རྟིན་འབྱུང 

Trenjung: A Journal of Interconnections

And yet another cry as we head toward something that looks very much like an abyss...A paper presented at a conference in Shanghai on "The Geopolitics of Climate Change"....and all along of course there really isn't anything political about this process....

Heroic Measures

D. H. Garrett

“Climate change is here. It is dangerous. And it is about to get much worse," 

Johan Rockstrom, Stockholm Resilience Centre.

Abstract: The weakening of the polar vortex and the resulting climate extremes around the world are indicative of a phase transition for the earth’s climate. Because the level of emergency-level decarbonization is not likely to occur in time (due to the weakness of global governance, national governance, and a dominant economic system which is essentially fraudulent because it does not take into account negative externalities, including climate change costs and pollution), it is prudent to assume that we have initiated a sequence of rapid climate change. Because this transition is non-linear, once we go over this cliff (if we have not in fact essentially already done so) the energy required to climb back up to the relatively stable climate of the Holocene, will probably be several orders of magnitude greater than would have been required had we acted in time.

This paper examines three basic issues: 

First: what is the nature of the transition climate, with a focus on tipping points and their results, and what is the nature of the new climate phase attractor we are being drawn to.

Second: as the climate turns so extreme and chaotic that it becomes clear even to reluctant leaders that we are in severe trouble what can be anticipated in terms of national and international responses, with a focus on climate refugee issues and geoengineering schemes.

Third: what types of radical adaptations in terms of infrastructure, governance systems, and human and biodiversity sustainability will have the greatest likelihood of success

Introduction: I do not want to think that the human story is over. We have after all only been in existence for a relatively short few hundred thousand to a few million years or so depending on how expansive you want to consider the family tree. At any rate it is much too short to consider an accomplishment to be proud of relative to much longer lived species. 

But we are facing a major challenge due to climate change (and of course the lethality of our weapons technologies) which it is not an exaggeration to say has existential potential. Climate change has over earth’s history proven to be more a factor in the demise of species than say asteroids.

And indeed exoplanetary specialists who have identified and hypothesized a huge plethora of habitable planets with seemingly no one there are concluding that, what I call the Planetary Germination Rate -in which a species “blooms” from its home planet before it either kills itself in meaningless internecine warfare or poisons itself from climate change- that that rate is exceedingly low.

And indeed as a species we seem to have reached that dangerous fluxion point. Looked at one way, the prospects look grim. Looked at another way though there is great reason for hope. We have all the technologies we need either ready to deploy or in various stages of development to create a golden age of humanity on earth in which every child has a world class education and world class health care and lives in respected variegated societies that are at peace with one another.

And indeed, this vision of a near-future harmonious equitable eco-civilization is one which we must constantly bear in mind as we move through the coming times of trouble, and times of great trouble they will be.

In terms of climate change we are blowing through the 1.5 degree safe guardrail as if it didn’t exist. What this means is that a variety of known and probably unknown positive feedbacks are activated or are being activated and we have begun or are beginning a process of runaway climate change as the earth begins to transition to a different climate phase, a hothouse state.

There are basically two types of runaway climate change. In one, the type Hansen first modeled when he was trying to understand the atmospheric history of Venus, the planet basically becomes so hot that the oceans are out-gassed to space. Now the good new is that with a little effort we should be able to avoid that. That said recent papers suggest the threshold for that happening may be fairly low at the 9 to 11 degrees C range.

The bad news though is that the types of positive feedbacks, or tipping points, that would indicate we have gone over the cliff, are all indicating activation to various degrees. Most notable is the melting arctic, the quicker than previously expected degradation of Greenland’s ice sheet and those of the Antarctic, the increase in permafrost melting, the death of our coral reefs and ongoing die-offs of forests both from clearing and fires. Even the MOC has weakened markedly and much earlier than modeled. 

(Courtesy EDF)

Hell and High Water

It is important to recognize that each of these tipping points, can itself best be modeled as a complex system, the nature of whose phase change may vary, but can be simplistically best thought of as non-linear in nature. In other words there is a difference between a slope and a cliff. Moreover, all of these tipping points, are multiply nested in other systems and complexly interconnected to other tipping points and so when one goes, the effect on the others is profound. In other words, the dominoes are close enough to each other that we should not be surprised if a cascade effect occurs. All of this though can be modeled as part of a larger earth system phase change, out of the Anthropcene (which perhaps had better be recognized for what it is, brief) and into a probable hot house state.  In other words, the glaciation-interglaciation periodicity that the earth has exhibited for so long is reverting in some way thermally to an earlier state, perhaps analogous to the PETM or the late Eocene.

