Abrupt climate change and geoengineering

This is the first post of a planned series of three.

1. Abrupt climate change and geoengineering (this post).
2. Geoengineering: A remedy for climate emergencies?
3. Global regulation of geoengineering.

Climate change is neither gradual nor uniform

We tend to think of global warming as something that happens very slowly, over a very long time. We further tend to thinkthat its more serious effects are still decades away. We are learning now that both assumptions are wrong.

Of course, it is well known that some years and even decades are cooler, warmer, wetter or drier than others. The weather can behave in fits and starts and in generally unpredictable ways, and two years in a row are never the same. This common knowledge notwithstanding, the snowy winter of 2010 on the east coast of North-America led to a new barrage of mockery of the idea of climate change from cable news and right-wing pundits.

Paradoxically, cold weather can be as much an indicator of global warming as hot weather. Global warming can mean that your city and region becomes warmer or colder, wetter or drier, or perhaps experiences more dramatic differences between summer and winter. What matters is that global warming changes how the climate behaves. For some, global warming can mean cooler temperatures. In reference to the normal human body temperature, global warming seems small: the global average temperature has increased by just under 1°C (1.5 °F) since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, around 1850. Most of us would not even be able to notice that difference on our skin, yet it is enough to drive distortions of long-established weather patterns. Scientists predict that one of the most noticeable effects of global warming will be more ‘abnormal’ weather, in the form of more severe storms, more heat waves and more torrential downpours.  Unfortunately, it can also mean permanent changes for some regions, such as more arid conditions, which could drive changes in agricultural productivity. Global warming is certainly not invalidated because a few American cities were buried in snow one winter. Residents of these cities should instead ask themselves: is the weather getting more temperamental?

The Arctic is a hotspot for climate change

There are, however, places on the planet where global warming is having direct, observable effects. Global warming is felt more keenly at the top and bottom of the world, and the ground that was erstwhile frozen beneath the surface layer all year is now thawing in the summer months, so that trees and houses lose their firm foundations. As a result, roads are disappearing into the ground, houses are falling in on themselves and trees are leaning over, as if in a drunken stupor.

Arctic amplification, as the phenomenon of Arctic warming is called, is making  mince meat of official climate change forecasts, which say dire effects of global warming should still be years away. For example, according to the latest IPCC assessment report from 2007, we should not expect the Arctic ice cap that covers the North Pole to be gone until some time between 2070 and 2090. No need to worry, in other words, we should still have plenty of time to bring our carbon emissions under control; enough time to make it a soft landing.

Except nature isn’t following the official script. In 2007, scientists could only look on in alarm as the Arctic ice cap receded to its smallest size ever recorded, 39.2 per cent smaller than the 1979 – 2000 average, obliterating the previous record set only two years before. Since satellite observation started in 1979, the eyes-in-the-sky have revealed a steady decline in the minimum ice cover at the end of the summer melting season, varying a little year over year. But suddenly, in 2007, the bottom dropped out of the scientists’ graph. How could so much ice vanish in a single melting season?

Scientists discovered that part of the reason why the melting was suddenly so dramatic was that the melting process, once started in earnest, reinforces itself. Human interference  is no longer needed to keep the process of melting going. This is called a positive feedback effect, and the climate system is full of them. In the Arctic Ocean, the specific mechanism is that the melting sea ice reveals the ocean underneath. Where ice had previously worked like a giant mirror, reflecting most of the light and heat that hit it, the dark ocean worked like a sponge. This ice-albedo effect, as scientists call it, heats the Arctic Ocean, and when the ocean gets warmer, more ice melts, which exposes yet more ocean to the Sun.

If the trend continues, the ocean over the North Pole may be ice-free in the summer decades earlier than anticipated. That is bad news for the hapless polar bears — but it is bad news for us as well. Thanks to the ice-albedo effect, glaciers everywhere on the planet act like air-conditioners for the Earth, reflecting significant amounts of infrared radiation — or heat — from the sun. As they melt, they remove an important back-stop that has allowed the Earth to keep some of its cool. In fact, without the glaciers and ice caps, the Earth would be a warmer place to begin with.

Tipping points are lurking around the corner

But the ice-albedo effect is only one feedback effect in the climate system. Melting sea ice could become a gateway to a far more insidious threat, coming from the thawing soils of the high north. For millennia, the permafrost has safely locked away billions of tons of carbon in the soils, lake beds and sea floors of the Arctic. Both carbon dioxide and methane, deposited in the ground a long time ago and removed from the carbon is now being released from the thawing permafrost at increasing rates.

