They made some progress at the annual December round of the international negotiations on controlling climate change, held this year in Qatar. They agreed that the countries that cause the warming should compensate the ones that suffer the most from it. The principle, known as the loss and damage mechanism, has no numbers attached to it, but it’s a step forward. The only step forward, unfortunately.
In the first phase of these talks, which concluded with the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, the emphasis was on “mitigation;” that is, on stopping the warming by cutting human emissions of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases.” That made good sense, but they didn’t get anywhere. Fifteen years later, emissions are still rising, not falling.
So gradually the emphasis shifted to “adaptation.” If we can’t agree on measures to stop the average global temperature from going up, can we learn to live with it? What’s the plan for developing new crops to withstand the droughts and high temperatures that are coming? What’s the plan for coping with massive floods that drown river valleys and inundate coastlines?
Well, there are no such plans in most places, so the emphasis has shifted again, to compensation. Terrible things will happen to poor countries, so who pays for them? In principle, says the new loss and damage mechanism, the rich countries that are responsible for the warming pay. But the “mechanism” has no method for assessing the damage or allocating the blame, so it will become a lawyers’ playground of little use to anybody else.
So if mitigation is a lost cause, and if adaptation will never keep up with the speed at which the climate is going bad, and if compensation is a nice idea whose time will never come, what is the next stage in these climate talks? Prayer? Emigration to another planet? Mass suicide?
There will be a fourth stage to the negotiations, but first we will have to wait until rising temperatures, falling food production and catastrophic storms shake governments out of their present lethargy. That probably won’t happen until quite late in the decade — and by then, at the current rate of emissions, we will be well past the point at which we could hold the rise in average global temperature down to 2 degrees C, or 3.6 degrees F.
We will, in fact, be on course for 3, 4 or even 5 degrees C of warming, because beyond plus-two degrees, the warming that we have already created will trigger “feedbacks:” natural sources of carbon dioxide emissions like melting permafrost which we cannot shut off.
So then, when it’s too late, everybody will really want a deal, but just cutting greenhouse gas emissions won’t be enough any more. We will need some way to hold the temperature down while we deal with our emissions problem, or else the temperature goes so high that mass starvation sets in. The rule of thumb is that we lose 10 percent of global food production for every rise in average global temperature of 1 degree C.
There probably is a way to stop the warming from passing plus 2 degrees C and triggering the feedbacks, during the decades it will take to get our emissions back down. It’s called “geoengineering:” direct human intervention in the climate system. Our greenhouse gas emissions are an inadvertent example of geoengineering that is pushing the climate in the wrong direction. Another, deliberate kind of geoengineering may be needed to stop it.
Geoengineering to hold the heat down is quite possible, though the undesirable side effects could be large. The biggest problem is that it’s relatively cheap: dozens of governments could afford to do it — and just one government, acting alone, could do it to the whole atmosphere.
So the fourth phase of the climate talks, probably starting late this decade, will be about when it is time to start geoengineering, and what techniques should be used, and who controls the process. They won’t agree on that either, so things will drag on further until some government, desperate to save its people from starvation, decides to do it alone, without global agreement. That could cause a major war, of course.
So we had better hope that neutral observers such as the fossil fuel industries are right in insisting that global warming is a fraud. Maybe all those scientists really are making it up just to get more money in research grants. That would be a happy ending, so fingers crossed.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose commentary is published in 45 countries.
Just another money grabbing scheme. Socialism at the world level. Take from the nations who are producers and distribute it to dictators who rob their people. Isn’t it called redistribution of wealth or also known as social justice?
Like the oil change companies used to advertise, “You can pay me now or you can pay me later”.
Not much proof that reducing CO2 levels increases the radiation of heat into space during night, making it cooler; but there is plenty of evidence that allowing plant life to flourish does cleanse the atmosphere of CO2. CO2 is heavier than air and doesn’t affect solar radiation, but it is ‘food’ for many plants. Maine’s forests are growing beyond use, and urban forests are as well. Longer ‘green’ periods will increase biomass, and that in turn uses up CO2.
I have faith that this is a natural balance of elements. and I also believe that Climate Engineers mucking around could be a disaster.
Might just mow the back lawn when the sun comes out Thursday and picnic at the beach for sunset w/parsley from the patio plant in the salad.
betting the lives of grand kids on that but then others take it seriously and are acting. The science is right on. Shame on you.
Climate change is happening. It has happened before and it will happen again and everything humans do to prevent it is like spitting in a hurricane.
The only thing risking the lives of our grand kids are the misguided attempts by enviro- Naz1s to push us back into the stone age in their misguided attempt to control climate.
The seas may rise. Permafrost may melt. Animals and people will have to migrate. Some areas will no longer support the crops grown there. New areas will become productive.
The world will not end. It will change.
And change drastically for the worse. How far above current sea level do you live? How far from the coast? Ever thought of what the millions who will be affected will do? What the even more will do when they run out of usable water? Those of us well off will be the target.
I don’t agree with your first sentence. The heat is in the form of infrared radiation that is re-radiated off the earths surface regardless of day or night. Plants do most of their growing at night. CO2 is “food” for all plants but when plants themselves metabolize, using those sugars and staches for energy, they also give off CO2. I don’t think that the differences in densities between CO2 and air (O2/N2) allow for significant fractionation of CO2 at atmospheric concentrations.
Controlled experiements have shown that plant growth is enhanced with increased levels of CO2 but the effect is not linear. The improvemnet tops out at relatively low CO2 concentrations.
I do agree that there’s a lot of downside to most proposed geoengineering proposals.