After Gutenberg

jcwinnie

Dr. James Hansen was interviewed by Newsweek’s Science Editor on the eve of the publication of his first book, Storms of My Grandchildren, which “he finished while recovering from treatment for prostate cancer and which will be published in December.”

Climate Progress posts on the topic of James Hansen:

• Right for 27 years: 1981 Hansen study finds warming trend that could raise sea levels
• Stabilize at 350 ppm or risk ice-free planet, warn NASA, Yale, Sheffield, Versailles, Boston et al
• Drilling off-shore is a “crazy thing” says Hansen on 20th anniversary of his famous testimony
• ‘Tipping Point’ — A non-technical Hansen piece
• Hansen’s plea for leadership to Nevada Gov.
• Hansen: Yankee Ticket Prices and Fossil Fuels
• NASA’s Hansen responds to NYT’s Revkin
• Hansen (et al) must read: Get back to 350 ppm or risk an ice-free planet
• Hansen throws cold water on cooling climate claim
• Hansen: The Shadow on American Democracy
• Dr. Hansen to Dr. Merkel: Carbon is forever — so ban new traditional coal plants now
• Hansen’s op-ed advice to Massachusetts
• Hansen apologizes, warns against “averting our eyes”
• Hansen’s final Iowa testimony
• More swiftboating of James Hansen
• Another “Must Read” from Hansen: ‘Long-term’ climate sensitivity of 6°C for doubled CO2
• A Must Read: “Global Temperature Change,” by James Hansen et al.
• Hansen 1: Sea Level Rise
• Hansen 2: Iowa Edition of Declaration of Stewardship
• Hansen on “civil disobedience”
• Hansen on “Fossil Fuel Subsidies”
• NASA’s Hansen on Live Earth, Gore, and Coal

jcwinnie

In the CP post covering the interview of James Hansen (JH) by Newsweek Science Editor, Sharon Begley (SB), there is discussion of tipping points:

SB: In Storms of My Grandchildren, you describe climate tipping points. What are some and why are they so dangerous?

JH: Things like methane hydrates on the continental shelf and the tundra: as they warm up they release their methane [which is a greenhouse gas], which we’re already seeing in the tundra and elsewhere. Tipping points are so dangerous because if you pass them, the climate is out of humanity’s control: if an ice sheet disintegrates and starts to slide into the ocean there’s nothing we can do about that.

jcwinnie

Speaking of tipping points, Washington Post Staff Writer Juliet Eilperin warns that carbon ‘sinks’ get clogged when emissions increase. While this blog recently had relayed the warning that the world’s oceans and forests are becoming less able to absorb CO2, it still is good to see such acknowledgment from a national newspaper that is noted for giving George Will a free hand to deny the dangers of global heating.

In the race to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, scientists have been looking to forests and oceans to absorb the pollution people generate.

Relying on nature to compensate for human excesses sounds like a win-win situation — except that these resources are under stress from the very emissions we are asking them to absorb, making them less able partners in the pact.

Consider it the latest inconvenient truth about climate change.

The benefits of these natural carbon “sinks” are many: Their diverse ecosystems soak up carbon dioxide. What’s more, the international carbon enables industries to compensate for their emissions at a fraction of the price of installing cleaner technology, essentially by investing in forests; meanwhile, poorer countries that are rich in woodland profit from selling not lumber but carbon credits.

Now, a global society of conservation biologists has launched a lobbying campaign, asking key decision-makers — from the Danish officials chairing next week’s climate talks in Copenhagen to U.S. lawmakers — to push for steeper emission cuts to ensure that humans do not exhaust forests’ capacity to store carbon in the decades to come.

Earlier this year, a team of nearly 70 researchers published a paper in the journal Science showing that the drought-stressed Amazon rain forest emitted roughly as much carbon dioxide in 2005 as it usually stores — about the same amount as the European Union and Japan together emit in a single year.

“This dramatic new information confirms that unsustainable human demands on the Earth’s dwindling primary and old-growth forests have pushed them to the wall,” said Dominick DellaSala, president-elect of the Society for Conservation Biology’s North America section.

A separate article published last month in the journal Nature analyzed the sea’s uptake of carbon between 1765 and 2008, finding that the proportion of fossil-fuel emissions absorbed by the oceans since 2000 may have declined by as much as 10 percent.

The study’s lead author, Samar Khatiwala, an oceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said oceans are becoming more acidic as more carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere, so they are losing their ability to soak up emissions produced by people.

“What our ocean study and other recent land studies suggest is that we cannot count on these sinks operating in the future as they have in the past and keep on subsidizing our ever-growing appetite for fossil fuels,” Khatiwala said.

