(The Conversation) Three Reasons Why Climate Change Models Are Our Best Hope For Understanding The Future

The Conversation - Mark Maslin

Dan Moeller/Shutterstock

Author Mark Maslin is Professor of Earth System Science, University College London

It’s a common argument among climate deniers: scientific models cannot predict the future, so why should we trust them to tell us how the climate will change?

This trope recently surfaced in an interview with Canadian psychologist and author Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan’s podcast. According to Peterson: “There is no such thing as climate… climate and everything are the same word.”

Faced with the impossible task of including “everything” in their equations – and predicting what will happen weeks and months from now – the world’s scientists are incapable of modelling the climate accurately, in Peterson’s view.

As a scientist whose research involves modelling the climate on a global and regional scale, I can say with confidence that this interpretation is wrong. Here are just three reasons why.

Muddling weather and climate

Deniers often confuse the climate with weather when arguing that models are inherently inaccurate. Weather refers to the short-term conditions in the atmosphere at any given time. The climate, meanwhile, is the weather of a region averaged over several decades.

Forecasting the weather is quite different from modelling the climate. Andrey VP/Shutterstock

Weather predictions have got much more accurate over the last 40 years, but the chaotic nature of weather means they become unreliable beyond a week or so. Modelling climate change is much easier however, as you are dealing with long-term averages. For example, we know the weather will be warmer in summer and colder in winter.

Here’s a helpful comparison. It is impossible to predict at what age any particular person will die, but we can say with a high degree of confidence what the average life expectancy of a person will be in a particular country.

 And we can say with 100% confidence that they will die. Just as we can say with absolute certainty that putting greenhouses gases in the atmosphere warms the planet.

Strength in numbers

There are a huge range of climate models, from those attempting to understand specific mechanisms such as the behaviour of clouds, to general circulation models (GCM) that are used to predict the future climate of our planet.

There are over 20 major international research centres where teams of some of the smartest people in the world have built and run these GCMs which contain millions of lines of code representing the very latest understanding of the climate system.

These models are continually tested against historic and palaeoclimate data (this refers to climate data from well before direct measurements, like the last ice age), as well as individual climate events such as large volcanic eruptions to make sure they reconstruct the climate, which they do extremely well.

No single model should ever be considered complete as they represent a very complex global climate system. But having so many different models constructed and calibrated independently means that scientists can be confident when the models agree.

Model predictions from the 1970s and 1980s compare stunningly well with the warming trend that actually occurred over the last four decades. And scientists have been continually testing and improving these models ever since, meaning their predictions are a very robust outcome of our science.

How the earliest climate models compared with reality. Mark Maslin/Oxford University Press, Author provide

Errors about error

Given the climate is such a complicated system, you might reasonably ask how scientists address potential sources of error, especially when modelling the climate over hundreds of years.

The biggest source of uncertainty in all climate change models is how much greenhouse gases humanity will emit over the next 80 years. Scientists account for this by working with economists and social scientists to build scenarios of the future with different emissions trajectories.

We scientists are very aware that models are simplifications of a complex world. But by having so many different models, built by different groups of experts, we can be more certain of the results they produce.

All the models show the same thing: put greenhouses gases into the atmosphere and the world warms up. We represent the potential errors by showing the range of warming produced by all the models for each scenario.

In its sixth assessment of the science of climate change, published in August 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that “it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”.

How human activity will continue to affect the climate is a difficult question primarily because we do not know how the world will respond to this crisis. But we can count on models, which have a proven record of accuracy, to help us navigate what the future is likely to hold.

What is most worrying about this kind of climate change denial is that it still gets airtime. Shows like The Joe Rogan Experience can host guests peddling misinformation about climate change or the pandemic just to get a ratings boost.

Spotify, it’s reported, paid US$100 million (£75 million) for Rogan’s podcast in 2020 and the platform has over 380 million users.

Joe Rogan surely does not need a bigger audience or a bigger pay packet, so why not have credible experts on who actually want to help build a better, safer, and healthier world?

This is what listeners want to hear about – real problems, real facts, real solutions.

Links

• Timeline: The History of Climate Modelling
• Q&A: How do climate models work?
• The five corrupt pillars of climate change denial
• Climate: A Very Short Introduction
• Why the weather forecast will always be a bit wrong
• Cascading uncertainty in climate change models and its implications for policy

(24/7 Wall St.) Natural Landmarks Already Damaged Or Destroyed By Climate Change

24/7 Wall St.  - Liz Blossom

Most people who will never travel to more exotic locations will nonetheless recognize images of Mount Kilimanjaro topped with its legendary snows or the Great Barrier Reef and its rich marine life. But these iconic natural wonders, along with many others, are losing their struggle with climate change and may be completely lost to future generations.

