A personal view of Australian and International Politics
Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
Beachgoers enjoy welcoming Bruce down to Nanarup Beach in the Great Southern. (ABC Great Southern: Kate Forrester)
In short:
Bruce the Brahman bull is a much-loved family pet from Albany, in Western Australia's Great Southern region.
Owner
Tom Kennedy is on a mission to educate the community about the Brahman
breed, highlighting its strengths and misconceptions.
What's next?
Bruce the Brahman is set to star in an upcoming book, which will tell the story of his daily life and rising local fame.
A bull casually strolling along Albany's pristine coastline is not an expected sight for many beachgoers.
But at Nanarup Beach, 435 kilometres south of Perth, it is just another day in the life of local legend Bruce the Brahman.
The
1,100-kilogram bull has called Albany home since 2018, rescued and
rehomed by former Kalgan Rodeo organiser Tom Kennedy, who said Bruce
would have faced an uncertain fate without him.
The turf meets the surf: Bruce the Brahman's a beach babe
"I wanted a little fella that kids could actually meet … a real bull," Mr Kennedy said.
"He had no purpose at his old stud and was about to be sent to the abattoir, so I decided to take him in.
"It was all about showing people just how inquisitive and intelligent the Brahman breed really is."
A pet for the whole town
Almost a decade after the Kennedy family took him in as a pet, Bruce the bull has become a local celebrity in Albany.
He is often spotted riding in the back of Mr Kennedy’s truck, visiting various spots around the Great Southern town.
Tom Kennedy carefully loads Bruce onto his trailer, gearing up for a fun-filled day at the beach. (ABC Great Southern: Kate Forrester)
"He
visits the bowling alley in town, I've taken him with me as I've been
horse-riding through the bush, he's gone to the Boddington rodeo — all
over the place," Mr Kennedy said.
"You simply just ask him, 'Do you want to go for a ride on the truck?', and he will just wander up to it and get on."
"People are often mesmerised by the animal — a lot ask, 'What's its hump for?'" he said.
"They're
bred to resist ticks and require less food and water, so they can
thrive in warmer climates, like in northern Australia."
Brahmans
are a common cattle breed in Queensland, north-eastern Western
Australia, the Northern Territory, and the north coast of New South
Wales. (ABC Rural: Lara Webster)
An online star
In
recent years, Bruce, who is also affectionately known as "Brucey", has
become something of a social media influencer, attracting visitors from
beyond Albany for a meet and greet.
Amanda Thomson said she had followed Bruce's adventures from the beginning.
"I grew up on a farm in Many Peaks, near Albany, with cows and bulls — and you wouldn't go anywhere near them," Ms Thomson said.
Amanda Thomson says she has dreamed of meeting Bruce the Brahman, having followed his adventures on social media. (ABC Great Southern: Kate Forrester)
"At first, I was dubious to approach Brucey, but then you just fall in love with him."
Mr Kennedy said that taking Bruce to different places was about much more than just meeting a bull.
"People
right now need something simple and real to smile at, I think, and
Bruce just has the ability to make people happy and laugh,"
he said.
Beachgoers are taken aback when they spot a bull walking along the shoreline. (ABC Great Southern: Kate Forrester)
The celebrity bull has even landed his own book deal.
"An author from over east saw a video of Bruce chasing jetskis and contacted me about writing a story on him," Mr Kennedy said.
"She came over to meet him — so I guess that is the next chapter for Brucey!"
Social cohesion is fragile, Labor minister Anne Aly warns.
Amid
growing concern about extremism in Australia — and with two men being
charged with terrorism offences in WA — Multicultural Affairs Minister
Anne Aly has a simple message: do not abandon people on the edge of
radicalisation.
Dr Aly is
uniquely placed to address one of the biggest challenges facing the
country — prior to entering politics she built a career as one of the
world's top radicalisation researchers.
In 2015, she was invited by then-US president Barrack Obama to speak at a White House summit on countering violent extremism.
