George F Preddey PhD
[retired upper atmospheric physicist and grandparent]
39 Anne St, Wadestown tel 0064.4.472.3369
Wellington 6012 fax 0064.4.472.3394
NEW ZEALAND email george.preddey@xtra.co.nz
for an electronic version of this submission
31 May 2010
All 72 Chairs / Mayors of Regional / City / District Councils
Selected media, scientific, and environmental organisations (for use as they think fit)
From George Preddey[1]
Submission 5:
A Key letter, Brash physics, lignite mining, Fatih Birol, Lord Stern, the Bishop of Stafford, physics v flawed economics, flying PIGS, how NZ might save the planet, and crimes against humanity
Genesis
I have previously sent four related submissions to all 122 MPs and 74 Councils on climate change and related matters, with a mixed response. I was not intending to send another.
My intentions changed on 16/17 May when I attended a public lecture/seminar hosted by Victoria University of Wellington. The keynote speaker at both events was climatologist Dr James Hansen. As a retired upper atmospheric physicist, I am familiar with Dr Hansen’s research and have had previous email contact with him. He provided me with a copy of his open letter to the Prime Minister sent on 30 May.
Kindly read Dr Hansen’s open letter if nothing else. A copy is attached as Annex A. This fifth (unintended) submission endorses and expands (see my Summary conclusions at p10) on Hansen’s plea[2] to the Prime Minister. I would be happy to oblige any email request for digital copies. Lacking the resources to do so myself, I respectfully request that copies of it be provided to Parliamentary advisers, Council advisers, and fellow Councillors as appropriate. Synopses of my four previous submissions are attached as Annex B.
Revelations
I have yet to find a climate scientist in New Zealand who privately disagrees with Hansen’s position, nor a climate scientist who would agree with him on the public record. His scientific record is impeccable. Could it be his maverick personality? Or could it be the way public science is managed in New Zealand?
Reading Hansen’s most recent book[3] was a revelation to me that my own motivations for the (onerous) task of preparing and distributing five submissions to all 122 MPs and 74 Councils are very similar to his.
My first motivation is the realisation that someday my grandchildren[4] may ask me why I didn’t do more to stop climate change. I can answer them truthfully.
My second motivation is an abhorrence of “greenwashing”: i.e. political assurances that the Government takes climate change seriously and cares more about a sustainable future than business as usual. The evidence clearly indicates to me that the PM is a consummate greenwasher, perhaps unwittingly[5].
As an example, the National Party was elected in 2008 on a promise to halve New Zealand’s carbon emissions by 2050 (its “50-by-50” slogan). The subsequent reality has been completely different. Although total emissions may have temporarily declined[6], fossil fuel carbon emissions have continued to rise inexorably[7]. Post-election policy initiatives[8] further reveal the extent of the Government’s greenwashing. Inter alia, Hansen argues[9] that the biggest obstacle to solving climate change is “the role of big money in politics and business”. In a somewhat different context, I can attest to that[10].
My third motivation is a recent change in my own understanding of climate change as a retired upper atmospheric physicist. For this change, I am partly indebted to Hansen, described as “a scientist who is sick of silence and compromise … to the point at which he is willing to sacrifice his credibility to make a stand to avert disaster”.[11]
My initial encounter with the threat of climate change was as a Secretariat member of the New Zealand Commission For the Future[12]. In 1982, global warming was suggested as an alternative hypothesis to global cooling that would result from a termination of the Earth’s current temperate interglacial period[13].
The science of climate change has advanced progressively since then, more recently under the auspices of an International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and in particular its increasingly sophisticated computer simulations of the Earth’s climate. In my third submission[14] I have argued that IPCC should be heeded despite a concerted campaign of misinformation directed against it by a media beat-up and the usual vested interest groups: in Hansen’s words “the role of big money in politics and business”.
Recent science based on actual physical measurement of Earth’s heat imbalance provides real cause for concern. See also Fatih Birol, Lord Stern, and What science is actually about and is telling us (p3 below).
The Bishop of Stafford
The Right Rev Gordon Mursell, Bishop of Stafford, has argued[15] that those who refuse to face the truth about climate change are as guilty as Austrian child abuser Josef Fritzl by in effect “locking their children and grandchildren into a world with no future and throwing away the key.”
In a pastoral letter, the good Bishop observed that Fritzl represents the most extreme form of a common philosophy of life: to do what makes oneself happy and to be indifferent if that causes others to suffer.
His critics have responded that global warming is the responsibility of governments and its comparison with sustained sexual abuse is facile and demeaning to the victim. A tenable counter-argument is that Fritzl committed a crime against one child, whereas a government that refused to face the truth about climate change risks being implicated in a crime against future generations of children. Such a refusal presumably would meet agreed international criteria for crimes against humanity.
Fatih Birol
The truth about climate change according to Fatih Birol, chief ECONOMIST of the International Energy Agency (IEA), is that greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount in 2010 to the highest in history[16]. This shock rise shows that the most serious global recession for 80 years has had only a minimal effect on carbon emissions.
According to Fatih Birol[17], it also puts the Copenhagen goal of limiting global warming to +2°C “all but out of reach. The prospect is getting bleaker. That is what the numbers say." The +2°C is a negotiated but unsafe[18] threshold for potentially dangerous climate change.
