EcoRadio

Category: Climate chaos

The atmosphere is to the earth as a layer of varnish is to a desktop globe. It is thin, fragile and essential for preserving the items on the surface.150 years of burning fossil fuel have overloaded the atmosphere to the point where the earth is ill. It now has a fever. Read the detailed article, Soothing Gaia’s Fever for an evocative account of that analogy. The items listed here detail progress on coordinating 6.5 billion people in the most critical project undertaken by humanity. 

  • Acid seas ‘attacking shellfish, corals’

     

    The shift disrupts ocean chemistry and attacks the “building blocks needed by many marine organisms, such as corals and shellfish, to produce their skeletons, shells and other hard structures”, they said.

    On some projections, levels of acidification in 80 per cent of Arctic seas would be corrosive to clams that are vital to the food web by 2060, it said.

    And “coral reefs may be dissolving globally” if atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide were to rise to 550 parts per million (ppm) from a current 387 ppm

    Corals are home to many species of fish.

    “These changes in ocean chemistry are irreversible for many thousands of years and the biological consequences could last much longer,” they said.

    Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, the British science academy, said there may be an “underwater catastrophe”.

    “The effects will be seen worldwide, threatening food security, reducing coastal protection and damaging the local economies that may be least able to tolerate it,” he said.

    The academies said that if current rates of carbon emissions continue until 2050, computer models indicate “the oceans will be more acidic than they have been for tens of millions of years”.

     

  • Govt votes down Greens’ move to investigate risk posed by rising sea levels.

    (d) the assessment of the impact of even a moderate sea level rise in Australia remains inadequate for adaptation planning;
    (e) assessing the vulnerability of low coastal and estuarine regions requires not only mapping height above sea level but must take into account factors such as coastal morphology, susceptibility to long-shore erosion, near shore bathymetry and storm surge frequency;
    (f) delaying analysis of the risk of sea level rise exacerbates the likelihood that such information may affect property values and investment through disclosure of increased hazards and possible reduced or more expensive insurance cover; and
    (g) an early response to the threat of a rise in sea level may include avoiding investment in long-lived infrastructure in high risk areas.
    (2) That the following matter be referred to the Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Committee for inquiry and report by 20 September 2007:

    An assessment of the risks associated with projected rises in sea levels around Australia, including an appraisal of:
    (a) ecological, social and economic impacts;
    (b) adaptation and mitigation strategies;
    (c) knowledge gaps and research needs; and
    (d) options to communicate risks and vulnerabilities to the Australian community.

    Yesterday in Australia we heard from Sir Nicholas Stern, one of the world’s most eminent speakers on the economic impacts of climate change, pointing out that whatever it costs to take action now will be nothing compared with what it will cost if we do not take action. I am asking the Senate to agree to a motion to look at the assessment of the risks associated with sea level rise in Australia, including an appraisal of recent science relating to sea level rise projections, the ecological, social and economic impacts of the full range of projections, adaptation and mitigation strategies, knowledge gaps and research needs, and options to communicate risks and vulnerabilities to the Australian community.

    This is an urgent matter; it is an urgent matter because the science is telling us that we can expect not only the current amount of global warming that is locked in because of the levels of CO concentrations in the atmosphere but that we will see accelerating global warming as the concentrations of CO rise. We have to make deep cuts. But, regardless of the deep cuts that we make in the next 10 or 15 years, the sea level rise is going to continue. We have had the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment report published in February telling us that the sea level will rise by between 0.18 metres and 0.59 metres by the end of the century. More concerning than that is recent evidence from scientists such as Dr Barrie Pittock, formerly of CSIRO. He says that we have an increase in the outflow of the glaciers from Greenland and parts of Antarctica-increasing to such an extent that the latest papers are suggesting a rise by 2100 of between 50 centimetres and 1½ metres. That is the range that the latest science is demonstrating by 2100. If you take into account the rule of thumb that for every metre in sea level rise the coast will retreat and go inland by 100 metres-so for every metre you can expect that impact of 100 metres-and you consider how many people live in the coastal zone around Australia, we have to be concerned.