As temperatures warm, sea levels rise, and storms intensify, causing food insecurity and displacement of entire populations, natural landmarks that may seem invulnerable to the ravages of climate are also seriously threatened. (These are the 20 countries responsible for nearly all global emissions.)

To find natural landmarks already damaged or destroyed by climate change, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed several sources, including International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Climate change now top threat to natural World Heritage – IUCN report, international environmental organizations, and adventure travel companies, among other sources.

The IUCN study found that 30% – 83 out of 252 – of natural World Heritage sites are threatened by climate change. Their status is described as being “of significant concern,” and 7% of all sites, including the Great Barrier Reef, are classified as “critical.”

While invasive species, human activity, and traditional weather patterns all take their toll on the natural world, the threats from climate change have overtaken other factors in the loss of natural landmarks.

Storm surges are pushing salt into farmland and freshwater reserves; sea level rise is threatening the very existence of islands and atolls; rising temperatures are melting glaciers and drying up lakes; and heat and drought are inviting the spread of highly destructive wildfires. (These are the 30 most destructive wildfires in the U.S. this century.)

These are some of the world’s natural landmarks that have already experienced severe damage from climate change.

Source: Patrick Daxenbichler / iStock via Getty Images

Alps
> Location: France, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany, and Slovenia

Just 15 years ago, the glaciers atop the Alps held 10% more water that they do today, and the ice continues to recede. The loss of glacial ice signals a slow march to extinction for the unique Alpine plants that are now migrating higher at a rate of 0.05 to 4 meters a decade, being replaced by lowland flora.

Source: Joel Carillet / E+ via Getty Images

Borneo’s Rainforest
> Location: Borneo

Borneo has some of the highest concentrations of forestland and biodiversity in the world, but heavy deforestation and the effects of climate change are working in combination to threaten Borneo’s increasingly endangered species, including the orangutan. In particular, wildfires have increased in intensity over the last two decades as temperatures rise and Borneo suffers from drought and a drying out of the landscape.

N/A (CC BY 2.0) by Simon Fraser University

Chacaltaya Glacier
> Location: Bolivia

Glaciers are particularly vulnerable to climate change and are shrinking rapidly all over the planet. High in the Andes, over 3 miles above sea level, the Chacaltaya Glacier was, until the 1990s, the highest ski center in the world. In the few years between 1992 and 2005, Chacaltaya Glacier lost 90% of its surface area and 97% of its volume. It is now gone.

Source: vvvita / iStock via Getty Images 

Dead Sea
> Location: Jordan and Israel

Climate change is warming many of the world’s lakes faster than the oceans, causing them to shrink, some at a startlingly rapid rate. While the Dead Sea has suffered from direct human intervention, such as diversion of water supplied by the Jordan River and mineral extraction, much of its volume has been lost to evaporation attributed to temperature rise. In the last half century, the Dead Sea has lost one-third of its surface area, and continues to shrink by 1 meter every year.

Source: SimonSkafar / iStock via Getty Images 

Everglades
> Location: Florida, US

With its low elevation and vulnerability to storms, the state of Florida is seriously threatened by climate change. Florida’s iconic Everglades National Park, at the state’s southern tip, is experiencing an increased movement of salt water into its freshwater interior, and increased salinity in its coastal soils. Caused in large measure by the sea level rise and storm surges brought on by climate change, the sea salt intrusion threatens the unique species of plant life found in the Everglades as salt-friendly flora, such as red mangroves, make their way inland.

Source: lucky-photographer / iStock via Getty Images

Giant Sequoias
> Location: California, US

Over the millenia, fire has been an important friend to the Giant Sequoias of California’s Sierra Nevada, promoting seed dispersal and clearing underbrush, but climate change is turning California’s wildfires powerfully destructive. Rising temperatures and drought have increased the intensity and frequency of the fires, with tragic results among the historically resilient trees – each with a diameter of 4 feet or more. There have been six such wildfires between 2014 and 2021, destroying 85% of the state’s giant sequoia groves. By contrast, 25% was lost in the preceding century.

Source: ronniechua / iStock via Getty Images

Glacier National Park
> Location: Montana, US

The glaciers of Glacier National Park began shrinking at the end of the little ice age in 1850, but the shrinking has greatly accelerated in recent decades. With park temperatures rising at twice the global average, the number of named glaciers (those with over 1 square km) has been reduced from 35 to 26 between 1966 and 2015. Some have lost 80% of their surface area. The loss of ice threatens tourism, wildlife habitat, native plants, and underwater archeology.

Source: Luisa Trescher Photos / iStock via Getty Images

Great Barrier Reef
> Location: Australia

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is perhaps the world’s most famous example of the damage wrought by climate change. Rising ocean temperatures are weakening the hundreds of species of coral that make up the reef, reducing their resiliency and diminishing their ability to reproduce. It is estimated that half of the coral in the miles long reef have been lost in the last 25 years.