Lord Stern
Professor Lord Stern of the London School of Economics, author of the influential Stern Report into the ECONOMICS of climate change for the UK Treasury in 2006, also warns of dire consequences. The IEA data shows that carbon emissions are now close to being back on a business-as-usual path, which according to IPCC projections implies a 50% chance of global warming in excess of +4°C by 2100.
According to Lord Stern, "Such warming would disrupt the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people across the planet, leading to widespread mass migration and conflict. That is a risk any sane person would seek to drastically reduce."
An inference from Lord Stern and the good Bishop’s analyses is that those governments that signed up to the Copenhagen agreement on limiting global warming are either insane and/or risk being implicated in crimes against humanity by their lack of effective action[19].
What science is actually about and is telling us
Citizens and especially political decision-makers need to understand the scientific process. There is always some uncertainty about scientific conclusions: science never absolutely proves anything. For a threat as potentially catastrophic as anthropogenic climate change, inaction is not a rational response yet has been the political response since the Copenhagen conference debacle[20].
The scientific process involves proposing falsifiable hypotheses suggested by an understanding of scientific theory. These hypotheses are tested by observations of the natural world, by laboratory experiments, and by mathematical and computer modelling.
Like all other humans, scientists make mistakes but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. The process is inherently adversarial - scientists build their reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That's what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did.
Scientists by their training are natural sceptics, very much more so than so-called climate change “sceptics”. When hypotheses have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of "well-established theories" and are often spoken of as "facts."
Climate change now falls into this category: there is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten human civilisation and the ecosystems on which humanity depends.
The fundamental conclusions about climate change according to an open letter in defence of climate research[21] from 255 members and 11 Nobel laureates of the US National Academy of Sciences are that:
- the Earth is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in its atmosphere;
- most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation;
- natural causes always play a role in changing Earth's climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes;
- warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise, more acidic oceans, and alterations in the hydrologic cycle;
- the combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.
The full text of the open letter is reproduced as Annex C. Its conclusions should be enough to indicate why scientists are concerned about what future generations will face from business-as-usual practices, and why (like Hansen) they are urging policymakers and the public to immediately address the causes of climate change including the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels.
Physics or flawed economics?
As indicated in my second paragraph, I attended a ‘Future of Coal’ seminar at Victoria University of Wellington on 17 May as a retired upper atmospheric physicist with concerns about climate change and for my six grandchildren.
In his keynote address, climatologist Dr James Hansen showed that human civilisation faces catastrophic consequences of climate change unless atmospheric CO2 content is allowed to decrease from its current 390 parts per million (ppm) to 350ppm. Its current annual rate of increase is 2ppm. In pre-industrial times, atmospheric CO2 was 270ppm. The increase of 30% since then has been caused unequivocally by human activity, principally fossil fuel use: i.e. gas, oil, and increasingly coal subsequent to peak oil[22].
Hansen’s diagnosis for the Earth’s future climate is based on his analyses of the paleoclimate records and of direct instrumental measurements of Earth’s heat imbalance. His analyses are pure PHYSICS. Human civilisation is not exempted from the laws of PHYSICS.
Paleoclimate records reveal large fluctuations over time scales of millennia in global temperature, sea level, and CO2 attributable to weak natural climate forcing by changes in solar output and Earth’s orbital parameters. Climate forcing by human-induced carbon emissions is ten thousand times stronger than natural forcing, and is predicted to cause comparable fluctuations over time scales of decades or centuries rather than millennia with catastrophic consequences for human civilisation.
Recent direct physical measurements of Earth’s heat imbalance (deep ocean temperatures by ‘yo-yo’ buoys; polar ice mass losses by gravity satellites) show that the predicted consequences of human climate forcing have already begun.
Hansen has shown in a landmark paper that a hard (i.e. non-negotiable) constraint for achieving 350ppm is that coal use must substantially end within three decades. What followed Hansen’s robust PHYSICS at the coal seminar was flawed ECONOMICS: cost-benefit analyses of lignite mining, cap-and-trade, carbon tax, ETS, free credits and similar rorts – all on the presumption of 450ppm CO2 (Hansen’s prescription for disaster). A major protagonist was Dr Don Elder, CEO of Solid Energy.
If PHYSICS shows that coal use must end to avert human catastrophe, then the economics of coal extraction surely becomes utterly irrelevant, particularly since it was flawed ECONOMICS that caused the global financial crisis, failed to predict it[23], cannot agree on effective remedies for it, and grounded the flying PIGS.
Brash physics
Although the new ACT leader Dr Don Brash may have a quasi-religious view of the efficacy of the free market mechanism according to a recent interview[24], he is a non-believer in one spectacular instance of free market failure - human-induced climate change.
In his interview, Dr Brash reported he “has a very close friend who is one of Australia’s top physicists and he thinks the whole thing is a con.” On this evidence, Dr Brash prefers to be a sceptic. Arguably he should consult more widely; for example on what the thousands of scientists represented by IPCC’s assessments think.
Such depth of analysis by one so potentially influential is disturbing. I would respectfully recommend some remedial reading: in particular What science is actually about and is telling us (p3 above).