    Only a couple of weeks ago in Cairns we had a meeting of the Planning Institute of Australia. They talked about the impacts of sea level rise, and we also had the insurance industry there. Both the Planning Institute of Australia and the Insurance Council of Australia are saying that we are reaching a situation where some people will no longer be able to get insurance because of where they are in relation to the coast. Furthermore, they are saying that, in the future, local government in particular will be sued because they have given planning approval for development in coastal zones where it was already known there would be sea level rise. So we have a situation where people are moving to the coast and local government is not taking adequate note of the likely impacts of sea level rise.

    Looking at their website today, I was alarmed to see that the Greenhouse Office has not published anything since 2004 on updated impact assessment of sea level rise around Australia. No doubt I am going to hear from the government that they have a Greenhouse Office and that that is the answer to climate change-that you set up the office. It is what the office actually does that is of concern to me.

    At that recent Planning Institute conference in Queensland they said that in the Northern Territory nearly 900 coastal buildings, mainly in Darwin, are at risk. Along the Tasmanian coastline more than 17,000 addresses are considered vulnerable-as are more than 60,000 in South Australia, mostly around Adelaide, and over 80,000 along the Victorian coast, mainly around Melbourne. In Western Australia 94,000 buildings have been identified as vulnerable around Perth. But the biggest concern is along the eastern seaboard where more than 200,000 buildings are considered vulnerable on the New South Wales coast, including Sydney. Queensland faces the largest risk with almost 250,000 buildings under threat stretching from the Gold Coast to the Sunshine Coast. So this is not something 50 or 100 years hence-although, as I am saying, we are likely to see increasing rates of sea level rise; these are buildings that have been identified as vulnerable right now because of sea level rise. Add to that the issue of storm surge and you will see that we are facing major disaster around Australia, and we need to spend money right now dealing with it.

    In the UK the Thames Barrier in the mouth of the Thames River has been there for a long time to try and stop storm surge influencing the city of London to the extent that it did previously as a result of that coastal flooding and storm surge. At a recent meeting of the conference of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, there was a discussion about what we know as the Low Countries-and that includes, of course, the Netherlands-considering putting out a tender for a new coastline. It is a concept that is very difficult to even imagine in terms of the costs of actually considering that you might have to build a new coastline. Already in the Netherlands they are actively moving people from areas that are clearly going to be vulnerable to flooding. They face not only the risk of sea level rise but also, with heavier rainfall events, they are going to have flooding coming down the rivers-the two will meet and there will be massive flooding. Certainly Europe is focused on this because of the density of population in what we know as those Low Countries.

    In Australia we also have issues with areas like Kakadu and our national parks, coastal wetlands, protected areas and so on. We are going to see sea level rise have a considerable impact as a result of saltwater incursion into our wetlands. I was appalled when I heard earlier this year the federal Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, saying:

    There’s a lot of very exaggerated claims and you have to bear in mind that most of our coastal population lives on the east coast of Australia and because of the geology or the typography-

    I presume he meant topography-

    of the east coast, you know, much of that is adequately elevated to deal with a one-metre sea rise.

    That demonstrates the complete ignorance of the government about what a one-metre sea level rise would mean for coastal Australia. It would be absolutely devastating to infrastructure and to millions of people. But consider for a moment what it would mean for our Pacific neighbours. We already recognise that a large number of people will be dislocated and will have to move from the islands where they live. Not only will their lives and their culture be disrupted but they will need somewhere to go-and Australia, of course, is resisting even the definition of an ‘environmental refugee’ in the refugee convention, let alone agreeing to have future arrangements and treaties whereby Australia would take some of those people, even though Tuvalu and the New Zealand government have had an understanding that New Zealand will absorb a number of people from Tuvalu because of sea level rise and saltwater incursion into fresh water supplies.

