It was just over twenty years ago, on June 23 1988, that Dr. James Hansen, who heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told a U.S. Senate committee that the year’s record temperatures were not the result of natural variation. As a result global warming irrevocably became part of official political discourse.

Last year Hansen said that a global tipping point will be reached by 2016 if the human population is unable to reduce greenhouse gases. He said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios for future sea level rise do not take into account ice sheet disintegration, which could cause several meters of sea level rise during the next century.

It is important to remember that even before his 1988 testimony Hansen was sounding the alarm. In 1981 he and a team of scientists at Goddard had reached the conclusion that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would lead to global warming sooner than previously predicted. While other climatologists had already predicted that a trend would be apparent by 2020, Hansen predicted, in a paper published in Science, that the change was already occurring and that there would be record high temperatures as early as 1990. He also predicted that it would be difficult to convince politicians and the public to react.

The history of Hansen is instructive for what it says about the American government’s ability to deal with a real global threat. After decades of even acknowledging there could be a problem it then switched to minimizing the dangers. When even that became impossible it switched to suppressing information about it.

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According to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in an article in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, China’s reluctant and belated concession to allow a skeleton UN-AU peacekeeping force in Sudan represents a newly “cooperative approach on a range of problems.” But the reality is that some newfound sense of Chinese responsibility on the world stage had nothing to do with Beijing’s decision to “cooperate.” The concession on Darfur (if you want to call it that) was entirely about the Beijing Olympics. Given that it took a threatened boycott by Western leaders for China to stop arms sales to Sudan and drop its veto of the peacekeeping resolution, I am dubious that we’ll see any further “responsible” behavior after the Olympic Games have come and gone. At this point, the Games are going ahead—with or without protesting Western leaders—and the leverage a coordinated boycott might have provided will be a mere memory.

But I’m not writing this to bemoan a missed opportunity or cast aspersions on Rice’s diplomatic optimism. I’m writing this to call some attention to the next opportunity down the road: Sochi 2014.

China and Russia are both rising powers, economically, militarily and diplomatically. Secretary Rice referred to both as carrying “special responsibility and weight as fellow permanent members of the UN Security Council.” Translation: they both have lots of nuclear weapons, so our military power doesn’t really scare them. China is also not the only rising power we’d love to see adopt a more cooperative stance as it claims (or reclaims) “full membership in the international community.”

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One of the classic rules of propaganda is that if you say something enough times, regardless of whether or not it is true some people will come to believe it.  With that in mind let us look at the newest conventional wisdom that has been increasingly circulating the past few years; especially in the aftermath of the recent climate change conference in Bali; namely, that the need to curb carbon emissions in order to prevent global warming means the world must rely more on nuclear power.

Yes, nice, clean, safe, nuclear power, as an advertisement from the Nuclear Energy Institute or the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, or even the International Atomic Energy Agency might put it. And no, I’m not picking on them. Like a character out of a Cecil B. Demille movie they are is just three of uncounted thousands –hmmm, in an internet age we better make that millions– parroting this new orthodoxy.

But before we think that advances in technology have made nuclear power so safe that even Homer Simpson can run a nuclear power plant perhaps we should pause to consider the world of reality, and not the one where Montgomery Burn’s Springfield nuclear power plant supplies our energy needs.

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It strikes me that the fate of the world might at least merit a second post on the same topic so let’s think a bit more about why we should be panicking, or at least far more concerned than we are at present, regarding the environmental state of the world in general, and climate change in particular.

Two weeks ago, the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presented its latest synthesis report, which contained its sternest warning yet about the need to immediately tackle climate change. “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment,” said IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri.

Consider some excerpts from the report

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level

Eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) rank among the twelve warmest years in the global surface temperature (since 1850).

Rising sea level is consistent with warming (Figure SPM.1). Global average sea level has risen since 1961 at an  average rate of 1.8 [1.3 to 2.3]mm/yr and since 1993 at 3.1 [2.4 to 3.8]mm/yr, with contributions from thermal  expansion, melting glaciers and ice caps, and the polar ice sheets

There is very high confidence that the net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming.