What happens if coal use doesn’t substantially end within three decades?
Hansen is internationally recognised as an authority on planetary atmospheres including the Earth’s. He has been making accurate predictions about climate change since the 1970s and has consistently outperformed IPCC[25]. He is the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).
Hansen’s conclusions must therefore be taken very seriously. They may be summarised thus:
- Earth’s climate is very sensitive to forcing factors that affect its energy balance and temperature;
- slow feedback processes[26] determine the magnitude of climate changes;
- natural forcing[27] is sufficient to initiate and end ice ages over time scales of millennia;
- CO2 level and mean global temperature are interrelated: CO2 changes drive temperature changes and vice versa[28];
- slow feedback causes significant delays in the response to changing CO2 level or temperature[29];
- changing CO2 levels have been the main cause of climate change over the last 65 million years;
- anthropogenic forcing caused by a 30% increase in atmospheric CO2 (389ppm[30] in 2010) above pre-industrial levels (270ppm in 1750) now overwhelms natural forcing by a factor of 10,000;
- the stability of Earth’s climate and sea levels over the past 7,000 years is most unusual[31];
- in a landmark paper published in October 2008[32], Hansen concluded that CO2 levels must be reduced from 389ppm in 2010 to 350ppm, necessary to preserve Earth’s current beneficent Holocene climate in which human civilisation has developed and to which life is adapted;
- this target must be achieved within a time scale of decades[33];
- his remarkable landmark paper, probably uniquely, has inspired a global environmental movement[34];
- his most recent analysis of direct physical measurements of Earth’s heat imbalance[35] shows that the predicted consequences of human climate forcing have already begun.
Hansen’s insights extend to a planetary perspective. Earth is located between Mars and Venus. Atmospheric greenhouse gases currently increase Earth’s mean surface temperature from -18ºC to +15ºC[36]. Frozen Mars (-50ºC) has negligible greenhouse gases in its thin atmosphere; hot Venus (+450ºC) has a thick CO2 atmosphere. About 600 million years ago, weak natural forcing was sufficient to turn Earth briefly into a Mars-like planet[37].
Hansen concludes that strong anthropogenic forcing - continuing to burn remaining oil, gas, and coal -would result in an ice-free planet, sea level rise of tens of metres, and release huge quantities of methane[38], potentially initiating catastrophic runaway global warming. He further concludes[39] that a global phase-out of fossil fuel CO2 emissions is a “stringent requirement” for reducing CO2 levels to 350ppm. Zero CO2 emissions are not required immediately[40]: about 44% of anthropogenic CO2 will continue to be removed from the atmosphere by natural processes[41] but these processes have highly adverse environmental impacts[42].
Hansen further concludes that the only practical way to achieve 350ppm is to “disallow the use of coal and unconventional fossil fuels” (low-grade lignite coal, tar sand, oil shale) unless the resulting CO2 from their combustion is sequestered[43]. Some additional reforestation and a complete halt to deforestation will also be required to achieve 350ppm over a time scale of decades[44].
Economic man, a crime against humanity or a simple case of “dig baby, dig?” [45]
Humanity now exists largely within an economic paradigm (i.e. in cash[46] economies) despite human economic and population growth being the greatest threat to life on Earth since the mass extinction event 65 million years that was caused by an asteroidal impact.
Growth obsessed politicians and economists claim ECONOMIC growth is the only way to lift the poor out of poverty, feed a growing population, and fund increasingly expensive lifestyles. This claim is disingenuous. Growing the global economy to fix a financial crisis caused by excessive greed and consumption is irrational. The trickle-down argument that economic growth eradicates poverty is self-serving and fallacious.
Whereas the under-developed world has unmet needs, the over-developed world has over-met wants. Through consumerism, the over-developed world substantially confuses needs with wants. Huge marketing sectors in the over-developed world economies exist purely to increase consumption.
Sustainable economic growth in a finite biosphere as promoted by politicians and economists is an oxymoron. The SCIENCE behind any finite (closed) system makes this conclusion self-evident. Regrettably it is a lost cause despite its robust supporting evidence[47] - and is not pursued further in this submission.
The only justification for lignite mining is its perceived ECONOMIC benefit. State-owned-enterprise coal miner Solid Energy Ltd has announce a decade of new multi billion-dollar projects that include:
- a multi billion-dollar lignite-to-fuel project converting water-laden lignite coal extracted in Southland and Otago into briquettes for sale;
- converting water-laden lignite through gasification into urea fertiliser for sale;
- converting water-laden lignite by gasification into diesel fuel for sale;
- coal seam gas production at Huntly for sale to industry and households;
- underground coal mining at Huntly to produce gas for thermal electricity generation for sale;
- extraction of coal from Pararoa National Park to sell to Fonterra’s milk processing plants.
Coal, particularly lignite, is a very dirty and inefficient source of fossil energy compared with cleaner fossil fuels such as natural gas and oil. The proposed expansion of lignite mining by Solid Energy Ltd is precisely what Earth’s current beneficent Holocene climate doesn't need. It is irrelevant where its derived products are consumed.