    Returning to Australia, a recent report by the Risk Frontiers Natural Hazards Research Centre at Macquarie University talked about the wider Sydney region, including the central and south coasts. It said that there are almost 13,000 dwellings below two metres above mean sea level and over 140,000 dwellings below six metres above mean sea level. It noted that, during spring tides, sea level is almost a metre above mean sea level in Sydney. Another study found that, for a given sea level rise of 20 centimetres by 2050, coastal erosion of up to 22 metres is projected for the Collaroy-Narrabeen beach, rising to 110 metres given a one-in-50-year storm surge, with associated economic losses of $230 million.

    Also, an interesting rumour has been handed down from generation to generation of public servants in New South Wales that, as long ago as under the Wran government, the planning department there did an assessment on sea level rise impacts on Sydney and coastal New South Wales. When those planning people delivered that to the Wran government, they were told to bury it-and it has been buried ever since-because of the devastating impact it would have had on coastal property prices at that particular time. No doubt that is why people do not want to have this kind of assessment into the future impacts of sea level rise and storms and storm surge on coastal Australia associated with global warming, because not only will it have a significant impact on future infrastructure planning-and it is absolutely appropriate that it should have-but also it will place a lot of councils and state governments in all sorts of quandaries about what they will do about protecting existing infrastructure.

    Of course, that has to be done in conjunction with the insurance industry, which will be moving rapidly to take away people’s insurance cover. I am glad that the Insurance Council of Australia has come out with a plan that says we have to deal with this matter as soon as possible. In Tasmania, I pointed out that Lauderdale, which is not far from Hobart, is probably one of Tasmania’s most vulnerable communities to sea level rise. That was identified in a coastal vulnerability analysis done for the state government. The population of Lauderdale are already suffering a rise in the watertable as the sea level rises and they are vulnerable to overwash. However, the insurance institute representative in Tasmania said that it was not a problem as far as the insurance industry was concerned. I think that was a serious misleading of the local population about the likely impacts on people in that area being able to continue to maintain insurance cover.

    However, all this goes to the point that, in Australia, we need a proper assessment, as has been done in the UK and in countries like the Netherlands. In the UK, they have gone along its southern coast and have identified communities that will be saved by infrastructure-new groynes, seawalls, new port facilities and so on. They have identified other coastal areas for what they call ‘managed retreat’. That has not even come onto the agenda in Australia. However, huge conflict is being caused on the southern coast of the UK, with the government there announcing that they will start identifying communities to be saved and others for managed retreat. Unfortunately, one of the main considerations for many of those communities is the extent to which they are well-known tourist locations. So a place like Lyme Regis, where TheFrench Lieutenant’s Woman was filmed and which is a major tourist attraction, has been identified as a town that has to be saved, with millions of pounds being spent on groynes and seawalls. However, other communities nearby, which local people would say are more reflective of the culture of southern England and so on, have been identified for managed retreat.

    That is how seriously the UK government is taking the figures on sea level rise. The Netherlands government is considering such measures and I have mentioned the Thames Barrier. It will require vast amounts of money in adapting to existing projections of sea level rise, not to mention that sea level rise will become unmanageable unless we act soon to mitigate further concentrations of CO that will make the matter worse. So we have to adapt to what we know is coming and reduce greenhouse gases to make sure that the situation does not get worse.

    That is why I am calling for the Senate to support an inquiry into this issue of sea level rise. It is not complicated. We know what the situation with global warming is. We know the projections for sea level rise. We need to look at Australia’s coastal vulnerability to sea level rise, because we need to consider infrastructure into the future. I hope that the Senate will support this reference. I referred a matter last year to the rural and regional affairs committee relating to Australia’s future oil supplies and that was an extremely successful Senate inquiry. I take these Senate inquiries seriously. If this reference gets up, I will be at all the hearings and I will work hard in this context so that we get a collaborative approach and, hopefully, a majority report-because I think it makes an important contribution and raises awareness of the issues in local communities.

    I urge the government, the opposition and the Democrats to support this reference. It has been circulated to members of the committee. As I said, it is not a complex idea that we would move to look at the science on sea level rise projections, the likely impacts for the full range of projections and scenarios, the adaptation of mitigation strategies, the knowledge gaps and the research that we need to undertake, and our options to communicate those risks and vulnerabilities to the Australian community.

