The worst direct impacts to humans from our unsustainable use of energy — over the next few decades — will, I think, be Dust-Bowlification and extreme weather and food insecurity:  Hell and High Water.

But all of the impacts occurring simultaneously will have an even more devastating synergy (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts“).  It means the rich countries will be far less likely to be offering much assistance to the poorer ones, since there will be ever worsening catastrophes everywhere simultaneously so we’ll be suffering at the same time.  Heck, this deep economic downturn and the record-smashing disasters of the past two years has already exacerbated media myopia and compassion fatigue to help those around the world staggered by floods and droughts.

And that suggests another deadly climate impact — far more difficult to project quantitatively because there is no paleoclimate analog — may well affect far more people both directly and indirectly: war, conflict, competition for arable and/or habitable land.

We will have to work as hard as possible to make sure we don’t leave a world of wars to our children. That means avoiding decades if not centuries of strife and conflict from catastrophic climate change. That also means finally ending our addiction to oil, a source — if not the source — of two of our biggest recent wars.

Last November, Nobel Peace Prize winner and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan “said rising temperatures and rainwater shortages are having a devastating effect on food production. Failing to address the problem will have repercussions on health, security and stability.”

The NYT reported in 2009:

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

That’s a key reason 33 generals and admirals supported the comprehensive climate and clean energy jobs bill in 2010, asserting “Climate change is making the world a more dangerous place” and “threatening America’s security.”  The Pentagon itself has made the climate/security link explicit in its Quadrennial Defense Review.

Sadly, the chance that humanity will avert catastrophic climate impacts has dropped sharply in the past two years (see “The failed presidency of Barack Obama, Part 2“).  And that means it is increasingly likely we face a world beyond 450 ppm atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, which in turn means we likely cross carbon cycle tipping points that threaten to quickly take us to 800 to 1000 ppm — a world of rapid warming and a ruined climate far outside the bounds of any human experience.

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A protester outside Heartland's climate denier conference. Photo: Kelly Mitchell

“I don’t appreciate being called a terrorist,” the woman said firmly.

I was standing outside the Hilton Chicago hotel talking to Jim Lakely, the director of communications for the Heartland Institute, when an elderly woman approached us on the street. Dressed in a business suit, she was loading her luggage into a taxi when she noticed Lakely’s Heartland name badge and interrupted our conversation.

“We can have a civil discussion. But I really don’t like being labeled a terrorist,” she said, referencing a billboard posted by Heartland equating people who believe in global warming to the Unibomber. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Well, I appreciate you telling me that,” said Lakely, who was taking a break from managing Heartland’s conference to watch the 60 or so people protesting the event outside the hotel.

The woman, who was wearing a badge for a different conference, got into her taxi and drove away. There was a brief moment of awkward silence between me and Lakely.

The exchange perfectly encapsulated the public relations disaster the Heartland Institute has created for itself over the last few weeks. The downfall started with an offensive billboard campaign on May 3rd and ended with 11 companies pulling support for the organization — stripping 35% of corporate funds overnight and leaving its financial future uncertain.

The dramatic drop in support was facilitated by the advocacy organization Forecast the Facts, which collected more than 150,000 signatures from people calling on corporate donors to end their relationship with Heartland.

This series of events built on an earlier incident in which Peter Gleick, a scientist with the Pacific Institute, faked his identity to acquire internal documents from the Heartland Institute. Those documents showed that the organization planned to secretly develop school curriculum to spread doubt about the causes of climate change. It also opened up a window to the organization’s donors, which were forced to make a decision about whether or not they wanted to be associated with Heartland’s tactics.

And then yesterday, the other shoe dropped. In his closing speech, Heartland President Joseph Bast announced that the organization does not have the money to continue putting on its hallmark climate conference — an event that had become a rallying point for an insulated group of climate disinformers.

“I hope to see you at a future conference, but at this point we have no plans to do another ICCC,” said Bast, explaining that Heartland was struggling to meet expenses.