Anne Aly says social factors can drive people towards extreme ideologies. (AAP: Mick Tsikas)
The
world has changed significantly since then, but Dr Aly says the
pathways of radicalisation and the ways to help those caught up in its
whirlpool remain fundamentally the same.
"The first thing is to not abandon them," Dr Aly told the ABC.
"Often
the pathway down radicalisation, it's a very emotive pathway. It is not
done by a logical kind of choice to go down that pathway.
"It
is usually driven by other things in that individual's life that makes
them look for or seek out a way of bringing meaning into their life."
In
addition to reaching out for help from professionals, Dr Aly said it
was important to help people reconnect with their community by getting
them involved in hobbies or activities they may have pulled away from.
"Nobody
ever changed their mind or left a violent extremist organisation
because somebody presented them with a fact sheet," she said.
"So don't think that this is all about facts and figures — it is highly, highly emotive and it is about emotion."
Anne Aly says those at risk of radicalisation need support. (ABC News: Simon Beardsell)
Improving social cohesion
Often
those emotions are rooted in concerns about fundamental elements of
life and whether people feel they are being provided for in areas such
as health, housing and education.
"Western
Australia is the strongest economy in the nation, we are a great place
to live, enjoying [an] extraordinary lifestyle," WA Premier Roger Cook
told the ABC.
"But not everyone is doing as well as everyone else.
"For
a lot of people, things just don't seem as affordable as it used to be,
and they become then susceptible to political leaders who see an
opportunity, an opportunity to pit one sector of the community against
another."
Dr Aly agreed.
"It is issues of opportunity, economic opportunity … opportunity to thrive, that underpin social cohesion," she said.
"When
people feel insecure, whether that's in their work life, in economic
life, where they are feeling cost of living pressures, then you see an
uptick in incidences of racism.
"The
way to deal with that is to do things at the government level, to make
policy decisions, make legislative decisions, make economic decisions,
that deliver for people."
Dr
Aly could rattle off a long list of efforts by the government to address
those issues, but she acknowledged meaningful change would not come
quickly.
Mr Cook said his government was trying to pass laws against "people who want to spread hatred".
But Mr Cook acknowledged the limits of that approach.
Roger Cook spoke to the ABC after two people were charged with terror offences in WA.
"We
can encourage, we can legislate, we can fund programs which lead
community conversations towards good places rather than bad places," he
said.
"But at the end of the day, we need everyone in the community to be on board."
One
way of encouraging that, Dr Aly said, was reinvigorating community
institutions, such as football clubs and community groups, to bring
people from different walks of life together.
"Once
you find a commonality with somebody … it's much easier then when you
have a disagreement to remember that there's something that you still
share," she said.
Optimism for the future
Despite the myriad causes for concern, Dr Aly remained optimistic those challenges could be overcome.
"We've
seen fractures in our social cohesion, in our unity as Australians and,
overwhelmingly, Australia has always risen to that challenge," she
said.
While
describing social cohesion as "fragile", the Member for Cowan — one of
Western Australia's most diverse electorates — maintained it was not out
of reach.
"You have to work hard at it," Dr Aly said.
"You can't be complacent about it — much like a marriage, I guess.
"We
can't take for granted the fact that we live in this beautifully
diverse country, where people from all over the world come together."
Ranger Stacey brought her love of nature into Australia's lounge rooms for 30 years. (Supplied)
Nineties
kids didn't dawdle on the way home from school in the afternoon. This
was the age of appointment television, and that appointment was with
Totally Wild.
From 1992 it was
beloved afternoon viewing for almost 30 years, hosted with a massive
smile (and a decent fringe) by Stacey Thomson, better known as Ranger
Stacey.
In the process, she sparked a love of nature for generations of children.
One of those kids was Jacqueline King. She is now assistant behavioural biologist at the Taronga Conservation Society Australia.
Taronga Zoo's Jacqueline King says watching Ranger Stacey on Totally Wild inspired her. (Supplied: Taronga Zoo)
"I
can picture five-year-old me, sitting on the rug watching Ranger Stacey
after school, just hoping that I could do that one day," Ms King says.
