We are the Weather Makers - The Story of Global Warming - Tim Flannery

[Ruth]

I would like to recommend this book:

We Are The Weather Makers – The Story of Global Warming
By Tim Flannery (2006)


The Text Publishing Company, 22 William Street Melbourne, Victoria, 3000
Australia
http://www.textpublishing.com.au/


This book was written by a palaeontologist and explains in simple language the connecting factors making up global warming and their relationship to each other. He talks about thresholds, change gateways what drives climate change on this planet and from space as well as extinction. I haven’t covered all the things mentioned in the book, but I was impressed by the number of things that were discussed. Global warming is definitely happening and so is climate change in all its various forms. The question is: Can we prevent triggering the three potential tripping points to global cataclysm?

The Importance of Atmosphere and CO2

Although CO2 has made up only 3 parts per 10,000 in our atmosphere and has done for the past 10,000 years, small changes in its levels have dramatic effects on global temperature. As an example; if this gas was to make up 1% of our atmosphere, it is estimated that our planetary surface temperature would rise to 100 degrees celsius. Venus, with its atmosphere of 98% CO2 has a surface temperature of 477 degrees celsius. Carbon Dioxide is the one of the main greenhouse gases involved in climate change.


Evolution and the Carbon cycle

For nearly half of this planets existence the earth’s atmosphere would have been deadly to creatures of our size, indeed anything bigger than a microbe would not have lived. Around 600 million years ago, the Earth underwent four very severe ice ages aided by a powerful mechanism called Albedo. This mechanism is where white surfaces (such as snow and ice) reflect 80-90% of the suns light, once a certain portion of the Earths surface is covered it sends the Earth into deep freeze for millions of years. It was around this time that the oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere started to permit the evolution of larger creatures. These creatures started to take part in the carbon cycle and began excreting CO2 into the atmosphere, ever since then, ice ages have been rare with only two occurring. One was between 355 and 280 million years ago and one now; for the past 33 million years.


What Explains the Ice Ages?

Atmosphere isn’t the only thing to influence this planets temperature. In 1941 a man called Milutin Milankovich published a paper that identified three main cycles involved in temperature change on our planet. He was attempting to explain what caused ice ages.

The first and longest of these cycles is the 100,000 year cycle known as Earths Eccentricity and has to do with the fact that the Earths orbit around the sun is not circular, but elliptical. This meant that the planet is carried both closer and father away from the sun, so the intensity of the suns radiation can vary. At present, the Earths orbit is fairly circular, so the difference in radiation reaching the Earth between January and July is just 6%. At more elliptical times, this difference can be as high as 20-30%.

The second cycle is the 42,000 one that concerns the tilt of the Earth on its axis. This varies from 21.8 to 24.4 degrees and determines where most of the suns radiation will fall. At the moment the Earth appears to be in the middle range.

The third and shortest of cycles runs for 22,000 years and concerns the wobble of the Earth on it’s axis. The axis shifts from pointing to the Pole Star, to pointing to Vega. When it does this it effects the intensity of the seasons. When Vega marks true North winters turn bitterly cold and summers scorchingly hot.

According to these measures we should currently be experiencing all the conditions of an ice age. But we are not. During the last 8 thousand years we have experienced what has been called a ‘Long Summer’. It is theorized that the activities of man on the environment (farming and cutting down trees) has had a lot to do with this temperature stability. A rise in CO2 in the atmosphere has kept the climate stable. We are now faced with ever increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution (1800s), but most especially since the 1950 when we started to ‘liberate’ huge amounts of it into the air with the burning of fossil fuels. That relative stability we had is now no longer there.

The Greenhouse Gas Hit Parade

It has been calculated (and widely acknowledged) that a quantity of 450-550 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere will trigger disastrous changes. Prior to 1800 (the Industrial Revolution), there were 280 parts per million in the atmosphere. Today this figure is 380 (it was measured at 315 in 1958). It takes a long time for this carbon to recycle out of the Earths atmosphere and this is dependant not only on a reduction of CO2 emissions, but other creatures abilities to transform it back into carbon compounds.