The cancellation marks the end of an era — albeit a short era — for the oddball world of organized climate change denial.

The event, called the International Conference on Climate Change, was started in 2008 as a way to organize libertarians  — many of whom believe that taking action on climate change would create a one-world government dominated by the United Nations.

Heartland tried hard to label the event a “science” conference. But the presentations were almost always political, peppered with anti-government rhetoric and conspiracy theories.

“We’re in a war. We’re in a war against our standard of living,” said Walt Cunningham, a former NASA astronaut, speaking in a morning session on Tuesday.

“There’s not a lot of science here,” said Scott Denning, an atmospheric scientist from Colorado State University who attended the event last year to present the so-called “warmist” case. Neither Denning nor any of the other 97% of climate scientists who say human activity is warming the planet presented at this year’s conference.

In fact, none of this year’s top speakers had any background in climate science. Instead, they spoke about the issues in highly conspiratorial terms.

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“Feeding some 9 billion people by mid-century in the face of a rapidly worsening climate may well be the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced.”

Last year, the journal Nature asked me to write a Comment piece after they read one of my posts on prolonged drought and “Dust-Bowlification.” The article was published October 27, 2011 (here, subs. req’d).

Since six months have passed, I can reprint the entire piece on ClimateProgress (see below).

This was my first piece ever in the journal itself.  I did have an online piece, “Nature publishes my climate analysis and solution.”  This is not a peer-reviewed article but rather a “Comment” piece.

I sent it to five of the world’s leading authorities on climate change and drought and the hydrological cycle:  Kevin Trenberth, Aiguo Dai, Michael Mann, Peter Gleick and Jonathan Overpeck.  I endeavored to incorporate their comments, but unfortunately Nature has a 10-reference limit for their Comment pieces so I wasn’t able to include as many references as they suggested or as I would have liked.  If you want links to most of the articles I refer to, go here.

I was particularly delighted that Overpeck liked the term “Dust-Bowlification.”  He really was an inspiration for me to begin studying this topic many years ago when I saw a 2005 presentation of his, “Warm climate abrupt change–paleo-perspectives,” that concluded “climate change seldom occurs gradually” (see The “global-change-type drought” and the future of extreme weather).

I was equally delighted Nature has basically endorsed this term through its multiple appearances in this article and felt that the overall issue warranted more attention.

I do not believe that most Americans — and that includes most policymakers and the media — understand the convergence of the recent scientific literature on the extreme threat posed directly to this country of Dust-Bowlification (see “Climate Story of the Year: Warming-Driven Drought and Extreme Weather Emerge as Key Threat to Global Food Security“).

I am glad that leading climatologists like James Hansen are starting to talk more about the threat posed by drought — since it is painfully clear that even some people considered climate experts are unaware of the literature (see “James Hansen Is Correct About Catastrophic Projections For U.S. Drought If We Don’t Act Now“).

As I wrote in the article:

Human adaptation to prolonged, extreme drought is difficult or impossible. Historically, the primary adaptation to dust-bowlification has been abandonment; the very word ‘desert’ comes from the Latin desertum for ‘an abandoned place’. During the relatively short-lived US Dust-Bowl era, hundreds of thousands of families fled the region. We need to plan how the world will deal with drought-spurred migrations and steadily growing areas of non-arable land in the heart of densely populated countries and global bread-baskets. Feeding some 9 billion people by mid-century in the face of a rapidly worsening climate may well be the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced.

Now, Dust-Bowl conditions could stretch all the way from Kansas to California by mid-century. America’s financial future and the health and safety of our people are at serious risk if greenhouse gas pollution is not brought under control quickly.  The food security of all of humanity is at risk. Denial is simply not an option, the time for action is now.

Here is the whole article:

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Journalist Bill Blakemore has another great piece on ABC’s website:

‘The Great Big Book of Horrible Things’: WWII and Climate Change

What our great failure in the 1930s may teach about facing the rapid assault of manmade global warming  (Or “Hell is the truth seen too late.”)