"Now,
grown-up me gets to be out in nature, learning from and with critters
and inspiring people, and then helping to share that knowledge with the
world."
But Stacey Thomson's
path to Australian television icon was an unconventional one, involving
prisoners and a supercilious puppet.
Where it all began
Stacey grew up in suburban Brisbane in the 1960s and '70s.
Stacey Thomson was often camping and swimming with her family growing up in Queensland. (Supplied)
Her
family ran a local cinema and spent a lot of time outdoors, including
embarking upon month-long trips to uninhabited Northwest Island in the
southern Great Barrier Reef.
"We'd
have to take all of our water, all of our supplies, that was hardcore
camping and big adventures," she tells Ann Jones on ABC Radio National's
What the Duck?!
"All
the grown-ups would go scuba diving, and the kids would just run wild …
at that time of the year, the turtles are laying, also there's a
crossover with the hatchlings.
"I think that might've been a little spark in my mind about what I wanted to do in the future."
But it was a friend's dad who first suggested she become a park ranger.
"I
told him, 'I wanna work outdoors and I love animals and I like the
environment,' and he told me about a course at Queensland Agricultural
College.
"Mum and dad took me to the open day and pretty much the rest is history: I was sold."
Becoming a park ranger
Graduating
in 1983, Stacey's first job with Queensland National Parks and Wildlife
Service was at Main Range National Park, south-west of Brisbane.
"There was Mount Cordeaux, Mount Mitchell, Queen Mary Falls and all of the wilderness in between, it was beautiful."
Ranger Stacey's totally wild life on and off TV.
While
much of the work, such as maintaining fire breaks and public toilets,
was physically challenging, she really enjoyed connecting with visitors.
"The cleaning of the toilets wasn't really my favourite job, surprise!
"But I did tend to ... volunteer if there was an opportunity to talk to the visitors."
"[I'd] take them along the tracks and show them the greater gliders and the possums and the owls at night."
An island of prisoners
As
a 21-year-old, Stacey's next job was in the middle of Moreton Bay at St
Helena Island, a former prison site and Queensland's first historic
national park.
With heightened
media and tourism attention on the island in the 1980s, prisoners from
Boggo Road Gaol were sent to assist with its maintenance.
Stacey (second from right) with other rangers on St Helena Island. (Supplied)
Stacey was tasked with ferrying the prisoners to and from the island each day.
"The
prisoners would be driven down in the prison van, the warder would walk
out to the end of the jetty, I'd take over from there.
"They'd
all jump into the boat and I'd drive them across to the island, they'd
work for the day, and then I'd bring them back in the afternoon and
they'd go back to prison for the night."
After two-and-a-half years of island life she was ready for a change.
"I was going a little bit stir-crazy."
The start of a television career
Comfortable talking to tourists and TV cameras alike, Stacey was often put forward for media interviews.
Her bosses recognised her talent and transferred her to a desk job as an education officer at the Department of Environment.
Then she became a regular guest on the children's show Wombat on Channel 7.
"What's
a better way of educating the masses than going on … a really popular
afternoon show that reaches hundreds of thousands of kids across
Australia?"
That's where Ranger Stacey first worked with the larrikin puppet and TV personality Agro.
Ranger Stacey and the cast of Agro's Cartoon Connection. (Supplied)
When
Wombat finished in 1990, Agro's Cartoon Connection began with Ranger
Stacey bringing animals and environmental education, and her trademark
smile, to morning TV.
Every
Saturday they'd record a week's worth of shows in front of a live studio
audience, made up of families and buses full of scout groups.
And if something didn't go to plan, it was TV gold.
"If I got pooed on or weed on while the camera was rolling, we wouldn't stop.
"Agro would make sure that we wouldn't stop, you just have to deal with it and clean it up in front of everyone.
"It
was amazing because then I could start talking about scats, or animal
poo and talk about, 'OK, so this possum has a little pellet and it's
different to a wombat scat'."
"You just had to think on your feet a lot."