Source: KiskaMedia / iStock via Getty Images

Joshua Tree National Park
> Location: California, US

Over the past century the average temperature in Joshua Tree National Park has risen by 3 degrees Fahrenheit, while precipitation has dropped by 39%. The change in climate has meant drier conditions, resulting in fewer Joshua tree seedlings and loss of animal habitat, particularly for birds, whose numbers are diminishing. Adding to the park’s climate problems, the drier environment has facilitated more frequent wildfires, an immense threat to the region. In 2020, Dome Fire in 2020 burned 43,000 acres and over a million Joshua trees in the nearby Mojave National Preserve.

Source: 1001slide / Getty Images

Kilimanjaro
> Location: Tanzania

Though all of Africa contributes less than 4% to the world’s output of greenhouse gasses, it is suffering disproportionately from the early ravages of climate change. With land and ocean temperatures rising faster than in most of the rest of the world, the continent is experiencing punishing droughts, floods, and heat, affecting habitability, food production, and health. It has also given the world one of the most visible and striking warnings about climate change, the melting of the iconic “snows of Kilimanjaro.” Along with its twin to the north, Mt. Kenya, Kilimanjaro is rapidly losing its mountaintop glacier due to rising temperatures and diminished precipitation. The ice is likely to completely disappear in the next 20 years, and that of Mt. Kenya in the next 10.

Maldives (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Hotel Kaesong

Maldives

> Location: Indian Ocean

Maldives is an archipelago of coral atolls, some of which support a tourist economy. Rising seas are threatening the tourist industry, but also the reefs that support the nation’s critical fisheries. Of even greater concern is the threat of catastrophic inundation since 80% of the islands’ surface area is 1 meter or less above sea level. Already, beaches are eroding rapidly and fresh groundwater reserves have been all but destroyed by salt water intrusion.

Source: JohannesCompaan / E+ via Getty Images

Pantanal Wetland
> Location: Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay

Located primarily in Brazil and sprawling into Bolivia and Ecuador, the Pantanal is the world’s largest inland wetland, and one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. The health of the ecosystem depends on fires started by lightning strikes and by land clearing, but in recent years fires have become a growing threat to the very survival of the wetland and its creatures. Increasing heat and drought have made fires ever more intense and destructive, with 2020 fires destroying 22% of Brazil’s share of the Pantanal.

Source: HenrikAMeyer / Getty Images

Solomon Islands

> Location: Solomon Islands

The Solomon Islands are a remote Pacific archipelago, and historically one of the most impoverished nations in the world. It is beset by ever more disastrous cyclones, storm surges, drought, and torrential rains, which have in turn led to a loss of land and fresh water, even as sea level rise threatens to submerge low lying islands in the coming decades. Today, these climate change impacts and resulting population displacement are causing extreme socioeconomic and political turmoil.

Source: Tamer_Desouky / Getty Images

Victoria Falls

> Location: Zambia and Zimbabwe

Nearly a kilometer in length along the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, the magnificent Victoria Falls has been one of Africa’s most perennially popular tourist attractions. Given the region’s dramatic shifts between dry seasons and the monsoon rains, it is not unusual for the falls to lose some of its flow during parts of the year, but in 2019, following a major drought, the magnificent Victoria Falls was reduced to a trickle. While one event does not define a trend, some see the extreme drought as likely attributable to climate change.

Source: bgsmith / iStock via Getty Images

Yellowstone National Park
> Location: Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, US

Since 1950, temperatures in Yellowstone have risen by 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Spring starts earlier, and fall lasts longer, and what might have been snow events in the spring and fall are now rain events, causing the annual snowpack to decrease by 2 feet. The drier park makes it more susceptible to wildfires, a fact that was dramatically demonstrated when, in 1988, wildfires damaged 800,000 acres of the park in the wake of a severe drought.

Links

• Climate change now top threat to natural World Heritage – IUCN report
• The 20 Countries Responsible for Nearly All Global Emissions
• This Is America’s Dirtiest City
• Countries That Generate the Most Plastic Waste
• The 40 Countries Decreasing Emissions the Fastest
• The Countries With the Highest CO2 Emissions Per Capita
• These Are America's Billion-Dollar Environmental Disasters

(The Revelator) Why The Chemical Industry Is An Overlooked Climate Foe — And What To Do About It

The Revelator - Darya Minovi

It’s time to overhaul the chemical industry — for the sake of fenceline communities and the rest of the planet.

Chemical manufacturing plant along the Gulf Coast. Photo: Roy Luck, (CC BY 2.0)

Climate change is quickly evolving into climate catastrophe, and there’s a narrow window of time to do something about it. While the world works on solutions, there’s surprisingly little focus on the chemical industry, which accounts for roughly 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions — as well as other environmental harms.