Dresden (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

It is the continuation of an essay he wrote about last week, which I blogged about here: “ ‘Hug The Monster’: Why So Many Climate Scientists Have Stopped Downplaying the Climate Threat.”

Blakemore cites the great quote from 18th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, “Hell is truth seen too late.” Since I wrote a book on climate a few years back, Hell and High Water, that quote seems particularly apt to me for climate.

Blakemore’s piece starts by looking at The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities by Matthew White, noting:

The world’s climate scientists are in effect telling us that one part of the truth we must now try to see is humanity’s ability — or lack of it — for collective prevention of enormous manmade disaster, atrocity.

The record is worrisome.

He then examines humanity’s problematic track record of not preventing catastrophes even when many powerful people were aware of what was happening or about to happen, including the great atrocities of World War II. And no, there is no direct analogy being made (see “Climate Science Disinformers Are Nothing Like Holocaust Deniers“).

Blakemore cites a presentation by Harvard historian and social anthropologist Timothy Weiskel — a colleague of mine 20 years ago at the Rockefeller Foundation. Weiskel in turn cites John F. Kennedy’s 1940s book, Why England Slept (a title JFK ‘borrowed’ from Churchill’s 1938 book, though JFK’s book was originally his senior thesis at Harvard titled, Appeasement in Munich):

“To say that all the blame must rest on the shoulders of Neville Chamberlain or of Stanly Baldwin, is to overlook the obvious.  As the leaders, they are, of course, gravely and seriously responsible.  But, given the conditions of democratic government, a free press, public elections, and a cabinet responsible to Parliament and thus to the people, given rule by the majority, it is unreasonable to blame the entire situation on one man or group…”

Blakemore notes, “But this time, say today’s climate scientists, the rapidly approaching climate catastrophe threatens to kill far more people than all of White’s 100 Deadliest atrocities combined.”

There is little question that if we continue to listen to the disinformers and the do-little crowd, we are very likely headed toward global warming in excess of 10°F, as the International Energy Agency and many others have made clear. That will destroy a livable climate (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces“).

Indeed, that is “incompatible with organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems & has a high probability of not being stable (i.e.  4°C [7F] would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level),” according to Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change in Britain (see here).

Blakemore points out that a great many scientists are worried that this would lead to a staggering amount of misery and starvation:
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by Nicole Lederer, via Clean Edge

They say nothing can get done in Washington, D.C. on the issue of clean energy, which has become a political lightening rod over the last year. With Congress at a high watermark of partisanship, accusations abound on Capitol Hill that American energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies and the policies that support them are job killers and a money-wasting hoax on taxpayers.

And yet, there’s reason for optimism about energy innovation in this country. Why? Because the most powerful force in the world, the U.S. military, is mobilizing on a clean-energy mission – and I believe they’re going to win this war.

While Congress fumbles, the Department of Defense (DoD) has identified our fossil-fuel dependence as a national security threat which exposes our country to increased vulnerability both at home and abroad. The Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines have all set aggressive goals – to lower their energy demand, utilize new renewable fuel sources, and develop energy generation, storage, and transmission technologies – that will allow military installations to function more reliably and expeditionary forces to perform more effectively.

Not only that, but the DoD has unequivocally determined that climate change is a “threat multiplier” that will heighten geopolitical instability, resource conflicts, and humanitarian disasters around the globe – stretching the capacity of our Armed Forces to respond.  Accordingly, not only is the military dedicated to improving energy performance and diversifying energy sources, it is specifically committed to developing low-carbon technologies.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta asserts that all of these initiatives are for one purpose only. “By changing the DoD energy posture, America will have a military that is better able to project and sustain forces around the world to meet any challenges to the nation’s security and interests of the American people.”

Through my work with Environmental Entrepreneurs, I’ve had the privilege to meet with many of the Pentagon’s energy leaders executing this clean-energy mandate, and also to work alongside a number of retired military officers to advance these initiatives. I can say without reservation that these are the best allies the clean-technology sector could have.