    I recommend this reference to the Senate. I will be interested to hear the response of my colleagues and hope that we can get this up and make a serious contribution to stopping what will be major disasters if we just pretend it is not going to happen.

    Question negatived.

  • Perestroika and permafrost: Moscow’s new interest in climate change

     

    Now they have changed their minds. In April, Vladimir Putin and his ministers approved a new climate ‘doctrine’ – well, that’s how they call these things in Moscow – which for the first time officially recognizes severe risks of global warming and calls for immediate action. My story over at Nature News explains the nature and significance of the baffling doctrine, details of which are beginning to leak.

    Critics point out that Russia plans to focus on adaptation to climate change, while putting less emphasis on actually reducing its emissions. Others say Russia’s new climate policy has been quietly constructed behind closed doors, without any involvement from industry, NGOs and the public. That’s all true; but Russia’s recognition of the scientific basis of climate change, and its apparent willingness to pro-actively partake in international climate protection efforts, outweighs these flaws. Let’s see what Moscow will put on the table in Copenhagen.

    Sure, all eyes in December will be on China, and Russia’s taciturn climate diplomacy has in the past been a fickle and half-hearted affair. Even so, one must not under-estimate Moscow’s influence at international negotiation tables.

    The climatic importance of Russia’s natural landscape, in particular its boreal forests and its permafrost soils, is beyond doubt anyway. For example, huge amounts of old carbon that accumulated over thousands of years are stored in permafrost soils which occupy more than 60% of Russia’s 17 million square-kilometre land area. How much of it will be released as the southern permafrost boundary shifts northwards as a result of climate warming, possibly by up to 100 kilometres in the next 20-25 years?

    A paper in Nature this week suggests that, globally, permafrost thawing may lead to the release of an extra billion tonnes of carbon per year into the atmosphere. The team measured carbon flows at a tundra site in Alaska where permafrost has been thawing for 20 years, and then calculated from the data the likely trajectory of global carbon release from thawing permafrost. Here’s an editor’s summary.

    Russian scientists were not involved in the study, led by Edward Schuur of the University of Florida in Gainesville. That’s a pity. If Moscow’s new interest in climate led to more frequent east-west collaborations in science, such as on permafrost, it would be a boon.

     

  • Carbon emissions must start falling in 2015 to keep warming to 2C: scientists

    Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, a convenor of the symposium, likened the urgency for action on climate change to the threat of thermonuclear weapons during the Cold War.

    “We are facing a crisis as deep as the arms race of the 1950s and 1960s and the Cold War notion of mutually assured destruction,” he said. “Today we have mutually assured increases in greenhouse gases.”

    He said the memorandum echoed a manifesto signed in 1955 when Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein and nine other intellectuals called for world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflict.

    “Global climate change represents a threat of similar proportions and should be addressed in a similar manner,” the memorandum said.

    The extent of the climate threat is also highlighted today by a report that suggests global warming is already killing an estimated 300,000 people per year – equivalent to the loss of life that resulted from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

    The report from the World Humanitarian Forum, an independent organisation led by Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary-General, claims that 90 per cent of those deaths are related to gradual environmental degradation resulting from the warming climate – principally malnutrition, diarrhoea and malaria. The remaining 10 per cent are linked with weather-related disasters.

    The study, due to be presented by Mr Annan, was reviewed by distinguished experts in the field, including Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York.

    It projects that by 2030, the number of annual deaths directly resulting from the warming global climate will rise to 500,000.

    The St James’s Palace memorandum was agreed after three days of discussions attended by 60 leading scientists, policymakers and intellectuals. Participants included Steven Chu, the US Energy Secretary and Nobel physics laureate, Wole Solinka, the Nigerian literature laureate, and Wangari Maathai, the first environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

    The symposium was organised by the Potsdam Institute and the University of Cambridge Program for Sustainability Leadership, under the patronage of the Prince of Wales.