What does this mean in terms of weather, and yes, survivability for us -possessed of considerable hubris- humanoids?  And what is the timeline for this “snowballing” avalanche of troubles?  

Let me first consider the timing. Will it begin tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in 10 years, in 20 years? We must recognize first of all that it is happening now. The climate change attribution studies which have been performed on extreme weather events so far, point at such high levels of probability toward climate change causality that looking the other way is folly. It is true that for some reason, given the way IPCC reports etc., are written and the high-level of necessary conservatism that goes into scientific predictions on the basis of complex -but not complex enough- modeling, that we usually think in terms of a mid-century or end of the century prospectus for when the dire will really become DIRE. I cannot say that we should switch now from screaming “HELP,” to screaming “HELP! BLOODY MURDER!" while also panicking, waving our arms and trying to run headlong out of the burning building. It is one of the two. Because as we can see various level of activation occurring at all of the identified Tipping Points, they are probably showing us a picture not of gradual subsidence, but of fairly rapid collapse. The only thing that keeps us from clearly seeing this is our subjective sense of temporal speeds which in turn are determined biologically, neurophysiologically and to some extent culturally as a species.

Next let us consider the weather: presently it is periodically somewhat normal-like interspersed with increasing periods of chaos. This won’t last long (the seeming normality that is). Although phase changes are often graphed as being relatively smooth and quick, from A to B, from ice to water, or what have you, in fact in many systems, the phase change itself looked at at a high enough level of temporal resolution can be quite interesting, with elements seemingly switching back and forth between phases and spikes of unique, out of the ordinary behavior, as partially localized energy releases occur and strands of stability break resulting in odd configurations. This is certainly what we can expect in terms of the weather, but not just the weather. In other words we can expect drought and mega-drought, punctuated by “rain bombs” and other types of massive precipitation events. As the polar vortex grows weaker and weaker it can be expected, as a semi-intact higher density mass of air, to slip slide around, sort of like the way a top begins to wobble more and more as it loses velocity, or if you watch an ice cube on a hot plate, spitter and spotter and dance about as it melts.  The effects of of this climate chaos on food security, water security and biodiversity are well-known, though the gravity and the speed are probably not sufficiently appreciated, as least as measured by adaptive responses.  Although regional modeling of these effects is improving, it is difficult for even the best modeling to capture the highly irregular and inherently chaotically unpredictable nature of the phase-change inter-regnum period. That said, I think we’ve seen enough already to say we’re screwed.

As I said above, odd inter-phase change behavior can be expected not just from the weather, but also from political systems under stress. As Antonio Gamsci said, “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Our urgent task -socio-politically-economically- is to birth the new eco-civilizational age as quickly as feasible, so as to save as much of humanity and of the earth as possible. The greatest challenge facing this task may in fact be that of preventing the “morbid symptoms” from being so destructive that that we are left little but ashes and hate from which to build the new.  

But let us return to the modeling of systems a little less complex than that of human beings whose belief systems are colliding with realty. Modeling of the hot-house planet once the phase change has been completed is a little easier as we have paleo-climatic analogues, and because a new phase that is in a state of thermal equilibrium will have been reached. Ironically, interestingly enough, if we do manage to stall some of the tipping points with the application of measures specific to them, or through local, or regional or global geoengineering attempts, or through success at decarbonization attempts, we may actually be prolonging the inter-phase chaotic period. Moreover, if in fact we have, as appears to be the probable case, initiated an earth system phase change, even if our efforts to decarbonize are massively successful, it is by no means certain that we will be able to flip things back into a perfect replica of the Holocene. Some things once broken are very hard to fix, and thermodynamically speaking, and certainly bio-dynamically speaking, not all phase changes are reversible. We are probably, having destroyed the natural garden of the earth, going to have to learn to be humble, patient, chief apprentice gardeners of the earth for centuries at least, to recreate a planet that is evocative of and approaching to the natural paradises that all cultures mistake for heaven, and which more importantly, the human physical frame to considerable depth, finds itself most happy when abiding in.