Methane is a particularly big worry because it is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, with about 25 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over the long term (and much highe warming potential over the short term). Fortunately, its airborne lifespan is far shorter, with a half-life of just seven years (meaning half of emitted methane is no longer in the atmosphere after that time period).

There is, however, enormous amounts of methane trapped in methane hydrates on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Methane hydrates — also called methane clathrates — are a very peculiar substance formed by water and methane under high pressure and low temperatures. It looks like ice, but put a match to it, and you can set it on fire. However, it is only stable as long as it stays frozen, and with the Arctic Ocean getting warmer, scientists are worrying that the water/methane bond will break down, releasing the methane into the atmosphere.

Even worse, if this process starts in earnest, it too could trigger a feedback effect, since more emissions will trigger more warming, and hence more melting. This could become what scientists call a threshold, or tipping point. Once a tipping point is crossed, the force of change becomes so great that it becomes unstoppable — it becomes self-sustaining — as the climate pivots over onto a new and unknown “normal.” With hundreds of millions of tons of methane added to the greenhouse effect, the planet could become several degrees warmer in a very short time, perhaps as little as a decade. We would be relegated to being passengers on a wild ride of rapid and historically unprecedented global warming, only able to look on, helplessly, as species would go extinct, deserts would spread, oceans would rise and the weather would be going haywire all over the place. There may  be no going back if we cross a tipping point.

We also know of other potential tipping points in the ocean currents (the Gulf Stream could shut off, as it has before), the Greenland ice sheet (which could start melting and sliding into the sea uncontrollably, raising sea levels worldwide by around seven metres), the Amazon rainforest (which could whither and burn under prolonged droughts), or the life-giving Indian monsoon (which climate models suggest would change its size, timing and path).

Uncertainty is not a cushion (or why we’re not lost yet)

Tipping points are extremely concerning because we might not see them coming; a slight change in climate might be enough to push a system across the threshold. This is extremely complex climate science, involving countless different processes and systems that all interact, as well as cosmic variables like the Earth’s rotation around the Sun and the Sun’s activity itself. Ocean temperatures in the Arctic  depend on currents, the ice-albedo effect and many other climatic variables. For scientists, making accurate, long-term predictions under such conditions becomes nigh on impossible; informing society about the effects of global warming on local climates or even how much warming we might experience is completely out of the question. This is why global warming estimates still cover an enormous range, from 1.1 up to 6.4°C (2.0 to 5.2°F), and haven’t changed in three decades.

With all this, you may be thinking that it is just another example of climate fear-mongering, contrived to attract research money, propel scientific careers or even expand state control over society. Or perhaps you say that the uncertainty surrounding the issue is too high to justify the high costs of emission reductions. If this is your opinion, I can’t convince you otherwise. But I can say that risk involves not just the chance that something may happen, but also the consequences of the event. There may be no way of compensating for and adapting to the effects of dangerous climate change — lost species would be lost, melted glaciers could only regrow over a really long time, if at all. Uncertainty should not be an excuse not to act — it should be precisely the opposite.

I can also say that we shouldn’t be too alarmed, because these tipping points are not a foregone fact (I sure hope they’re not!). Nature may be more robust than scientists think. But even if it is not, if we act quickly and resolutely to cut emissions, we may never reach the temperatures required to cross a tipping point. The longer we postpone serious action, however, the farther we push the climate system and the more likely dangerous climate change becomes. Temperatures will continue to rise for decades even if we cut carbon emissions to zero today. And if we continue with business-as-usual, dangerous climate change is virtually assured.

Sources

• WWF Arctic Feedback Report. WWF, 2009. (See article)
• Arctic Climate Change Impact Assessment. Arctic Council, 2006.
• IPCC 4th Assessment Report. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007.
• “The central role of diminishing sea ice in recent Arctic temperature amplification.” Screen & Simmons, Nature, 2010.
• “Can we still avoid dangerous human-made climate change?” James Hansen, Social Research, 2006.
• “Abrupt climate change.” Alley et al., Science, 2003.
• …and there are many more!

Geoengineering under a climate emergency:
Exploring governance pathways and pitfalls

Master research paper. Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo, 2010.

• Download PDF (445Kb)

Here is my MRP, then, finally. The MRP was the major accomplishment of the master, and though it is shorter than a thesis, it still ended up at 70 pages (of text — 92 pages altogether). I wrote about what I was planning to cover in my MRP a year ago, and the final paper isn’t far off the mark, though I chose to de-emphasise securitisation and write more about governance.

