Saving the Earth from Climatic Destruction
George M. Woodwell*
and Richard A. Houghton**
The annual tax on GDP around the
world from the climatic disruption has now reached well into the hundreds of
billions of dollars and tens of thousands of early deaths. While economists
have hardly led the world in acknowledging the emergency and in deflecting
it, their recent annual field day in Davos produced some lucid and
welcome insights. They had a World Bank report and a new World Bank president
calling for immediate action.[1] Christine
Lagarde of the IMF was unequivocal in her response to a question: “Unless
we take action on climate change, future generations will be roasted, toasted,
fried and grilled.”[2] The question is what to do.
The popular discussion seems to
revolve around accepting a two-degree C rise in the global temperature as tolerable and controllable. The
suggestion is that the two-degree goal has been blessed as safe by
a consensus of science. It is not a consensus of scientists nor is it correct
that a rise to two degrees would be benign. The two-degree threshold was
emphasized in the negotiations during the 15th Conference of
the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen in
December 2009. It was an economic and political compromise that appeared
to offer some room to establish effective action in reducing emissions
globally. It does not have a scientific consensus behind it. It is,
unfortunately, an attractive trap in that the current atmospheric burden
exceeds the 1992 agreement under the Framework Convention to prevent dangerous
interference with the climate system.
The warming to date has been about
0.8 degree C and the effects are conspicuous. The glacial melting in particular
is moving more rapidly than most scientists had anticipated and considerably
more rapidly than assumed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.[3] A thoroughly detailed report by the US
Geological Survey compiled over years and dealing with the world’s glaciers
observes that “… since the late 19th century, all of Iceland’s
glaciers have decreased in area and thickness…. Since 1995…the decrease has
been quite dramatic…. [They] will virtually disappear by 2200.”[4] The
Greenland and West Antarctic ice caps are also melting much more rapidly than
earlier predictions. They contain in total as much as forty feet of sea level
rise.[5] A
continuation of the accelerating rise in temperature will melt all the glacial
ice and raise sea level by 75 meters, more than 225 feet.
The big issue that forecloses
limiting an increase in mean global temperature to 2 degrees C, or even the
present 0.8 degree, is the warming itself, most threatening in the
Arctic. It is a double threat in that the warming is greater in the
higher latitudes than elsewhere and the Arctic contains a massive quantity of
carbon potentially vulnerable to release as carbon dioxide and methane. The
largest carbon pool is in the soils and peat of the tundra. There is also a
significant pool in the soils and vegetation of the boreal forest. Both are
circumpolar. Much of the peat in these landscapes is several too many feet
deep. Some of it, containing an estimated 1700 billion tons of carbon,[6] twice
the current amount in the atmosphere, has been frozen in permafrost for
thousands of years. Thawed, the carbon in peat and mineral soils is
vulnerable to decay with the release of both carbon dioxide and methane.
Substantial quantities of methane have accumulated through slow decay over
thousands of years in frozen soils and are released as the thawing proceeds.[7] Some is
in crystalline form in shallow coastal waters that are also vulnerable to the
warming. The total quantities of carbon dioxide and methane available from
these sources are uncertain. They are, however, large enough to affect the
current atmospheric burden and to be a major factor in the array of positive
feedbacks associated with the warming.[8]
While the Earth has warmed by less
than 1 degree C, the Arctic has warmed by 2-3 degrees, more in some places, and
the process of thawing long frozen soils is underway. The thawing of soils is a
significant immediate source of methane. If organic decay is also
stimulated, it has the potential for flooding the Earth with carbon dioxide far
beyond any capacity we have for controlling it by reducing human
emissions.
The alternative is an overt,
immediate, effort to stop the warming and ultimately to re-freeze the Arctic.
The first step is a rapid stabilization of the concentration of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere as agreed to by all the nations in 1992 when they signed and
ultimately ratified the Framework Convention on Climate Change. The
action now requires reductions in human emissions from deforestation and
combustion of fossil fuels. Ultimately, a reduction in the
heat-trapping gas content of the atmosphere will require abandonment of fossil
fuels and a major effort at reforestation of the earth to sequester as much
carbon as possible over the next decades.
It may not be possible. The Arctic
release may not be controllable at this late date. There is no
alternative to attempting to check the process by cooling the earth now with
the most powerful and safe methods.
The following are the facts. The
total current releases from human activities are more than 10 billion tons of
carbon from burning fossil fuels and from deforestation and degradation of,
largely, tropical forests. The deforestation is contributing more than one
billion tons of carbon. Burning fossil fuels is the rest, about 9.5 billion
tons in 2011.[9]
Of those ten billion tons between 4
and 5 billion tons accumulate in the atmosphere. This accumulation is the
immediate problem. It is rising. In the past year it was more than 5 billion
tons, the second highest ever.[10] The remainder of the 10 billion ton release is
absorbed into the oceans and into terrestrial vegetation, largely forests.
Those marine and terrestrial “sinks” amount currently to about 5 billion tons
of carbon annually. They are vulnerable, of course. Forests are
vulnerable to disease and fire and drought as temperatures rise. The oceans
absorb less carbon dioxide as the surface waters warm and become more acidic.