DoD brings formidable assets to this mission.

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Monckton watches the protesters outside Heartland's conference.

With the Heartland Institute suffering from a public relations disaster that caused 11 donors to abandon financial support, one might think the organization would attempt to moderate messaging tactics at its climate denial conference this week.

Or maybe even find an expert who doesn’t freely admit that he “has no scientific qualification” to challenge the science of climate change.

Not quite.

After comparing people who understand global warming with serial killers in a billboard campaign, the organization featured a presentation yesterday that called into question the legitimacy of President Obama’s citizenship.

Enter Lord Christopher Monckton, Heartland’s “mystery guest” who popped in to the conference Tuesday to perform a quirky stand-up comedy routine for a couple hundred eager attendees.

His presentation peeled back yet another layer on the conspiratorial beliefs of many within the climate disinformation community.

Monckton, a man frequently held up as an expert among deniers, started his speech off by boldly admitting his lack of scientific qualifications. He thanked the attendees for having the “courage” to challenge climate scientists, explaining: “It is particularly hard, if like me, you have no scientific qualification to do so.”

Monckton then joked about what he needed to do in order to build his credibility in America.

“I have concluded what one needs to have is a freshly minted Hawaiian birth certificate,” he said, referencing the belief among “birthers” that President Obama’s birth certificate is forged. He displayed a picture of a Hawaiian birth certificate with his personal information filled in. The crowded erupted in laughter.

“I was born at a military hospital. What is marvelous is that this [birth certificate] is just as genuine of that of the President of the United States,” said Monckton.

Even with the release of official documents and the repeated confirmation from Hawaiian officials, Monckton is an outspoken believer that President Obama’s birth certificate is forged. The conspiracy has gotten so ludicrous in the face of documentary evidence, the Washington Post labeled remaining birthers “crackpots” who “live for their pet conspiracy theory.”

Explaining that his forged birth certificate prepared him to run for President of the United States, Monckton presented Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast with a freshly minted campaign button. Bast shook Monckton’s hand, jokingly saying he would endorse the candidacy.

The opening skit raised resounding laughter and applause throughout the room.

Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher, has become a form of comic relief for the climate disinformation community. Australian satirists did a hilarious interview with him in which they “mistook” him for an act by Sacha Baron Cohen. But Monckton has also said those who embrace climate science are “Hitler youth” and fascists. He travels around the world making grossly inaccurate presentations filled with peculiar jokes poking fun at climate scientists, who he labels “bullies” and “liars.”

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by Jake Schmidt, via NRDC’s Switchboard

With the haze of the Durban climate negotiations finally lifting, the climate negotiations in Germany at the midway point, and one month before Rio+20 it is time to reflect on the path that lies ahead for the rest of this year.  While global negotiations have slowed since the high-intensity period over the last three years (in Copenhagen, Cancun, and Durban), that doesn’t mean we can afford for action to slow down.  After all, as the International Energy Agency just pointed out the door for avoiding the greatest impacts is quickly closing.

Four key themes are critical to watch the remainder of this year that are essential ingredients for progress on international global warming action: (1) the actions countries take at home right now; (2) the actions countries commit to implement at Rio+20; (3) how much progress is made in closing the “mitigation gap”; and (4) what stage is set this year for the international legal agreement that is to be reached in 2015.

Acting at Home Right Now

No global political signal or agreement is sufficient if countries don’t act at home to pass laws, adopt regulations, or support incentives which spur the necessary actions.  As a result, what happens in key countries around the world is essential for putting the world on a safer path.  So here are some key actions to watch in some of the key countries the rest of this year.

Some important countries have taken additional action at home this year. Mexico has adopted a national law which establishes in domestic law the country’s target to reduce its emissions 30 percent below business-as-usual emissions by 2020 and 50 percent below 2000 levels by 2050.  The law sets in place the foundation for even greater action by Mexico under future Administrations.