I will blog about this topic shortly–give a condensed version of the MRP–but here is the abstract. The paper is available for download in its entirety on the right.

Abstract

Geoengineering has been advanced as a possible emergency option to sudden and disruptive climate change—a climate emergency. This paper advances the nascent geoengineering governance discourse, looking specifically on issues and challenges relating to how geoengineering can be used as a remedial option in case of a climate emergency.

The main contribution of this paper is the examination of six potential governance alternatives for geoengineering, assessed according to three fundamental characteristics that the paper argues any geoengineering regime must evince, to wit, holism, adaptability and legitimacy. Using path-dependency theory, it further explores how the current parochialism and fragmentation in global governance could affect the long-term development of the geoengineering discourse, before finally looking at how unilateral geoengineering could result from a global discourse on catastrophic climate change gone astray.

High levels of complexity, risk and uncertainty are inherent in both climate change and geoengineering and present substantial obstacles in the development of geoengineering governance. The fundamental question of this paper is how we can foster robust and resilient governance and responses for climate change and other environmental problems.

Desperate times, desperate measures: Advancing the geoengineering debate at the Arctic Council

Read the paper:

Abstract and download-page at IISD.org

Abstract:

The Arctic is like the canary in the coalmine, warning us about the increasing impact of climate change, which is felt first there. In 2007, the Arctic ice cap shrunk to its smallest size ever recorded, 37 per cent below the recorded average. Its abrupt decline, which deviates widely from the largely linear and predictable trend observed over the past few decades, has alarmed the scientific community and suggests we may be closer to a dangerous “tipping point” than previously anticipated. At the same time, economic globalization is coming to this marginalized region at last through increased resource exploitation, leading in turn to further emissions of greenhouse gases and further climate change.

As unsavoury as it may be, this paper will argue that we must investigate geoengineering as an emergency option in case the mitigation regime fails. Given the dramatic consequences of climate change in the Arctic and the role of this region in the global climate, the Arctic countries have a special responsibility to lead this investigation and the debate surrounding it. As the only circumpolar governance forum on environmental issues, the Arctic Council is an obvious venue for this process. The paper explores the state of global geoengineering governance and how it should be constructed, and how the Arctic Council can contribute.

So why this topic, and why in the context of the Arctic?

My contract with the IISD was to write a paper about Arctic policy issues in order to position the organisation in the run-up t0 Canada’s chairmanship of the Arctic Council — a circumpolar intergovernmental organisation and high-level forum — starting in 2012. The Arctic has received a lot of attention in recent years following the increasingly pronounced effects of global warming. Worrying events in the Arctic of late indicate that we may be dangerously close to  the disintegration of Arctic summer sea ice, and when that happens, it will open up vast new areas for commercial exploitation. There may be a lot of resources in the Arctic — minerals, fish, hydrocarbons — and corporations are lining up even as I write to grab a piece of the action. They know the demand for these resources is almost limitless, because maintaining the high standard of living (and conspicuous consumption) of the North while raising billions of people in the South out of poverty will require greatly expanded production of consumer articles and energy. In a classical display of mercantilism, countries around the Arctic Rim are aligning themselves to protect their territorial and commercial interests, and this includes strengthening their military capabilities in the region.

This is where my interest in the Arctic lies. As one of the largest pristine (relatively speaking) wilderness areas of the world, the Arctic is on the verge of fundamental change — it is about to be ravaged by climate change and torn up by southern capitalists looking for resources. And in a vicious cycle, the resources they do find there will be funnelled into yet more development and consumption, leading to more global warming and more melting in the Arctic.

The cost of development

But we need the resources, you might say, lest we jeopardise the increases we have achieved in the standard of living, and if we are to lift billions of other people up to our level. Besides, surely development in the region can be done in a responsible manner that protects the environment as much as possible.

That may be so, though “as much as possible” is a very vague definition. Who will decide what the appropriate level of protection is? Perhaps we should turn it around and ask instead, “what is the appropriate or acceptable level of environmental damage?,” because that is what the issue really is about. Neoclassical economists would say that development should go on until the marginal costs exceeds the marginal benefits — when the cost of extracting one more barrel of oil from the Arctic Ocean is greater than the benefit to humans derived from that barrel. In any development scenario, nature will be encroached upon. This is unavoidable, they say, and a necessary sacrifice in the name of progress. In many if not most cases, however, the costs and benefits are borne by different people, geographically and politically separated by thousands of kilometres, and this means the marginal cost is far divorced from reality.