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After reading the new report on global climate change just released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for a New American Security one might be inclined to ask, am I afraid? But afraid is such an insufficient word. A better question is, am I panicked? And if your answer is no, then you need to ask why not?

While warnings, projections, and predictions about the planet’s environmental future are hardly novel, most writings limit themselves to the actual physical consequences resulting from global warming. And by now we should have heard them often enough to be able to cite them in our sleep, i.e., mass migrations, flooding of costal cities, fighting over resources, adverse impact on agriculture, desertification, collapse of ocean fisheries, et cetera.

Still, as someone who regularly reads the latest reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  I have to say that this new report, The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change does a great job of making you shudder.

Now normally, I’m not one for fearmongering. In fact, much of what is wrong with our foreign policy today is based on exaggerating threats, i.e., Iran may develop nuclear weapons so we must bomb them now or Al-Qaeda wants to attack America so we must fight a global war on terrorism.

But the issue of climate change is different. Bush and Cheney might still disagree, albeit privately, but we’re now at the point where we no longer have an excuse. Climate change is happening now. We can’t say it might be a problem for a future generation, such as our children or our grandchildren. The fact is that it is already a problem for us. It will be a bigger problem for our children; and an even bigger problem for our grandchildren.  And this is under the best case scenario. We are already living in the “age of consequences.” And so far our reaction to it is laughably inadequate. (more…)

Every day now it seems that we see more and more concrete examples of the serious ramifications of the warming of our planet.  The fires in the West are just the most recent example of the type of changes that are in the works.  Even George Bush has admitted that climate change is happening and that humans are something to do with that.  Ahhh…. the world breathes a sigh of relief.  Now that the American President, ever so skeptical of scientific evidence, has actually recognized both the magnitude of the problem and the cause, surely America will take the lead in solving the problem.  Unfortunately, no such overtures have been made by this administration.  It’s belatedly strong on talk, but still quite short on action. 

This challenge has the potential to be the overwhelming security challenge of this century.  If predictions are correct, it may make us yearn for the days when we only had to deal with terrorists and nuclear states.  In so many ways, climate change has the potential to dramatically alter many of the fundamentals of our economy and our relationship with the natural world.  Yes, there will be winners and losers, but it seems that the evidence indicates that the losers will dramatically outnumber the winners.  What’s more, the losers are those members of society that can least afford to deal with the dramatic life changes that will come.  Generally any event that creates that many losers in the world is bound to lead to increased conflict and, therefore, dramatically increased instability.   A recent report by a panel of retired generals and admirals outlines the dramatic national security threat that global climate change poses. 

The report predicts:

“Projected climate change will seriously exacerbate already marginal living standards in many Asian, African, and Middle Eastern nations, causing widespread political instability and the likelihood of failed states…. The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide, and the growth of terrorism.

Here is recent Congressional testimony on the subject by the author of an upcoming CSIS and CNAS report, The Age of Consequences:  The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change. 

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Once the scourge of reflexive internationalism, the Bush administration is now dressing in multilateralist garb. The president’s latest concession is pushing the Law of the Sea Treaty, appropriately known as LOST.

The treaty declares all seabed resources to be the “common heritage of mankind,” hits Western mining companies and their sponsoring nations with fees and royalties, and creates a new global bureaucracy to divvy up the spoils. There are authorities, enterprises, committees, commissions, tribunals, and rules galore.

Unfortunately, decades ago the so-called Group of 77, the developing nations’ political lobby, appended this money-making scheme to [add] proposals to improve ocean resource exploitation, regularize petroleum exploration, improve environmental protection, and strengthen navigational freedom. Turn over the globe’s unowned resources to us, the Third World states offered, and we’ll recognize some of your rules–many of which already had been accepted as customary international law. (more…)

