A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization

And How to Save It

Pluto Press

Contents

Climate Catastrophe

What is climate change? Is it a product of natural cyclical variations in the earth's ecological systems, or is it a consequence of human activities? What are the implications of climate change for the international system? How serious are the ramifications of climate change for the continuity of modern industrial civilization? This chapter begins by confronting the major public media debates regarding the causes of climate change, reviewing the main arguments against the idea that contemporary global warming is due to fossil fuel emissions and is therefore human-induced (anthropogenic). The relevant scientific literature is explored to discern whether we can be sure if, and why, climate change is happening.

I then explore the implications of climate change for national security, finding that a variety of Western security agencies recognize that it will drastically alter the global security landscape for the foreseeable future unless there is significant preventive action. The focus of this analysis is not to list the specific conflicts that might arise (an exercise performed frequently elsewhere), but to assess the overarching ramifications of global warming for the ability of modern industrial civilization in its current form to survive. The analysis then extends to a critical examination of the conventional narrative of global warming's progress as described by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and as generally endorsed by Western states. I argue that cutting-edge scientific research provides compelling evidence that the current rate of global warming is far greater than the UN models predicted. Integrating the impact of positive feedbacks in the earth's climate systems, the research suggests the probability of a worst-case climate scenario well before the end of the twenty-first century – unless significant preventive and mitigating actions are taken.

But such actions must go far beyond the mere question of reducing emissions. Emissions reductions have largely been addressed as if in a sociopolitical and economic vacuum, divorced from the real-world systemic changes required to drastically reduce energy consumption in general, and utilize cleaner and more energy-efficient technologies based on renewable fuel sources in particular. Yet this inattention to the global systemic origins of the ecological crisis is part of a long-term trend, evidenced by the fact that policymakers have largely ignored several decades of dire warnings issued by the world's leading climate and environmental scientists. Therefore, for civilization to survive beyond the twenty-first century will require fundamental global systemic change at the very heart of modern industrial social relations. Only in the context of such systemic change can the prospect be realized of a post-carbon civilization that is no longer dependent on the unrelenting exploitation of hydrocarbon energies.

A DEBATE RESOLVED? CURRENT CLIMATE CHANGE IS UNEQUIVOCALLY ANTHROPOGENIC

The Scientific Consensus

Climate change generated by human emissions is perhaps the global crisis most prominent in public consciousness – its existence is now readily acknowledged by most governments including the United States, even if reluctantly, and it is generally recognized that urgent steps are required to prevent the prospect of mass extinction. What is missing from the official discourse on climate, however, is not simply an acknowledgement of the real extent and gravity of the civilizational catastrophe it poses, but the corresponding measures required to prevent or avert such catastrophe.

Since 1900 there has been an approximately 0.7°C rise in global average temperature (see Figure 1.1). This increase cannot be accounted for by natural variations of solar and volcanic activity, nor by human-induced sulphate emissions, which act to reduce global temperature. It is only by including the impact of human-induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that climate models are able to accurately simulate the rise in global temperatures over the last century of industrial civilization.

Industrial civilization derives almost all its energy from the burning of fossil fuels, pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – with the exception of approximately 2–3 per cent from renewable and nuclear sources. The emissions of primarily CO2 – but also nitrous oxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons, among other greenhouse gases – from the industries that drive our economies and sustain our infrastructures, are the main engine of global warming in the last few decades. This does not mean that all climate change is solely due to our CO2 emissions. Scientists acknowledge that there are many other factors involved in climate change, such as solar activity, as well as periodic changes in the earth's orbit. Yet they have overwhelmingly confirmed that these are not the primary factors currently driving global warming.