Weak or nonexistent regulations of the industry have led to widespread cancer, respiratory illnesses, and even facility explosions, primarily in low-income communities and communities of color.

But the industry essentially has a free pass to continue business as usual — it just keeps on keepin’ on, with little accountability.

The same holds true when it comes to the industry’s contributions to our warming planet, which is happening in three major ways:

First, fossil fuels are the “feedstocks” for chemical manufacturing, meaning that oil, natural gas and coal are used as raw material for chemicals. Global plastic production relies heavily on fossil fuel feedstocks and is expected to grow by 40% by 2030. That will bring more environmental problems.

Around 98% of single-use plastic is derived from fossil fuels, and it releases greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of its life cycle. Only a small amount of plastic products are recycled. Most end up in landfills or the environment, and nearly one-quarter is incinerated, releasing millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide and other harmful air pollutants.

Second, fossil fuels power chemical manufacturing. Some of the most commonly manufactured “primary” chemicals, like ethylene, propylene, benzene, toluene, ammonia and methanol, account for two-thirds of the energy used by the industry, according to the International Energy Agency.

While the industry has implemented some energy efficiency measures and low-carbon technology, direct carbon dioxide emissions from chemical production have continued to increase.

Third, the chemical industry contributes to climate change by producing chemicals that are themselves potent greenhouse gases. For example, hydrofluorocarbons, used as refrigerants and foam-blowing agents, are 3,800 times more damaging to the climate than carbon dioxide.

Under the Kigali Amendment of the Montreal Protocol, countries have committed to cutting production and consumption of HFCs by at least 80% by 2047. And just this year, the EPA announced a goal to reduce U.S. production. But this may create new problems.

For example, some proposed plans for capturing HFCs (rather than replacing them with safer chemicals that don’t harm the climate) will result in emissions of other hazardous air pollutants like chloroform, hydrochloric acid, chlorine and hydrogen fluoride. All of these hazardous air pollutants contribute to the cumulative burden faced by fenceline communities.

Finally, not only does chemical production and use contribute to climate change — the intensifying weather patterns of climate change will worsen the industry’s environmental and public health impacts.

Chemical and petrochemical facilities are concentrated along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana: the very same areas that are and will be hit hard by hurricanes, flooding and sea-level rise.

Many of these facilities are unprepared for these effects, increasing the risk of catastrophic chemical disasters — predominantly in communities of color and low-income communities.

Across the country, hundreds of thousands of aboveground storage facilities containing hazardous chemicals — such as arsenic, formaldehyde, and trichloroethylene — are NOT subject to state or federal rules designed to prevent and mitigate spills.https://t.co/C9tYm94kIP

— Center for Progressive Reform (@CPRBlog) December 22, 2021

Ultimately, to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change, limit the risk of chemical disasters, and begin to remedy a legacy of environmental injustice, we must significantly reduce and replace the use of fossil fuels in every part of the chemical industry, which needs a systemic overhaul.

It’s a mighty task. Only a handful of more than 40,000 chemicals on the market have ever been restricted; even asbestos hasn’t been fully banned. There are still almost 3.5 billion pounds of hazardous releases to the environment every year. The United States is covered with 1,300 toxic “Superfund” sites, plus thousands more contaminated sites.

But that hasn’t stopped affected communities and organizations from banding together to say enough is enough. Recently a group of more than 100 health, science and environmental justice groups called for a transformation of the chemical industry with the release of the new Louisville Charter.

Named after an area in Kentucky with 11 industrial facilities that release millions of pounds of toxic air emissions every year — disproportionately impacting people of color — the Charter’s 10 principles outline a vision for how to overhaul chemical policies in favor of safety, health, equity and justice, and how to avoid false solutions that simply shift harms to other people and places.

These principles include calls to reduce or eliminate fossil fuel use, substitute toxic chemicals with safer alternatives, remedy environmental injustice, end subsidies for polluting companies, and give communities and workers information about chemical risks and the ability to act upon these disclosures.

We can make gains to achieve these goals if Congress passes the Environmental Justice for All Act and the Build Back Better Act, which would advance the some, but not all, of the Charter’s principles. More action is needed, and the Charter can guide the way.

Whether it’s to solve climate change, stop toxic chemicals from bombarding overburdened communities, or reduce hazardous substances in household products, we need to start replacing harmful chemicals with safe alternatives. No more free passes.

Links

• Julian Cribb - Earth Detox : How and Why we Must Clean up Our Planet
• In conversation with Julian Cribb - ANU
• The Chemical Culprits Behind Climate Change - Nature's Path
• Agents of global warming - NASA Climate Change
• Overview of Greenhouse Gases
• Five Reasons Why Climate Change and Toxic Chemicals are Connected