    The memorandum called for an emergency package of financial support for tropical forest nations, as the loss of forests is responsible for about 18 per cent of global carbon emissions.

    “The St James’s Palace memorandum calls for a global deal on climate change that matches the scale and urgency of the human, ecological and economic crises facing the world today,” the final document says.

    “It urges governments at all levels, as well as the scientific community, to join with business and civil society to seize hold of this historic opportunity to transform our carbon-intensive economies into sustainable and equitable systems. We must recognise the fierce urgency of now.”

  • 700.000 homes at sea rise risk

     

    “Other scientists say the sea could rise metres in the next century. The director of the Fenner School of Environment and Society at

    the Australian national University, Professor Will Steffen, told the inquiry there was huge uncertainty among scientists about the rate

    of sea level rise and ‘the science … has progressed significantly since the publication of the IPCC (report) last year’. The observed

    rate of sea-level rise is tracking at or near the upper limits of the envelope of IPCC projections. With no further changes in the rate of

    sea level rise, this would suggest that sea levels in 2100 would be 0.75m to one metre above the 2000 levels. However, there was

    further uncertainty over the loss of polar ice sheets, particularly Greenland, which was melting rapidly. The concern is that a

    threshold may soon be passed beyond which we’ll be committed to losing most or all of the Greenland ice sheet. This would lead to

    6.0m of sea level rise (with enormous implications for Australia), although the time frame required to lose this amount of ice is

    highly uncertain, ranging from a century to a millennium or more.”

    “Insurance Australia Group actuary Tony Coleman said preliminary estimates of the value of property, homes, businesses and public

    infrastructure vulnerable to sea inundation ranged from $50 billion to $150 billion. The figure depends upon the extent of sea-level

    rise assumed and the effectiveness or otherwise of potential mitigation measures.”

    Professor Will Steffen, Australian National University Article : West Australian (Page 18), 17 Oct 2008

  • NASA’s James Hansen on the IPCC forecast

     

    He is also one of the most outspoken of mainstream climate scientists, regularly and publicly clashing with his political masters in recent years.

    But in his April testimony to the US Congress Hansen this time criticised the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) . Its newly published advice on predicted rises in sea levels, Hansen argued, was far from adequate.

    If the NASA scientist’s calculations are correct, we face a problem far more serious than previously suggested. Hansen is convinced that if we continue to burn fossil fuels relentlessly there is no question coastal nations worldwide will experience unprecedented flooding.

    Ice-cap row

    Hansen’s dispute with the IPCC centres on what he suggests is an overly cautious approach to factoring in the speed at which the ice caps are melting.

    In the IPCC’s 2001 report it predicted a sea level rise of about 0.7 metres from all causes by 2100. But the new IPCC report excludes melting ice sheets so gives lower estimates.

    ” Greenland and west Antarctica are home to the most vulnerable ice-sheets. If either sheet melted entirely it would raise sea levels by seven to eight metres.”

    Hansen has himself taken a brave stab at estimating this most important and very uncertain component, suggesting that under typical “business as usual” scenarios the more likely figure by 2100 is several metres.

    There is little argument over the volumes of ice and water involved. Scientists are confident they have fairly accurately calculated the amount of water now locked up in the great ice-caps of Greenland and Antarctica.

    Greenland and west Antarctica are home to the most vulnerable ice-sheets. If either sheet melted entirely it would raise sea levels by seven to eight metres.

    According to the IPCC, a global temperature increase of more than about 2°C would see Greenland’s ice-sheet eventually melt completely. And its projections show this degree of temperature change is now very likely by the end of the century.

    But while there is no doubt about the final outcome, the uncertainty for the IPCC is over how fast Greenland’s ice-sheet will melt. The rates of all the melting processes are still very uncertain, nor are they properly represented by conventional models for predicting melting rates (see Extras: the science below).

    ” With the scientific community divided, such an uncertain forecast will leave policy makers struggling to plan ahead.”

    Given this uncertainty, the IPCC in its report declined to make any quantitative estimates of sea level rises that might result, even within wide error bounds. What it did give was estimates of the smaller but much better understood effects of thermal expansion as the oceans warm, ranging from 0.2 to 0.6m by 2100.