What are missing from the ECONOMIC argument for lignite mining are its negative externalities (costs). As concern grows about climate change[48], New Zealand’s tarnished[49] clean green reputation is the key to market access for New Zealand products[50]. In robust ECONOMIC terms, it is a positive externality; an asset no one pays for but from which all New Zealanders derive some benefit.
Indeed this reputation is worth more than New Zealand’s entire mineral wealth and underpins major sectors of the economy including farming, fishing, and tourism. The threat to undermine[51] it is real. Proposals to mine prime conservation land and lignite go to the heart of where New Zealand is heading, and why it is entirely the wrong way on a robust ECONOMIC argument.
What is it about NO that Solid Energy Ltd doesn’t understand? Is it N for the Next generation? Or is it O for Outrage that a state-owned enterprise is seeking non-notifiable consent to mine lignite motivated by flawed ECONOMICS while presumably aware of the dire consequences that Hansen’s PHYSICS predicts.
Either Solid Energy Ltd must explain why Hansen’s PHYSICS is wrong or risk being implicated in a crime against humanity, particularly since the ECONOMIC justification for mining lignite, which ignores large negative externalities, is deeply flawed.
Why New Zealand?
When Hansen was asked to give talks in New Zealand about climate change, his rationale for accepting was that "…there is a chance that small nations could play a key role by standing up and telling the truth about the (climate) situation." He believes the time is approaching when a developed nation will have to stand up and tell the truth. Reaching that point requires first, within that nation, a rational conversation.
At his public lecture in heartland lignite territory (Gore), Hansen was asked by a landowner’s daughter why she should have to give up the wealth that would accrue from lignite development given that New Zealand’s carbon emissions are globally insignificant and other countries’ carbon emissions, like New Zealand’s, continue to increase.
Hansen responded that, as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest form of energy, they will continue to be dug up and burned. But fossil fuels are cheapest only because they are subsidised, directly and indirectly, and do not pay their costs (externalities) to society. These include air and water pollution and all of the present and horrendous future costs of anthropogenic climate change.
Is it possible that New Zealand might be the developed country that Hansen was searching for in "Storms", i.e. “a country that could have a conversation and stand up to tell the truth: that fossil fuel addiction can only be cured via an honest rising price on carbon?”
Hansen has previously focused on Nordic countries as perhaps the best hope. He observes that, although both Norway and New Zealand generate their electricity by mostly renewable hydropower, the substantive issue for both countries is that their fossil fuel emissions are still increasing. He also observes that fossil fuel emissions arising from products sold internationally are attributed to the producer nation (commonly China), not the consuming nation (Solid Energy Ltd kindly note).
Hansen’s assessment conveyed in his open letter to the PM (copied at Annex A) is that New Zealand has impressive potential to carry out such a conversation. His perception is that “discussions are civil, politics is not dysfunctional, third parties can participate under MMP[52], most electricity is from renewable sources[53], and nuclear power is not needed for almost carbon-free electricity generation.”
Hansen has questioned whether “any nation will stand up and tell the truth about the climate situation and the need for urgent action.” His proposed solution is a rising price on carbon that is fair to all of society, that starts at a moderate level, and rises slowly enough over time to allow for lifestyle changes and the development of low-carbon innovations.
Under his proposed solution, most (low energy quality) lignite, coal requiring mountaintop removal, and oil from deep ocean floors would be left in the ground. The landowner’s daughter might miss out on a cash bonanza, but would inherit a habitable planet.
Hansen urges that public interest must lead the energy/climate conversation. He expects the result will not be a complex cap-and-trade-with-offsets approach, fluctuating energy prices, favours to special interest groups, and ineffectively small carbon reductions. More likely is a simple, transparent, gradually rising fee on carbon emissions collected from fossil fuel companies with proceeds distributed to the public[54].
Why not New Zealand? An opportunity for New Zealand and its Prime Minister to show leadership
There has been an undercurrent view among political commentators that the PM has done very little except smile[55] since National’s substantial election win 2 years ago. Consequently he is endorsed by 53% of voters in political opinion polls which may show the naivety of New Zealand voters.
There has also been an undercurrent view among political commentators that the PM has displayed a lack of political vision prior to the 2011 budget in which his keenly anticipated new policies were revealed. These included benefit cuts, public sector cuts, and selling state-owned assets. All three are arguably failed policies of last century.
A revealing observation at a recent Chamber of Commerce lunch that "it's important to make the PM feel important" has been attributed[56] to the PM’s deputy, Finance Minister Bill English. Mr Key has often said he is "ambitious for New Zealand" yet currently will leave no obvious legacy[57] as a Prime Minister except for re-introducing failed policies.
By contrast, former PM David Lange will be remembered for "nuclear free NZ" and by implication a perception that he helping to save the world from nuclear holocaust. The perception is by no means fatuous. Lange took the initiative at the height of the Cold War during a perilous nuclear confrontation between the superpowers. New Zealand’s nuclear free status, although undoubtedly difficult for many Americans to understand, is now firmly embedded in the New Zealand psyche. PM Lange can reasonably take the credit for this. Mr Key has shown the political acumen not to attempt to subvert it.