The global effects of Arctic climate change

Climate change, however, is different, though we act as if it is not. Immediate environmental degradation, such as  depleted fisheries, a collapse in biodiversity, oil spills and thawing permafrost — these problems will be borne almost exclusively by the inhabitants of the Arctic. But climate change is a global problem, and the effects of the disintegration of the Arctic ice cap — which is increasingly a question of “when”, and not “if”  — will be borne by us all. The Arctic ice cap is an important temperature regulator, and when it melts, global warming accelerates, because less sunlight is reflected back into space by the brilliantly white ice. The more ice that melts, the more the globe is heated through this positive feedback effect. But even worse, if the thawing of permafrost, which covers vast areas of Northern Russia, Northern Canada and Alaska, continues, we risk releasing billions of tons of carbon stored in the frozen soil. If this process is started in earnest, we may experience runaway climate change — self-reinforcing and virtually unstoppable. We do not know, however, exactly when such a threshold — or “tipping point” — may occur, but we do know they are out there, and too close for comfort. If they do occur, however, the effects on the climate may be rapid and devastating.

Is this not a sufficient argument for taking climate change mitigation seriously? We also know that unless we start bringing emissions down before 2015, it will be extremely hard to limit global warming to less than 2°C of warming above pre-industrial levels, which is the official goal of the EU and the G8. As arbitrary as this number if, scientists believe most positive feedbacks and tipping points lie above this level, but that is small comfort if we are looking at three or four degrees of warming before we are half-way through this century.

So far, however, we perceive little imperative to act. A few more extreme weather events is not enough — we can live with those — and the slow creep of global warming is so gradual we can acclimatise; besides, before it gets really serious, surely we’ll have the necessary technology to take care of it. But most do not consider that there is considerable lag in the climate system. Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, warming would continue for a long time into the future.

2015 is still four years away, but that is not much time when we consider how difficult it is to hammer out a global climate change deal. I sincerely hope the negotiations will be successful, but I’m not optimistic about it. While more countries now perceive the dangers, the same stumbling blocks and flaws that derailed the Kyoto process are still present. Successful resolution looks distant, while the window of opportunity is rapidly closing — if it is not already closed.

Geoengineering

For that reason, I believe it would be dangerous not to investigate emergency options as well as other technological solutions that could remove CO₂ directly from the atmosphere and sequester it under ground or at the bottom of the oceans. This is called geoengineering; the deliberate manipulation of the planet’s climate. Geoengineering schemes that have been suggested includes mimicking the effects of a volcano by infusing the stratosphere with SO₂ particles, and thereby cooling the planet (a giant sunshade); equipping buildings with white roofs to reflect more sunlight into space; stimulating algae blooms to sop up CO₂; or building machines to do the same.

Geoengineering has received much flak, and rightly so. The idea that we should look for yet another technological solution to political problems is hubristic, arrogant and possibly very dangerous. Our knowledge about the climate system is both incomplete and uncertain, and to start actively trying to adjust it would seem like the ultimate folly. How do we know that the climate will react the way we think it will? A lot of negative effects can even be predicted, such as disruptions in monsoon patterns, to the potential detriments of billions of people.

Not all geoengineering schemes, however, are borne equal. Schemes that would remove CO2 from the atmosphere obviously address the root of the problem of global warming (though it could be argued that the real root is the emission of greenhouse gases). At any rate, it is quite likely that we will have to augment the planet’s ability to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere, as glaciers melt and as the oceans acidify, which is bad for marine life. Depending on the implementation, such schemes may be relatively harmless  and probably very necessary.

Those schemes that change the Earth’s radiative balance (heat transfer between the Earth and space), on the other hand, address only the symptoms of climate change. Some schemes in this category, such as white roofs, may buy us time to mitigate without causing irreversable ice melting, but at the cost of increased ocean acidification. Others, such as a stratospheric sulphur sun shade, could be deployed on very short notice, but could destroy the ozone layer and create acid rain everywhere. It is also possible that we could manufacture a different material with high reflectivity that would not have these harmful effects, though nature has a way of surprising us in ways we could not have thought of (or neglected to think of). Either way, it is envisioned that such geoengineering would only be deployed in a situation of dire need, where the effects of further warming would be far worse than the effects of intervention.

Geoengineering and the Arctic

Dire need, however, may present itself first in the Arctic. The governments of the Arctic need not only to be prepared for that, but they should actually “aid and abet” the process. Working together in the Arctic Council for almost 15 years, the Arctic Eight (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia and the United States) have accumulated a considerable competency in Arctic research, not least in relation to climate change. As it is becoming clear that if the danger that geoengineering will one day be necessary is increasing, it becomes imperative that its scientific foundation and engineering implementations can be made as safe and reliable as possible. The Arctic countries and the Arctic Council can be trusted in this regard, and has a clear responsibility to engage with it.