Methane is the next most important greenhouse gas after CO2. Methane is created by microbes that live in oxygenless environments such as stagnant pools and bowels. Making up just 1.5 parts per million of the atmosphere, its concentration has doubled over the last few hundred years. It is 60 times more potent at capturing heat energy than CO2, but thankfully lasts less time in the atmosphere. It has been estimated that methane will cause 15-17% of global warming this century. Mammals produce quite large quantities of this, the majority of which tends to get trapped by ice crystals at the bottom of the ocean and remains there unless the sea temperature changes or the pressure changes. The consequence of this being ‘liberated’ on a large scale is absolutely catastrophic.

Nitrous oxide (laughing gas) is 270 times more efficient at trapping heat than CO2 and last 150 years in the atmosphere. Today there is 20% more nitrous oxide in the atmosphere than there was at the beginning of the Industrial revolution. This is mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels and the increased use of nitrogenous fertilizers by farmers.

Hydroflurocarbons (HFC) and Chloroflurocarbons (CFC). Man made ingenuity! These gases are ten thousand times more potent at capturing heat energy than CO2 and they last in the atmosphere for many centuries. Mainly responsible for destroying ozone and creating a hole in that protective layer.

Earthly Participants in Climate Change

Everybody has probably heard of the Gulf Stream which flows from the Gulf of Mexico, carrying heat with it, north, to Europe. If this gets interrupted, slows or even stops, which has happened in the past, Europe ceases to be warmed and a new ice age starts. Central France will ends up feeling a lot like Siberia. This Gulf Stream interruption is caused when large amounts of fresh water enters it, as it would when global warming occurs and the polar ice melts.

El Nino: This cycle brings extreme climatic changes often causing two thirds of the planet to be subjected to droughts, flood and other extreme weather. As greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere we will experience persistent El Nino like conditions.

“Climate scientists are now debating whether humans have already tripped the switch that will create an ice-free Earth. If so, we have already committed our planet and ourselves to a rise in sea level of around sixty seven meters.ᾠ (p.141). This will mean that cities, towns and villages are going to disappear under water, starting in our lifetimes.

Three Major Tripping Points

Scenario 1:
“In 2003 the Pentagon commissioned a report outlining the implications for US national security should the Gulf Stream collapse.ᾠ Well, apart from the ‘shit hitting the fan’ in all sorts of ways, economically, politically and socially, scientists are now trying to understand its consequences on biological productivity in the North Atlantic ocean. How does a fall by 50% sound? With a global reduction in oceanic productivity of 20%? The Pentagon wasn’t very optimistic about man’s ability to co-operate during this crisis.

“It is possible, if the Gulf Stream were to slow, that extreme falls in temperature could be felt over Europe and North America within a couple of wintersᾠ. (p.181)

Scenario 2:
The collapse of the Amazon rainforests also represents a huge potential problem for global warming, setting up a positive feedback mechanism that would increase CO2 in the atmosphere to 1000 parts per million and turn forests into deserts. According to current modeling we should see this start to happen in 2040.

Scenario 3:
Methane release from the sea floor. The biggest extinction ever to occur (so far) was 245 million years ago when 9 out of 10 animals died. Palaentologists are starting to suspect that methane released from the sea floor had something to do with it. All that would be required would be for the pressure on it to be relieved or the sea temperature of the deep or Arctic oceans to increase.

What is the solution?

Stop or reduce the use of fossil fuels. Start using other forms of energy. And interestingly enough: “If aircraft were to fly lower, cirrus cloud formation could be cut in half and CO2 emissions lowered by 4%, while average flight times over Europe would vary by less than a minuteᾠ(p.248)

The author says “If everyone takes action to rid atmospheric carbon emissions from their lives, I believe we can stabilize and then save the Arctic and Antarctic. We could save around four out of every five species currently under threat, limit the extent of extreme weather events and reduce, almost to zero, the possibility of any of the three great disasters occurring this century, especially the collapse of the Gulf Stream and the destruction of the Amazon.ᾠ (p249)

I don’t believe the chances of this are very good. We need world leaders to start looking at this situation as the very real threat it is, rather than being caught up in their short term fantasies of money making and war mongering. The only thing that could possibly save the climate, in my opinion is some sort of massive reduction in human population. I guess doesn’t make me an optimist.