A Totally Wild turn
In
1992, Network Ten executive producer Cherrie Bottger began developing a
nature and environment program featuring Ranger Stacey and her
colleague Ranger Tim.
Totally Wild's Ranger Stacey and Ranger Tim signing autographs. (Supplied)
Mrs Bottger had previously worked with the pair at Channel Seven, and she had some inspiration close to home.
"I had a four-year-old at the time who adored Ranger Stacey," she says.
"I
started researching and tossing ideas around with her and her friends …
their little minds were so curious about the world and its animals and
environment."
The program was initially broadcast weekly, but it expanded to three days and then five as its popularity grew.
Still employed by the department as a ranger, Stacey worked across Seven, Nine and Ten for several years.
Totally Wild was filmed mostly on location away from the TV studio. (Supplied)
Totally Wild ran for three decades and inspired generations of Australians to care about the natural world around them.
"I
remember back in the early days going out to Epping Forest National
Park … there were only 70 northern hairy-nosed wombats … left in the
whole world," Stacey recalls.
"We
went back a number of times over the 29 years of Totally Wild … and
although it's still endangered, it's certainly not as critically
endangered as it was back in 1992."
Mrs Bottger credits the dedicated camera crew with creating something special.
"It still gives me goosebumps when I think of the vision we were able to expose our young audience to," she says.
"Like
a tiny joey, no bigger than a jellybean, climbing its way into its
mother's pouch; the praying mantis laying her cobalt blue eggs; the
underwater vision of coral spawning; the repelling down a cliff face
into a Jurassic World of tropical rainforest.
"I
reflect on more than 4,500 stories we presented to our young audience
who today have families of their own, and I bet you, there is one name
they all remember from their past: Ranger Stacey."
The end of a wild ride
By
2021, streaming services had changed television programming. Totally
Wild had already moved time slot and channel several times, when Stacey
was called into a meeting in the boardroom … with HR on the phone.
She was told the show was cancelled and that the full staff and crew would be told the next morning.
"I
probably had tears in my eyes, but I just pretty much grabbed my bag
and I just left for the rest of the day because I couldn't be sitting
there for the whole afternoon."
It was a sad time, but when the announcement was made public, thankfully the right opportunity came calling.
Stacey continues to teach kids about native wildlife. (Supplied)
Today,
Stacey is an education officer at Redland City Council continuing to
inspire the next generation to take care of the environment.
"Throughout
my whole career, and it's something we used to say on Totally Wild: 'if
we all do a little bit, it all makes a bigger impact'."
Her
positive messages are still reaching little ears, through Stacey and
through the thousands she's educated along the way, like Ms King.
"I
was lucky that being outside in the bush was part of the everyday, and
Ranger Stacey certainly helped to give that meaning and bring it to life
for me," Ms King says.
"Now, I work across science and education — I'm all about how people and the planet connect and relate."
Stacey Thomson still loves the outdoors and educating the public about the environment. (Supplied)
Runaway climate has a new meaning: a climate
system pushed beyond the point of no return, when devastating
consequences for young people are locked in, impossible to avoid. Below
is the latest draft of Chapter 10 of Sophie’s Planet, which will be published in Green Energy Times. For context, it includes the last paragraph of Chapter 9 of Sophie’s Planet.
Meanwhile, as our
instrument for the Venus mission was being built, we became involved in
investigations of changes in our own planet’s atmosphere. Eventually,
our desire to understand those changes overwhelmed our interest in other
planets. However, before leaving the planets, let us see what the
Goldilocks planets can tell us. That topic is addressed in my first
book, Storms of My Grandchildren,[1] where I stumbled and did
not distinguish between the Venus Syndrome and runaway climate. For the
sake of a coherent scientific explanation, in the next chapter I commit
three writer’s sins by: (1) disclosing an event out of chronological
order, (2) showing a graph, and (3) including a simple equation. You may
choose to skip lightly over a chapter heavy in technical science.
However, runaway climate has a new meaning: a climate system pushed
beyond the point of no return, with devastating, unavoidable
consequences. We must learn from lessons of the past to avoid handing
young people a situation out of their control.
