COP24: here's what must be agreed to keep warming at 1.5°C

[Andrew Lockley]

Poster's note: mass media, but respected author and topical 

https://theconversation.com/amp/cop24-heres-what-must-be-agreed-to-keep-warming-at-1-5-c-107968?__twitter_impression=true

COP24: here's what must be agreed to keep warming at 1.5°C

Hugh Hunt, University of Cambridge

December 3, 2018 11.12am GMT

The Paris Agreement of 2015 has a central aim to keep global temperature rise this century well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to “pursue efforts” to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5°C. This is an ambitious aim – global temperatures are rapidly approaching the 1.5°C target and the 2°C limit is not far away.

The path to 1.5°C requires that the world achieve zero emissions before 2050. It is imperative, therefore, that we stop burning fossil fuels, known as mitigation. However, our present trajectory suggests we’re not on track. COP24 can’t take its eye off this ball –- there is no long-term plan that doesn’t include zero fossil-carbon emissions. The scientific consensus is that we need to reach “net zero” CO₂ emissions by 2050. But to tack closer to a scenario of 1.5°C warming, COP24 should set this target for 2035.

Black, observed temperatures; blue, probable range from decadal forecasts; red, retrospective forecasts; green, climate simulations of the 20th century. The Met Office

Carbon removal and non-CO₂ emissions

The United Nations, in the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC has accepted that there isn’t any obvious pathway to zero emissions in such a short time frame, so they have pegged their hopes on NETs – Negative Emissions Technologies. These approaches include carbon capture and storage (CCS), which involves sucking CO₂ from the air and storing it deep underground.

Carbon removal along these lines is the second imperative for COP24 in Katowice. Globally we emit around 40 billion tonnes of CO₂ annually, so net zero CO₂ by 2050 will require CO₂ removal of this scale, starting immediately.

But CO₂ isn’t the only problem. We emit other greenhouse gases such as methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which all contribute to climate change. Methane is on the rise and is 84 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO₂.

It comes from cows, and it leaks from oil wells and coal mines as “fugitive methane”. It is also seeping out of the melting permafrost in the Arctic. This is a worrying form of “positive feedback” where global warming causes the further release of gases that cause further warming.

Nitrous Oxide, which is 300 times more potent than CO₂, is rising too, caused by modern agriculture. And the concentration of refrigerant gases, such as CFCs, which are thousands of times more potent than CO₂, is not falling as fast as we’d hoped. So COP24 has a third imperative, to prevent the rise of non-CO₂ greenhouse gases. If we can stabilise non-CO₂ greenhouse emissions at present day levels we’ll be doing well, but concentrations are rising fast.

Limiting warming to 1.5°C or 2°C requires mitigation (energy efficiency and renewable generation) and CO₂ removal. MCC

Desperate times, desperate measures

All of this is going to be hard work. We’re failing to cut down our emissions, the technologies for NETs don’t exist at any meaningful scale, yet and there are no political drivers in place to enforce their deployment. There is also a real risk of a dramatic rise in methane in the near future. COP24 will have to consider emergency plans.

One such plan is very controversial. There are so-called “geoengineering” technologies which can be used to cause changes in global temperatures. One of these is Solar Radiation Management (SRM), which involves injecting tiny aerosol particles high in the atmosphere where they reflect sunlight into space.

We know from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 that stratospheric aerosols caused a cooling of around 1°C over a year. The northern winter of 1992 saw a dramatic increase in sea ice and a stalling of glacial melting. SRM technologies exist and the first sun-dimming experiments are underway.

A proposed SRM technique which would inject sulphate aerosols into the atmosphere. Hugh Hunt/Wikimedia Commons

There is a realistic possibility that deploying SRM can buy us some time to enact the essential measures needed to stop warming at or before 1.5°C. The discussions at COP24 must keep all options on the table, and as unpalatable as geoengineering technologies might seem, their deployment may prove to be unavoidable.

The indicators are all in the danger zone. We are seeing increasing Arctic temperatures, rapid loss of Arctic sea ice, reduced Arctic reflectivity, rapidly melting ice shelves and methane release from permafrost. These are leading to rapidly rising sea levels, coastal flooding and storm surges, increased hurricane and storm activity, dry and hot conditions conducive to wildfires, and drought and crop failure.

The urgency for decisive action is the imperative for COP24. The UN must press on with four major strands for meeting the Paris 1.5°C target:

Reduce fossil carbon emissions.

Remove carbon from the atmosphere (NETs).