I thoroughly recommend this book for an easy to understand scientific view of global warming, its consequences and causes. Climate change isn’t something new and because it hasn’t happened significantly in the last 8 thousand years; we tend to forget that it is already happening now and the world may be a very different place within as many as eighty years.

 

[Pierre]

This book was written by a palaeontologist and explains in simple language the connecting factors making up global warming and their relationship to each other. He talks about thresholds, change gateways what drives climate change on this planet and from space as well as extinction. I haven’t covered all the things mentioned in the book, but I was impressed by the number of things that were discussed. Global warming is definitely happening and so is climate change in all its various forms. The question is: Can we prevent triggering the three potential tripping points to global cataclysm?

The Cs also mentioned weather change and listed some human activity factors and some other factors explaning global warming.

Here's an excerpt :

A: Climate is being influenced by three factors, and soon a fourth.
Q: (L) All right, I'll take the bait; give me the three factors, and also the fourth!.
A: 1) Wave approach. 2) Chlorofluorocarbon increase in atmosphere, thus affecting ozone layer. 3) Change in the
planet's axis rotation orientation. 4) Artificial tampering by 3rd and 4th density STS forces in a number of different ways.

This doesn't mean that we should do nothing. We obviously can have some impact, at least on one of the four factors.

 

[Ruth]

A: Climate is being influenced by three factors, and soon a fourth.
Q: (L) All right, I'll take the bait; give me the three factors, and also the fourth!.
A: 1) Wave approach. 2) Chlorofluorocarbon increase in atmosphere, thus affecting ozone layer. 3) Change in the planet's axis rotation orientation. 4) Artificial tampering by 3rd and 4th density STS forces in a number of different ways.

This doesn't mean that we should do nothing. We obviously can have some impact, at least on one of the four factors.

It looks like we've had some impact on No. 2, because in 1987 something called the Montreal Protocol was signed and according to the book:

Today we know just how important the Montreal Protocol was. Had it not been enacted, by 2050 the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere (where most humans live) would have lost half of their UV protection, while equivalent latitude in the Southern Hemisphere would have lost 70 per cent. As it was, by 2001, the Protocol had limited real damage to around a tenth of that. Not all countries were initially bound by the Monteal Protocol. China continues to produce CFCs and may well go on pollting until 2010, when under the treaty it must cease. But production is limited because the new substitued chemicals are so much better. (thank God for that!).

In 2004 the ozone hole over the Antarctic reduced by 20 per cent. Because the size of the hole changes from year to year, we cannot be certain that this decrease signals the end of the problem. Nevertheless, scientists are optimistic that in fifty years time the ozone layer will be returned to its former strength.

Good news at last!

I was wondering if you had any ideas on how to 'influence' the 3rd factor? The pictures it brings to my mind all seem to be quite amusing but somewhat futile....

 

[Ruth]

Ok? Hmm...

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s1833950.htm

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT

LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s1833950.htm

Broadcast: 25/01/2007

Tim Flannery announced Australian of the Year
Reporter: Kerry O'Brien


KERRY O’BRIEN: As announced just minutes ago, Tim Flannery is Australian of the Year. He's a scientist of world standing, a prolific and bestselling writer, a noted explorer, passionate about the Australian environment, and believes global warming is a calamitous crisis facing us all. Tim Flannery is also a controversial, outspoken stirrer who promises to use his role this year to tread on toes if he has to, to get his blunt views across. He's already offended many environmentalists by advocating nuclear power despite the risks it poses as part of the solution to climate change, but not in Australia, where he says other alternatives should be pursued. I recorded this interview with Tim Flannery.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Tim Flannery, a former governor general once said he saw his job as holding up a mirror and reflecting the nation to itself. I wonder what you see in that mirror?

TIM FLANNERY, AUSTRALIAN OF THE YEAR: I suppose what I see in that mirror is a people who are coming to terms with the land that supports them and really defines them, who don't yet understand it particularly well and understand its sensitivities, and therefore are sort of like squatters. We're squatting on the country rather than being true ones who have a long term future here through a careful caring for our land.

