Claim: Climate change is 10x faster than ever before
Posted on August 1, 2013    by Anthony Watts

From Stanford University  comes this breathless missive that sounds just like every one we’ve heard before. No mention of “the pause”, but we do have a “baked into the system” goodness apparently.

climate_speed

Climate change occurring 10 times faster than at any time in past 65 million years

The planet is undergoing one of the largest changes in climate since the dinosaurs went extinct. But what might be even more troubling for humans, plants and animals is the speed of the change. Stanford climate scientists warn that the likely rate of change over the next century will be at least 10 times quicker than any climate shift in the past 65 million years.

If the trend continues at its current rapid pace, it will place significant stress on terrestrial ecosystems around the world, and many species will need to make behavioral, evolutionary or geographic adaptations to survive.

Although some of the changes the planet will experience in the next few decades are already “baked into the system,” how different the climate looks at the end of the 21st century will depend largely on how humans respond.

The findings come from a review of climate research by Noah Diffenbaugh, an associate professor of environmental Earth system science, and Chris Field, a professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science and the director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution. The work is part of a special report on climate change in the current issue of Science.

Diffenbaugh and Field, both senior fellows at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, conducted the targeted but broad review of scientific literature on aspects of climate change that can affect ecosystems, and investigated how recent observations and projections for the next century compare to past events in Earth’s history.

For instance, the planet experienced a 5 degree Celsius hike in temperature 20,000 years ago, as Earth emerged from the last ice age. This is a change comparable to the high-end of the projections for warming over the 20th and 21st centuries.

The geologic record shows that, 20,000 years ago, as the ice sheet that covered much of North America receded northward, plants and animals recolonized areas that had been under ice. As the climate continued to warm, those plants and animals moved northward, to cooler climes.

“We know from past changes that ecosystems have responded to a few degrees of global temperature change over thousands of years,” said Diffenbaugh. “But the unprecedented trajectory that we’re on now is forcing that change to occur over decades. That’s orders of magnitude faster, and we’re already seeing that some species are challenged by that rate of change.”

Some of the strongest evidence for how the global climate system responds to high levels of carbon dioxide comes from paleoclimate studies. Fifty-five million years ago, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was elevated to a level comparable to today. The Arctic Ocean did not have ice in the summer, and nearby land was warm enough to support alligators and palm trees.

“There are two key differences for ecosystems in the coming decades compared with the geologic past,” Diffenbaugh said. “One is the rapid pace of modern climate change. The other is that today there are multiple human stressors that were not present 55 million years ago, such as urbanization and air and water pollution.”

Record-setting heat

Diffenbaugh and Field also reviewed results from two-dozen climate models to describe possible climate outcomes from present day to the end of the century. In general, extreme weather events, such as heat waves and heavy rainfall, are expected to become more severe and more frequent.

For example, the researchers note that, with continued emissions of greenhouse gases at the high end of the scenarios, annual temperatures over North America, Europe and East Asia will increase 2-4 degrees C by 2046-2065. With that amount of warming, the hottest summer of the last 20 years is expected to occur every other year, or even more frequently.

By the end of the century, should the current emissions of greenhouse gases remain unchecked, temperatures over the northern hemisphere will tip 5-6 degrees C warmer than today’s averages. In this case, the hottest summer of the last 20 years becomes the new annual norm.

“It’s not easy to intuit the exact impact from annual temperatures warming by 6 C,” Diffenbaugh said. “But this would present a novel climate for most land areas. Given the impacts those kinds of seasons currently have on terrestrial forests, agriculture and human health, we’ll likely see substantial stress from severely hot conditions.”

The scientists also projected the velocity of climate change, defined as the distance per year that species of plants and animals would need to migrate to live in annual temperatures similar to current conditions. Around the world, including much of the United States, species face needing to move toward the poles or higher in the mountains by at least one kilometer per year. Many parts of the world face much larger changes.

The human element

Some climate changes will be unavoidable, because humans have already emitted greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the atmosphere and oceans have already been heated.

“There is already some inertia in place,” Diffenbaugh said. “If every new power plant or factory in the world produced zero emissions, we’d still see impact from the existing infrastructure, and from gases already released.”

The more dramatic changes that could occur by the end of the century, however, are not written in stone. There are many human variables at play that could slow the pace and magnitude of change – or accelerate it.

Consider the 2.5 billion people who lack access to modern energy resources. This energy poverty means they lack fundamental benefits for illumination, cooking and transportation, and they’re more susceptible to extreme weather disasters. Increased energy access will improve their quality of life – and in some cases their chances of survival – but will increase global energy consumption and possibly hasten warming.

Diffenbaugh said that the range of climate projections offered in the report can inform decision-makers about the risks that different levels of climate change pose for ecosystems.