Global warming sceptics often point to the fact that human-induced CO2 emissions are tiny compared to natural emissions from the ocean and vegetation. What they forget, however, is that natural emissions are balanced by natural absorptions by ocean and vegetation. This natural balance has become increasingly unstable due to additional CO2 emissions from industrial activities. In terms of natural emissions, consumption of vegetation by animals and microbes accounts for about 220 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 per year. Respiration by vegetation emits around 220 (Gt). The ocean releases about 330 Gt. This totals about 770 Gt of natural emissions. In terms of natural absorption s, land plants absorb about 440 Gt of carbon per year, and the ocean absorbs about 330 Gt, again roughly totalling about 770 Gt. This emission-absorption parity (770 Gt released and 770 absorbed) ensures that natural atmospheric CO2 levels remain in overall balance even as emissions and absorptions fluctuate over time. In comparison, human emissions are only around 26.4 Gt per year. The problem is that this seemingly small addition of CO2 into the atmosphere by industrialization cannot be absorbed by the planet. Only about 40 per cent of it is actually absorbed, largely by oceans, leaving 60 per cent in the atmosphere. Worse still, the oceans are increasingly losing their ability to absorb CO2, with the Southern Ocean and the North Atlantic both approaching saturation point in 2007. This means that, with time, unprecedented concentrations of CO2 are accumulating in the earth's atmosphere. Just how unprecedented can be gauged by a simple example – while a natural change of 100 parts per million (ppm) takes between 5000 and 20,000 years, the recent increase of 100 ppm took only 120 years.

The majority of scientific studies show that climate sensitivity to CO2 emissions is high, or, in other words, that CO2 emissions induce large increases in global temperature. Despite the media images of a raging debate among climate scientists, the fundamentals are agreed upon – the direct connection between CO2 and global temperatures has been empirically observed by analysis of ice cores, paleoclimate records, observations of ocean heat uptake, and temperature responses to the solar cycle, among other data. The empirically focused studies, including published research from the 1990s to 2009, show that doubled CO2 emissions would contribute to warming within the range of at least 1.4 to 4°C. Furthermore, the link between CO2 and warming is confirmed by fundamental physics, including laboratory analysis on the degree to which CO2 and other greenhouses gases absorb infrared, as documented by University of Chicago geoscientist Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert in his physics textbook on climate change.

The origins of current climate change are therefore no longer a matter of serious scientific debate. The landmark declaration came in 2007, when the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its Fourth Assessment Report, based on a meta-analysis of the scientific literature by 600 scientists from 40 countries, peer-reviewed by 600 more meteorologists. The report confirmed that human-induced global warming is 'unequivocally' happening, and that the probability that climate change is due to human CO2 emissions is over 90 per cent.

Yet the waters have been increasingly muddied by the perception that there is no real scientific consensus about climate change – either that global warming is not happening, or that if it is, it has little or nothing to do with human activities. In fact, this self-styled 'sceptical' agenda has revolved around a network of ideological and advocacy organizations funded largely by leading players in the fossil fuel industry. Between 1998 and 2005, ExxonMobil has funnelled about $16 million to such groups with the aim of manufacturing uncertainty about even the most indisputable scientific evidence. This has not only generated considerable confusion in the media about climate change, it has also influenced US government policy.

It is therefore important to recognize that claims by sceptics that there is no scientific consensus on climate change are deeply misleading. The scientific consensus can be discerned not only from the IPCC report, but from other meta-analyses of the peer-reviewed literature. In 2004, US geoscientist Naomi Oreskes, Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego, conducted a survey of the 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global climate change from 1993 to 2003. She found that 75 per cent explicitly or implicitly accepted the consensus view, while 25 per cent took no position and dealt purely with methods or paleoclimate:

Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position ... Many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for understanding climate dynamics. The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen.

Efforts to disprove the existence of this scientific consensus have been poor in quality. For instance, although social anthropologist Benny Peiser attempted to refute Oreskes' findings in his own survey of the same peer-reviewed papers, he managed to flag up only 34 studies which he claimed raised doubts about anthropogenic global warming. This is a tiny fraction – only 3.6 per cent – of the scientific papers from this period. But close inspection of the actual abstracts shows not only that the vast majority do not in fact reject the scientific consensus at all, and that those few which can be interpreted as casting some doubt were not actually peer-reviewed. In the end, Peiser himself was forced to retract his criticisms: 'Only few abstracts explicitly reject or doubt the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) consensus which is why I have publicly withdrawn this point of my critique ... I do not think anyone is questioning that we are in a period of global warming. Neither do I doubt that the overwhelming majority of climatologists is agreed that the current warming period is mostly due to human impact.' Indeed, when pressed to clarify which specific papers he thought expressed doubt about anthropogenic climate change, he was able only to identify one – which was not peer-reviewed.

