Future Leaders

Green Army: Communications

Challenges to Australian Agriculture

Lauren Rickards and Karlie Tucker

{Australia’s river systems [already] have the lowest and most variable streamflow of any continent.}

For dryland farms (those reliant only on local rainfall) [rainfall] events will … become more intense but less frequent …
[Precipitation] will be less reliable, and the rain that does fall will be less useful for plant growth.

For irrigated farms [any] reduction in rainfall leads to a proportionately greater reduction in streamflow (water flowing into storages).
[In] the Murray-Darling Basin … a 10% drop in rainfall leads to a 35% drop in streamflow. …
[The] Murray-Darling Basin … produces 40% of Australia’s agricultural produce …
[Agricultural output] is projected to fall by 12% by 2030 and by up to 92% by 2100, if adequate mitigation measures are not undertaken. …

If Not Now, When?

Peter Christoff

Since 1990, Australia’s domestic and industrial greenhouse emissions have increased, on balance, by some 4.2%.
Its underlying emissions have increased by 28.8%.
Most of this change is associated with the unchecked development of coal-fired and gas-fired power stations to produce electricity (+47% in emissions since 1990) and increased transport use (+27%).
It is only because emissions from land clearing have been halved … that Australia has managed to offset this underlying increase and approach its Kyoto Protocol-determined target of 108% above 1990 levels.

As a result, Australia has the world’s highest level of emissions per person …

(Climate Change: On For Young and Old, 2009)

Severe Climate Change

CSIS-CNAS: Security Implications of Climate Change

Scenario Overview

Time Span: 30 Years
Warming: 2.6°C
Sea Level Rise: 0.52 meters

“[Tipping] point” events such as the abrupt release of massive quantities of methane from melting tundra or of carbon dioxide as the sea warms up [contribute to abrupt and accelerating changes and impacts:]

• Dynamical changes in polar ice sheets accelerate rapidly [leading to] high confidence that the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets have … destabilized and that 4 to 6 meters of sea level rise are now inevitable over the next few centuries …


• Water availability [falls drastically] at lower latitudes (dry tropics and subtropics), affecting 1 to 2 billion people worldwide.
  The North Atlantic overturning circulation slows significantly, with consequences for marine ecosystem productivity and fisheries.


• Crop yields decline significantly in the fertile river deltas because of sea level rise and damage from increased storm surges.
  Agriculture becomes essentially nonviable in the dry subtropics [because of dwindling water supplies,] soil salinization [and enhanced] evaporation of water from irrigated fields.
  [Desertification takes] previously marginally productive crop lands out of production.

(p 72, italics added)

• Global fisheries are affected by
  • widespread coral bleaching,
  • ocean acidification,
  • substantial loss of coastal nursery wetlands, and
  • warming and drying of tributaries that serve as breeding grounds for anadromous fish.


• The Arctic Ocean is now navigable for much of the year because of decreased Arctic sea ice and the Arctic marine ecosystem is dramatically altered.
  Developing nations at lower latitudes are impacted most severely because of climate sensitivity and high vulnerability.
  Industrialized nations … experience net harm from warming and [are forced spend an increasing proportion] of GDP adapting to climate change at home.

[This scenario depicts] possible societal consequences of severe climate change over the course of thirty years.
These consequences are not to be taken as predictions [but are] intended to encourage reflection about the [plausible] consequences of continued inaction.
(p 73)

Systemic Events

[Massive] nonlinear events in the global environment [could] give rise to massive nonlinear societal events. …

• We could see class warfare as the wealthiest members of every society pull away from the rest of the population, undermining the morale and viability of democratic governance, worldwide. …


• [Global] fish stocks [may] crash. …

(p 76)

• [The] risk of pandemic explosions of disease [will] increase.


• As drinkable water becomes scarcer it will become an increasingly commercialized resource.
  Governments, lacking the necessary resources, will privatize supply.
  [In poor societies such measures have provoked] violent protest and political upheaval [in the past.]


• Human fertility may collapse in economically advanced regions, as the consequence of increasingly difficult living conditions and of general loss of hope for the longer term.


• [Rapid] economic decline may [occur due] to the collapse of [globalized] financial and production systems that depend on integrated worldwide systems.