    This, Hansen thinks, was a serious error. He argues there is a major risk that sea levels will rise by several metres this century so a cursory look at the IPPC’s safe prediction of less than 1m gives an altogether false sense of security.

    Faced with a major controversy, and real and serious uncertainty, the official watchdog has failed to bark, and Hansen is trying to fill the vacuum it has left. With the scientific community divided, such an uncertain forecast will leave policy makers struggling to plan ahead.

    Stern warning

    Previous considerations of risks associated with rising sea levels, including the Stern Report, have tended to stick with the conventional “maybe a metre per century”.

    Nevertheless all agree it is a serious problem that will either cause massive damage or incur massive costs in adaptations needed to prevent damage – or both.

    The rise in sea levels since 1900 has been modest at about 0.2m, mainly due to the relatively small effects of thermal expansion and melting mountain glaciers. But the now rapid melting of large ice-sheets is causing increased concern.

    A separate issue for areas a few metres above sea level is flooding caused by heavy rainfall, but in low lying areas such as Bangladesh this combined with rising sea levels is making the overall effect much worse.

    There is serious doubt that we can afford to protect the world’s major coastal cities – London, New York, Mumbai and Shanghai – against sea-level rise of several metres.

    According to Hansen, large areas of Florida, East Anglia and the Netherlands, as well as many oceanic islands and most of Bangladesh, could be inundated within the lifetime of children now being born.

    Speaking exclusively to ClimateChangeCorp.com, Hansen said: “Energy departments the world round don’t get it yet. We should not be building any new coal-fired power plants that do not capture and store the CO2.”

    If we are to retain any hope of keeping sea levels relatively steady, he argues, those power plants will need to be bulldozed over the next few decades.

    Damage limitation

    If there is a real risk that this problem may now be several times worse than previously thought, it strengthens the case made by Stern that mitigation – reducing CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions – represents an excellent investment, even if the cost of doing so is far from trivial.

    In Hansen’s view, allowing the atmospheric CO2 level to rise even to 450 parts per million (ppm), corresponding to a global warming of about 2°C, may be to go too far.

    Atmospheric CO2 is currently about 380ppm, already far above the pre-industrial level of 280ppm, and rising at almost 2ppm per year.

    This gives us at most just a few decades to take drastic action. Within 50 years, but preferably sooner, we would have to cut global CO2 emissions by, at the least, a factor of four; in plain terms, by 75%.

    The targets set under the Kyoto protocol are just a very small step in the right direction. The UK target for a 60% cut by 2050 seems broadly consistent with what is needed. But it overlooks a rapid rise in emissions elsewhere, and especially in China, which means the developed world will have to make even deeper cuts.

    Ethical arguments support the adoption of a “contraction and convergence” policy. This would see total global emissions progressively reduced, with per capita emissions in different countries gradually equalised over time to less than 0.4 tonnes for every person.

    In this scenario, Europe could expect to have to aim for a 90% cut by 2100, and the USA for a 95% cut over the same time. Even China and India will have to halt their rising emissions, eventually reducing them albeit by smaller amounts to achieve stabilisation. To say the least, these are seriously challenging goals.

    Is this de-carbonisation of the global economy achievable? No one can foresee the technology of 100 or even 50 years into the future so the short answer is: we don’t know. But businesses can make a start.

    Economic incentive

    In a now world-wide market economy, putting a serious price on carbon emissions would provide a clear and significant incentive for the development and use of all types of renewable and low-carbon energy sources.

    It would also encourage methods for capturing and storing CO2 generated by continued use of fossil fuels, while they last.

    This could be done by levelling a carbon tax or, less directly, through cap and trade schemes such as the European emissions trading scheme.

    But as teething troubles with the emissions trading scheme have shown, these schemes rely heavily on getting the level of emissions limits right. Most businesses would probably prefer stable and predictable prices for carbon emissions, which a carbon tax can provide. Traders who profit from market fluctuations might have other ideas.