Fig. 10.1. Greenhouse warmings on Mars, Earth, and Venus: about 5°C, 33°C, and 500°C.
Chapter 10. The Venus Syndrome & Runaway Climate
Mars, Venus and Earth
are the Goldilocks planets – too cold, too hot, and just right. These
planets reveal how a planet’s surface temperature depends on atmospheric
gases as well as the planet’s distance from the Sun. The physics is
energy balance: a planet sends back to space, as (infrared) heat
radiation, the solar energy that it absorbs. The amount of absorbed
sunlight depends on the Sun’s irradiance,[I] the planet’s distance from
the Sun, and the fraction of incident sunlight that the planet absorbs
(the remainder being reflected). The planet’s surface temperature is
given by the Stefan-Boltzmann law[2] (physical principle), if the planet
has no atmosphere.
If the planet has an atmosphere that partly blocks heat emission, the
surface must be warmer than given by the Stefan-Boltzmann equation for
emission to space to match absorbed solar energy.[3] This “greenhouse”
warming depends on the mass of the atmosphere and its infrared opacity.
Mars’ atmosphere is thin and transparent, so its surface is only a few
degrees warmer than it would be with no atmosphere. Venus has a thick
atmosphere (96% CO2) with sulfuric acid clouds and water vapor that absorb at wavelengths where CO2
absorption is weak. Resulting greenhouse warming on Venus is about
500°C. Earth has greenhouse warming of about 33°C, enough to change
Earth from an ice ball at –19°C (–2°F) to a hospitable +14°C (57°F).
How did these planets get to this situation? Can Earth end up like Venus, a lifeless hothouse?
Venus was doomed to permanent climatic hell once it lost its ocean. On a planet with an ocean, CO2
injected into the air by volcanoes (or humans) is put back into the
crust[II] on a time scale of millennia, which is geologically rapid.
Removal from the air occurs due to weathering. Rainfall is slightly
acidic (from dissolved atmospheric CO2) and plants and
animals release acidic compounds, which speed weathering of rocks.
Streams and rivers carry chemicals to the ocean, where CO2 is deposited on the ocean floor as limestone. Ocean-free Venus, in contrast, has no mechanism to rapidly return volcanic CO2 to the crust. So much CO2
is now “baked” (outgassed from)[4] the Venus crust and mantle that the
surface pressure is 90 times that on Earth, enough to crush any human
visitors, if they were not already fried to a cinder.
Why the big difference between neighboring planets? The Sun and planets
were made from approximately the same material, as they all formed 4.6
billion years ago from gravitational collapse of a swirl of gas, ice,
and dust in a spiral arm of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. Original
atmospheres of the four inner planets were blown away by a hot solar
wind because of the weak gravity of small planets and proximity to the
Sun. The atmospheres of Venus and Earth today are secondary[III] gases
released on geologic time scales from the materials that compose the
mantle and crust. Thus, Venus must have had an ocean once, even though
Venus is dry today.[5]
How do we know that Venus had an ocean? Why does Earth still have an
ocean, while Venus does not? The key process is escape of hydrogen to
space. Ultraviolet solar radiation breaks up (dissociates) molecules in a
planet’s upper atmosphere. The lightest constituent, the hydrogen atom,
can readily escape the gravity of an inner planet, traveling off into
space. Thus, water (H2O) loses its hydrogen and the oxygen
combines with other atoms. Great overabundance today of deuterium (heavy
hydrogen) on Venus relative to protium, the main hydrogen isotope,
confirms the initial presence of water on Venus.[IV] Thus, Venus once
had a lot of water, and surely some ocean, but the hydrogen escaped to
space. Venus spiraled into hellish conditions, the Venus syndrome, as
carbon dioxide was baked from the crust into the atmosphere.
The question becomes: why has Earth not followed in the footsteps of
Venus? Will Earth suffer the Venus syndrome in the future? This was a
big issue when I was a post-doc, as the Soviet Union’s Venera spacecraft
series revealed the extreme conditions on Venus.