KERRY O’BRIEN: If we've been slow learners in that, it would be in part at least, wouldn't it, because of the kind of iconic images that we've drawn for ourselves as being hardy pioneers of the land, and the land and our development of the land, working of the land, has been so much a part of the ethos.

TIM FLANNERY: That's right, and that grand illusion, if you want, came from a particular history where our ancestors came from an overcrowded and impoverished Europe into this, what seemed to be an open continent, that seemed so easy to exploit. You could put the sheep on the land, you didn't even need to knock down the trees and all of a sudden you were a wealthy landowner. And that pioneer phase is due to a naivete both on the part of the land about us and us about the land and what it can actually contain. It was as if we ate through the wealth of the continent in just a few decades rather than carefully shepherded it. And those images and icons made it harder to realise the reality of the situation for us and I think it's only now, as people look at the country with new eyes and see that it is limited, that we need to take care of it and that it will define our future, that we're starting to see a new reality.

KERRY O’BRIEN: You wrote an Australia Day article, as it happens, five years ago in which you talked about how Australians tend to define themselves culturally as opposed to how they should define themselves; can you remember your argument?

TIM FLANNERY: Yeah, I can, I remember thinking about it, why we imagine that meat pies and football and Holden cars are important when the true underpinnings, the one thing that we all share as Australians, is this land. It's what gives us our water and our food and our shelter and defines us as a nation. Why isn't that the basis of our common sentiment about what it means to be an Australian? The rest of it seems to me to be sort of randomly chosen bits of icons that we just happen to like.

KERRY O’BRIEN: You share Al Gore's apocalyptic view on global warming. Do you take any comfort in the fact that the issue has finally forced itself into the consciousness of politicians and big business in the country?

TIM FLANNERY: I do take comfort from that, but I do so with an acute awareness that we have wasted at least a decade in dealing with this problem and therefore the efforts we have to make now have to be so much greater and done with so much more single-mindedness where we're not thinking about short term self interest, whether it be the future of the coal industry or whatever else, but thinking about the bigger picture of our position in the world, and that's the critical thing. We've got a very short amount of time to deal with this problem. Many people argue that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere already is too great to allow for climate stability and there are signs of that already. If you look at the high Arctic and changes there you will see how severe this problem's becoming. It will take a single-minded, united effort, people working together to overcome this problem, which I think is the greatest challenge that humanity really has ever faced.

KERRY O’BRIEN: You've startled, even angered, some environmentalists with your embrace of nuclear power as potentially part of the solution to global warming. Put that into context.

TIM FLANNERY: Well, you know, when I travel to China, to the east coast of the United States and to parts of Europe and look at the options available to those people to generate even the minimum amount of electricity required to keep those societies functioning, I can't see an alternative to nuclear power, at least as part of that generation of base load. Now we all know the dangers of nuclear power, you know, particularly nuclear proliferation, which scares the hell out of me. But I simply cannot see another alternative. It's the lesser of two evils and for that reason I refuse to condemn uranium mining in Australia, I think it's going to be part of the solution. What we need is really, really good regulation where we can stand up with pride and say we're doing this in a way that absolutely minimises those dangers and that we can do that better than anyone else. My view is that governments immediate to set the regulatory framework. So when it comes to uranium mining, we need to have the best regulatory framework in the world that will satisfy all Australians that we are doing our utmost to make sure this fuel is as safe as it possibly can be.

KERRY O’BRIEN: But you know the practical realities of global politics and diplomacy and of relationships between countries – you know that at times countries can be as pragmatic as hell to get a desired outcome. You've said yourself, you asked in a recent article on nuclear power whether our politicians have the moral fibre required to export uranium responsibly. Now, how do you answer your own question? Do you have faith in our politicians' moral fibre?

TIM FLANNERY: I would say that our politicians are what we make them. We need to hold them accountable at every level, at every election and ask the hard questions. The media is a big part of that. You're right, it could all go horribly wrong but, you know, we have to march into that future. It feels a bit to me like 1939, you know, with a lot of the public unaware of the reality of this growing danger. Some people positively sympathetic to that outside evil for various reasons and yet somehow we, as good citizens of this country and of the world, have to find a way forward.

