Unpicking Kyoto
Jo Abbess
20 June 2010

PART 5

CONTINUED FROM : Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4

Linking Climate Change to other Environmental Problems

The Greenhouse Gas Carbon Dioxide (CO2) from humankind’s activities is accumulating very rapidly in the Atmosphere, and this is why the international Climate Change negotiations and Climate Change Science focus on it so heavily.

The warming response of the Earth’s surface correlates strongly with the rise in Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere, so Global Warming can be treated almost entirely as the Earth system’s reaction to rising levels of this one gas.

Other Greenhouse Gases, such as Methane (CH4) and high level water vapour (H2O), are increasing in line with the rise in Carbon Dioxide.

Logic and experiment dictates that they are doing this in response to the rise in Carbon Dioxide, so their rise is a feedback effect in the Earth system – a reaction to rising temperatures – caused by the warming due to increasing airborne Carbon Dioxide.

However, Carbon Dioxide is not the only Greenhouse Gas that humankind is pumping into the Atmosphere in excess of natural levels – a rather famous example being that growing numbers of livestock are belching Methane that is adding to the up-tick on concentrations of Methane in the Atmosphere.

There are still high levels of various gaseous industrial pollution, some of which is in the form of Greenhouse Gases.

In addition, Global Warming is not the only environmental problem, although it is exacerbating other environmental problems.

Climate Change is an added stressor on natural habitats that are being degraded by pollution, bad land management and deforestation.

It seems obvious to take a step back to the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 and mesh together once more the environmental threads of the United Nations conventions : on Climate Change, Biodiversity and Desertification.

A signpost for the good sense of this idea can be seen in the Montreal Protocol – which was designed to deliver reductions in ozone-depleting gases reaching the high atmosphere – but had the added bonus of controlling some of the worst industrial Greenhouse Gases.

Combination approaches to various problems could help get policy on Climate Change embedded into environmental law as part of a package of regulations.

With the levels of ecological damage currently being experienced, it may not be necessary to consider Global Warming in isolation from other environmental policy issues.

Here’s just a few examples :-

FISH

Charles Windsor, the son of the British reigning monarch, has raised the problem of over-fishing on the world public stage.

Quotas are the obvious answer, as long as overcaught fish are not being thrown back dead into the sea.

But, even when we get the over-fishing problem under control, there are other damages that need to be contained.

Run-off – pollution caused by the leaching of agricultural chemicals into the waterways – is contributing to what are known as “dead zones” in the mouths of rivers and in areas of the coastal seas.

The run-off changes the balance of the chemistry in the seawater, and it promotes the growth of bacteria and other organisms whose waste products are starving the water of oxygen.

Increased humankind emissions of Carbon Dioxide is causing the oceans to acidify as the mixing zone between the air and the sea causes more Carbon Dioxide to be taken up into the top waters.

Acidifying ocean water is damaging the ability of phytoplankton to maintain their populations, reducing the planet’s atmospheric oxygen balance and reducing how much Carbon Dioxide can be permanently stored in the oceans.

Acid ocean contributes to the severity of the dead zones.

So, in order to protect edible sealife, and oxygen levels, it is necessary to lower humankind Carbon Dioxide emissions and agricultural chemical use.

Changing the way agriculture is done leads on to the next batch of interlocked problems.

FARMS

The use of agricultural chemicals over the last century has helped to boost crop yields, but it has done lasting damage to soils and biodiversity.

The evidence points the way to acceptance that the application of various pesticides have affected bird populations (downwards), selective pest populations (upwards), and perhaps even bee populations (downwards).

Petrochemical-based fertilisers have caused high levels of crop growth but at the expense of de-nutrifying the soils and increasing water extraction for irrigation.

In many parts of the world, “fossil water” from aquifers hundreds or thousands of years old has been plundered, with little hope of refreshing the sources.

Climate Change is already having a demonstrable effect on the availability of fresh water, through changes in wind patterns and changes in rainfall amounts and timings.

Drought and changes in the availability of water are affecting a further area of concern.

FORESTS

One of our major Carbon stores on Earth comes in the shape of large clumps of trees.

Well-managed and replenished trees are also useful as a source of Carbon-neutral Biomass energy.

Deforestation is a major issue, for example in Brazil, where rainforest still continues to be threatened by the farming of soya to feed cattle, and the farming of cattle to feed hamburger addicts the world over.

Water stress in the Amazon is now a well-established risk with continued Global Warming, and less water means less tree growth.

In Indonesia and Malaysia, the governments were persuaded to allow palm oil plantations to be grown to supply cheap BioDiesel to European markets, in the process destroying much rainforest.

In the industrialised Northern Hemisphere, we still haven’t solved acid rain, even though it has been curbed extensively, because we are still burning fossil fuels.

And acid rain curbs forest development.

Climate Change will only add to the impact on forest sustainabililty from other stressors, by aiding the migration of pests, reducing available freshwater, so acid rain cannot be dealt with on its own.

Scientists aren’t ignoring general environmental problems in order to concentrate on Climate Change.

Climate Change is a major threat to the effectiveness of practically every other environmental policy.

Here’s an example of suggestions based on well-rounded analysis, one of the examples of Science showcased in the book “Merchants of Doubt” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway :-

http://www.eurekalert.org/images/release_graphics/pdf/09%20June%20Forum%20Likens.pdf

“Ecosystem Thinking in the Northern Forest—and Beyond : GENE E. LIKENS AND JERRY F. FRANKLIN : Regionally based, collaborative efforts from diverse stakeholders are critical to identify and address diverse and complicated environmental challenges. We present here an example from the Northern Forest Ecoregion of the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada, which currently is being degraded by a variety of simultaneous environmental impacts, including acid rain, fragmentation of landscapes, mercury and salt pollution of water resources, invasive alien species and diseases, and climate change. We propose five sustained, multigenerational actions to protect and restore the vital ecosystem functions of the Northern Forest Ecoregion…”

BioScience Magazine, Volume 59, Number 6, June 2009

Just as the Montreal Protocol has been beefed up to help with tackling further Greenhouse Gases, so perhaps other conventions, protocols, treaties and trade agreements could be given the muscle to help with preventing dangerous Climate Change.

