Things We Don't Understand About Climate Change

Three Things We Don’t Understand About Climate Change 

by Aarne Granlund

I argue that most of us do not grasp how immediate this situation has become, how fast it is progressing and what the scale of change needed is to reach the stabilisation targets of the Paris Agreement.

I also argue that after individuals, nations and corporations understand the urgency and the rate, they should be honest about the scale of action needed in order to avoid collapse of the biosphere and thus civilisation.

Intense forest fires were raging in California in December 2017 (NASA WorldView Terra / MODIS) https://go.nasa.gov/2l1LVX4

1. Urgency 

The first misunderstanding about climate change is related to how we perceive its impacts in time. It is not (only) a future issue, not a polar bear issue and certainly not an issue which only affects a few remote parts of the world.

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2. Rate and Scale of Change 

The Arctic, area located on the top of the planet from 66°N north, is a prime example of systematic exponential change. It is warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the planet. There is less inertia in the Arctic than there is in the general climate system.

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3. Stabilisation

For a reasonable chance of keeping warming under 2℃ we can emit a further 865 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2). The climate commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 2030 are a first step, but recent analyses show they are not enough (Canadell and Smith, 2017 http://bit.ly/2jRNjIK).

It is becoming clear that whether the budget is set at 600 or 800 gigatonnes, industrial civilisation will overshoot it. Overshoot means that since emissions are unlikely to fall rapidly close to zero, the physical amount of carbon in the atmosphere will be higher than that which would lead to an eventual 2°C temperature increase of the oceans and land surfaces. 

Recent policy, consumption pattern and technological analysis suggests a much higher eventual temperature increase of 3–4°C.

 In other words, we are very likely to have a 3–4°C world within the lifetime of our children and grandchildren.  This will be a very different world then we now have, sea coasts inundated, violent storms, droughts, and vast stretches of uninhabitable land.  And this is what is going to happen even if we start right now to reverse the flow of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.