Absorption rate slowing

According to the Global Carbon Project, which tracks emissions, land and ocean carbon sinks took up 57 percent of human-generated carbon emissions between 1958 and 2008. While the size of these sinks has expanded in the past few decades, their absorption rate is slowing as greenhouse gas emissions have risen (by 41 percent since 1990).

Ed Grumbine, an environmental studies professor at Prescott College and another member of the Society for Conservation Biology, said future drought and other factors make it difficult to determine what the exact rate of absorption will be. He noted that the Amazon has now returned to soaking up carbon rather than emitting it, but it’s projected to be drier in future decades. To the north, Canada’s boreal forest has suffered pine-beetle infestation on 51 million acres, an area half the size of California, which can lead to a massive carbon release as trees die off.

“It’s climate change with an emphasis on ‘change,’ ” Grumbine said, adding that the climate bills pending in Congress do not factor in these trends. “They’re pretty much rear-window views on what forests can and cannot do.”

Concerns for old trees

The calculations matter because countries such as Brazil, which has pledged to reduce its deforestation rate 80 percent by 2020, are planning to receive money for these reductions as part of an allowance-trading system through the carbon market.

Some environmentalists argue that the fact that forests are becoming less efficient carbon sponges should not lessen the incentive for preserving long-standing forests in developing countries. Such forests are more effective at storing carbon because the trees are bigger.

Mark Tercek, president and chief executive of the Nature Conservancy, called the issue “a distraction. . . . In a climate-changing world, does that mean the level of difficulty goes up? Yes, but that doesn’t mean you stop doing what you’re trying to do.”

Miguel Calmon, director of forests and climate change for the Nature Conservancy’s Latin America program, said environmental groups are trying to protect the integrity of natural carbon sinks. “The more biodiversity in any ecosystem, the higher the resilience,” he said.

New research does point to one promising new avenue of natural carbon sequestration: coastal salt marshes, mangroves and seagrass meadows.

Emily Pidgeon, Conservation International’s marine climate change director, said these habitats “are extremely efficient at burying carbon in the sediment below them, where it can stay for centuries or even millennia.”

But human activity is eroding these coastal habitats.

As Grumbine observed, the future capacity of natural sinks to absorb carbon “is going to depend on human action.”

jcwinnie

Although James Hansen is credited with creating much of the awareness about what the science shows, the AMS (American Meteorological Society) recently reaffirmed in a statement, “The dependence on any one set of research results to the comprehensive understanding of the climate system is very, very small.”

jcwinnie

The state of climate change in the Arctic is less than encouraging according to 3 separate scientific reports:

1. The director of the National Snow & Ice Date Center says less winter ice this year may mean greater summer melting;
2. The end of the three year Canadian study says changes in the Arctic are happening faster than anyone expected; and,
3. Melting in the Arctic is going to cost the world collectively some $24 trillion by 2050

Via Reuters

Arctic Changes Already Cost at Least $67bn Annually

That high dollar figure is the conclusion of a study funded by the Pew Environment Group. Arctic Treasures: Global Assets Melting Away says that climate changes in the Arctic are already costing the world somewhere between $67 billion and $371 billion annually.

As permafrost melts it will release large amounts of stored greenhouse gases, contributing to greater warming as well as higher economic costs.

Read more: Arctic melt to contribute up to $24 trillion by 2050: report

Ice Free Summers in Arctic Maybe as Early as 2013

Meanwhile, a three-year study aboard a research vessel spending winters above the Arctic Circle, involving more than 370 scientists, and led by the University of Manitoba’s David Barber has concluded. The result: Barber says climate change in the region “is happening much faster than our most pessimistic models expected.”

Barber says that means we can plan on seeing an ice-free summer in the Arctic sometime between 2013 and 2030.

Read more: Arctic climate change faster than expected

January Ice Growth One-Third Slower Than in Past

Based on statements from the US’ National Snow and Ice Data Center that ice-free summer may well be closer to the beginning of Barber’s date predictions. NSIDC director Mark Serreze says that “We’ve grown back ice in the winter, but that ice tends to be thin and that’s the problem. You set yourself up for a world of hurt in the summer. The ice that is there is also thinner than it was before and thinner ice simply takes less energy to melt our the next summer.”

This January Arctic sea ice grew at one-third the pace of ice growth seen in the 1980s, and was below average for what has been observed since the year 2000.

Read more: Scant Arctic ice could mean summer double whammy

Arctic melting

More Treehugger posts on topic of Arctic Climate Change

• Arctic Just Witnessed Fastest August Ice Retreat in History
• Melting Arctic Ice Increase Permafrost Thaw Farther Inland Than Previously Thought
• US Using CIA Spy Satellites to Study Ice Retreat in Arctic (Photos)