In many respects, a nuclear holocaust and a climate holocaust would be equally devastating for human civilisation although over different time scales. In his open letter to the PM, Hansen asserts that “the youth of New Zealand are asking (him) to consider their concerns and exercise (his) leadership on behalf of their future, indeed on behalf of humankind and nature.”
This request from the youth of New Zealand offers a unique opportunity for Mr Key to achieve international recognition for his country by making an historic contribution to resolving the current impasse over an effective response to climate change.
The historic contribution I envisage is that the Government either winds up Solid Energy Ltd or redirect its efforts into alternative renewable energies. Hansen has commented that its CEO Don Elder “left the clear impression that he could just as well move his company into alternative renewable energies if the Government provided that direction”, which is at least encouraging.
However, without a high carbon price or Government direction, lignite currently provides the best profit potential for Solid Energy Ltd’s business, especially with the Government subsidies available through New Zealand’s flawed ETS scheme.
Winding up or redirecting Solid Energy Ltd may be somewhat easier to achieve than Hansen envisages because such an intervention would offer a win-win opportunity for the Government:
- when its negative externalities are included, lignite mining does not make ECONOMIC sense;
- since PHYSICS shows that coal use must end to avert a human catastrophe then the flawed ECONOMICS of coal extraction are irrelevant as well as a compelling reason not to proceed.
Should Mr Key accepted his opportunity to show global leadership it would put him on a par with Australian PM Julia Gillard who is putting her political future on the line by pushing for a carbon tax against the usual well-funded interest groups of "quarry Australia".
Hansen warns that Gillard faces “all the fire-power that the fossil fuel interests can muster; orders of magnitude more than that of scientists, environmentalists, or public concerned about their children. Look for the same in New Zealand. Lord Monckton[58] may be on a plane already.” However Ms Gillard unlike Mr Key has the strong support of Australian Greens who argue[59] that the costs of the recent devastating floods across three states should be met by the "coal barons" rather than by Australian taxpayers.
I have argued previously in my fourth submission to all MPs and Councils for a counter-proposal to Solid Energy Ltd’s expansion plans: i.e. that the New Zealand Government should progressively wind up (or redirect) Solid Energy Ltd and phase out all coal mining in New Zealand (with fair compensation for those directly affected) as this country’s contribution to averting a climate catastrophe. New Zealand is better placed than almost all other countries to take this initiative.
A precedent has already been established by the ban on nuclear weapons introduced by a previous government. It was a significant albeit symbolic contribution to averting a nuclear catastrophe.
Summary conclusions
Phasing out all coal mining in New Zealand, especially of lignite coal, if implemented would:
- accrue positive benefits for the economy through the consequential large positive externalities;
- protect New Zealand’s environment including the conservation estate;
- restore New Zealand’s currently delusional clean green reputation;
- enhance New Zealand’s moral authority in an international response to climate change;
- offer an international leadership role for New Zealand (and its PM) by initiating urgently needed effective action against climate change;
- reinforce the PM’s frequent statement that he is “ambitious for New Zealand”;
- be consistent with the precautionary principle[60] customarily applied for economic risk management;
- offer hope to those citizens who have deep, legitimate concerns about climate change;
- be an historic contribution to reducing CO2 levels from 389ppm in 2010 to 350ppm by 2040;
- be an historic contribution to preserving Earth’s beneficent climate in which human civilisation has developed and to which life is adapted.
I respectfully request that you consider the analysis contained within submission 5: in particular
- any potential relevance for the conduct of your own duties and responsibilities;
- any ethical or legal implications of not taking all available opportunities for effective action against climate change that is consistent with both PHYSICS and robust[61] ECONOMICS.
[4675 words]
Annex A
An open letter to Prime Minister John Key from Professor James Hansen
30 May 2011
Dear Prime Minister Key
Encouraged by youth of New Zealand, especially members of the organization 350.org, I write this open letter to inform you of recent advances in understanding of climate change, consequences for young people and nature, and implications for government policies.
I recognize that New Zealanders, blessed with a land of rare beauty, are exemplary in their environmental awareness. Also New Zealand contributes relatively little to carbon emissions that drive climate change. Per capita fossil fuel emissions from New Zealand are just over 2 tons of carbon per year, while in my country fossil fuel carbon emissions are about 5 tons per person.
However, we are all on the same boat. New Zealand youth, future generations, and all species in your country will be affected by global climate change, as will people and species in all nations.
New Zealand's actions affecting climate change are important. Your leadership in helping the public understand the facts and the merits of actions to ameliorate climate change will be important, as will New Zealand's voice in support of effective international actions.
The fact is that we, the older generation, are on the verge of handing young people a dynamically changing climate out of their control, with major consequences for humanity and nature. A path to a healthy, natural, prosperous future is still possible, but not if business-as-usual continues.
The state of Earth's climate is summarized in the attached paper[62], whose authorship includes leading world scientists in relevant fields. The bottom line is that Earth is out of energy balance, more energy coming in than going out. Thus more climate change is "in the pipeline".
Failure to address emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of human-made climate change, will produce increased regional climate extremes, as seen in Australia during the past few years. But young people, quite appropriately, are concerned especially that continued emissions will drive the climate system past tipping points with irreversible consequences during their lifetimes.