Andy Ingersoll,
in a landmark paper,[6] raised the issue of possible “runaway” global
warming. What does that mean exactly? Climate change is so complex that
persuasive analysis demands solution of the fundamental equations that
describe atmospheric structure and motion, in other words, the use of a
global climate model (GCM). GCMs were still in their infancy in the
1970s, when I had a small research group, a few scientists supported by
planetary science funding. However, because of a series of curious
developments, described in the next few chapters, I was able to hire
three exceptional young scientists in 1978. These scientists broadened
our group’s capabilities and made it possible for us to develop our own
climate model.
Gary Russell,
one of the three scientists, became the chief architect and programmer
of our climate model. Gary’s Ph.D. was in mathematics, but he could
understand and program the physics of the entire model. This gave us the
potential to pursue an unusual goal: a model that was valid for a wide
range of planets and planetary evolution. That goal requires the model
to correctly include the effect of changing atmospheric mass as the
amounts of water vapor and carbon dioxide change, an effect that is
ignored in most climate models. However, our first climate simulation
was based on more limited changes to a conventional weather model.
Before our first long simulation with that model was complete, we were
asked to provide results for a National Academy of Sciences study of
climate change. Our interest in a “planetary” climate model was thus
preempted by a rush of events described in following chapters.
Fig. 10.2. Simulated global temperature profiles in Earth’s atmosphere for alternative atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) amounts relative to a 1950 control run (312 ppm).[8]
Gary did not forget the early objective and
years later produced a model[7] viable for climate from snowball Earth
to a prelude of the Venus syndrome (Fig. 10.2). This model helps clarify
the “cold trap” effect that limits hydrogen escape. The temperature
profile in Earth’s atmosphere today is near that in 1950 (black curve,
Fig. 10.2), ~15°C at the surface and colder than –60°C at the tropopause
(temperature minimum near the 100 mb[V] pressure level). Extreme cold
at the tropopause “wrings out” almost all water in upward moving air.
Thus, little water makes it to the upper atmosphere above the 1 mb
level, where it can be dissociated by extreme ultraviolet radiation. As a
result, negligible water is escaping from Earth today.
The other curves in Fig. 10.2 are computed for successive doublings of atmospheric CO2. Each CO2
doubling is a “forcing” equivalent to a 2% increase of solar
irradiance, as discussed in later chapters. Our Sun is an ordinary star,
“burning” hydrogen via nuclear fusion, with solar irradiance increasing
10% per billion years, equivalent to 5 CO2 doublings (32×CO2) in 1 billion years. The 20% increase of solar irradiance in two billion years produces a climate forcing equivalent to 1024×CO2.
By then, upwelling circulation in Earth’s atmosphere has a clear path
to pump water directly into the upper atmosphere (Fig. 10.2). As the
Sun’s irradiance continues to grow, Earth will lose its ocean, probably
within 3 billion years, and our own Venus syndrome will commence. There
is no need to be concerned about that. Three billion years is 100
million human generations in the future. If humanity still exists, it
likely will have technology to move a livable environment to a safer
distance from the Sun.
Runaway climate change can occur, if climate feedbacks are large enough. Global warming caused by 2×CO2
or a 2% increase of solar irradiance would be only 1.2°C, if there were
no climate feedbacks, because 1.2°C warming increases radiation to
space enough to restore planetary energy balance. However, observations
and modeling reveal three main feedbacks – increased atmospheric water
vapor, decreased cloud albedo (reflectivity), and decreased sea ice
albedo – and all are amplifying. The net feedback effect is described by
a simple equation,[VI] ΔT = 1.2°C/(1 – g), where ΔT is climate
sensitivity for 2×CO2 and g is the feedback “gain” in our
feedback parlance.[9] Climate system gain today (sum of all feedbacks)
is likely between g = 0.7 (thus ΔT = 4°C) and g = 0.75 (ΔT = 4.8°C), as
we will show in later chapters.