• [Transnational corporations may eclipse] governments as the rich look to private services. …


• Alliance systems and multilateral institutions may [break down] — among them the UN, as the Security Council fractures beyond compromise or repair.

(p 77)

Civilization

Live Long and Prosper

Every country will be affected, and no-one can opt out.
Each country has to contribute, and those countries who are industrialised must contribute more to help those who are not.
It is life itself, incomparably precious, that distinguishes us from the other planets.
It is life itself, that we must battle to preserve.

— Margaret Thatcher (1925 – 2013), London Saving the Ozone Layer Conference, March 1989.


[The] most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it …
Should our moral beliefs really prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would be hardly moral to defend them by refusing to acknowledge facts.

— Friedrich Hayek (1899 – 1992), Why I Am Not a Conservative, The Constitution of Liberty, University of Chicago Press, 1960.


Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all. …
The individual benefits as an individual from his ability to deny the truth even though society as a whole, of which he is a part, suffers.

— Garrett Hardin (1915 – 2003), The Tragedy of the Commons, Science, Vol 162,
American Association for the Advancement of Science, 13 December 1968, p 1244.


Reality
Is what kills you
If you ignore it for long enough

— peaceandlonglife

97 out of 100 active climate researchers are CONVINCED that human induced climate change is underway.

Mark Pesce (1962) [Futurist]:
One of my friends taught me long ago that: reality is that which kills you when you ignore it long enough.
(Dangers of digital tribalism, Sunday Extra, ABC Radio National, 17 May 2015)

Garrett Hardin (1915 – 2003):
World food banks move food to the people, hastening the exhaustion of the environment of the poor countries.
Unrestricted immigration, on the other hand, moves people to the food, thus speeding up the destruction of the environment of the rich countries. …
We are all the descendants of thieves, and the world's resources are inequitably distributed.
[However, we] cannot remake the past.
We cannot safely divide the wealth equitably among all peoples so long as people reproduce at different rates.
To do so would [only] guarantee that future generations would have … a ruined world to inhabit.
(Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor, Psychology Today, 1974)

Alistair Cooke (1908 – 2004):
[As for the] pollution of the atmosphere, the cities, and the rivers — the destruction of Nature.
I find it impossible to believe that a nation that [has produced so many] ingenious human beings … is going to sit back and let the worst happen …
(David Heycock, The More Abundant Life, America, Episode 13, 1972)

Rachel Carson (1907 – 64):
The balance of nature is not a status quo; it is fluid, ever shifting, in a constant state of adjustment.
Man, too, is part of this balance.
Sometimes the balance is in his favor; sometimes — and all too often through his own activities — it is shifted to his disadvantage.
(Chapter 15, Silent Spring, 1962)

Kim Robinson (1952):
[In the late 21st century] capitalism writhed in its internal decision concerning whether to destroy Earth’s biosphere or change its rules.
Many argued for the destruction of the biosphere, as being the lesser of two evils
(2312, Orbit, 2012, p 124)

Philip Dick (1928 – 82):
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
(How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later, 1978)

Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936):
Cities and Thrones and Powers
    Stand in Time's eye,
Almost as long as flowers
    Which daily die:
But, as new buds put forth
    To glad new men,
Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth
    The Cities rise again.
(Cities and Thrones and Powers, Puck of Pook's Hill, 1906)

James Cameron:
There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.
(Terminator, 1984)

James Hansen:
Human-made climate change is … the greatest threat civilization faces.
(Storms Of My Grandchildren, Bloomsbury, 2009, p 70)

Tim Flannery:
If humans pursue a business-as-usual course for the first half of this century, I believe the collapse of civilisation due to climate change becomes inevitable.
(The Weather Makers, Text, 2005, p 209)

Al Gore:
[What] is at stake is the set of environmental conditions and the health of the natural systems on which our civilization depends.
(The Future, 2014)