Halt the rise of emissions of non-CO₂ greenhouses cases (Methane, Nitrous oxide, CFCs).

Investigate techniques for geoengineering, including Solar Radiation Management.

All four of these must proceed simultaneously and in parallel. COP24 must make this perfectly clear. There is utmost urgency and no time to “wait and see”.

Comment on this article

Hugh Hunt

Reader in Engineering Dynamics and Vibration, University of Cambridge

Hugh Hunt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Cambridge provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

[Adam Cherson]

To this I would add COP24 should make clear that the instrument of carbon taxes as an economic disincentive leading to changes in business behavior is not a rapid enough mechanism. For carbon taxes to have a rapid enough impact, the revenue needs to be of sufficient scale and must be applied directly to intensive work on the four strands mentioned by Hunt.

[Adam Cherson]

Or to be more precise the 2nd and 4th of Hunt's strands: CDR (incl other GHG-R) and SRM. Emissions reductions are a longer-term economic strategy and here is where strong disincentives as well as R&D investments will pay off.

[Robert Tulip]

“Globally we emit around 40 billion tonnes of CO₂ annually, so net zero CO₂ by 2050 will require CO₂ removal of this scale, starting immediately.”

Not quite.  Net Zero requires that carbon removal equal total emissions.  While the primary focus of the IPCC remains reducing total emissions, the hope is that the NET task could be smaller if emissions can be cut. 

Unfortunately, all the emission trends seem to be in the wrong direction, so it looks like the NET task will actually be bigger.  As well, the equation must include CO2 equivalents.  The IPCC projections are that by 2030 total CO2e emissions will be 60 billion tonnes (gigatons or GT) under Business as Usual, and that full implementation of the Paris Accord would cut that by 10% to 54 GT (New York Times 6 Nov 2017, World Emissions Far Off Course). 

Therefore, the projected task for NETs to achieve net zero is to remove 54 GT of CO2e annually by 2030, unless emissions come down faster than agreed at Paris.  

Further to this massive task, climate restoration requires an even bigger goal.  In order to steer the planet away from the hothouse precipice, NETs should aim to remove double total emissions, 100 GT. And in the meantime, solar radiation management should be deployed to help avoid unforeseen dangerous tipping points.  These are the primary planetary security problems. 

Robert Tulip

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From: Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com>
To: geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>; "CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>" <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, 11 December 2018, 4:47
Subject: [CDR] COP24: here's what must be agreed to keep warming at 1.5°C

Poster's note: mass media, but respected author and topical 

https://theconversation.com/amp/cop24-heres-what-must-be-agreed-to-keep-warming-at-1-5-c-107968?__twitter_impression=true

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[Adam Sacks]

There is no technology anywhere close to photosynthesis.  It's available today and it's cheap to implement and we have 12+ billion anthropogenically desertified acres.  We have plenty of knowledge of how to do it, and there are currently practitioners on millions of acres.  Geoengineering is a distant and unproved set of options, fraught with unintended consequences.  The mainstream climate science doesn't understand the power of biology as they're mostly physical scientists, and even biologists are caught in the assumptions of the dominant paradigm.  Studies of the potential of biological carbon capture and the many many other positive effects of eco-restoration are mostly conducted on desertified land and the baseline of the possible is grossly underestimated.  We know this from studies of positive variants.

If we're serious about addressing climate we will have to shift paradigms, and recover from our extreme technophilia.  Every time my cell phone or computer screw up, I marvel that we think for a moment that technology will save us - have we learned anything from dams, large cities, synthetic agricultural assault on soil life, etc.?  We don't know more than Nature, we're the global sorcerer's apprentice and we're not catching on.

When will we ever learn?

Check out our Compendium (links below), watch some of our videos, explore some of the many regenerative land management websites (you can start with Regeneration International).

Cheers!

Adam

===

Check out Bio4Climate's Compendium of Scientific and Practical Findings Supporting Eco-Restoration to Address Global Warming, 3 issues, free download.

===

Adam Sacks, Executive Director

Biodiversity for a Livable Climate

P.O. Box 390469

Cambridge, MA 02139

781-674-2339

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"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." Buckminster Fuller

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[Adam Cherson]

Robert's calculations present a good summary of the emissions and reductions numbers for COP24 policy discussion.

