What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment. — Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. With another decade of business-as-usual, it becomes impractical to achieve the alternative scenario. — James Hansen, climate scientist. Substantial reductions in global CO2 emissions must occur within the next 10 to 15 years, or stopping catastrophic warming may be nearly impossible. — Protecting Our Biosphere report. If we delay action by even a few years, the rate of reduction needed (would be) beyond anything achieved historically and could be very costly, making it practically unachievable. — Presidential Climate Action Project. Warnings like these might appear to explain the urgency about climate change shown these days by the Obama administration, where almost every top official has been declaring it the worlds biggest, potentially catastrophic threat. But in fact those quotes point more to the futility of efforts to stop it. Pachauri and Hansen issued their warnings back in 2007, with Pachauri adding that action on global warming had to happen before 2012 or it would be too late. The biosphere report came out 13 years ago, and the White House claim that even a few years delay could make fighting global warming unachievable came out several years ago. Its certainly possible that these folks were just being alarmist in an attempt to motivate policymakers. But a review of recent research indicates that, no matter how many costly regulations the U.S. imposes or how dire the warnings, the battle appears to be already lost. The reason is fairly simple. Climate scientists claim that to avoid a climate catastrophe, we have to hold the increase in global temperatures — relative to pre-industrial times — to about 2 degrees Celsius. Thats the goal Obama and other countries say theyre aiming for. That, in turn, means holding CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere to about 450 parts per million. But CO2 stays in the atmosphere for centuries, so even a freeze in annual emissions would mean a continual buildup in the atmosphere. Climatologists describe it as the planets carbon budget, and if current emissions growth trends hold steady, this budget will be exhausted in 22 years, according to the Global Carbon Project. Freezing overall emissions at todays levels would extend that date by just eight years. What would be needed to stay under this cap, scientists admit, are dramatic cuts in global carbon emissions, starting today and continuing through the century. Many climate scientists say that the world would have to cut annual emissions to near zero in about 60 years and then have negative emissions after that. That is, these projections assume that the world will have figured out how to remove more CO2 than it produces roughly by the 2070s — even though such technology doesnt exist today. Without such a breakthrough, the world would have to rely only on emissions cuts, an effort that would be unfeasible or extremely costly, according to a study published in Nature last month. But even modest cuts in global emissions are unlikely any time soon. First, ongoing carbon efficiency gains havent been nearly enough to reduce the total amount of CO2 spewing into the atmosphere. While global per-GDP carbon emissions have dropped about 28% since 1990, overall emissions climbed more than 50%, according the Nature study. Even China has cut the carbon intensity of its economy in about half since 1990, while its annual emissions nearly quadrupled. The Global Carbon Project estimates that, despite continued improvement in carbon efficiency, global GDP growth alone will push emissions up 3.1% a year through at least 2019. Another major roadblock is that emissions increases from developing countries are quickly swamping any gains made by industrialized countries like the U.S. and the European nations. In 2012, for example, the U.S. and Europe emitted 1.2 million tons less carbon than they did a decade before. But over those same years, global emissions climbed by 6 million tons. By 2019, CO2 emissions from China alone will likely exceed the U.S., Europe and India combined, the Global Carbon Project says. India will be emitting more than all of Europe. As a result, even if wealthier countries like the United States were to reduce their emissions to zero immediately, it is unlikely that global CO2 emissions would be stabilized, noted a 2011 report from the National Research Council(NRC). With the huge economic growth projected for developing countries, the NRC report continues, these countries will likely turn to the cheapest energy sources to fuel their growth. These fuels currently are fossil-based: coal, oil, and gas. On top of all this, theres the possibility that no matter what happens to CO2 emissions in the future, warming is already inevitable. A 2009 study by a top climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that even if the world stopped all carbon emissions immediately, thered still be global warming, because warming is essentially an irreversible change that will last more than a thousand years. Even the UN warns in a draft of its latest climate change report that harmful warming will soon be irreversible. Of course, when it comes to science, anything is possible. The Wright Brothers made their first flight just eight years after British mathematician Lord Kelvin said that heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. But if the dire forecasts about global warming are right, it looks as though it will take something like a miracle to prevent them. Read More At Investors Business Daily: news.investors/100314-720010-climate-change-fight-may-be-futile-waste-of-money.htm#ixzz3F8ljuNud Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 02:51:45 +0000
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