In other words, the arguable science of these phase changes aside, the fundamental human question is, how will us humans respond to all of the problems? The main impediment to solving the problem of climate change up to now, can arguably be located inside our heads.  Although we have this human gift of being able to model in our various languages, to various degrees of accuracy, events that can reasonably be assumed will occur, the center of gravity of our response to the climate change challenge has in fact been at a more instinctual level, and in that sense, we have barely reacted at all, but instead have increased the speed of our “economic” activities and mostly ignored the little voices of reason telling us to slow down and do things in a different way based on a different set of more humanistic, values.  So given that rather tragic record, what -politically, economically, and scientifically- can we expect to be a likely set of responses? Actually, though this is in some way the crux of what might be of use in this paper, I want to say and in fact have to say, that the answer to that question is over-constrained. There exist a range of possibilities. It is, in other words, up to us. 

Civilizational collapse is certainly possible. It has happened to other civilizations in the past. Species and ecosystem collapse certainly must be left on the (collapsing) table. Intermediate states between total collapse and total smooth sailing through also seem quite probable given that we are clever monkeys and don’t want to die. Some regions and states may find the resources and technologies to “batten down the hatches” sufficiently to survive intact, while other poorer societies, or countries weakened by other issues, might find the added climate stress more than enough to cause their collapse also. The massive waves of refugees in turn might easily cause other proximate societies to collapse. At a minimum, the rather small number of refugees we are seeing so far, seems to be enough to increase rabid nationalism, forcing some wealthier countries to close their doors. And heck, it is such a small earth these days that we are all “proximate” to each other. Neo-isolationism does not arise in isolation. There are also examples of course of peoples in times of trouble coming together to work with common purpose toward a common goal, survival. When things get bad enough, the kind of WWII level response that should have been undertaken some time back, might well, probably will, be what takes place. When the need for concerted international effort becomes obvious enough, I think we will make our best efforts, even though, at that late date, and it is already a very late date, there will be quite a lot of “shit to hit the fan.” Though I personally think the human software modification approach (live simply, focus on human happiness) is the simplest and most energy efficient way to solving the problem, in fact there already are, (and will be quite a bit more) a number of clever technological “deus ex machina” solutions to provide us with the prosthetics that our greed now requires of us. And finally, though it seems right now the most unlikely scenario, we may respond so quickly and in such volume to this threat that, the impact as we go over the climate change cliff, is made much more mild. That and I want to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.

Heroic Measures in Freefall and at Impact

We do not know if the earth has a “do not resuscitate” (DNR) order as part of some advanced directive it has crafted in its wisdom. In past extinction events (this is the 5^th) nature has taken its course. Since contemporary neo-liberal capitalism essentially regards the earth (with the exception of the wealthy of course) as a lifeless system whose value is only measured by the extent to which profits can be extracted from it -no matter the costs- one does not expect to find a DNR tucked away amongst the hills and crannies of disappearing wildernesses.  Instead, we can expect that the super-predator (homo sapiens sapiens) currently driving the rapid climate phase change which we are undergoing, will adopt so-called “Heroic Measures” to save its own skin. Most of the heroic measures –geoengineering schemes- being bandied about are in fact quite risky, having side-effects, both anticipated and no doubt unknown, which would cause us to say no, had we any other choice (we did of course have another choice, but made the wrong one…).

It is in other words, a hopeful time.

In that light I will present a brief overview of adaptive/mitigative approaches organized in terms of global, mezo, and micro-level applications. In some senses, though global level geoengineering responses might best effect root causes and have the greatest global efficacy, they also tend to be the most expensive and riskiest.  I will not address here renewable energy and efficiency measures except in passing, because, important as they are, those issues are well-covered elsewhere (one must add of course that their speed of deployment needs to be about an order of magnitude faster than it is at present).

Amongst global solar radiation reduction technologies, the most promising candidate is probably thought to be stratospheric aerosol injection. Global dimming. The “hazy-way” out of global frying. Unfortunately models appear to show it more effective for higher latitudes and encouraging of drought in the global south. As in any engineering problem there are probably work-arounds that can be found. 

Radical reforestation and aforrestation is another strong global candidate. While the problem of ramp-up speed can probably be solved, maintaining massive new forests under extreme climate conditions is no easy task, given that well-established forests are already dying off under the same conditions. That said, again, these problems are probably solvable.