Runaway climate occurs if g approaches unity. Runaway happened several
times when the Sun was weaker, Earth was cooler, and sea ice was
extensive. Atmospheric CO2 varies due to the level of
volcanic emissions and other processes associated with movement of
continental plates. When decline of CO2 caused enough cooling
for sea ice to expand toward the tropics, g reached unity and runaway
to snowball Earth occurred.[10] Eventually, volcanoes increased
atmospheric CO2 enough for sea ice near the equator to melt,
and runaway global warming ensued. Warming then was likely rapid until
the “fuel” for the sea ice feedback (sea ice area) was small enough for
total gain, g, to subside to less than unity. Since the most recent
snowball event, 600 million years ago, the Sun’s irradiance has
increased 6%, making another snowball Earth implausible.
Earth’s paleoclimate history
contains remarkable data on climate change[11] that is still being
converted into knowledge. “Hyperthermal” events, rapid global warming of
a few degrees Celsius,[12] are helpful for understanding the potential
for limited runaway warming. The larger episodic hyperthermal events are
separated by at least a million years; they coincide with, and are
likely triggered by, extreme eccentricity[VII] of Earth’s
orbit.[13] These rapid warmings are marked by changes of the carbon
isotopes in ocean sediments that imply release of hundreds or thousands
of gigatons of isotopically depleted carbon.[VIII] Most interpretations
are that extreme summer heat and drought due to the eccentric orbit lead
to oxidation of the carbon in peat, permafrost, and/or methane
hydrates. Rapid warming caused by the increased atmospheric CO2 then speeds depletion of carbon reservoirs.
In Storms of My Grandchildren,
I painted a scenario in which all fossil fuels are burned rapidly –
within the next 1-2 centuries -- including unconventional ones
(hydrofracturing to extract gas and oil, tar sands, heavy oil). Total
fossil fuel resources are huge, far exceeding proven reserves, which
expand as technology improves. That extreme scenario yields a forcing,
including other greenhouse gases, of 8×CO2. Visitors to Earth
in 2525 found a devastated planet. Is that possible? Land temperature
rises about 1.5 times more than global average, and this scenario could
bring into play feedbacks such as melting permafrost and/or methane
hydrates.
Thus, the conclusion that burning all fossil fuels rapidly would lead to
extreme climate change and pose an existential threat to humanity may
be right, but the discussion in Storms was flawed. First, I did
not distinguish between and explain well the Venus Syndrome and runaway
climate. Second, I inferred runaway warming based on simulations with
our GCM that found an uptick in climate sensitivity between 4×CO2 and 8×CO2 and GCM breakdown for 16×CO2.
The model breakdown, however, was only an indication that one or more
of the scores of processes in the complex GCM was pushed outside its
range of validity. Once we had the model version developed by Gary
Russell – stripped of all unessential processes so that it could be used
to investigate climate sensitivity – the effect of limited “ammunition”
in most feedbacks was clear. Only water vapor has a practically
unlimited source (the ocean). The physics and radiative properties of
water vapor are understood, calculated well in the model, and do not
yield runaway.
The underlying problem soon became clear. My research in the 20 years before writing Storms
was focused on GCMs. In 1989, NASA received funding from Congress for
“Mission to Planet Earth,” an effort to understand ongoing global
change. Our group submitted two proposals: (1) a comprehensive GCM study
of the carbon, energy, and water cycles, and (2) a satellite instrument
to measure aerosol climate forcing. Remarkably, both proposals were
selected.[IX] At the meeting announcing winning proposals, in a gentle
mocking of the ambitious objectives of our GCM investigation, NASA
summarized its title as “The Theory of Everything.”
That summary epitomizes a problem with GCMs. Global modeling is
essential to investigate the simultaneous interactions of all parts of
the global system. However, GCMs are imperfect – at best approximating
the laws of nature – so there are continual efforts to improve the
models and include more physical processes. It is easy to spend most of
one’s time on modeling, crowding out alternative ways to investigate a
problem. It was my own fault, a self-inflicted error, which I did not
recognize until I began to question conclusions of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), specifically IPCC’s downplaying of the
threat of sea level rise and shutdown of the overturning ocean
circulation.
