, including now ice albedo, elevation drop during
melting, and temperature drivers, says that the tipping
point for losing all of Greenland to melt is much lower than
had been thought by more primitive assumptions.
• Tipping Point is global average surface temperatures of +0.8
to +3.2 C above pre-industrial (Robinson et al. 2012)
• We’re already at +0.8C today. And the Greenland melt is
indeed accelerating… Khan et al. 2014
Geo-Engineering
• Would seem to be necessary, and urgently needed now
• Perhaps the ugly ideas circulating, of pumping massive aerosols into
the stratosphere constantly to block sunlight?
• That seems the most technologically feasible on the short term.
Effects on lakes and ocean ecology with acid rain would be very bad
though, but at least add a cooling effect while we scramble to do
something better.
• CO2 removal from the atmosphere at a rapid rate is needed – but
we have no affordable technology for doing so, yet, just some ideas
(e.g. Klaus Lackner’s resin artificial trees)
• Assuming the captured CO2 is turned into a stable form such as
calcium carbonate or calcium bicarbonate – it would take a cube 6
miles high, deep, and wide to pull enough CO2 out of the
atmosphere to reduce our 400 ppm to 280 ppm as it was in preindustrial times. That’s higher than Mt Everest … not the pictures
you’ve seen (usually taken from 14,000 ft elevation or higher), but
from SEA LEVEL. Where would you get that much calcium? Where
would you put it all?
Pulling CO2 from the Atmosphere Costly
• The American Physical Society (professional physicists)
used what they characterize as optimistic assumptions
and find carbon capture and sequestration from the
atmosphere would cost $600/ton.
• The world emits 35 billion tons of CO2 per year, which
would cost $21 TRILLION a year to remove, at this cost.
That’s bigger than the entire accumulated U.S. National
Debt.
• That’s $60,000 for every man, woman, and child in the
U.S. compared to a median income of $55,000 per
household in the U.S.
• Lackner’s artificial trees, he claims, would be much
cheaper – but it was a private venture which was
stopped in 2013 and we have little to go on to judge it
Agricultural Sequestration?
• Better agricultural techniques would let more carbon be
sequestered in the ground, at a significant rate for a few
years. There are many reasons to end commercial practices
and go organic, to preserve our topsoil most of all, which is
currently disappearing at a rate of 1% per year.
• But longer term, the benefits of massive carbon
sequestration by agriculture would appear to taper off
fairly rapidly once healthy plant communities were restored
and the topsoil holding carbon at capacity (if possible, in
this changing climate and increasing drought-prone world).
• Ending deforestation and planting trees will help of course,
but not at the magnitude needed to solve this.
CO2 vs. Temperature
• This is a point that’s worth making for the non-scientist citizen
climate activist…
• CO2 initiated our problems, but it is TEMPERATURE which will
trigger the unstoppable feedbacks which look so frightening here.
• CO2 acts to create temperature changes with a lot of thermal
inertia and delay.
• Focusing on reducing CO2 only, would have been a decent strategy
a few decades ago. But now it’s too late – the Arctic Ocean summer
ice is 65% gone, and the permafrost is melting, and temperatures in
both theory and paleo record, are TOO HIGH for safety already.
• It’s TEMPERATURE which is melting the ice sheets, and the
permafrost
• It is TEMPERATURE directly which must be quickly brought back
down to slow or halt our progression to climate chaos. It’s too late
to just think about gradually reducing CO2 emissions as our savior.
• Those in power need to know just how dire it ALREADY is – we
don’t have a decade or two more emissions we can comfort
ourselves with foot-dragging.
Another Analogy
• You’re in San Francisco, just gotten out of your car
you’ve parked at almost the tippy top of one of the
famous hills.
• You get out, close the door, hurry away – and then
realize you (a) forgot to set the parking brake and (b),
locked your keys inside the car! OhhhhNooo!!!!!!!!!
• If you’re like most folks vs. climate these days
(especially politicians), you’ll moan and complain about
how hard it’s going to be to try and deal with this
terrible situation, and do little or nothing.
• If you instead think fast and decisively, you rush back to
the car…
Costly, or Catastrophic? You Decide
• …and the car is already starting to creep forwards.
• You do the math, and realize that unless you get in
front of the car immediately and push with ALL your
strength, there’s catastrophe ahead
• You push desperately, and yell to a passer-by to throw
the nearest rock through your driver’s side window,
and then to reach in and open the door and set the
parking brake while you still push with all your might.
• THAT’s what we should be doing. Costly, but a bargain
in the long run
Meanwhile, in a Make-Believe Universe
• Your politician’s car starts to drift, and he worries he’ll muss his clothes, or
worry that neighbors will think he’s dumb for locking his keys and
forgetting the parking brake. Leadership is only a buzzword to him, not a
meaningful reality
• So he hesitates and tries to ignore the thought of what’s about to happen
• Very soon, the car’s going too fast to stop with human power. Still, no
catastrophe. That’s still in the future – but now it’s baked in without
possibility of changing, like “committed climate change”
• Down the hill is a pedestrian crossing, filled with school kids, and just
beyond that a cable car filled with people waiting for the light to change…
• You get the picture?
• What would YOU do?
• What CAN you do?
• One thing seems certain – wasting energy on little things at this late date
seems pointless. People NEED to be frightened. They NEED to feel stark,
cold terror at the future – if that’s what it takes to force a wrenching
reversal of our civilization so that Priority #1 is climate and future Earth,
and there IS no Priority #2.
The 2014 US/China Climate Agreement – “A Game
Changer!”…. Not. A Carbon Tax Far Stronger than the
McDermott Proposal, WOULD be a Game Changer