KERRY O’BRIEN: In the race against time, isn't it too late to embrace nuclear power, by your own benchmarks? You're saying we have no time and that you're prepared to countenance all the risks associated with nuclear power knowing that it could take up to 20 years to get the first nuclear power stations up and running in Australia?

TIM FLANNERY: I've thought long and hard about that and even at a personal level I think about the world I will leave my children and I have a boy and a girl, in their 20s, and think they're going to be dealing with the problems of nuclear waste storage and of proliferation long after I'm too old to care about it and that's the future I've got to bequeath them, because this situation is so difficult. It depends upon the resources available and which part of the world we're talking about. Here in Australia I believe nuclear power makes absolutely no sense because we have an embarrassing richness of renewable energy resources that we should be using much more aggressively or exploiting more aggressively than we are. As I said, when you go to places like China, east coast of the US, parts of Europe where geothermal energy is limited, where other forms of energy are not as abundant as they are in Australia, I fail to see another alternative. Maybe one will be pointed out, in which case I would say, thank Heavens for that.

KERRY O’BRIEN: How do you explain to Australians why they should make sacrifices to their lifestyle and potentially the economy when collectively Australia contributes only about 1% to global warming?

TIM FLANNERY: We are on a per capita basis the worst polluters in the world and what's even more serious, I think, is for the last decade we've held the world up. We've not been part of Kyoto, we've cost the global enterprise time and time is critical in this area.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Would we have made that much difference on Kyoto?

TIM FLANNERY: I think that we would have, actually. I think you would have left the US totally isolated or standing with Monaco and Liechtenstein, which is not a good look. I think it did make a difference and I think that we need to really work in recognition of that, of the cost that our policies have had to the whole globe and so when you come to searching your own soul about whether you should put on solar panels on your roof or buy green electricity or whatever else, those things all need to be taken into account.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Is that going to be part of your message over the next 12 months, pitching individually to Australians to do their own part in this?

TIM FLANNERY: Yes, it is. But more importantly government, because government can make it so much easier for people to play their own part. Now, it's, you know, it's critically important that we all do something but our efforts could be made so much more valuable with the right government policy and I hope to see over the next 12 months or so Australia develop that policy, a very, very aggressive policy to combat this problem of climate change, working in an integrated way with the international community, taking a leading role, in fact, rather than dragging our feet in that global effort to combat this problem.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Have you ever wondered about your own Australian identity? Have you ever wondered about yourself within this country and what you are?

TIM FLANNERY: Well, I can only answer that tangentially, I suppose, in that I've tried to live outside Australia. I was in the US for 12 months and there was something really fundamental missing in it for me and coming back to the clear skies and the smell of the gum trees, I know that sounds terribly

KERRY O’BRIEN: It sounds fine to me.

TIM FLANNERY: But that's very important to me and this sense of being part of an ecosystem that supports you and nurtures you and takes you into its bosom when you die and recycles you is very, very important to me and this country in a sense is very important to me for that reason.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Tim Flannery, congratulations on the award and thanks for talking to us.

TIM FLANNERY: Thank you.

 

[Third_Density_Resident]

I have much respect for Tim Flannery, particularly with his stance on what needs to be done with the Murray-Darling River system (which, for those who are unaware, is one of the biggest environmental disasters caused by white European settlement in Australia; essentially in many parts of this river system, water ceases to flow anymore, which causes a whole range of problems, the least of which being severe salinisation). However, I completely reject his idea that nuclear power is the only "clean" and realistic power option available, and I was quite disappointed when I heard that he held this view.

In a country such as Australia, with AMPLE solar energy available, there really should be no reason for us to use nuclear power. It is my belief that the federal government only wants to embrace nuclear power because they can go on making bucket-loads of money from charging people for it, while simultaneously acting like they're doing the environment a huge favour. They don't want each household to have its own solar panels and to make its own electricity (something that could easily be done, especially since new technology exists that can make solar panels far more cheaply than in the past). Never mind about things like Chernobyl, as "that won't happen here".