Outside the realm of scientific research, there have been several efforts by vested political interests to demonstrate not only that there is a lack of scientific consensus about anthropogenic climate change, but further that an alternative scientific consensus undermines it. In December 2007, Senator James Inhofe, the ranking minority member of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, released a list of over 400 'prominent scientists' including 'current and former participants in the UN IPCC' who allegedly 'disputed man-made global warming claims' that year. His list was widely publicized by the media. Yet by the time of writing Senator Inhofe has received at least a million dollars in campaign contributions from individuals and companies linked to the US oil and gas industry. Detailed analysis of Inhofe's list of scientists and their actual research on climate change reveals other awkward facts: 1) 84 individuals listed had either taken money from, or were connected to, fossil fuel industries or think tanks founded by them; 2) 44 are television weathermen; 3) 20 are economists; 4) 70 simply have no expertise or qualifications in climate science; 5) increasing numbers of scientists cited as 'man-made climate sceptics' in the Senate report have since been found to support anthropogenic climate change and despite repeated efforts to dissociate themselves from the report, continue to remain on the list.

Examples of flagrant misrepresentation in the report are rife. On the list, for instance, is 'prominent scientist' Ray Kurzweil – not a scientist but an inventor. Worse, Kurzweil is not even a global warming sceptic. Rather, he argued that Al Gore's arguments about climate change were 'ludicrous' for failing to account for the potential of new technologies: 'nanotechnology will eliminate the need for fossil fuels within 20 years ... I think global warming is real but it has been modest thus far'. Kurzweil, in other words, is not a climate scientist, accepts the climate science behind global warming, but believes that continued warming is preventable due to technological progress. Another example of a 'prominent scientist' cited in the report is Steve Baskerville, a 'CBS Chicago affiliate' and 'Chief Meteorologist' who expressed 'scepticism' about a consensus on man-made global warming. Yet Baskerville's alleged qualifications in climate science amount only to a Certificate in Broadcast Meteorology from Mississippi State University. Other examples include Thomas Ring, who has a degree in chemical engineering from Case Western Reserve University, with no peer-reviewed climate science publications to his name; George Waldenberger, not a climate scientist but a meteorologist, who has repeatedly requested to be removed from the Inhofe list and reiterated his support for the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis, but who still remains on the list; Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner, real climate scientists who, however, are misrepresented as sceptics when in fact they state: 'We face a problem of anthropogenic climate change, but the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 has failed to tackle it'; and so on. These and numerous other examples are discussed at length in an ongoing regular column, 'The "Inhofe 400" Sceptic of the Day', by Andrew Dessler, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A & M University, which continues to demonstrate the fraudulent nature of Inhofe's list.

Unfortunately, this did not stop Senator Inhofe from releasing an updated list a year later in December 2008, including the original 400, of now 'more than 650 international scientists' who 'dissent over man-made global warming claims'. It was not long before the credibility of this list was also undermined. By way of example, on Inhofe's new list is IPCC scientist Erich Roeckner, a renowned climate modeller at the Max Planck Institute. Roeckner is cited in the new report as saying that there are kinks in climate models, and telling Nature: 'It is possible that all of them are wrong' – supposedly implying that he is questioning the validity of anthropogenic models of climate change in general. However, as the New Republic reported:

But he's not! Roeckner was referring to the IPCC's emissions scenarios, which involve assumptions about the rate of growth of greenhouse-gas emissions ... We already know that emissions are growing faster than the IPCC's worst-case scenario, and that's bad news, not good.

Anyway, Roeckner's as far as you get from a 'dissenter' ... Roeckner is quoted in multiple news stories sounding downright alarmist about the consequences of man-made warming. 'Humans have had a large one-of-a-kind influence on the climate ... Weather situations in which extreme floods occur will increase,' he informed Deutsche Welle in 2004. 'Our research pointed to rapid global warming and the shifting of climate zones,' he told ABC News in 2005. Quite the heretic, that one.