Concluding Views

As my blog now reaches its conclusion I thought I would review some of the issues I have explored and things I have learned as I have tried to cut a coherent path through what is a hugely diverse issue. To help highlight the key themes of my blog I have created the image you can see below using the 'Wordle' application. This application has processed all of the text from all of my blog posts and has created an image where the size of the word is proportional to the amount of times that word has been used in my blog.

Prominent in the image are the words 'Climate' and 'Change', two words one would hope to be common in a blog about climate change. These two words are extremely important as they form the umbrella under which all topics I have talked about sit.

If your eye moves about the image somewhat, it is possible to find three words that, together, form one of the main threats I have talked about, which is of course 'sea level rise'. In this blog I have shown how the IPCCs prediction of 21^st century sea level rise of up to 0.59m is a threat to many societies around the world. As my focus has largely been on the effect on small islands (the wordle image is a testament to this) the case study which I have concentrated mainly on is that of the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. When I first began writing this blog I very naively thought that the problem with sea level rise was simply one of flooding and the erosion of land. However, through reading of the relevant papers I have learned this is just a small part of the problem and that sea level rise also has the potential to devastate societies through pollution of freshwater aquifers and inundation of land which dramatically reduces its fertility. I also feel it important to note that while my main focus was on the plight of small island communities I have also highlighted the fact that a disproportionate amount of people worldwide live in low elevation areas and thus the problem of sea level rise is not one that is confined simply to small islands.

I have also learned it is not only sea level rise that poses a threat to small island communities but that temperature rise associated with global warming is also a serious risk. The predicted 21^st century air temperature rise of up to 4^oC will result in an increase in sea surface temperature. Such increases are likely to result in large scale coral bleaching and thus the destruction of a resource that many inhabitants of small islands are dependent upon for food. In addition I have shown that rises in temperature can cause significant increases in the number of cases of infectious disease and therefore the shocking figure of 150,000 global warming related deaths per year is only going to increase.

I feel that my blog has three easily identifiable elements to it, the first and arguably the main element is the exploration of the physical effect expected to be had on people around the world due to global warming. The second, which I shall review now, is the palaeo element.

Through researching the formation of islets I have shown that those particularly at risk are coral atolls, I found interesting here that the nature of coral atoll formation means that the greatest threat arrives due to erosion and not the possibility of over topping. I think this is very important to recognize as often, the threat of rising sea level, is given in terms of how much sea level is expected to rise and then the average elevation/highest elevation of an island. As figures are given in such a way it is only natural to presume that the threat comes from water flooding low elevation areas. However, through exploring formation I have learned that this is not the case and that a threat is posed particularly to coral atolls long before over topping has occurred.

Furthermore, I have also learned the huge effect that climate change has had on communities in the past, as the 'AD 1300 event' resulted in the generation of violence and conflict in the previously peaceful Pacific. This goes to show the extreme importance of climate change and thus highlights the need for issue of global warming to be taken seriously.

The third element of my blog was one which I did not expect to feature so prominently and that is the politics of climate change. While I began this blog with a piece about the dishearteningly slow pace of climate discussions, I was not aware that this political element would remain with me throughout the blog as I expected each post to be objectively about the science of climate change. However, on reading papers and researching the contemporary issues of small islands, this element is something I could not stay away from. This is mainly because when beginning this blog I did not know that the discourse of climate change is so contested. While I was aware that climate change has been sensationalised, I was not fully aware of the negative consequences this may have. What I found most interesting though, was that the label of climate change refugee was one which many shied away from. In addition I found the geopolitical element of the Tuvaluan drought crisis truly deplorable; I was previously unaware that groups of people tried to further their interests by taking advantage of such desperate people. I think that this geopolitical element really highlights the need for global co-operation in tackling climate change so to reduce the extent to which global political support can be bought by individual groups from vulnerable nations.

At times during this blog all three previously mentioned elements have been brought together, this has been done largely in discussion of future climate targets. Ice core records have highlighted the need for atmospheric carbon levels to be reduced to 350ppm if we are going to reduce global warming to just 1.5^oC which many small nations think is key to their survival (see video below). However, the most shocking element here is that such an aim seems to have been disregarded by some of the world’s most powerful politicians who seem happy to aim for a minimum 2^oC rise. I think this is one of the most important issues that I have come across in this blog and it is something I would like to conclude with.