Ross Garnaut [Professor of Economics, Australian National University]:
With human society, if you give it a big enough shock, things fall apart. …
We've got plenty examples of history.
Germany, at the time arguably … in the 20's and 30's … the best educated community … in some sense one of the highest points of civilisation … had the shock of … very high unemployment for a period and the normal moral foundations of society fell apart …
That's the sense which I see civilisation threatened by [an] increase in temperature of four degrees.
We would be giving human society such a big shock, displacing so many people, shaking the foundations of organized society to an extent that it's unlikely that normal patterns of political and social organization would survive.
And so then you do get disintegration of civilisation as we know it.
(Cutting Carbon: Australian Answers to a World Problem, 12 June 2014)

William Nordhaus:
Once we open the door to consider catastrophic changes, a whole new debate is engaged.
If we do not know how human activities will affect the thin layer of life-supporting activities that gave birth to and nurture human civilisation and if we cannot reliably judge how potential geophysical changes will affect civilisation and the world around us … should we not be ultra-conservative and tilt towards preserving the natural world at the expense of economic growth and development?
Do we dare put human betterment before the preservation of natural systems and trust that human ingenuity will bail us out should Nature deal us a nasty hand?
(Climate Change, 1996)

Alfred Wallace (1823 – 1913):
[The atmosphere is] a most complex structure, a wonderful piece of machinery, [which,] in

• its various component gases,
• its actions and reactions upon the water and the land,
• its production of electrical discharges, and
• its furnishing the elements from which the whole fabric of life is composed and perpetually renewed,

may be truly considered to be the very source and foundation of life itself.
(Man's Place in the Universe, 5th Ed, 1905, pp 258-9)

Dan Kahan:
[There] is no logical connection between what you propose to do to solve a problem and whether there … is a problem in the first place.
Either the earth is heating up, it's being caused by humans, and it's going to have a bad effect — or not.
[Whether] those are true propositions or not does not depend [on how] you're proposing to deal with that problem …
(Water Institute Lecture, 2009)

Nate Silver:
Human beings have an extraordinary capacity to ignore risks that threaten their livelihood, as though this will make them go away.
(The Signal and the Noise, 2012, p 25)

Myron Ebell:
[If it turns out we're wrong about anthropogenic climate change, then] I'll have to say I’m sorry and I wish we could speed up our efforts to reverse the policies that we have supported here at [the Competitive Enterprise Institute.]
(Climate of Doubt, PBS Frontline, 23 October 2012)

Richard Lindzen:
[The] likelihood over the next century of greenhouse warming reaching magnitudes comparable to natural variability seems small.
(MIT Tech Talk, 27 September, 1989)

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 59):
A false notion which is clear and precise will always meet with a greater number of adherents in the world than a true principle which is obscure or involved.
(Democracy in America, 1835, Bantam 2011, p 189)

The Last Great Global Warming

	Cretaceous Hothouse	Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)	Anthropocene
Speed of Warming	Slow	Moderate	Fast
Rate of Carbon Release (petagrams per year)		< 2 [1]	9 to 25 [2]
Rate of Temperature Rise (degrees Celsius per century)	0.000025	0.025	1 to 4
Absolute Temperature Rise (degrees Celsius)	5 (Over 20 million years)	5 [to 9] (Over 20 thousand years)	2 to 10 (Projected over the next 200 to 300 years)
Duration (years)	Millions	Thousands [3]	Tens to Hundreds
Main underlying cause	Volcanic eruptions	Volcanoes Methane bubbling up from the ocean bottom Peat and coal fires Thawing permafrost	Fossil-fuel burning
Environmental change	Oceans absorbed carbon dioxide slowly so did not acidify	Deep sea acidification	Acidifying oceans More extreme weather Glacier melting Sea-level rise
Ecological Impact	Nearly all creatures had time to adapt or migrate		Poleward movement of many species Habitat loss Coral bleaching Extinctions

Notes:

1. [The] rate of [atmospheric carbon] injection during the PETM was less than two petagrams a year …
2. [We] are now pumping nine petagrams of carbon into the atmosphere every year …
   [Consequently,] C02 concentrations are rising [around] 10 times faster now than they did during the PETM. …
   Projections that account for population growth and increased industrialization of developing nations indicate that rate may reach 25 petagrams a year before all fossil-fuel reserves are exhausted. …
3. It took nearly 200,000 years for the earth's natural buffers to bring the fever down.