Large scale seaweed farming on up to 9% of the ocean’s surface has also elicited considerable excitement as a way of sequestering Carbon, directly contributing to ocean de-acidification, and providing both a food and a fuel source. Speed of scale up, and maintenance issues also of course need to be solved.

At the mezzo-scale level there are numerous ideas about approaching the tipping points themselves to, at least, delay the switches from being thrown. The slow down of the MOC (Meridional Overturning Current) might be addressed by dumping massive amounts of salt into Greenland fresh meltwater to make it heavy enough to continue sinking thus maintaining the thermal conveyor belt function of the MOC. Or for that matter, the sources of the meltwater itself that are the problem for the MOC (not to mention sea level rise) could be addressed, and geoengineering technologies could be focused on the poles, Greenland, and the Himalayan glaciers, with the full understanding that there are huge advantages to maintaining some semblance of climate stability (not to mention not losing our coastal cities or putting Northern Europe in a deep freeze for a while) by preserving as much of the Earth’s cryosphere as possible.

At the micro-scale there are also a large number of possibilities. Their greatest advantage is in terms of regional adaptability, and the fact that if they don't work they have less of a global impact.

Water from air technologies have the potential for widespread application, given robust projections of major water shortages combined with increased desertification and the beginning of mega-drought regimes in some regions. Widespread deployment would help to maintain green carbon sinks in dry times, while at the same time essentially function as a way of taking water vapor (a major contributor to global warming) out of the air and use it as an agent of carbon bio-fixation.

Given the food security problem, because of chaotic and violent weather patterns and other issues, it is probable that we will need a new agricultural revolution if nothing else as a backup (and maybe later primary food supply). Vertical farming (at everything from the skyscraper to the household level) is a promising candidate.

In fact, if we are not able to address root causes quickly enough, and if global and mezzo-level geoengineering schemes prove to problematic, we will have to rethink all of our human infrastructure, because “Stationarity is Dead.” In other words the envelope of what was considered the range of possible climate, is over, and everything that we have built to date, is probably not going to withstand the multiple punches of a hot and angry Planet Earth.

We may in fact all get hot and bothered and resort to tried and true historical methods of dealing with our collective unhappiness. For example, there is that one excellent and expedient way to -at one fell stroke so to speak- alleviate both a great amount of excess consumption-driven climate change and the massive levels of global inequality: yes, I speak of (*sarcasm alert*) the guillotine.  This particular remedy will probably not be willingly acquiesced to by the global elites. That said, any fair system of global climate governance should include a hefty wealth tax on trans-national hiding of -if not ill-gotten- than at least carbon-heavy gains.

In conclusion, at least for now, we may in fact be reduced to living in air-conditioned malls, and having to put on our smart temperature-controlled undergarments, just to venture out to play on a planet that has shifted unrecognizably under our feet and made us into aliens no longer quite welcome upon her, buffeted about and mistreated in fact by Her, much as we mis-treated Her for lo these many years.

 

References

1. “Less than 2 °C warming by 2100 unlikely” Adrian E. Raftery, Alec Zimmer, Dargan M. W. Frierson, Richard Startz & Peiran Liu, Nature Climate Change, volume 7, pages 637–641 (2017) doi:10.1038/nclimate3352

2. “Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society A, Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, Theme issue ‘The Paris Agreement: understanding the physical and social challenges for a warming world of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels’ compiled and edited by Dann Mitchell, Myles R Allen, Jim W Hall, Benito Mueller, Lavanya Rajamani and Corinne Le Quéré; 13 May 2018; volume 376, issue 2119

3) “Net retreat of Antarctic glacier grounding lines”, Hannes Konrad, Andrew Shepherd, Lin Gilbert, Anna E. Hogg, Malcolm McMillan, Alan Muir & Thomas Slater, Nature Geoscience, volume 11, pages 258–262 (2018) doi: 10.1038/s41561-018-0082-z

4) “Albedo Enhancement by stratospheric suffer injections: More research needed” Alan Robock,  AGU Publications, Earth’s Future

5) “Exceptional twentieth-century slowdown in Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation” Stefan Rahmstorf, Jason E. Box, Georg Feulner, Michael E. Mann, Alexander Robinson, Scott Rutherford & Erik J. Schaffernicht, Nature Climate Change volume 5, pages 475– 480 (2015) doi:10.1038/nclimate2554