How could those conclusions be disputed? We needed to go back to a broad
research approach, one that placed comparable emphasis on (1) Earth’s
climate history, (2) global climate modeling, and (3) modern
observations of ongoing climate change, as will be described in later
chapters.
The “runaway” climate threat
now is the danger that today’s accelerated global warming will push
Earth past a “point of no return,” with irreversible consequences for
today’s young people and their descendants. I described the danger of
rapid ice sheet collapse and sea level rise as the “tipping point” in a
December 2005 tribute to Charles David Keeling[14] and Bill McKibben
popularized this a month later in an article[15] in the New York Review. However, Lenton et al.[16] now
use “tipping point” for a broad range of climate feedbacks, many of
which are reversible when the climate forcing is removed or replaced
with global cooling. Therefore, I prefer “point of no return”[1] as
terminology for the point of lock-in of unavoidable ice sheet collapse.
The danger of passing the point of no return is taboo with the United
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the
organization that we should expect to be most protective of the future
of young people. This reticence of IPCC is a cause for concern, which
deserves to be pointed out and vigorously debated. IPCC relies on models
with millennial response times, even when driven by forcings that dwarf
any experienced in Earth’s history. Based on paleoclimate data, global
modeling, and ongoing ocean and ice sheet observations, we have
concluded that shutdown of the ocean’s overturning circulation could
occur within decades and this will affect ocean/ice sheet interactions
and the rate of sea level rise.[17] We will show in later chapters that
up-to-date data support these conclusions. Concern about the danger of
passing the point of no return is not a reason to panic. The climate
system’s delayed response provides time to take preventive actions, if
the science is understood well enough to define effective policy
actions.
Public support will be needed to achieve timely, effective, climate and
energy policy, but, as of now, long-term climate change is far down the
list of public concerns. However, priorities can change – and have
historically[18] – as effects of changing climate on weather increase.
What a coincidence! That brings us back to our chronological account, as
we had a remarkable opportunity to witness the most exciting
development ever in weather prediction.
[I] Irradiance is the flux of radiant energy per unit area normal to the direction of radiation flow.
[II] The crust is the outer layer of a terrestrial planet, like the skin
of an apple. The continents on Earth are part of the crust – slabs of
solid rock with some soil on top – that are mobile, riding on top of the
viscous mantle, the mantle being a layer of silicate rock, about 1800
miles (2900 km) thick between the crust and Earth’s iron-nickel core.
[III] Earth’s atmosphere now can be described as tertiary because it has been altered by the development of life.
[IV] Overabundance is relative to the Sun or Jupiter, where abundances
should be close to their initial values because of the strong gravity of
those bodies. Energy for hydrogen escape is provided mainly by the
thermal energy of gases.
[V] The unit mb (millibar) has been supplanted by hPa (hectopascal) in
scientific literature. These units are numerically identical. I prefer
mb, which helps keep scientific discussion connected to the educated
public.
[VI] Imagine that water vapor increase caused by increased CO2 causes a forcing half as large as that from the CO2 increase (thus gain = 0.5). That warming from water vapor, half that from CO2,
adds still more water vapor. This continues ad infinitum, so the total
warming is 1+0.5+0.25+0.125…times larger than the direct CO2
warming. The sum of this infinite series is obviously 2, but a much
easier way to sum the series for any value of g < 1 is 1/(1-g).
[VII] Earth’s orbit is perturbed over tens and hundreds of thousands of
years by the gravitational tug of other planets. The eccentricity
reaches up to about 7%, but presently it is small, 1.67%, so the orbit
is nearly circular.
[VIII] Isotopically depleted carbon refers to carbon compounds with a high proportion of 12C relative to the heavier isotope 13C. Organic matter, methane hydrates, and volcanic eruptions are sources of isotopically depleted carbon.
[IX] Unfortunately, in a short time, the aerosol instrument was deselected, a story in itself.