Shifting of climate zones accompanying business-as-usual emissions are expected to commit at least 20 percent of the species on our planet to extermination – possibly 40 percent or more. Extermination of species would be irreversible, leaving a more desolate planet for young people.
Sea level rise is a second irreversible consequence of global warming. Some sea level rise is now inevitable, but with phase down of fossil fuel use it may be kept to a level measured in a few tens of centimeters. Business-as-usual is expected to cause sea level rise exceeding a meter this century and to set ice sheet disintegration in motion guaranteeing multi-meter sea level rise.
Prompt actions are needed to avoid these large effects. Phase-out of coal emissions by 2030 is the principal requirement. Also unconventional fossil fuels, such as tar sands, must be left in the ground. These conditions, plus improved agricultural practices and reforestation of lands that are not effective for food production, could stabilize climate.
Implications for New Zealand are clear.
First, New Zealand should leave the massive deposits of lignite coal in the ground, instead developing its natural bounty of renewable energies and energy efficiency. If, instead, development of such coal resources proceeds, New Zealand's portion of resulting species extermination estimated by biological experts would be well over 1000 species. Most New Zealanders, I suspect, would not want to make such 'contributions' to global change.
Second, New Zealand should lend its voice to the cause of moving the global community onto a path leading to a healthy, natural, prosperous future. That path requires a flat rising carbon fee collected from fossil fuel companies domestically, with the funds distributed uniformly to citizens, thus moving the world toward carbon-free energies of the future.
Prime Minister Key, the youth of New Zealand are asking you to consider their concerns and exercise your leadership on behalf of their future, indeed on behalf of humankind and nature.
With all best wishes,
James E. Hansen, Adjunct Professor
Columbia University Earth Institute
Annex B
Abstracts of my four related previous submissions to all 122 MPs and 74 Councils
My first submission to all MPs and Councils (1786 words, 6 March 2009) argues that a steady-state economy rather than an exponentially growing economy is necessary to avert a catastrophic biosphere collapse and human cull[63] this century. It outlines the Limits to Growth[64], first identified and analysed in 1972 and validated more recently by Australia’s CSIRO in 2008[65].
My second submission to all MPs and Councils (4891 words, 28 September 2009) expands on my first, noting that anatomically modern humans have existed for just 0.0035% of the age of the Earth yet are driving a mass extinction event; only the sixth since the emergence of biodiversity about 600 million years ago. It reiterates that unfettered consumerism is unsustainable in a finite biosphere[66], unfettered growth is predicted to lead to catastrophic collapse sometime mid-century, and that political action guided by the precautionary principle[67] is essential to avert the disastrous consequences of unfettered growth. These consequences include economic and population collapses and runaway global warming.
My third submission to all MPs and Councils (5149 words, 15 February 2010) argues that the Fourth IPCC Assessment Report (2007) should be accepted by policy makers as the most authoritative scientific consensus statement on anthropogenic climate change available to decision-makers despite the current media (and sceptics’) beat-up over relatively inconsequential errors[68] contained within it. However my third submission further argues that IPCC Assessment Reports have consistently underestimated the impacts of anthropogenic climate change in terms of both magnitude and time scale and thereby may be offering false assurance on the gravity of the situation.
My fourth submission to all MPs and Councils (4157 words, 31 March 2010) develops an affordable strategy that preserves Earth’s current beneficent Holocene climate, saves human civilisation from extinction, offers positive net economic benefits, and restores New Zealand’s delusional clean green reputation. It does so through a comparison of three contrasting responses to anthropogenic climate change. See also Summary conclusions at the bottom of p10 for further detail.
Annex C:
The full text of an open letter on climate change and the integrity of science
We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet.
Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modelling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial - scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That's what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of "well-established theories" and are often spoken of as "facts."
For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5bn years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14bn years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today's organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution). Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong. Climate change now falls into this category: there is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.
Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific assessments of climate change, which involve thousands of scientists producing massive and comprehensive reports, have, quite expectedly and normally, made some mistakes. When errors are pointed out, they are corrected.
But there is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change:
- The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.
- Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
- Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth's climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.
- Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.
- The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.
Much more can be, and has been, said by the world's scientific societies, national academies, and individuals, but these conclusions should be enough to indicate why scientists are concerned about what future generations will face from business-as-usual practices. We urge our policymakers and the public to move forward immediately to address the causes of climate change, including the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels.
We also call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them. Society has two choices: we can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively. The good news is that smart and effective actions are possible. But delay must not be an option.
[ENDS]
The open letter, originally published in the US journal Science, was signed by 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences including 11 Nobel laureates. It was also published in The Guardian of 6 May 2010 and elsewhere.
[1] After graduating PhD in Physics (VUW, 1968), I have worked as: a physicist (PEL / DSIR), futurist (CFF), tertiary teacher (VUW, CIT), disaster manager (MoCD), chief adviser (MoE), and education consultant (ADB, ILO, OECD, World Bank, UNESCO); was the first scientist to warn the NZ public (1974) about ozone depletion; and as a “retired” physicist have become an activist motivated by concern about climate change and for my grandchildren.
[2] “Plea for New Zealand to make a stand over climate change”. DomPost, 4 June 2011, pA11.
