Why global warming should be every candidate's #1 priority

Sir David King, Chief Scientific Advisor to the British Government, has said that global warming is the biggest problem that civilization has ever been confronted with. That's a pretty strong statement. He didn't say it was just a problem or that it is the biggest problem today. He said it is the biggest problem ever.

Thanks to the efforts of Al Gore, the media, and others, global warming now ranks alongside healthcare as a top issue for voters.

Unfortunately, there is still not enough public outrage about this issue to get things done in Congress. I received an email recently from the chief of staff of one of the top lawmakers in the House who told me how frustrating it is that because of the lack of public outrage on this issue, they don't even have the votes to improve fuel economy standards for cars.

So current efforts are not enough. I think it's time our Presidential candidates started telling Americans what they need to understand about global warming.

I have a simple suggestion: Why not tell Americans a few simple, undisputable but significant facts about global warming that they do not already know and then let them make their own value judgments?

Here are my suggestions for three simple, but important facts that I think that everyone should know, but nobody does know:

Our best scientists tell us that at the rate things are going today, there is more than a 5% chance that temperatures could rise by more than 6ºC in less than 100 years from now
It is unlikely that humanity will be able to survive a 6ºC temperature increase in other than small numbers.
We are out of time. Our leading scientists tell us that the best way to prevent a global warming disaster is to take very aggressive actions now to reduce our emissions and encourage other countries to do the same. We should be cutting greenhouse gas emissions like our lives depend on it; because they do!

In other words, if you put these three facts together, at the rate we are going, there is a chance that is small, but too big to ignore, that humanity could be virtually extinct in less than 100 years from now, but we have an opportunity to change that if we are aggressive about taking action. That means doing things that are required to reduce our absolute emissions such as replacing coal plants with clean renewable plants---something that NO candidate dares to talk about, yet that is the single biggest greenhouse gas emission source we have; most anything else we can is minor in comparison (see TopThingsToKnowAboutClimate for examples).

Today, few people understand the seriousness of the problem. Only a very few know those three facts. Should we keep them in the dark? Or should we try to educate them on both the importance and the urgency of this issue, so that they can make up their own minds as to how important global warming should be in this election?

And at what point are politicians going to "get it"? Does it require a 25% chance of extinction within 100 years before we even start to talk tough? A 50% chance? This would be an interesting question to ask each Presidential candidate....at what point do you make the decision to start replacing existing coal plants with clean plants? At what point do you accept the EU minister challenge of cutting 30% below 1990 levels by 2020?

Coal-based electricity is responsible for 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. If we cannot shutdown and replace a single coal plant in the US, then how can we possibly expect any other country, like China, to do it? And how do we expect to save the human race from extinction if we don't start replacing these plants now? Nobody has explained that. Nobody is even talking about it.

If you want to minimize the risk of a planetary meltdown, we need to be playing all the cards we have as aggressively as we can. That's the point. And the biggest single leverage point are our coal plants. To not put them in the equation...that makes no sense.

The good news for us is that we still have some time left to fix the problem. The bad news is that because Congress has been ignoring the warnings of our scientists for more than 20 years now, we don't have a lot of time left. We must make make substantial progress within the next 8 years to significantly reduce our emissions in order to avoid a planetary disaster.

One thing that most experts I've talked with agree upon: if we are going to solve this problem, we must elect a President in 2008 who is serious about aggressively tackling this problem. A good indicator of whether we should be optimistic or not about our future is to look at where global warming is on the priority list of those running for President. Only one candidate has made his global warming priority crystal clear: John Edwards. Edwards has said global warming is his #1 issue and it's also listed as the #1 issue on his home page. But other candidates have not done the same. It is unclear where global warming ranks on their priority list. I hope that they will be asked this question by the media and clarify their position, especially in light of the two facts.

Today, many Americans are confused about who and what to believe about global warming. There is certainly a lot of confusing information around, and some of it sounds quite convincing, especially if you don't have a climate scientist "on call" to help you navigate what is fact and what is fiction. Rather than try to address the skeptics here, I created a web page where I listed 30 points that the skeptics have had a hard time explaining.

Rather than deal with all the issues about climate change, I tried to simplify the argument down to a few facts I believe cannot be denied. It is not productive to get into a more general discussion about whether global warming is real or not. All I am saying in my facts is that a group of very credible scientists (the IPCC) concluded that there is a 5% likelihood that the temperature rise could be 6.4ºC temperature rise or higher, that according to US government data, the actual emission rates are worse than what the IPCC assumed in coming up with those projections, and that those with extensive knowledge of the science are skeptical as to whether mankind can survive a 6 degree temperature rise. The details that back up my facts include:

The most recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was created by 2,500 scientists from 130 countries over a 6 year period. They reviewed tens of thousands of technical papers. They agreed that under certain reasonable assumptions, there is a 5% chance (per footnote 5 on page 2 of the Working Group I report) that the average world temperature could rise by 6.4ºC or more by 2100. This is scenario A1FI in Table SPM.3 on page 13 of the Working Group I report. A1FI is the "worst case" scenario of the six scenarios considered by the IPCC. Because the chance of a 6.4ºC temperature rise is 5%, it means that the chance of a smaller 6ºC rise must be greater than 5%.
The actual emissions have equaled or exceeded the assumptions in the A1FI scenario. Take a look at this recent paper that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This paper was cited in Time magazine, but few people even noticed it. In particular, look at Fig. 1 which plots all 6 IPCC emission scenarios that were used in the calculations as well as our actual emissions using two different data sources. As the paper points out, the assumptions of every single IPCC scenario have been equaled or exceeded. This means that the worst case temperature rise is likely to be worse than the 6.4ºC estimate for A1FI since the actuals are worse than all the assumptions. It also means that the A1FI scenario is the closest to reality of the scenarios examined by the IPCC.
The most extensive research on what happens to the planet at each degree of temperature rise was done by British journalist Mark Lynas who spent three years camped out in the Radcliffe Science Library at Oxford University trawling through tens of thousands of scientific papers on the subject. He wrote a book entitled, "Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet." He found that a six degree temperature rise "would cause a mass extinction of almost all life and probably reduce humanity to a few struggling groups of embattled survivors clinging to life near the poles." A review of the book published in the Sunday Times in the UK said, "Hyperbole? Don’t you believe it. Lynas is in many ways conservative." Also, even if the temperature rise is only 5ºC (which is just above the 4ºC "best estimate" projected by the IPCC), Lynas estimated that billions would die.
Even if we are lucky enough to only hit the 4ºC IPCC best estimate by 2100, then it is just a matter of time before we hit 6ºC since at that point, due to positive feedback effects, climate is almost certainly a runaway train (see p. 204 of the book). So on our current course, it is not a question of whether we will hit 6ºC, it is just a question of when.

Sobering, isn't it?

The other key fact is that we are out of time. We cannot continue to ignore the problem. If we are to prevent a runaway global disaster, we should be keeping the temperature rise below 2ºC. If you look at Table SPM.5 in the IPCC Working Group III report, Row I shows that to keep temperatures from rising by more than 2.4ºC, we must to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 at the latest. To accomplish stabilization, we must emit no more than the planet absorbs. That means that the entire planet needs to cut their emissions by at least 60% from today's levels by 2015. If not everyone agrees to participate, then the countries that do participate may need to cut their emissions to nearly zero in order to achieve this goal. For example, if the US, EU, and China all cut their greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2015, we could stabilize CO2 growth by 2015 for a while. That's not likely to happen, but it does point out the magnitude of the problem.

The point is that the more we cut and the faster we cut, the better. From a scientific point of view, cutting our emissions to zero by 2015 maximizes our chances of slowing down global warming and averting a disaster, but it does not guarantee it. Therefore, the amount we cut isn't dictated by the science; it is limited by what is possible to achieve without turning our economy upside down.

The most aggressive number that is generally agreed upon is to cut emissions to 30% below 1990 levels by 2020. The EU countries have agreed to achieve this if other countries such as the US also agree.

Could the IPCC temperature projections be wrong? Yes. There are some credible scientists who believe that the climate sensitivity (the temperature rise caused by a doubling of CO2 concentration) is less than estimated by the IPCC. But there are also some who believe it could be much worse. Currently, the IPCC best guess is that there is more than a 5% chance that we could exceed 6ºC before 2100. While "more than 5%" is a small probability, it is too high to ignore especially when the fate of the world is at stake.

For example, if there is more than a 5% chance that Al Qaeda will attack us tomorrow and completely obliterate every human being on the planet tomorrow, do you think that President Bush would sit on his butt and say, "we decided not to act because the probability wasn't high enough"? That is possible I suppose, but unlikely.

Everyone buys insurance - car insurance, house insurance, health insurance. In fact, many of us pay a substantial portion of our income on insurance. But what are the odds that your house will burn down, you're car will get totaled or you'll contract a terminal disease? Pretty low for most of those. In fact, it's probably much less than a 5% chance that your house will be destroyed, yet we wouldn't consider someone crazy for spending a hefty chunk of change on disaster or fire insurance for their homes. So why are we still asking ourselves "is it worth it?" when it comes to investing a small portion of global GDP - just a few % according to the Stern Review - on avoiding a 5% chance of near-extinction of the human race and worldwide catastrophe, not to mention a whole host of slightly less apocalyptic but still-perfectly-scary climate change consequences?

Could Mark Lynas be wrong about whether 6ºC is survivable? Of course. He even admits he could be wrong and points out that we should never underestimate the ability for people to adapt to change.

The the key question is this: should we bet our lives that the scientists are wrong about the worst case possibilities? Are we feeling lucky? Or do we know something that the 2,500 IPCC scientists do not? Or should we buy ourselves some insurance just in case?

Faced with such uncertainty, unless we have new data that proves that the IPCC 6.4ºC by 2100 projections are nearly impossible, the most prudent course is to listen to our scientists and accept that they might be right. If we do that, then in order to avoid a planetary catastrophe, we should do what leading climate scientists such Jim Hansen have long been advocating: cut our emissions as fast and as deep as we possibly can and encourage other nations to do the same.

But until our public is educated about why this is necessary, it is unlikely to happen here as we can see by our inability to pass meaningful reforms such as our inability to eliminate government incentives for things that make the problem worse. And if it isn't going to happen here, why should we be optimistic that other countries are going to be smarter about it than we are?

The Presidential candidates have a great platform to use to help educate the public on this issue. For example, the debates provide an opportunity for many "teachable moments." I hope that our candidates do start to educate the public because if they do not, then I do not know how it is going to happen. Right now, nobody gets it. We must change that so people understand the importance of this issue and why we must act now. This is what leadership is all about.

Why global warming should be every candidate's #1 priority

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