So why the need for this paper?

I fear the Arctic Council and the Arctic countries may shun the issue. It has been subject to taboo for decades, and is on its way to become politically toxic. There is a strong argument for moral hazard, and for the risk that geoengineering may take attention and research money away from mitigation, as cautioned by Britain’s Royal Society, which recently presented a comprehensive report.

But the paper should also serve as a warning to Arctic governments that business-as-usual in the Arctic over the long run will be catastrophic, and that the sort of conventional environmental stewardship will neither be capable of hindering nor handling the disruptive changes that are on the way. Unfortunately, this is not reflected in much recent policy research.

I still believe we can avert catastrophic climate change, but it will not be easy. An awareness of the criticality is an absolute minimum. But criticism should be followed by constructive advice, and my advice is that the Arctic Council engage fully with geoengineering research, and start building the necessary global governance foundation for trials, and if it is deemed necessary, deployment. The best- case scenario is that mere awareness of the issue, and its many adverse side-effects, will lead to a re-doubling of mitigation efforts.

It’s time for an update about what I’m doing these days. Apart from taking a course in Complex Systems Theory (think Jurassic Park, when Jeff Goldblum is talking about “chaos theory”; it’s in the same alley, though there is a lot more to it) that is really tickling my intellectual fancy, I’ve been working on figuring out what my master research paper (MRP) will be about. I have to write the MRP in the fall of 2009, it has to be original research and about 60 pages in length. Because of my interest in climate change, I have chosen to write about geoengineering. I have been lucky enough to get the support of Dr Thomas Homer-Dixon, formerly of the University of Toronto and author of i.a. “The Upside of Down” and “The Ingenuity Gap“, who will supervise me. Dr Dan McCarthy, my teacher in complex systems, will be my secondary adviser.

What is geoengineering, you might ask

While there is no single and universally agreed-upon definition, suffice it to say here that geoengineering is actively and intentionally attempting to change the global climate (geoengineering is sometimes used to describe geotechnical engineering, which is unrelated). There are two fundamental ways of changing the climate: either control the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mainly carbon dioxide (CO₂); or, attempt to control the temperature of the Earth directly, through solar radiation management. While the former is almost by definition more benign (depending on how it’s done), the latter is for the most part significantly easier and less costly. It has indeed been calculated that releasing sulphur dioxide (SO₂) into the stratosphere—for the purpose of cooling the planet by deflecting sunlight—could cost as little as $30 billion a year using a fleet of Boeing 747s. For the time being, I will leave you to ponder what possible negative consequences that could have (what could possibly go wrong…). I will blog more about geoengineering later.

Excerpts from my MRP proposal:

Why study geoengineering?

While humankind is gaining the technical capability to change the climate and the body of scientific literature about geoengineering is quickly expanding, the political, economical, social and security implications of such a capability are still largely unexplored. Also, the lack of progress in climate change mitigation and the high risks associated with climate change, combined with tremendous uncertainty about how it is going to unfold, give the issue further urgency.

As climate change becomes more pronounced, world leaders, politicians, economists, scientists, newspaper columnists and the wider public may start to demand geoengineering solutions, especially if the climate deteriorates rapidly—a climate emergency. Such an event cannot be ruled out, as we cannot assume that the global climate change trend will be linear or orderly or that the climate models of the IPCC are accurate. However, the potential effects of the various geoengineering schemes on the environment are as poorly understood as the climate itself, while the stakes will be astronomical.

Questions I will ponder:

Primary Question

1. What are the geopolitical consequences of geoengineering in the event of a climate emergency, and what would be the role of global governance under such a scenario?

Secondary questions

1. What organisations currently exist that could deal with a climate emergency?
2. What would be the role of the Security Council (SC)? How could the SC be adapted to cope with the challenge?
3. Is securitisation of the problem desirable? What are the benefits and drawbacks of this?
4. What happens if a country, group of countries or a private interest party acts unilaterally? What are the geopolitical ramifications, whether the implicated party is one of a host of undemocratic and poorly governed countries or a member of the Security Council P-5?

Further reading

For a short introduction to geoengineering, I recommend reading the entry for geoengineering in the Encyclopedia of Global Change, written by David Keith, one of the foremost geoengineering scientists.

Link to PDF.