རྟིན་འབྱུང Trenjung: A Journal of Interconnections
Here is the gist of a talk I gave in Shanghai back in February.
The Death of the Ice Fairy, The Rule of
the Orange Monstrosity, and the Resistance of the Green Alliance
D. H Garrett, The Asia Institute
“If you want your children to be intelligent,
read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more
fairy tales.”
1. The Death of the Ice Fairy
If you want to understand the particular magic of the Good
Fairy of the North Pole, it is important to recall one specific fact: the
difference between specific heat, and latent heat. Specific heat is the amount
of heat needed to raise one kilogram of a substance by 1 degree C. The specific
heat of water is 1 kcal kg-1 which is the standard unit of heat, the
calorie. The latent heat of ice by
contrast is 80 kcal kg-1. This
is an important magic to remember as polar ice disappears. Even mid-winter at
the North Pole is 50 degrees above normal. As the collapse at the pole progresses
and ice-free summers in the far north ensue -some 100 hundred years before the
IPCC’s early predictions- we lose one of our most important climate buffers, a
massive air conditioner dampening high temperatures. Furthermore, as the loss
of albedo from that loss of ice further heats up the now bare, dark ocean,
-amongst other things- climate chaos ensures as weather patterns that basically
endured for 10,000 years are disrupted. Amongst other things, the melting
permafrost releases methane, and our meager efforts to date to constrain
runaway climate change, are basically undone.
It is true, there may be some scientists who give us a
decade or two in which to radically reduce CO2 emissions, but at this point in
time, there are probably an equal number who think we have basically waited too
long, and that the arctic death spiral is exactly that: the initiation of a
non-linear sequence, a climate phase change, a rapid climate change event which
has the potential to essentially destroy civilization as we know it.
“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons
exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the
dragons can be killed.”
2. The Rule of the Orange Monstrosity
Not that there is ever a good time for a madman to take over
a country, but now is probably one of the worst possible times. For not only
will this disturbed person have a good chance of destroying his own personal
country, but he may well also bring down the other countries of the earth with
him. The 45th President of
the United States -a name that shall not be named- has Narcissistic Personality
Disorder, is in fact a malignant narcissistic, and at a time when the earth’s
carbon budget can no longer afford it, he has surrounded himself with climate
change deniers, and oil men, and politicians bought and sold by oil men. He and his henchmen, having been helped to
this position of power by fear and prejudice-driven manipulations of a
superstitious and undereducated populace, in combination with well-done
assistance from the Russian Federation, will (amongst other odious acts) probably
seek to remove sanctions on Russia so as to fulfill a lucrative ($500 billion
dollar) contract to develop the oil and gas reserves of the Russian Arctic.
The Russian Federation it can be presumed is doing this for
regime survival (perhaps also thinking geoengineeering is safe and inexpensive),
while the U.S., as is typical of much of its so-called leadership is doing it
for short-sighted gains (money) and an obsolete understanding of what makes for
national power.
And meanwhile, though the Ice Fairy of the North is dying, no
one except those who have studied her, seem to understand that her death means
calamity for all of us. Wild weather and
unpredictability are already with us, while we remain largely transfixed and
preoccupied with trivia, instead of rising to the level of actually confronting
this planetary crisis. And what is equally tragic, her sister, the Ice Fairy of
the south is crumbling, far faster than anyone had predicted, or almost anyone,
and so, if you live near the coast, or love one of the many great cities of the
planet that are on or near the coast, it really is time you think of moving.
“If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.”
3. The Resistance of the Great Green Alliance
So let us be clear.
The Paris Agreement, as Hansen said, is bullshit. And unless we want to devolve into warring
states, throwing up our borders as best we can to stop the desperate waves of
climate change refugees who really have nowhere else to go, those of use who
are still somewhat sane, and those nation states which understand that only a
massive, quick, collective effort involving real cash, and real innovation, is
the only way to save as many as possible, and pave the way to a truly human way
of living on this planet, must act together.
We must form in fact, a Great Green Alliance, one that holds accountable
any individual, company, or country, which holds itself above the need for
collective survival.
Those who have worked to warn about the dangers of climate
change over the decades will remember the time, not that long ago, when they
refused, or were reluctant to even talk about adaptation, for fear it would
take the focus away from the urgent necessity of mitigation. As action was not forthcoming, this gave way
to an understanding that some talk of adaptation was going to be necessary. Now
it appears that we have waited too long and the momentum already built up in
the earth system, and the fact that largely un-modeled positive feedbacks and
black swan events meant that Earth System Sensitivity was at the high-end of
the imagined range, we are rapidly swinging into a full-fledged global abrupt
climate change event. Mitigation of
course must go on in the hopes of preventing various forms of essentially
irreversible runaway climate change, but the level and type of adaptation
required is of a whole new order of magnitude.
