Storms kill more people than any other extreme weather event–a reported 242,000 deaths in the 2o years to 2015.

Any hope of limiting global warming to 1.5C degrees, or even 2C above the pre-industrial global temperature, as sought in the December 2015 Paris Accord, evaporated in 2017. No one knows how high the temperature will climb in the coming decades, nor how great the human casualties will be.

In the quarter century since the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC) was adopted in 1992, the world has made zero progress in limiting global warming, caused primarily by carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. Fossils fuels accounted for 81 percent of global energy demand in 2017, “a level that has remained stable for more than three decades,” the International Energy Agency Reported in March 2018.[i]While the fossil fuel share of energy demand remained stable, total energy demand, and thus related CO²emissions have about tripled in that period. The emissions increased 1.4 percent to a record 32.5 gigatonnes in 2017. This figure, says the IEA, “contrasts with the sharp reduction to meet the goals of the Paris Accord.”[ii] While CO²is the principal greenhouse gas, methane (the main constituent of natural gas) and nitrous oxide are also greenhouse gas. Nitrous oxide is one thousand times less abundant than CO²in the atmosphere but is 200 to 300 times more effect in trapping heat. It has an atmospheric lifetime of up to 300 years, the longest of the greenhouse gases. Its atmospheric concentration has increased by 16 percent since the Industrial Revolution.[1]

It is ironic in light of the Trump administration’s efforts to promote fossil fuels that the one country that has significantly reduced fossil fuel use and CO²emission is the United States—thanks primarily to solar and wind power, as well as less energy waste. Big business has found it can save big money by burning less fuel. Chemical giant Dupont, which operates more than 200 plants worldwide, claims to have saved US$6 billion from 1990 to 2018 by burning less fuel. It also reduced its greenhouse gas emissions, by a reported 900,000 metric tons in 2010.[iii]But, as already noted less wasteful fuel use did not stop record C0²emissions in 2017.

Don’t count on geoengineering to curb global warming, warns the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.[iv]Proposed measures are said to be either too risky, too expensive, or blocked by global politics. Removing CO² from the atmosphere is considered safe and might become feasible but is currently limited by cost and “technical maturity.” But ultimately, carbon capture and storage might still be the best long-term hope on putting a putting a limit to runaway temperate rises, and start lowering the heat.

Increasing the amount of the Sun’s energy reflected back into space before reaching Earth (known as the albedo) is a controversial measure to cool global warming. One method would involve spraying the atmosphere with an aerosol. Almost any country can do it, whether as small as New Zealand or as big as China. Adjusting the albedo is said to involve unknown technical risks. More to the point, it would equally affect the climate and lives of all of Earth’s 7.6 billion people. If a new coal-fired power plant went into production in Timbuktu, it would have precisely the same climate effect on Timbuktu, Toronto, Tallahassee, Tampico, and the rest of the world. No single country can do this to almost eight billion people without creating an unprecedented global controversy.

“Paris is dead. The global warming deniers have won,” blared the headline in Toronto’s National Post, in one of the first Paris Accord obituaries, July 22, 2017. Global warming denier author Larry Solomon and the Post appeared to rejoice, but the world will pay the price.

Exxon Mobil, and Charles and David Koch, owners of Koch Industries, the second largest privately owned U.S. company, were the main driving forces of the deniers.

For 15 years, Exxon Mobil denied fossil fuels caused global warming and spent millions of dollars in grants to organizations and individual scientists who sought to undermine the findings of virtually all of the world’s climate scientists. The New York State Attorney General in November 2015 launched an investigation into alleged Exxon Mobil lies to the public about global warming risk and how such risks might hurt the oil business. Exxon Mobil can be counted on to fight any charges in the courts for years.

There is no public knowledge of how much the Koch Brothers spent, but it could be as high as a billion dollars. They spent to influence public opinion with a complex network of organizations, but more importantly, they provided money to influence members of Congress. (For more about the Koch Brothers, see “The Koch corruption: lies, crime, and ruthlessness,” in Chapter 22.)

The IEA may be first to put a semi-official imprimatur on global warming gone wild, but other scientists had already predicted the same thing.

Well before the Paris Accord, the world was seen in 2010 as losing the battle to curb global warming. “The world right now in terms of renewables is about where I expected it to be 1985,” Denis Hayes, director of the Solar Energy Research Institute, told energy historian Daniel Yergin in 2010. “We weren’t in error about what it would take to get there, but about the political process we counted on to facilitate it.”[v]

“I teach my students that they need to plan for a world 7F (4C) warmer,” Richard P. Rood, professor of climate and space science and engineering, University of Michigan, declared in December 2014. Rood argues that if we stopped emitting CO²today the temperature would continue to climb for “maybe 40 more years” before stabilizing.[vi]

The United Nations has joined the chorus, forecasting annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to between 53 billion and 55 billion tonnes of CO² per year by 2030, far in excess of the 42 billion-ton threshold to keep the warming rise within two degrees.[vii]

Runaway global warming will mean runaway numbers and ferocity of storms, floods, heat waves, wildfires, drought, and rising sea level. The sea level climbed 210 mm (8.3 inches) by 2015, and is now climbing at the fastest rate in 2,800 years.[viii]Drought can lead to famine and would have in the Middle East and Africa during the second decade of the twenty-first century, except for humanitarian aid. The United Nations defines famine as two or more starvation deaths every day from a population of 10,000, or four deaths per child.[ix]Every civilization that has collapsed during recorded history has been the victim of famine.

James Hansen, Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says global warming of 2-3C will raise the sea level in “the order of 25 metres” (80 feet.)”

Billions of lives are at risk. The rising sea level and famine might well reduce Earth’s human population.[x]

How on Earth did we get into this mess?

ENDNOTES

[i]International Energy Agency, Global Energy & CO2 Status Report 2017. Paris, March 2018.

[ii]Ibid, p.3

[iii]Dupont, Plant Site Energy Efficiency & Profitability, http://www.dupont.co.za/products-and-services/consulting-services-process-technologies/brands/sustainable-solutions/sub-brands/operational-risk-management/case-studies/dupont-bold-energy.html. Accessed April 22, 2018.

[iv]Committee on Geoengineering Climate, National Academy of Sciences, Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration. Washington 2015.

[v]Quoted by Yergin in The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World. New York: Penquin Books, revised edition, 2012, p. 551.

[vi]Richard P. Rood, What Would Happen to the climate if we stopped emitting greenhouse gas today? The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/what-would-happen-to-the-climate-if-we-stopped-emitting-greenhouse-gases-today-35011. Accessed April 17, 2018.

[vii]Reuters, World set to bust global warming goal,” November 11, 2017.

[viii]Justin Gillis, “Seas Are Rising at Fastest Rate in Last 28 Centuries”, New York Times, February 11, 2016.

[ix]  Andrew Purcell, “Somalia: How the UN defines a famine.” New Scientist, July 20, 2011. https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/07/how-the-un-defines-a-famine.html, accessed April 22, 2018.

[x]James Hansen, Is there still time to avoid ‘Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference’ with global climate? Speech to Columbia University Earth Institute, December 6, 2005. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2005/Keeling_20051206.pdf. Accessed October 1, 2017.

 

 

[1]While CO²is the principal greenhouse gas, methane (the main constituent of natural gas) and nitrous oxide are also greenhouse gases. Nitrous oxide is one thousand times less abundant than CO²in the atmosphere but is 200 to 300 times more effect in trapping heat. It has an atmospheric lifetime of up to 300 years, the longest of the greenhouse gases. Its atmospheric concentration has increased by 16 percent since the Industrial Revolution.[1]