Catastrophic Climate Change

CSIS-CNAS: Security Implications of Climate Change

Scenario Overview

Time Span: 100 Years
Warming: 5.6°C
Sea Level Rise: 2.0 meters

A Malignant Threat: Climate Change

[Three] factors should lead a prudent individual to consider such catastrophic change plausible:

1. [The] possibility that some positive feedback loops could radically accelerate climate change well beyond what the climate models currently predict;
2. [The] prospect of accelerated emissions of CO2 in the near future due to substantial economic and population growth, particularly in developing countries such as China; and
3. [The] interactive effects between these two phenomena and our increasingly integrated and fragile just-in-time — but certainly not just-in-case — globalized economy.

(p 81, emphasis added)

A Malevolent Threat: Mass Terrorism

Oil presents a panoply of opportunities for and encouragement of mass terrorism [and] creates a litany of vulnerabilities for our society.
[Around] two-thirds of the world’s proven [conventional oil] reserves … are in the Persian Gulf …
Some oil states’ governments (Iran) are quite hostile today [and] others (Saudi Arabia) could become so with a change of ruler.
A nuclear arms race appears to be beginning between Iran and six Sunni states which have announced nuclear programs “for electricity generation.”
The United States borrows approximately a billion dollars a day at today’s prices to import oil …
The Wahhabi sect of Saudi Arabia profits massively from oil income …
[Their] teachings are murderous with respect to Shia, Jews, homosexuals, and apostates, and are mirrored by the views of al Qaeda and similar groups …
Extremely wealthy oil-exporting [nations] are thus often [totalitarian states — unconstrained by any institutional checks and balances.]
(p 87)

[Of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers:

• fifteen were Saudi nationals,
• two were from the United Arab Emirates,
• one was from Egypt and
• one from Lebanon.

None were from Iraq or Afghanistan.]

Getting Down to Work

[Mass terrorism is a concrete threat.
Climate change is not.]
[But] if we wait for absolute certainty of the threat — for a climatological 9/11 — we may then be past a tipping point from which there is no recovery.

[Wouldn’t] it be wise to take steps — particularly when many of them are financially attractive — that reduce both

• the risk of mass terrorism and
• the chance of catastrophic climate change?

[Could we not work together and agree to take the same sensible steps even it is for different reasons?]
(p 90 emphasis added)

Future Tense

ABC Radio National

Contents

Military Expenditure and the Arms Trade Treaty

Climate Change and the Top End

Climate Science 2

Naomi Oreskes: Merchants of Doubt

[If] anyone was meddling in the scientific assessment and peer review process, it was the political right wing, not the left.
It wasn't the Sierra Club that tried to pressure the National Academy of Sciences over the 1983 Carbon Dioxide Assessment [—] it was officials from the Department of Energy under Ronald Reagan.
It wasn't Environmental Defense that worked with Bill Nierenberg to alter the Executive Summary of the 1983 Acid Rain Peer Review Panel [—] it was the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
And it was the Wall Street Journal spreading the attack on [Ben] Santer and the IPCC, not Mother Jones.
(Merchants of Doubt, 2010, p 211)

21st Century Projections

World Bank: Four Degree World

How Likely is a 4°C World?

[If the] emission pledges made at … Copenhagen and Cancun [were] fully met [they would] place the world on a trajectory for a global mean warming of well over 3°C [— with] about a 20% chance of exceeding 4°C in 2100.

If these pledges are not met:

• [On a medium business-as-usual reference pathway] there is a … more than 40% [likelihood] of warming exceeding 4°C by 2100 [— with] a 10% [risk] of this occurring [by the 2070s.]
• On a higher fossil fuel intensive business-as-usual pathway {(SRES A1FI) warming reaches 4°C by the 2080s [— with a] probability of 10% of exceeding this level by the 2060s.}

There are technically and economically feasible emission pathways that could still limit warming to 2°C or below in the 21st century.
(p 23)

Changes in Extreme Temperatures

[Toward] the end of the century [using SRES A2 assumptions] about every second European summer could be as warm as or warmer than the summer of 2003 [— a 5 sigma event with a natural return time of several million years].
[Under] unmitigated emission scenarios,

• the European summer of 2003 would be classed as an anomalously cold summer relative to the new climate by the end of the century …
• days exceeding the present-day 99th percentile occur more than 20 times as frequently [and]
• the intensity, duration, and frequency of summer heat waves are expected to be substantially greater over all continents, with the largest increases over Europe, North and South America, and East Asia.

[These are the expected consequences of a 3+°C rise in global average temperatures.
The effects of a 4+°C degree rise would almost certainly be more severe.]
(p 37)

Frequency of Significantly Warmer Months

[In 4+°C world the] warmest July month in the Sahara and the Middle East will see temperatures as high as 45°C, or 6–7°C above the warmest July simulated for the present day.
In the Mediterranean and central United States, the warmest July in the period 2080–2100 will see temperatures close to 35°C, or up to 9°C above the warmest July for the present day.
[In] the Southern Hemisphere, [monthly average temperatures] will be as warm as 40°C in Australia, or about 5°C warmer than the most extreme present-day January.
[These are monthly average temperatures —] which include night-time temperatures.
Daytime [daily maximum] temperatures can be expected to significantly exceed the monthly average.

Monthly heat extremes exceeding 3 standard deviations or more that occur during summer months are associated with the most prolonged, and therefore high-impact, heat waves.
[The] number of such prolonged heat waves will increase dramatically … over essentially all continental regions, with the tropics and the [Northern Hemisphere] subtropics and mid-latitudes most severely impacted.

The Impacts of More Frequent Heat Waves

Prolonged heat waves are generally the most destructive as mortality and morbidity rates are strongly linked to heat wave duration, with excess deaths increasing each additional hot day.
[In a 4+°C world] a completely new class of heat waves, with magnitudes never experienced before in the 20th century, would occur regularly. …
[The] agricultural sector would be strongly impacted as extreme heat can cause severe yield losses.
Ecosystems in tropical and sub-tropical regions would be particularly vulnerable … as they are not adapted to extremes never experienced before.
[The] increase in absolute temperatures relative to the past variability is largest in these regions and thus the impacts on ecosystems would become extreme here.
(p 40, emphasis added)

Sea Level Rise

[During the last interglacial, 120,000 years ago, when) global mean temperature was … likely 1-2°C above current values [—] sea level was 6.6–9.4 m above the present level …
[This indicates that] ice sheets may have been very sensitive to changes in climate conditions and [have collapsed] in the past.
(p 30-31)

Risks of Sea-level Rise

[In] the Caribbean [total] cumulative capital GDP loss [is] estimated at US$68.2 billion [(8.3% of GDP) by] 2080, including

• present value of permanently lost land [and]
• relocation and reconstruction costs.

Annual GDP costs [are estimated] at $13.5 billion (1.6% of GDP) [—] mainly in the tourism and agricultural sectors.
{The tourism industry —] a major source of economic growth in these regions [— is predicted] to be very sensitive to sea-level rise.}

These estimates do not include

• water supply costs,
• increased health care costs,
• nonmarket damages, and
• increased tropical cyclone damages.

Large areas of important wetlands would be lost, affecting fisheries and water supply for many communities: …

• 22% in Jamaica,
• 17% in Belize, and
• 15% in the Bahamas …

(p 34, emphasis added)