Too Stupid to Take Action on Climate Change? It’s Time to Get Smart and Get Started

The acclaimed British film The Age of Stupid has opened in the Western World, with most of the reviews we’ve seen very favourable. Starring Pete Postlethwaite and six real people presently suffering the effects of climate change, it shows us that runaway global warming could destroy life on our planet if we humans are too stupid to prevent it. Please click on the film title for more information, trailers, etc. 

Appearing briefly in the film is science writer Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, published in March 2007. He tells us that our carbon budget will run out in 2015 and that we have to work quickly to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions to zero if we are to avoid a temperature rise of more the 2.0 degrees Celsius. 

This is consistent with the findings of Matthew England et al in their PNAS paper Constraining future greenhouse gas emissions by a cumulative target, published September 29, 2009. This is a short document, only two pages long, but its message is clearly understandable: 

“If policymakers seek even greater certainty to avoid crossing the 2 °C threshold, say moving into the ‘‘very likely’’ range in IPCC lexicon (P  0.9), then it is estimated we need to cap post-2000 emissions at only 170 PgC. Assuming unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions over the next few years, we will exceed this cumulative quota as soon as 2017, which is a sobering metric in the lead-up to Copenhagen this year.“

The authors conclude with this statement: “A global mean warming of 2 °C could still have devastating impacts on climate (13), ecosystems, human health, and infrastructure. This level of warming, for example, is likely to significantly reduce food productivity over the tropics, substantially increase the risk of extinction for 20–30% of species worldwide, bleach most of the world’s coral reefs, and increase the likelihood of severe weather and extreme climate events (14). Global warming to
2.7 °C could additionally trigger a gradual but irreversible disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, with still lower thresholds thought to apply to the Greenland Ice Sheet (15), ultimately raising sea level by 10 m and displacing hundreds of millions of people worldwide.Two degrees Celsius warming should thus not be seen as a mere aspirational target: it surely has to be the maximum stabilization target for global warming, with recognition that even this carries significant global-scale risks. Worryingly, this once-modest target is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve, requiring deep emissions cuts over a confronting time frame, something that must be secured in Copenhagen this year.” 

Please also read this Washington Post article published September 25, 2009:  

Washington Post, New Analysis Brings Dire Forecast Of 6.3-Degree Temperature Increase. This article contains a link to a paper presented on March 10, 2009 at the “Climate Change – Global Risks, Challenges, and Decisions” Conference in Copenhagen: Current emissions reductions proposals in the lead-up to COP-15 Are Likely to be insufficient to stablilize CO2 levels: Using C-ROADS – A simple computer simulation of climate change to support long-term climate policy development . It describes the creation of an easy-to-use interactive website for climate modeling, Climate Interactive.

This you’ll find is a very interesting site, containing up-to-date climate modeling tools and simulations, including a very good Climate Bathtub Animation. Try the C-Learn Freeware Online Simulator on the Climate Interactive home page and see if you can control CO2 emissions to keep global temperature below 2.0 C by 2100. You’ll see this is a difficult challenge.  

In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero as quickly as possible and developing more carbon sinks, such as planting as many trees as possible, it is the opinion of many of our Board Members that we must concurrently begin research and development of ways to artificially and benignly remove carbon from our atmosphere. We simply must to this to cool our planet down and prevent further acidification of our oceans. The excess carbon of which we have to rid our planet is 300 billion metric tonnes or the equivalent of the mass of over four Mount Rainiers.

We have to get smart, and get started, right now.