A comprehensive COP24 discussion must also include a sociopolitical (which includes economic) prescription. This can also be summarized to a few key goals as well: 1) ecumenical participation in emissions reductions (i.e., an enforceable framework applies to all nations with independent monitoring and assessment), 2) proportionally shared financing of emergency measures such as CDR and SRM (i.e., economic responsibility according to formula: fixed% * GNI * m, where the 'fixed%' is calculated according to the budgetary needs of the emergency implementations and 'm' is a multiplier based on excess emissions over specified reduction targets timetable), and 3) after immediate crisis averted then reparations for legacy emissions according to a formula to be determined at that time and based on environmental restoration.

Using this prescription, each nation is responsible for managing its own economy in whatever way it wants to meet the mandated emissions reduction targets timetable (i.e., carbon taxes, budgetary allocations, subsidies, etc.). However, when a nation falls short of its prescribed emissions targets a sufficient multiplier is applied to its emergency measures contribution. Historical responsibility is recognized by reparations for environmental restoration, but only after the clear and present danger is addressed.

Without such measures along with emissions, removal, and management prescriptions, we'll be in the same old Paris Agreement dilemma.

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[Dennis Amoroso]

This is precisely why we at PNTI are processing almost a billion tons of rock powder to be put into farmland of 40M acres which then removes 6 tons per acre per month CO2 as well as Methane and NOX. We are doing this in Canada and as of January in Zambia Africa.  Do the math on that and you will find that Net Zero is achievable.  Actions speak louder than words! 

Dennis Amoroso

Sent from my iPhone

[Bernard Mercer]

100% agree, and so good that you articulate the case for collaborative approaches.

 

The options are not mutually exclusive. We can have regenerative agriculture/new forests and solar farms in arid lands (and elsewhere). But such thinking has become less and less evident in the Geoengineering and CDR posts (and within HCA), most folks seem to be content just to push their particular solution, and to argue that it is a greater priority than others.

 

I would like to see the original Socolow & Pacala stabilization wedges framework redeployed now, in a context where we need emissions reductions, CDR, GE. What could be the contribution of each of the array of interventions? Could the many great scientists and engineers on these lists come together to do this?

 

From: geoengi...@googlegroups.com <geoengi...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Veli Albert Kallio
Sent: 12 December 2018 01:00
To: rtuli...@yahoo.com.au; adam....@bio4climate.org
Cc: Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com>; geoengi...@googlegroups.com; Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [geo] Re: [CDR] COP24: here's what must be agreed to keep warming at 1.5°C

 

I agree Adam Sacks that utilisation of desertified biosphere needs to be done. I would add even more that there is a need to utilise arid land masses far better with drip water irrigation which would allow reforestation in some areas where forests can be restored and build more robust food supply system that is resilient against shocks by climate change and normal weather events and other types of crises. However, I would disagree that there is a necessary either - or situation for geoengineering versus desert reclamation. Some deserts should be used for solar farms as well to reduce fossil fuel.

 

Indeed, why do we always need to stand against each other in opposing of things, when there is market and space for both kind of activity to steer the earth from its disastrous current trajectory? Let's pull the rope together from the same end, rather than competing each other by pulling the ropes from the opposing ends to get results...

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[Charles H. Greene]

As long as we are talking about "regenerative agriculture/new forests and solar farms in arid lands", I would like to point out that bioenergy and nutritional products from deserts and other subtropical, non-arable lands can be achieved very effectively by growing marine microalgae in coastal, land-based facilities. In an area slightly less than three times the size of Texas, enough algal biofuel can be produced to meet the entire global demand for liquid fuels (2015) while simultaneously producing an amount of protein equivalent to ten times the annual global production of soy protein. In addition, the microalgal protein has a much more nutritious amino acid composition.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/686A8767A620AF47A261852F24189433FA713E66%40DC4HS14EXMBX05.os.local.

[Greg Rau]

Am all for bio CDR methods when and where possible.  Further PR here: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-best-technology-for-fighting-climate-change-isnt-a-technology/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly-review&utm_content=link&utm_term=2018-12-12_top-stories

However, until it is proven that this form of CDR alone will be timely and adequate, it would be unwise to exclude those abiotic methods that are immune to disease, fire, rising temps and competition for space, esp land, and whose C storage cannot be prematurely defeated by the human temptation to make fuel, food or parking lots. Furthermore, if one advocates for natural CDR methods, the bulk of natural CDR is abiotic:

http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/figures/WGI_AR5_Fig6-24.jpg

http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/figures/WGI_AR5_FigFAQ6.2-2.jpg

Considering what's at stake and how nature operates, let's keep an open mind here as to how to best save the world, and assume that it's going to take more than one approach.

Greg