And yet, we can, at this moment take advantage of the present
circumstance to, first, stabilize the atmospheric composition, and, ultimately,
to reverse the trends in climate.
There is no escape from reducing
the use of fossil fuels. On the other hand, management of land and forests to
conserve carbon is essential and will be significant. The first step is to stop
further degradation and destruction of primary forests globally.[11] That single step would remove more than 1
billion tons of carbon from the current emissions and from the annual
accumulation. Second, natural forests can be restored to deforested lands
in the normally naturally forested zones. A newly forested area of 2-4
million square kilometers stores, conservatively, about a billion tons of
carbon annually during the phase of maximum growth of trees. Such an area or
more can be found globally. Those two steps, desirable in any analysis of beneficial
land management policies, would account for more than 2 billion tons of carbon
annually from the 5 billion tons in excess currently. Thirdly, in an emergency,
harvesting of secondary forests globally could be curtailed to avoid carbon
releases during a transition period to ease pressures on use of fossil fuels.
The combined effects would absorb and store in plants and soil 3-5 billion
tons of carbon, annually, a major increment in starting the return toward the
300 ppm of the atmosphere at the beginning of the 20th century.
Simultaneously, reductions in use of fossil fuels are essential, beginning at
once.
Those steps would constitute a
totally appropriate recognition of the urgency of stabilizing the biosphere,
opening a new era in the industrial age with new industries with local foci,
new jobs and new economic opportunities globally. There is no question
that the human enterprise can be operated successfully and beneficially on
renewable energy. Within the last five
years the cost of wind and direct solar energy has dropped to make it
attractive in many circumstances on the basis of price alone. The transition
must be now and rapidly advanced to deflect the drain on national GDPs from
climatic disruptions now underway.
Uncorrected, environmental chaos will consume the last vestiges of
global GDP and the world will be redefined by cascading environmental, economic
and political catastrophes.[12]
Notes and References
[1] J.Y.
Kim, president of the World Bank, offered a strong statement based on the
report: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2012/11/18/new-report-examines-risks-of-degree-hotter-world-by-end-of-century
[2] J. Romm.
2013. ThinkProgress 2/6. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/05/1546471/imf-chief-unless-we-take-action-on-climate-change-future-generations-will-be-roasted-toasted-fried-and-grilled/
[3]
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate
Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, UK. Rahmstorf, S.,
Foster, G., Cazenave, A. 2012. Comparing climate projections to observations up
to 2011. Environmental Research Letters
7:044035. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044035
[4]
Williams, R.S., J.G.
Ferrigno, B.H. Raup., J.S. Kargel. 2012. Glaciers: The Earth’s Dynamic
Cryosphere and the Earth System. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper
1386-A. Washington, DC. http://thinkprogress.org/wpcontent/uploads/2012/12/WAIS.jpg
[5] USGS. 2012. State of the Earth’s Cryosphere at the
Beginning of the 21sr Century: Glaciers, Global Snow Cover, Floating Ice, and
Permafrost and Periglacial Environments. U.S. Geological Survey Professional
Paper 1386-A. Washington, DC. A 461.
[6] Hugelius, G., Tarnocai, C.,
Broll, G., Canadell, J. G., Kuhry, P., and Swanson, D. K. 2013. The Northern
Circumpolar Soil Carbon Database: spatially distributed datasets of soil
coverage and soil carbon storage in the northern permafrost regions. Earth System Science Data. 5:3-13, doi:10.5194/essd-5-3-2013
[7] Anthony,
K.W., P. Anthony, G. Grosse, J. Chanton. 2012. Geologic methane seeps along
boundaries of Arctic permafrost thaw and melting glaciers. Nature Geoscience 5:419-426. doi:10.1038/ngeo1480
[8] Woodwell, G.M., F.T.
Mackenzie, R.A. Houghton, M.J. Apps, E. Gorham, E.A. Davidson. 1995. Will the
Warming Speed the Warming? in G.M. Woodwell and F.T. Mackenzie (Eds).
1995. Biotic Feedbacks in the Global
Climatic System. Oxford University Press, New York. p 406.
[9]
Le Quéré et al. 2012.
The global carbon budget 1959-2011. Earth System Science Data Discussions
5:1107-1157.
[10]
CO2Now.org. Feb. 2013.
[11] The World Commission on
Forests examined that question extensively and found that at that time (the
late 1990s) there would be no serious influence on the availability of timber
or fiber globally. 1999. Our
Forests Our Future: Report of the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable
Development. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. While growth
in all aspects of the global economy may have changed that conclusion, the need
for action on climate has become acute.
[12] Oreskes, N., and E.M. Conway.
2013. The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. Daedalus. Winter. p 40. See also Ehrlich, P R., and A.H. Ehrlich.
2013. Can a Collapse of Global Civilization be Avoided? Proceedings of the Royal Society B 280(1754):20122845.
*G. M. Woodwell is Director Emeritus of the Woods Hole
Research Center and currently Distinguished Scientist, Natural Resources
Defense Council, 40 West 20th St., New York, NY 10011.
**Richard
A. Houghton is Senior Scientist, Woods Hole Research Center, 149 Woods Hole
Road, Falmouth, MA 02540.