By way of reference consider the PETM event. Carbon was emitted during the PETM event at a
rate of about 6.2 billion tons of CO2 per year, and about 1.1 billion tons of
methane per year. The current emission
rate of CO2 from humans is about 30.6 billion tons of CO2 per years, and about
1.1 billion tons of methane per year. In other words we are emitting CO2 at
about five times faster than the PETM, and about 27 times its methane emission
rate. We are in uncharted waters, and it
is hot and moreover acidic.
4. Some Policy Recommendations for the Great
Green Alliance
1) Legal and trade
defenses against individual, companies and nations which are not adopting
emergency rates of decarbonization (we need teeth).
2) Heavy national and
transnational taxes on extreme wealth with proceeds transferred to the global
poor (6 individuals have as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity;
moreover for this rapid survival transition to be possible, if levels of
inequality remain as they are, civil disturbance will be so great as to disrupt
all well-laid plans).
3) Most known
geoengineering schemes are known to be dangerous. Solar shielding the arctic and Antarctic
regions though expensive might be worth considering. Other possibilities that
evaluations so-far do not appear to have eliminated from consideration are
converting 9% of the ocean’s surface to seaweed farming, and radical
afforestation schemes involving water-from air technology assistance or of
course some combination thereof.
4. Innovative drop-in
climate change lifeboats which provide self-sustaining systems of water, energy and food for the
global south where possible.
5. Rapid development of
smart-skins for the global south (and elsewhere). In other words, instead of
trying to air condition everything, simply provide smart-skins to individuals
which locally regulate temperature and allow life to continue in the new
climate regime.
6. Massive programs of
emergency vertical farm construction for cities as the new chaotic weather
regime makes traditional farming extremely difficult and undependable.
7. Careful planning for
orderly relocation from the coasts so as to avoid chaos and mass civil
disturbance.
References
2. “A Farewell to Ice: A
Report from the Arctic” Peter Wadhams, Penguin Books Ltd (2016)
3. “Reconciled climate
response estimates from climate models and the energy budget of Earth” Mark Richardson, Kevin Cowtan, Ed Hawkins
& Martin B. Stolpe Nature Climate Change 6, 931–935
(2016) doi:10.1038/nclimate3066 Received 17 November 2015 Accepted 27
May 2016 Published online 27 June 2016
4. “Climate science bedeviled by 'tipping points'” January 19, 2017 by Marlowe Hoodhttps://phys.org/news/2017-01-climate-science-bedeviled.html
5. Evidence
for a rapid release of carbon at the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum James
D. Wrighta,1 and Morgan
F. Schallera,b Edited* by Wallace S. Broecker,
Columbia University, Palisades, NY, and approved August 5, 2013 (received for
review May 14, 2013) PNAS
6. Reply to Pearson and Nicholas,
Stassen et al., and Zeebe et al.: Teasing out the missing piece of the PETM
puzzle
Acad Sci U S A. 2014
Mar 25; 111(12): E1068–E1071.
8. “North Pole Temperatures May Soar to 50 Degrees Above
Normal Freakishly warm pole weather is
likely to peak on Christmas Eve” By Brian
Kahn on December 21, 2016,
Scientific American
• 9. “Nonlinear climate sensitivity and its implications for
future greenhouse warming” Tobias Friedrich Axel Timmermann, Michelle Tigchelaar, Oliver Elison Timm
and Andrey Ganopolski Science Advances
09 Nov 2016:
Vol. 2, no. 11, e1501923
11. “Potential climate engineering
effectiveness and side effects during a high carbon dioxide-emission scenario”
David P. Keller, Ellias Y. Feng & Andreas Oschlies, Nature
Communications 5, 2015
Coda:
transpolar
over the
pole
in its
death spiral
of
disappearing ice
I still
feel the clutched
embrace
of my little son
crying
daddy daddy
wanting
no one else
to hold
him
as if he
knew I was leaving today
do I
grieve for him
grieve
for myself
grieve
for the earth
we are
leaving him
or is it
all
premature
will love
somehow
find a
way to save
the
beauty and the child
my heart
still aches
with the
warmth and trust
of his
hug
but the
climate is changing
12000
years of calm sedateness
are out
the window now
and the
storms walking boldly
amongst
us
are not
so easily
tamed