“There’s no question that a climate in which every summer is hotter than the hottest of the last 20 years poses real risks for ecosystems across the globe,” Diffenbaugh said. “However, there are opportunities to decrease those risks, while also ensuring access to the benefits of energy consumption.”

Politicians are powerless over Australia’s economy

Posted Tue Jul 30, 2013 2:59pm AEST

Photo: A small country highly integrated into the global economy is going to be very sensitive to international crises. (ABC News)

The fate of the Australian economy – the big ups and downs of the economic cycle – will be determined by global conditions, not domestic ones, writes Chris Berg.

Australia is a very small country with a very open economy. These facts are sometimes easy to forget.

No matter what they say during the upcoming election campaign, neither Kevin Rudd nor Tony Abbott will have much control over Australia’s economic fortunes in the next term of government.

Wrapping up his National Press Club address earlier this month, Kevin Rudd said Labor governments “manage transitions … sketch the future … harness the energy and ambition of our people” and “put the changes in place that best secures our future.”

Tony Abbott has used the same sort of hyperbole. A Coalition victory would immediately trigger prosperity.

Such boldness is par for the course at election time. But it is a confidence trick.

The fate of the Australian economy – the big ups and downs of the economic cycle – will be determined by global conditions, not domestic ones.

No-one knows this better than the workers at Holden and Ford, for whom global exchange rates are more important than any subsidy or tariff our elected representatives can devise.

This has always been so.

A sudden increase in the cost of bank lending in London caused our first true depression – the largely forgotten Depression of the 1840s. We suffered along with the rest of the British Empire.

Our better-remembered second depression occurred in the 1890s. What little modern Australians know of the Depression of the 1890s is perhaps the housing boom in Melbourne which preceded bank failures and unemployment.

But the Australian episode is only part of a story that encompasses the near collapse of the London-based Barings Bank, sovereign debt crises in Latin America and the Mediterranean, a gold panic in New York, and a mining market collapse in South Africa. Our trouble – as traumatic as it was – was just one crisis among many.

The Great Depression was even more clearly imported. No way were we going to avoid suffering from the stock market crash of October 1929 or the collapse of world trade.

Historically our good times correspond with good times in the global economy too.

We boomed in the 1950s and 1960s along with everyone else. We suffered stagflation in the 1970s along with everyone else.

And the recession we had to have?

Well, that recession had to be had by the United States, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Japan as well.

This all makes sense. Australia is tiny. Overseas there are cities with more people than our entire country. We’re almost entirely dependent on imports for consumption and exports for economic growth. And we need foreign capital for investment. A small country highly integrated into the global economy is going to be very sensitive to international crises.

Yet for each of these historical episodes there exists a cottage industry trying to explain the unique Australian factors that caused them. The 1840s Depression is blamed on problems in the Australian wool industry. The 1890s Depression is blamed on reckless Australian banks. The depth of the Great Depression in Australia is blamed on our obsession with balanced budgets.

It goes on. We’ve all heard Paul Keating blamed for the recession of the early 1990s and John Howard credited for the subsequent growth.

If there is growth or recession in the next term Abbott or Rudd will take the blame or credit. They probably won’t deserve either.

In the past I’ve mentioned research that suggests political success is more about dumb luck than virtue or competence. In truth Rudd or Abbott will win government then cross their fingers.

But political debate struggles with powerlessness. Voters like to assign blame and give credit for things that are actually outside any domestic politicians’ control.

Kevin Rudd rightly points out the global financial crisis dumped a bucket on Labor’s first term. The policy agenda of any party would have been drowned out by the global consequences of America’s subprime collapse.

But then he claims his decision to artificially stimulate the economy was responsible for Australia’s relative endurance.

Not, for instance, Chinese demand for West Australian minerals.

In other words, Rudd believes the disease was entirely foreign, but the cure was entirely domestic.

Yet even if you are a card-carrying Keynesian – that is, you believe the government can and should spend more to boost the economy in a downturn – it is just as plausible that China’s enormous stimulus package in 2008 is responsible for our prosperity, rather than Labor’s smattering of insulation and community projects.

Australia spent around $90 billion to stimulate its economy. Sounds like a lot? Well, China spent over half a trillion dollars. And nearly three quarters of that spending went towards the infrastructure whose raw materials we supply.

Our politicians pretend they can steer the economy like a ship. But we have a very small ship and it’s a very big ocean. During an election, it pays to remember our economic future is determined by the wind, not the sails.

Chris Berg is a Research Fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs. His most recent book is In Defence of Freedom of Speech: from Ancient Greece to Andrew Bolt. Follow him at @chrisberg. View his full profile here.

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