June 13, 2016
By MK Blechman and Don Hughes co-Chairs, Climate Crisis Committee
A shocking new report from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies reveals that February 2016 was the warmest month ever measured globally: 1.35 degrees Celsius above the “long-term” (1951-1980) average. By itself, it might be considered a fluke – a blip of warmth. But it followed a January that also set a new record, at 1.13°C above the 1951-80 baseline. This was on top of a 5-month run of record heat, as recorded at hundreds of meteorological stations spread across the globe.
The increase, from +1.13°C in January to +1.35°C in February, is a giant leap. NASA has confirmed that its data “is showing a dramatic and ongoing surge in the planet’s temperature.”
Keep in mind that manmade climate change began well before 1951. Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels began in earnest with the industrial revolution in the early 1800s. If the pre-industrial baseline from 1750 is used, the increase is more than 1.5°C globally. In northern regions of Russia, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Western Canada and Alaska, temperatures were 4°C or more degrees above former February averages. It was T-shirt weather for some Alaskans in the depth of winter.
Comments from scientists tend to be understated. However, these latest numbers, which are measurements and not conjectures or probabilities, has changed their tone. Brad Ward, the policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics said, “These results suggest that we may be even closer than we realized to breaching the 2°C limit. We have used up all our room for maneuver. If we delay any longer strong cuts in greenhouse emissions, it looks like global mean surface temperature is likely to exceed the level beyond which the impacts of climate change are likely to be very dangerous.” Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change Research in Germany stated, “We are in a kind of climate emergency now. This is really quite stunning … it’s completely unprecedented. “ Many climate scientists from around the world joined in expressing astonishment.Compare being at +1.35°C now with the temperature goals negotiated just last December in Paris. The IPCC was going to consider a revised temperature target of no more than +1.5°C 5 years from now!
The IPCC has relentlessly publicized that the planet may safely reach 2°C and that we would somehow turn off the emissions spigot just before that benchmark. This never made sense, but the IPCC said it did, and the media parroted it constantly as if it were true. By saying that, the IPCC was effectively complicit in the low bar for action on emission goals at COP 21 in Paris last winter.
It was at the Copenhagen IPCC conference in 2009 that the decision was made to dismiss using parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a marker of increasing vulnerability to global warming. It then substituted the 2Celsius temperature goal that informs the public of nothing. This slight of hand was an out-of-sight, out-of-mind strategy that served the fossil fuel industries well. An accurate marker would have been to include a daily measure of methane as well as carbon dioxide. No mechanism has been established for a daily count of atmospheric methane that is readily available to the public on the internet. We need both everyday if we are to understand where we are going.
We find that fast increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere parallels the temperatures we are finding on the surface of the Earth. Measurements of monthly average CO2 hit 404.2 ppm in February 2016 at Mauna Loa observatory. For the month of February 2015, they recorded 400.3ppm.This is an increase of 3.9 ppm of CO2 in one year. It is far beyond anything recorded in nearly 60 years of careful measurements at Mauna Loa.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements started in 1958. At first the year-to-year increases were less than 1 ppm of CO2 annually. But the year-to-year increase has been growing, such that the current rate of increase has been about 2 ppm per year. An increase of nearly 4 ppm is unprecedented. We can conclude that the surface temperatures we are seeing today are not temporary freaks of nature. They foretell the future.
In 2006, climate scientist James Hansen had prophesied that a temperature increase of 1 degree Celsius would leave us with a planet so altered we would not recognize it. But his science was ignored by the IPCC and he remains marginalized. Actually he was probably too optimistic. By the time the planet reached +1°C, the melting of permafrost had begun to release methane some years before.
Increases in temperatures may be caused, in some part, by another greenhouse gas, methane. Methane is far more powerful than CO2 at trapping heat. The massive expansion in hydro-fracking deep into the ground for natural gas and oil has produced a dangerous by-product: methane. The natural gas will be burned, but significant amounts of methane are released to the atmosphere beginning with drilling and continuing during production, even after the well is abandoned decades later. The USEPA recently announced new regulations designed to control methane emissions from the oil and gas industry, but it will be years before this technology is implemented. In the meantime, the release of methane continues. This adds to the climate emergency. It is like taking the genie out of the bottle.
Huge repositories of methane, estimated to be as many as 450 billion metric tons across Alaska, Canada, and Siberia are stored under the permafrost. Permafrost is an icy blanket covering the vast arctic lands. It functions as a cap on methane releases. Yet it is melting rapidly as temperatures in the Arctic rise. Holes in the ice are are developing and the methane is bubbling out on its way to the atmosphere. This is why it is essential to have permafrost securely frozen in the Arctic. Scientists have long understood that maintaining the permafrost is the condition for the survival of Earth as we know it.
The Obama administration canceled drilling for oil on the Atlantic east coast, yet promised to open up the Arctic to oil exploration. Other nations are doing the same. Pipelines for oil and natural gas, and electrical lines, are still being built everywhere. Coal mining is ongoing. We are mining coal on public lands. Hillary Clinton was a big proponent of fracking and still waffled on it during a recent presidential debate. It seems to us that there is an incredible disconnect with the reality of climate change when there are 510 coal plants under construction now and 1874 proposed for construction in China, India and many other nations. (Global Warming Policy Forum)
The numbers tell us that the world is looking at possible runaway global warming with a horrific outcome: sea-level rise of 5-6 feet by the end of the century, increased frequency of prolonged droughts, massive storms like Katrina and Sandy, major displacement of species that can adapt, and extinction of those that cannot, the collapse of agricultural systems, and the spread of tropical diseases into mid-latitudes (Europe, N. America). The impact on the oceans is barely comprehended at this point, but what is known is frightening: coral reefs are succumbing to the double daggers of higher temperatures and ocean acidification. Over 25% of fish species depend on coral reefs.
If we agree that the job of the federal government is national security, a different approach is required. It needs to recognize finally that we cannot burn any more fossil fuels. The first step is to starve the fossil fuel industry by stopping the enormous subsidies for fossil fuel development that our government provides. It is American banks that are financing new construction of coal plants.
We will not accomplish an about-face on fossil fuel extraction, unless the public demands it. A focus on rapid emissions reductions is entirely possible, as pointed out in numerous reports that show that the combination of renewable energy, efficiency, and conservation can really work. It will not be easy, but it is doable. Yet we have not scratched the surface. The reallocation of subsidies from oil to solar energy must be part of the plan. Electric cars, powered by solar energy, are on the streets of Albany and Troy already.
We both live in upstate New York. In mid-winter we see tawny, empty fields, and it feels wrong. Not many years ago those fields were covered with snow for at least three months. Snow melts very slowly in the spring and there are last minute flurries. One gets the impression that winter is reluctant to leave. But below the surface the longer days of sun are turning the snow to a steady stream of water soaking the land beneath the insulating snow, and feeding the roots of plants and trees with the moisture they need for immediate robust growth once the snow is gone. Instead, this year, heavy rains poured and poured over frozen ground. The continual force of the water damaged the terrain, and then went straight to the Hudson River. There was little recharge to the aquifer.
This is global warming, and it is only the beginning. Every year, the impacts will increase. New York is a rich agricultural region that will become even more important as other agricultural regions become too arid for agriculture, or as in Florida, consumed by the rising sea. The new world of climate change will be less beautiful and very dangerous. Just having the food and water necessary to feed this populous planet will become a formidable challenge, one that may ultimately be impossible to meet. Unless we act. Now.