On Tuesday, I attended the Set America Free Coalition’s first in a series of energy policy events featuring 2008 presidential candidates.  The speaker was Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS).  After profusely, effusively (and a little awkwardly) thanking his hosts for giving him the time for a genuine “policy speech,” Brownback launched into a reasonable, if not groundbreaking, oratory advocating a range incremental steps toward energy independence for North America over the next 15 years.  His best turn of phrase was probably when he called for US dependence on the Midwest rather than the Mideast for our energy.  It’s one of his campaign speech staples.
In addition to extensive facts and figures, Brownback’s talk featured a number of logical and political word games endemic to this genre of “I have a plan to fix energy insecurity in 10-15 years” pitches.  His official energy policy platform calls for increased US ethanol production based on boosting agricultural output in Midwestern states like Kansas (of course), increasing domestic petroleum exploration and production, and expanding use and production of biofuels.  In other words, Brownback—like many of his competitors for the nomination from both parties—thinks our salvation lies in converting food crops and agricultural waste into clean and abundant vehicle fuel.  And that’s pretty much where his plan ends.

Naturally, finding the technology to achieve the miraculous conversion of biomass into gas at a viable price and scale is the key to Brownback’s energy security solution.  Conveniently, he did not get much into the substance of how, whether or how soon that technology will work.  He’s not alone.  Politicians these days toss all their (and our) hopes onto the technological bandwagon for two simple reasons: (1) neither they nor we understand or are expected to understand the technologies (especially when they haven’t been invented yet!), and (2) it is a lot easier to predict a technological revolution than to call for costly, concerted action to change our national infrastructure or our cherished, fuel-burning way of life.  In addition, industries doing energy R&D want government dollars, and politicians are happy to promise those dollars as long as doing so relieves public pressure to undertake tougher legislative solutions.  Meanwhile, we’re all temporarily forgiven for driving polluting cars while we wait for the technological panacea that won’t cost us a penny extra but will save the environment and rid us of our oil addiction. (more…)

Given the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (see summary here ) and the recent meeting of one of its working groups in Thailand  there is increasing focus on what should be the actual fixes to try and slow and then reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases  in order to stabilize climate change.
 
People disagree on what should figure into the solution, which, in and of itself, is not bad, as reasonable people can disagree. But usually most people say that nuclear power must be included in the mix. While one might expect opposition from environmental groups, such as Greenpeace, which has come out with a recent report on The Economics of Nuclear Power there are others who are also skeptical. 
 
A case in point is the enormously status quo elite establishment group, The Council on Foreign Relations. A report it commissioned, Nuclear Energy: Balancing Benefits and Risks  found that:

nuclear energy, despite its attributes, is  unlikely to play a major role in the coming decades in strengthening energy security or in countering the harmful effects of climate change. In particular, the rapid rate of nuclear reactor expansion required to make even a modest reduction in global warming would drive up construction costs and create shortages in building materials, trained personnel, and safety controls.
 

Undoubtedly the best line in the 1986 Australian comedy film Crocodile Dundee was when the protagonist Mick Dundee is approached by a mugger carrying a switchblade. Mick says, “That’s not a knife, mate”, then draws a very large bowie knife and continues “This is a knife”.
 
I thought of that line as I read Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. This report, released last Friday, actually the summary of Working Group II Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fourth Assessment Report, lays out in very clear and direct terms what the future holds. As Jeff Goldblum said, in another 1986 movie the Fly, “Be afraid, be very afraid.”
 
And therein is the problem. Not nearly enough people are afraid, or even concerned. And we should be screaming our lungs out about what is our future is bringing. Note I did not write may bring or might bring. I am writing about what is coming. Forget about terrorism or nuclear proliferation. We are talking about wrenching global catastrophe unprecedented in human history. One is going to have to go back nearly 250 million years in time to find something comparable; the Permian mass extinction,  which was the greatest mass extinction ever recorded in earth history.
 
For those who think that this is hyperbole see the new book, Under A Green Sky, by biology professor Peter D. Ward. He discovered that the near-total devastation at the end of the Permian period was caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide leading to climate change.
 
Let’s look at what the report’s authors wrote. Scientists, unlike politicians, don’t try to sway people’s minds with dire predictions, preferring to let the facts speak for themselves. But they really don’t need to do anything more than that.

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