The South Korean Government approved a mandatory carbon trading program for its biggest polluters. The legislation is set to go into effect in 2015 and would cap the carbon pollution from power plants, steel plants, ship makers, and large universities.  The final details are still to be worked out sometime this year so stay tuned.

South Africa announced that it will introduce a rising price on carbon pollution from major sources starting in 2013.  The proposal is to implement the carbon tax at a level of $16 per ton in 2013, with annual increases of 10 percent through 2019.  Final details could come later this year.

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by Jeffrey Cavanagh

During this weekend’s G-8 summit hosted by President Obama at Camp David, leaders from the Group of Eight nations endorsed a new plan to combat “short-lived climate polluters,” with a focus on methane, black carbon, and hydroflurocarbons (HFCs).

According to the Camp David Declaration — the official communiqué endorsed by all G-8 leaders at the end of the summit — short-lived pollutants significantly contribute to global warming, and limiting their release will help prevent a substantial number of premature deaths around the world:

Recognizing the impact of short-lived climate pollutants on near-term climate change, agricultural productivity, and human health, we support, as a means of promoting increased ambition and complementary to other CO2 and GHG emission reduction efforts, comprehensive actions to reduce these pollutants, which, according to UNEP and others, account for over thirty percent of near-term global warming as well as 2 million premature deaths a year.

The Group of Eight nations will now join the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-lived Climate Pollutants, a partnership originally launched by the United States, with Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Mexico and Sweden, in February of this year. Additional G-8 members to the Coalition will include France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Japan, and Russia.

Unlike carbon dioxide, which can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, climate pollutants such as methane, black carbon, and HFCs are generally much shorter lived; however they are much more effective at raising global temperatures.

Methane, a shorter-living gas, is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period, and has contributed to roughly 50 percent of tropospheric ozone helping warm the planet. HFCs, a common refrigerant, are thousands of times more potent. Black carbon — or soot — lands on ice caps and glaciers, increasing melting and preventing the reflection of sunlight. Reducing these short-lived pollutants will help countries meet near-term international climate change goals.

The G-8 operates with an “imperative” to promote economic growth and create jobs, and the group’s willingness to address climate change and short-lived pollutants rightly suggests that fighting climate change by curbing greenhouse gasses can also facilitate economic growth.

According to a White House fact sheet released during the summit, fostering sustainable economic development is “essential” for addressing both the challenges of climate change as well as international economic insecurity:

The development of and universal access to environmentally safe, sustainable, secure, and affordable sources of energy is essential to global economic growth and to their overall efforts to address climate change.

G-8 leaders also agreed to support initiatives of the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM), a collaborative effort of 23 countries that brings together the world’s major carbon emitters in a smaller forum than the UNFCCC. G-8 countries agreed to build on current initiatives in the CEM, which already cover 90 percent of clean energy investment and 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, including the Super-efficient Equipment and Appliances Deployment (SEAD) initiative and working through the CEM to share best practices for efficient energy management in industry and government. Additional G-8 support for the CEM’s 21^st Century Power Partnership will enhance high-volume renewable energy and smart-grid technology development, as part of the 20-country International Smart Grid Action Network.

The G-8’s decision to reduce short-lived pollutants represents another, effective approach in combination with broader efforts to address carbon dioxide. Reducing these pollutants will save lives and help curb near-term global warming. That’s a win-win for everyone.

Jeffrey Cavanagh is an intern with the international climate team at the Center for American Progress.

Photo: Jefferson Beck/NASA

by Michael D. Lemonick, via Climate Central

The sea ice that blankets the Arctic Ocean each winter peaked in early March this year, as usual, and is now in retreat, en route to its annual minimum extent in September. How low it will go is something scientists worry: Ice reflects lots of sunlight back into space, and when the darker ocean underneath is exposed, more sunlight is absorbed to add to global warming.

