Seven years Earth didn’t need
BY ROGER HANNEY
From 2000 to 2007, global carbon emissions increased far more rapidly than any predictions used in any current climate modelling, due almost entirely to the unforeseeably massive growth of coal-fired power stations in China and India.
That is the blunt fact delivered mid-February to the American Institute for the Advancement of Science by scientist Chris Field, co-chair of the UN’s Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
‘The consequence of that is we are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we’ve considered seriously,’ said Field. ‘The actual trajectory of climate change is more serious than any of the climate predictions in the IPCC’s fourth assessment report Climate Change 2007.’
Forecast global temperature rises of 1.4 ‘ 6 degrees celsias, the Stern (UK) and Garnaut (Aus) reports, and the climate policies of every government in the world are based on data sets compiled without these drastic rises.
Field sees a likely worsening in self-reinforcing mechanisms already driving climate change ‘ including the melting of ancient tundra, releasing billions of tonnes of stored methane and carbon, accelerated temperature rise with risk of no predictable upper limit, and the prospect of droughts and massive wildfires in forests currently rated as tropical.
The new information points starkly toward a catastrophe beyond containment, but Field seems hopeful.
‘We don’t want to cross a critical threshold where this massive release of carbon starts to run on autopilot.’