It seems that anthropogenic interference with the atmosphere has undermined two important things :-

(a) The ability of phytoplankton to reproduce because of the heat and the acidity of the oceans – thereby compromising the base of the entire global food chain and, more seriously,

(b) By reducing the conditions for phytoplankton success, cutting off one of the “Carbon sinks” on the planet that we really need to soak up a proportion of the excess Carbon Dioxide that we are pumping into the air.

http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/29/nature-decline-ocean-phytoplankton-global-warming-boris-worm/

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7306/full/nature09268.html

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7306/edsumm/e100729-03.html

http://www.physorg.com/news199471106.html

http://scienceblips.dailyradar.com/story/global-phytoplankton-decline-over-the-past-century/

Currently, the world’s biomass processes somewhere between 40% and 50% of all humankind’s excess Carbon Dioxide emissions, the CO2 we have made by taking Fossil Fuels out of the ground and burning them.

If this Carbon sink becomes less effective, Global Warming will become much stronger, as there will be a faster build-up of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere.

As for the food chain – well, the big fish eat the little fish which eat the shrimp and krill which eat the ocean phytoplankton plants. What will the coastal-dwelling humans living on salty ground eat for protein if there are no more fish and they can’t raise plants or land animals because of the poor soils ?

I think it’s time for me to quote Phil Thornhill once again, “What we need is more screaming panic.”

http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2010/07/30/the-plankton-are-dying/

Possibly some good news from the world of Carbon Sink science : the Earth may be soaking up progressively more Carbon Dioxide as time goes by instead of refusing to do so :-

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL040613.shtml

“Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing? Wolfgang Knorr : Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK : Several recent studies have highlighted the possibility that the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems have started loosing part of their ability to sequester a large proportion of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions. This is an important claim, because so far only about 40% of those emissions have stayed in the atmosphere, which has prevented additional climate change. This study re-examines the available atmospheric CO2 and emissions data including their uncertainties. It is shown that with those uncertainties, the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, i.e. close to and not significantly different from zero. The analysis further shows that the statistical model of a constant airborne fraction agrees best with the available data if emissions from land use change are scaled down to 82% or less of their original estimates. Despite the predictions of coupled climate-carbon cycle models, no trend in the airborne fraction can be found. Received 18 August 2009; accepted 23 September 2009; published 7 November 2009. Citation: Knorr, W. (2009), Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L21710, doi:10.1029/2009GL040613.”

http://www.tackleclimatechange.co.uk/2009/11/controversial-new-climate-change.html

“Controversial new climate change results : New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now. This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected. The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero…”

http://bristol.ac.uk/news/2009/6649.html

“…So is this good news for climate negotiations in Copenhagen? “Not necessarily”, says Knorr. “Like all studies of this kind, there are uncertainties in the data, so rather than relying on Nature to provide a free service, soaking up our waste carbon, we need to ascertain why the proportion being absorbed has not changed”. Another result of the study is that emissions from deforestation might have been overestimated by between 18 and 75 per cent. This would agree with results published last week in Nature Geoscience by a team led by Guido van der Werf from VU University Amsterdam. They re-visited deforestation data and concluded that emissions have been overestimated by at least a factor of two.”

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n11/abs/ngeo671.html

“Commentary : Nature Geoscience 2, 737 – 738 (2009) : doi:10.1038/ngeo671 : CO2 emissions from forest loss : G. R. van der Werf, D. C. Morton, R. S. DeFries, J. G. J. Olivier, P. S. Kasibhatla, R. B. Jackson, G. J. Collatz & J. T. Randerson : Correspondence to: G. R. van der Werf e-mail: guido.van.der.werf@falw.vu.nl : Abstract : Deforestation is the second largest anthropogenic source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, after fossil fuel combustion. Following a budget reanalysis, the contribution from deforestation is revised downwards, but tropical peatlands emerge as a notable carbon dioxide source.”

And as the Antarctic ice cap retreats, there’s more opportunity for marine plants to grow and soak up CO2 :-

http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=594

“Ice retreat opens new shores for carbon storage : 9 November 2009, by Sara Coelho : Ice melting in Antarctica has opened a new area of sea as big as Wales, where tiny marine plants called phytoplankton can bloom and absorb extra carbon from the atmosphere. But before we open the champagne, this positive effect does not offset the damage done by carbon emissions. Global warming is causing unprecedented melting in Antarctica’s glaciers and the break-up of many ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula. But new opportunities for life arise as the glaciers retreat and shore waters become exposed to light and circulation of nutrients. Without ice cover, carbon-absorbing phytoplankton moves in and starts taking up extra amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, becoming what scientists call a ‘carbon sink’. ‘This is really massive – it’s like having a new forest the size of Wales,’ says Professor Lloyd Peck, a near-shore marine biologist from the British Antarctic Survey. Peck estimates that this new natural sink is taking up 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dissolved in the ocean. This is the amount of carbon absorbed by the equivalent of between 6,000 and 17,000 hectares of tropical rainforest. However, ‘this is a very small amount compared to the global emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,’ he says. It is, nevertheless, an important discovery: ‘It shows nature’s ability to thrive in the face of adversity,’ says Peck, who led the study published this week in Global Change Biology…”