(Lee Kump, Implications: Lessons from Past Warmings, Scientific American, July 2011,
pp 42, 44-45, adapted)

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Observations and Impacts

World Bank: Four Degree World

Extreme Events in the Period 2000–12 [1] (Adapted from Table 1, p 18)
Region (Year)	Record-breaking Event	Impact & Costs
England and Wales (2000)	Wettest autumn since records began in 1766 Several short-term rainfall records	~£1.3 billion
Europe (2003)	Hottest summer in at least 500 years	Death toll exceeding 70,000
England and Wales (2007)	Wettest May to July 1766	Major flooding ~£3 billion damage
Southern Europe (2007)	Hottest summer in Greece since 1891	Devastating wildfires
Eastern Mediterranean, Middle-East (2008)	Driest winter since 1902	Substantial damage to cereal production
Victoria, Australia (2009)	Heat wave Many station temperature records (32–154 years of data)	Worst bushfires on record 173 deaths 3500 houses destroyed
Western Russia (2010)	Hottest summer since 1500	500 wildfires around Moscow Crop failure of ~25% Death toll ~55,000 ~US$15 billion in economic losses
Western Europe (2011)	Hottest and driest spring in France since 1880	French grain harvest down by 12%
Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana (2011)	Record-breaking summer heat and drought since 1880	Wildfires burning 3 million acres (Preliminary impact of $6 to $8 billion)
Continental US (2012)	Warmest July since 1895 Severe drought conditions	Abrupt increase in global food prices due to crop losses
1.  [Unusual] weather events for which there is now substantial scientific evidence linking them to global warming with medium to high levels of confidence (p 16).

Heat Waves and Extreme Temperatures

These events were … typically more than 3 standard deviations (sigma) warmer than the local mean temperature …
[Such] 3-sigma events would be expected to occur [by chance] only once in several hundreds of years.

The five hottest summers in Europe since 1500 all occurred after 2002, with 2003 and 2010 being exceptional outliers.
[During] the 2003 heat wave … daily excess mortality [reached] up to 2,200 in France. …
(p 13)

On August 28, [2012,] about 63% of the contiguous United States was affected by drought conditions … and the January to August period was the warmest ever recorded.
[Wildfires set] a new record for total burned area — exceeding 7.72 million acres.

In the 1960s, summertime extremes of more than three standard deviations warmer than the mean of the climate were practically absent, affecting less than 1% of the Earth’s surface. …
Now such extremely hot outliers typically cover about 10% of the land area.
(p 14)

Arctic Sea Ice and Greenland Surface Melt

Figure 3-5
Arctic Sea Ice Cover in September (the Summer Minimum Extent) in 1979 [the first year of satellite observation] and in 2005.
(NASA, May 2007)

(Stefan Rahmstorf, Anthropogenic Climate Change: Revisiting the Facts in Ernesto Zedillo, Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto, Brookings Institution Press, pp 34–53, 2008)

Figure 21.4
September sea-ice extent, already declining markedly, is projected to decline even more rapidly in the future.
The three images above show the average of the projections from five climate models for three future time periods, using the B2 emissions scenario. …
Some models project the nearly complete loss of summer sea ice in this century.

Figure 21.6
Seasonal surface melt extent on the Greenland Ice Sheet has been observed by satellite since 1979 and shows an increasing trend.
The melt zone shown here for 1992 and 2002, where summer warmth turns snow and ice around the edges of the ice sheet into slush and ponds of melt-water, has been expanding inland and to record high elevations in recent years.

(Susan Hassol & Robert Corell, Arctic Climate Impact Assessment in Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, Hans Schellnhuber, Editor in Chief, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp 207-8)

World Meteorological Organization

Arctic sea ice extent reached its record lowest [annual minimum in the last 1,500 years on] 16 September [2012.]
This value broke the previous record low set on 18 September 2007 by 18% [and] was 49% … below the 1979–2000 average minimum.
The difference between the maximum Arctic sea-ice extent on 20 March and the lowest minimum extent on 16 September was 11.83 million km^2 — the largest seasonal sea-ice extent loss in the 34-year satellite record.

(WMO Annual Climate Statement Confirms 2012 as Among Top Ten Warmest Years, Press Release No 972, 2 May 2013)

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