    There is however no doubt that a new form of indirect taxation through a carbon tax would prove unpopular and regressive. So it would make sense to make it a revenue-neutral replacement for another existing unpopular and regressive indirect tax, such as sales taxes or, in Europe, VAT.

    Recent statements by Britain’s new prime minister, Gordon Brown, suggest that within Europe this may no longer be an impossible goal.

    For more intractable sectors of the economy, direct regulation of emissions may be needed. This would apply notably to transport and especially aviation, which currently has no alternative to fossil fuels.

    And while hydrogen may be the fuel of the future, regrettably its generation is now largely done through use of fossil fuels. If hydrogen is to play a role in solving transport problems, we desperately need a low carbon (solar or possibly nuclear) way to produce it, along with better and lighter ways to store it.

    Business imperative

    We need to make the shift from a position where global emissions are increasing at about 2% per year to one where they decrease at about 2% per year, and within a few decades at most.

    The change will require major economic incentives and a much more effective global emissions limitation scheme. Even if we develop the right clean technologies, the financial incentives will be needed to help implement them.

    For businesses this means planning ahead for a future where energy costs will be much higher, especially where derived from fossil fuels. This is the inevitable, and intended, consequence of both any carbon-trading scheme, and a carbon tax.

    Businesses and the financial community are already thinking hard how to turn this threat into an opportunity. PriceWaterhouseCoopers notably looked into the effect of carbon regulations on businesses in its recent report “Saving the planet: can tax and regulation help?”.

    We also need to look with grave misgiving at all existing infrastructure and new investments located within a few metres of sea level.

    And above all, we need to be ready for change, for surprises, and for more extreme events. It’s likely to be a bumpy ride.
    …

    Extras: the science

    Until recently, the growth and decline of ice-sheets was believed to be a very slow process, stretching over thousands of years. An ice-sheet can only grow as fast as snow accumulates, generally at less than 1m per year when it is compacted into ice, so an ice-sheet several thousand metres thick must take thousands of years to build up.

    Ice-sheets then get smaller and lose mass, mainly in two ways. The first is melting, at both the surface and the base when the temperature is greater than 0°C. The base is often relatively warmer than the surface, because of geothermal heating from the interior of the Earth.

    Secondly, the sheets lose mass by disintegrating at the edges, calving icebergs into the sea, often after the ice has first flowed offshore to create massive floating ice-shelves.
    Ice lost this way is replaced by more ice flowing from the interior, via glaciers and ice-streams. In the past, glaciologists have generally considered this a slow process.

    Their computer models have reflected this view so the whole process of melting and calving, and the resulting rise in sea level, has been predicted to take thousands rather than hundreds of years.

    However, the last few years have brought some surprises. First, we have seen that floating ice-shelves can disintegrate quite suddenly, over just a few weeks. The collapse of the Larsen B ice-shelf off the Antarctic peninsula in 2002 is a classic example.

    Another big surprise was the subsequent discovery that ice-streams – the “rivers” of ice that flow relatively fast within glaciers – that fed the ice-shelf had accelerated dramatically after the shelf disappeared.

    The buttressing effect of the ice-shelf, holding back the glaciers and ice streams, seems too be much greater than glaciologists had thought.

    The third surprise was recent measurements of both gravity and surface elevation from satellites showing that both Greenland and west Antarctica are losing mass much faster than expected.

    In both cases it seems “warm” ice, near its melting point, is responsible. This ice is relatively wet, and melt-water is known to create a slurry that lubricates the flow of glaciers over the rock beneath, allowing them to flow much faster.

    And it now seems water also percolates into “warm” ice much more than was expected, sometimes flowing right through glaciers in “moulins” to lubricate their beds, and even through ice-shelves, causing them to fracture.

    West Antarctica, it appears, is less prone to melt than Greenland’s ice-sheet. But, worryingly, it is grounded on land below sea level so it may also be vulnerable to melting by sea-water, from below.

    The even larger east Antarctic ice-sheet is thought to be more secure but the big question is: how much melting will occur, and how fast?”