Fellow blogger Joshua Hill has already expressed his aggravation with the U.S.’s efforts to water down the latest climate change assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but things might be even worse than they already sound.
A new report from The Climate Institute in Australia examines the latest research on climate change and concludes the IPCC’s most recent assessment is already outdated.
“(T)he IPCC report only uses material published up to mid-2006, and many new important observations have been published since,” states the report, written by Dr Graeme Pearman in collaboration with the Climate Adaptation Science and Policy Initiative at the University of Melbourne. “These suggest that the IPCC assessment is underestimating the risks of adverse impacts due to increased warming during this century and that impacts previously considered to be at the upper end of likelihood are now more probable.”
“Evidence of Accelerated Climate Change” cites data showing that carbon dioxide emissions are rising nearly three times as fast this decade as in the last — 3-plus percent per year for 2000 to 2004, versus 1.1 percent per year for 1990 to 1999. The current growth rate, the report says, exceeds that used in the IPCC’s most emissions-intensive climate scenario.
The report adds we’ve already reached greenhouse gas atmospheric levels equivalent to 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide, the point at which the IPCC says we risk slipping into “dangerous climate change.” While the IPCC assessment acknowledges carbon dioxide-equivalent levels are around 455 parts per million, it assumes the actual climate impact is still below the danger point thanks to the cooling effects of atmospheric aerosols and pollutants. The Climate Institute report notes those aerosol levels are dropping — thanks to pollution-control efforts — while greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.
The IPCC’s climate scenarios also fall short of what is actually being seen in the Arctic, the report adds.
“Models show declining Arctic ice cover, but very few model simulations show trends as large as are observed,” states the report. “The current summer minima are approximately 30 years ahead of a range of simulation model forecasts.” That means we might seen an ice-free Arctic Ocean well earlier than the IPCC’s predicted dates of somewhere between 2050 and 2100.
But wait, there’s more. The Australian report’s most disconcerting finding is that the IPCC, in trying to craft an assessment that represents “the full range of uncertainties” in climate science, might not be giving enough attention to low-probability events with high-impact results. Those would include things like multiple feedback loops that cause a rapid collapse of the world’s ice sheets or a catastrophic release of stored carbon — thousands of gigatons’ worth — from undersea hydrate reservoirs.
“To the extent that the impacts of climate change may be in the more severe range of those outlined in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, the case for a policy of risk management and more urgent intervention is strengthened,” the report concludes.
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Shirley Siluk Gregory
Shirley Siluk Gregory, a transplanted Chicagoan now living in Northwest Florida, represents the progressive half of Green Options' Red, Green and Blue segment. She holds a bachelor's degree in Geological Sciences from Northwestern University but graduated in 1984, just when the market for geologists was flatter than the Florida landscape. Just as well, though: she had little interest in spending her life either in a laboratory or, heaven forbid, an oil field. So, of course, she went into journalism. After extremely low-paying but fun and educational stints at several suburban Chicago weeklies and dailies, Shirley and her then-boyfriend/now-husband Scott found themselves displaced by a media buyout and spending the next several years working as freelancers. Among their credits: The Chicago Tribune, a publication for the manufactured-housing industry, and Web Hosting Magazine, a now-defunct publication that came and went with the dotcom era. Shirley's always been concerned about nature and conservation (and an avid pack-rat, as her family can attest to), but became even more rabidly interested in the environment primarily due to two factors: the growing signs that global warming was real and threatening, and the birth of her son, Noah, in 2003. Suddenly, the prospect of a world that might not be quite as habitable in 40 or 50 years took on a whole new, and personal, meaning. Living where she lives now also helped light the fire of Shirley's environmental awareness: her hometown was severely damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and beaten up again by Hurricane Dennis in 2005. That, and the fact that she and her family were vacationing in New Orleans until the day before Katrina -- and spent 12 hours driving home for a trip that normally takes 3 -- has made Shirley deeply appreciate how fragile our lifestyles are, and how dependent they are on sound management of natural resources and sustainable living practices. That's why she's become a passionate reader and writer about all things green and sustainable.
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