[3] Hansen (2009). Storms of My Grandchildren: the truth about the coming climate catastrophe and our last chance to save humanity. Bloomsbury, New York, 303pp. Published in December 2009. (ISBN 978-1-60819-200-7.)
[4] I am ahead of Hansen only on this criteria: I have six, he has two.
[5] Yeah right!
[6] Total emissions are reducing by claimed forest regrowth. Stored carbon will be released as forests are harvested.
[7] Driven mainly by increasing vehicle traffic on an expanding motorway network etc.
[8] Some examples include: repeal of the moratorium on new fossil fuel electricity generation; an aggressive expansion of the motorway networks; implementation of an ETS that subsidises big emitters (including lignite mining) and rorts taxpayers; explicit encouragement of mining within national parks, deep offshore oil prospecting, and a massive expansion of lignite mining; proposed RMA reforms intended to expedite urban “development” etc.
[9] Hansen (2009). See also footnote 3.
[10] In 1974, I warned the public (through TVNZ) that CFCs were destroying the ozone layer. A US manufacturer sued me for US$3m unless I retracted. I did not. The subsequent Montreal protocol banned CFC production.
[11] From a book review of Hansen (2009) by Susan Salter Reynolds in the Los Angeles Times (27 Dec 2009).
[12] Future Contingencies 1. Natural Disaster. G F Preddey, Commission For the Future, 1981. ISBN-0-477-06222
[13] The current Pliocene-Quaternary ice age began about 2.58 million years ago. The earth is currently in an interglacial period that began 10,000 years ago that is characterised by vestigial Greenland, and Antarctic ice sheets.
[14] Submission 3: Anthropogenic climate change: should IPCC be believed? (real action is needed now to avert future climate catastrophe). G F Preddey, 15 Feb 2010. See also Annex B.
[15] Reported in The Times of 2 June 2008.
[16] In 2010 a record 30.6Gt of carbon dioxide entered the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuel, an increase of 1.6Gt on 2009 according to IEA estimates that are recognised as the “gold standard” for emissions data.
[17] Reported in The Guardian of 29 May 2011.
[18] The compromise agreement at Copenhagen for +2ºC = 450ppm CO2 inevitably will make Earth as warm as it was during the Pliocene 3 million years ago when sea levels were 25m above present. In my view, scientists were wrong to compromise with economists and politicians in order to achieve a consensus. PHYSICS does not compromise.
[19] Under NZ law, it is a crime to deprive a child of the necessities of life. Do these include a stable climate?
[20] Those few responses arising from the Copenhagen conference debacle – e.g. the working group convened by New Zealand on agricultural emissions - are orders of magnitude weaker than any effective response to climate change.
[21] Published in the US journal Science, The Guardian of 6 May 2010, and elsewhere.
[22] The International Energy Agency (IEA) is on record that the production of conventional crude oil peaked in 2006 according to The New York Times (14 Nov 2010).
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[23] As HM the Queen has acerbically pointed out. Perhaps she could be retained as an adviser to the Treasury?
[24] As reported in The Listener of 21 May 2011, p26.
[25] This is not a criticism of IPCC. IPCC is saddled with the onerous requirement to find consensus among thousands of participating scientists. Its internal processes are rigorous (except for rare but inconsequential lapses) but also slow. IPCC’s next assessment report isn’t due until 2014. In the meanwhile the climate will change inexorably.
[26] Slow feedback processes include the melting of methane clathrates and frozen tundra (releasing methane and CO2) and melting summer sea ice in the Arctic (reducing the reflection of sunlight back into space).
[27] Natural forcing is associated with cyclical changes in the Earth’s orbital and spin axis geometry (Milankovich cycles), small variations in solar output including an 11-year sunspot cycle, and perhaps variations in cosmic ray intensity that affect cloudiness.
[28] A common argument used by sceptics is that, since historical temperature increases often precede CO2 increases, anthropogenic carbon emissions therefore cannot be causing climate change. It is entirely fallacious.
[29] Mean global temperature in 2010 reflects CO2 levels of several decades ago; CO2 level in 2010 will determine mean temperatures a few decades into the future. The Earth will continue to warm for decades (+1ºC) even if CO2 emissions are cut immediately.
[30] ppm = parts per million.
[31] Earth has been warm enough to prevent an icecap forming in Canada but cold enough to keep the Greenland and Antarctic icecaps stable over this period. Disconcertingly, when former icecaps began to collapse at the end of the last ice age 14,000 years ago, sea levels increased at a rate of 1m every 25 years over several centuries.
[32] Hansen (2008). Open Atmos. Sci. J. (2008), vol. 2, pp. 217-231. Hansen’s full paper can be downloaded as an open-source PDF file from http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Hansen_etal.pdf
[33] Hansen suggests a 30-year time-scale (i.e. by 2040) would be prudent to preserve Earth’s current beneficent Holocene climate.