That’s the simple version of the story, but things look even worse when you dig into the details. For one thing, all that open water does re-freeze each winter, but it freezes into a relatively thin layer known as seasonal, or first-year ice. Because it’s so thin, first-year ice tends to melt back quickly the following season, giving the ocean a chance to warm things up even more in what National Snow and Ice Data Center director Mark Serreze has called a “death spiral” that could lead to ice-free Arctic summers by 2030.

But it’s worse than that, says a new analysis by scientists at the U.S. Army’s Cold Regions Research Laboratory in Hanover, N.H. “First-year ice is not just thinner, “ said Donald Perovich, lead author of a report in Geophysical Research Letters, in an interview. “We’re also beginning to realize it has other properties.” The most important: New ice is less reflective than old ice, for most of the year, anyway. It absorbs more heat from the Sun, which means it doesn’t just melt faster: It actually speeds up its own melting.

Here’s how it happens, according to Perovich. “Most of the precipitation in the Arctic,” he said, “happens at the end of summer and in the early fall.” When the snow first begins to fall, it builds on the multi-year ice, but disappears onto the patches of open ocean. Those patches eventually freeze, and the snow sticks there as well; it just forms a thinner layer. So for most of the winter, all of the ice, thick and thin, is covered with a brightly reflective blanket. That would be good as far as warming is concerned, except that for most of the winter, the Sun doesn’t rise.

When the Sun finally does rise in spring, it melts the thinner snow first, forming heat-absorbing pools on the surface of the first-year ice. The older ice eventually catches up, forming pools of its own, but since the surface is crumpled, the ponds don’t spread as widely, and they absorb less heat.

In short, the death spiral — where more melting leads to more melting — appears to be even steeper than anyone thought.

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Even with the wettest April on record, some areas of England are still facing “exceptional” drought conditions. After two years of dry winters — including the fifth-driest March — the ground hasn’t been able to soak up the heavy rainfall that hit in April.

The situation in the country illustrates the cruel reality of “rollercoaster” extreme weather — a problem that will only be exacerbated by accumulating heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. Recent research also finds that the loss of Arctic ice favors extreme, prolonged weather events “such as drought, flooding, cold spells and heat waves.”

The rain has certainly helped some regions. But other parts of England were so dry, it could take months of record rainfall to bring groundwater levels back to normal. One aquifer close to London is 90 percent below normal levels for this time of year.

Experts in the country are explaining why the combination of extremely dry and extremely wet conditions make it harder to recover from drought. Climatewire reported on the problem:

“Heavy rain on parched ground is like pouring water on an old, dry sponge. Much of it will bounce off. The sponge needs to be wet in order to hold the water. Farmers are in a much better position than they were thanks to the rains. River levels have risen, soil moisture has increased and their water reserves have been replenished. But aquifers take much longer to fill,” said a spokeswoman for England’s Environment Agency.

According to figures from the Environment Agency, 42 percent of groundwater “indicator sites” are “exceptionally low.”

“Over the last two winters, the amount of rainfall we have had has been down 20 to 30 percent on what we would normally have. Most of the recharge of groundwater happens over the winter. We lost three to four months of groundwater recharge in total over that two-year period,” [explained Andrew McKenzie of the British Geological Survey McKenzie to Climatewire.]

“We have now had the wettest April ever, and you might think that would go halfway to recharging the groundwater. But we also had a very dry March, and the soils had already switched to summer, dry mode and had to switch back,” he added.

Ironically, when the rains hit in April after a dry March, the Environment Agency issued 13 severe flood warnings and 42 flood alerts for areas around the country — all while homeowners were banned from watering their gardens.

This will eventually be normal weather under a business as usual emissions scenario.

According to a study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, our current rate of emissions puts us on a path to dust bowl conditions in many areas of the world, while “precipitation may become more intense but less frequent (i.e., longer dry spells) under GHG-induced global warming. This may increase flash floods and runoff, but diminish soil moisture and increase the risk of agricultural drought.”

Related Posts:

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