At the moment, greatly at risk small island nations have a vision for the future, a vision for their survival, which has been backed up by scientific investigation and can be secured through the limitation of global warming to 1.5^oC. However the views of these small islanders seem to have been completely overlooked on the global political scene, where the big industrialised nations have a greater hunger for profits than they do for the survival of highly vulnerable societies which are already under great threat.

Climate Campaign

In a previous post I touched upon the fact that the association of small island nations want to limit global warming to just 1.5^oC. Such a limit to the extent of temperature rise is associated with the reduction in global concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million, and is seen as vital in securing the survival of societies which inhabit small islands long into the future. In this post I will explore the reason behind setting such a goal for atmospheric CO₂ concentration as well as looking at one particular organization which works to try and make this figure of 350ppm a reality.

The figure of 350ppm emerged not long ago in a paper written by Hansen et al (2008). In this paper Hansen et al look at a wide range of evidence with the aim of deciding on a figure for the level of atmospheric carbon that humanity should aim at if a planet "similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted" is going to be preserved.

I’m now going to try and explain why Hansen et al (2008) came to the conclusion that they did (this isn’t as easy as it sounds, as you will see for yourself if you read the paper, it is one of the most densely packed incomprehensible papers I have ever come across).

The main contention of this paper is that climate sensitivity is double what we think; therefore the paper asserts that a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ will result in a 6^oC not a 3^oC global rise in temperature. The paper explains that the models used to come up with this 3^oC rise only took into account fast feedbacks such as changes in water vapour and sea ice. Therefore Hansen et al argue that slow feedbacks must be included; these are mainly positive feedbacks such as changes in the levels of green house gasses (e.g. due to the release of CO₂ by oceans due to changing solubility of CO₂ with changing temperature) and global albedo (largely due to change in the size of ice sheets) which lag behind changes in global temperature by hundreds of years. Therefore by plotting GHG forcing based on Vostok ice core data against temperature data (figure 1) Hansen et al are able show that climate sensitivity is actually double the 3^oC currently accepted by the IPCC.

Figure 1: Graph showing global temperature (left scale) and GHG forcing (right scale) due to CO2, CH4 and N2O from the Vostok ice core. A doubling of CO2 is equivalent to a climate forcing of 4W/m2, here the ratio of temperature of temperature to forcing is 1.5:1 therfore doubling CO2 will result in a 6 degree temperature rise (source). 

Hansen et al explain that the existence of slow feed-backs means that global climate is not presently at an equilibrium temperature and therefore even if levels of carbon in the atmosphere where to stay at the level that they are now an increase in temperature would still be observed and thus sea levels would continue to rise. As such a reduction in global atmospheric carbon levels to 350ppm is set as the goal by Hansen et al, which will therefore limit temperature rise to 1.5^oC, a level that the association of small islands sees as key to ensuring their survival.

So now that we have seen how this figure has been arrived at, what is being done to turn this goal into a reality?

In 2008 Bill McKibben, an author who wrote one of the first popular science books about global warming back in 1989, founded a grass roots organization named 350.org. As suggested by the name this organization advocates science based climate policy which will reduce atmospheric carbon levels to below the magic 350ppm. In addition the organization offers solutions to this issue by campaigning for adaptation strategies such as the move away from fossil fuels and towards green technology. It has a large global presence due to the mass public actions it organizes; an example of this is the ‘Moving Planet’ worldwide day of action which occurred on the 24^th September 2011.  This day saw over 2000 events in around 180 countries where people marched and paraded using various forms of green transport from walking to dancing, cycling to kayaking (see the video below). In addition to these large scale actions members of 350.org can often be seen campaigning at high profile inter-governmental meetings such as the recent Durban Climate conference.

Unfortunately as I showed in my post about Durban many politicians seem to have accepted 2^oC warming as the minimum temperature rise that should be aimed for, and thus, those who support a 350ppm, 1.5^oC world, have a got a big job on their hands convincing some of the most influential politicians otherwise. However, the members of 350.org look like they are up for it! Therefore, if you’re looking for something to do in the New Year that has the potential to have a truly life saving impact, why not visit their website and sign up to show your dissatisfaction with current climate policy and become a member of a global climate campaign!