[34] Hansen (2008) inspired the “350.org” global environmental movement that, in less than 2 years, has extended to 200 countries including New Zealand (the “Sign-On” campaign). Without this paper, the campaign would have been named 450.org (where the Copenhagen “agreement” for +2ºC = 450ppm found some common albeit compromised ground. See also footnote 18)
[35] Hansen et al, 2011. This paper is available as a PDF file through Hansen’s website: www.columbia.edu/~jeh1
[36] Earth experiences natural global warming of +33ºC by atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases, essential for life to survive.
[37] Earth’s then primitive lifeforms (single-celled organisms) survived this ‘snowball Earth’ event, indeed benefited from it by evolving into the multiple-celled organisms that characterise Earth’s current biodiversity.
[38] Principally from ocean clathrates and melting permafrost in the Arctic.
[39] See also Hansen (2008) at footnote 32 and Hansen (2009) at footnote 3.
[40] Hansen, 2010. Pers. comm.
[41] C D Keeling and T P Whorp (in Trends: A Compendium on Global Change; CO2 Information Analysis Centre, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US Department of Energy) have shown that about 44% of fossil fuel emissions continue to be removed by natural processes include absorption by the oceans, weathering of rocks, and enhanced photosynthesis due to elevated CO2 levels.
[42] For example, the absorption of CO2 by the oceans increases their acidity. This has adverse impacts on: coral reefs (bleaching, loss of biodiversity); shellfish; and krill (base of the food chain that cetaceans (whales, dolphins) depend upon). An acidic ocean largely devoid of life is a bleak possibility. Whales are at greater risk from increasing CO2 emissions than from Japanese “scientific” whalers.
[43] CO2 sequestration (capture and storage of CO2 emissions over geological time scales) on the scale required is at present technologically unfeasible and may reasonably be considered a variant of “greenwash”.
[44] Hansen suggests all coal use should be phased out over 30 years, i.e. by 2040 to preserve Earth’s current Holocene climate.
[45] Citing Sarah Palin’s enthusiasm for inappropriate oil exploration, expressed as “drill baby, drill!”
[46] Perhaps that should be “credit”?
[47] See also footnote 64 and footnote 65 for further detail.
[48] Expressed concerns also include the global collapse of fisheries.
[49] It has been recently redefined as “clean, green, and delusional” by some commentators, with some justification.
[50] Surveys conducted in New Zealand’s emerging middle class markets in Asia show potential consumers are increasingly interested in ethical shopping.
[51] No pun intended.
[52] He noted with evident approval that the minority New Zealand Green Party, by receiving more than 5 percent of the vote, has a proportionate number of seats in Parliament.
[53] About 70 percent hydropower.
[54] See also Jim DiPeso’s summary at http://www.rep.org/opinions/weblog/weblog10-10-11.html
[55] It is consistent that Hansen’s open letter to the PM was acknowledged (smile) without response (do nothing).
[56] The DomPost, 1 June 2011, pA2
[57] Other than his absolutely stunning political opinion poll achievements.
[58] Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is a vocal, right wing Euro- `and climate sceptic.
[59] According to the Australian Greens co-leader Bob Brown.
[60] See also footnote 67 for details.
[61] i.e. including all positive and negative externalities (see also Economic man, a crime against humanity etc at p7).
[62] Hansen et al, 2011. It can be downloaded as a PDF file from Hansen’s website: www.columbia.edu/~jeh1
[63] Astronomer Royal Martin Lord Rees in his 2004 book Our Final Century gives human civilisation a 50/50 chance of surviving the 21st century. James Lovelock, the architect of Gaia, has predicted a 90% cull of humans around mid-century. Lovelock argues it is wrong to assume humanity will survive +2°C warming since there are already too many people on Earth. At +4°C, humanity could not survive even with one-tenth of the current population. Lovelock predicts a 90% cull this century through famine, noting it has happened before during ice ages when human populations collapsed to a few thousand individuals (New Scientist, 23 January 2009).
[64] The limits to growth published by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Meadows et al, 1972) describes three computer simulations of a future Earth. Predicted consequences of its business-as-usual scenario are sudden, uncontrollable (50%) collapses of human population and industrial capacity sometime mid-century if current economic and population growth continues.
[65] CSIRO researchers in 2008 (Graham Turner et al, CSIRO working paper ISSN 1834-3638) showed that predictions of The limits to growth business-as-usual scenario (Meadows et al, 1972) accurately track the more recent observational data available from 1972 to 2008, which is due cause for concern.
[66] HRH the Prince of Wales has long called on people and politicians to rethink their attitudes to the planet, economic growth, and consumption. In a private response to my second submission, HRH made the prescient observation that humans “must now always put the environment before the economy and not the other way round as we always have done.”
[67] Sir Nicholas Stern in his highly regarded report to the UK government on the economics of climate change argues that the precautionary principle customarily applied for potentially high impact but low probability events should also be applied for climate change. The costs of an inadequate response if scientific concerns prove to be valid will massively outweigh the costs of over-responding if scientific concerns prove to be overstated. On an orthodox economic risk management analysis, over-responding to the risk of climate change is prudent. Only cranks, vested interest groups, and the uninformed would argue that the risk of anthropogenic climate change is very low.
[68] These include the so-called “climate-gate” leaked emails and inadequate citations for melting rate of the Tibetan icecap, disappearance of the Amazon rainforest, and observational evidence for more frequent extreme weather events.
