[Phys-l] Climate Change, Peak Oil and other Limits to Growth

["Steven M" <stevie69_m@hotmail.com>]

Hi Physics Teachers!

I am a business information systems graduate, and I have done a lot of 
research into climate change, peak oil, and limits to growth. There is a lot 
of science behind it, as well as theories, statistics, and concepts. Please 
have a look. There are some physics related ideas in climate science, like 
the effect GHG, reflection of sunlight and other wave lengths, as well as 
influences on the Earths orbit which could be incorporated into the study of 
Astronomy. There are also some ecological footprint calculations which could 
be attempted, and there are some decay/exponential growth functions in 
looking at resource consumption and population growth.

If you have any more maths/physics related calculations/formulas regarding 
anything to do with climate, species extinction, resource depletion, and 
limits to growth please let me know!

If anyone wants my document with graphs, images, diagrams etc, let me know. 
Below is the text only version. I've formatted the document in the form of 
answer and question.

Steven M

====

Climate Change, Peak Oil and other Limits to Growth
Challenge our Models of
Perpetual Growth, Business as Usual, and Economics

Compiled information by Steven Muschalik

What Do Human Records and Proxy Data Tell us About Our Climate?	3
What Does Ice Core Data Tell Us About Earth’s Climate History?	5
What Climate Existed in the Carboniferous Period?	7
What Are Greenhouse Gases?	10
What Are Climate Forcings?	12
Is The Earth Out of Energy Balance With Space?	13
How do Milankovich cycles affect the sun-earth interaction?	16
What Are Positive or Negative Feedback Mechanisms?	19
How Much Energy Is Required to Warm an Entire Planet?	21
What is the Carbon Cycle?	22
Is The Carbon Cycle Out of Balance?	24
What Are Carbon Sinks?	25
How Much CO2 Equivalent Can Our Planet Absorb Naturally?	26
Why Should We Be Worried About a Warming of Just 1-5°C?	29
Is There Scientific Consensus on Climate Change?	34
Is The IPCC Report Unbiased Or Is It Political?	35
Is There Evidence In the Past of Abrupt Climate Change?	37
What Is The Probable Resulting Climate For Given Emissions?	38
What Are The Chances of Exceeding a Range of Temperatures at a Particular 
Level of CO2 Equivalent?	39
How Does Sea Level Rise Relate to Temperature?	43
What Kind of Sea Level Rise Can We Expect in The Future?	44
How Long Will It Take For The Climate to Respond to Forcings	45
How Long Will It Take to Stabilise The Climate, and Sea Levels?	46
What Constitutes Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference With Nature?	47
What Are Tipping Points?	48
What Are The Uncertainties About Climate Change?	50
What Is Happening To Our Species In Relation to Climate Change?	53
What Can We Do To Save The Climate From Going Haywire?	56
What Are The Limitations of Coal and Geosquestration?	58
What Is Happening In The Arctic, and In the Oceans?	60
Do We Need To Reconsider GDP Or Even Capitalism?	62
Is The Current Fossil Fuel Based Economy On a Crash Course With Nature?	64
Will Environmental Policies Stifle The Economy?	66
What Is Sustainable Development?	72
What Are The Costs of Inaction?	73
What Opportunities Do Businesses See In Taking Action on Climate Change?	75
What Surprises Can We Expect?	78
What is Humanities Ecological Footprint?	80
How Do Entropy, Economy and Environment Relate?	82
What Are the Equity Issues of Energy?	83
Are There Limits To Growth?	84
How Do We Know We Have Reached Overshoot?	95
What Does Human History Tell Us About Civilisation and Equilibrium?	95
Can The (R/P) Ratio Predict The Lifetime of Fuels?	96
What is Peak Oil?	97
How Long Does It Take To Prepare For Peak Oil?	103
What Is The Creaming Curve?	104
Is It Possible to Replace Declining Oil Production With Alterative 
Fuels?	105
Can Taxes Help Improve Signals to Businesses to Save Energy?	107
Does The Suburban Way of Life Have A Future?	108
Can New Technology Make Civilisation Sustainable?	110
Net Energy Analysis with EROI	112
Will We Have To Rethink Our Current Economic System In a Low-Energy 
World?	113
How Will Peak Oil Affect Food Supply?	115
How Will Climate Change Affect Electricity Production?	116
Is The Planetary Situation Urgent?	118
Can We Believe Climate Skeptics?	119
What TV Channels May Show Documentaries With Evidence of Global Warming?	120


What Do Human Records and Proxy Data Tell us About Our Climate?
Good weather records extend back less than 150 years in most places. In that 
time, the Earth's global average temperature has increased by approximately 
0.5 degrees centigrade or 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit.

This figure shows direct observations of global temperatures since the 
1850s.




Beginning in the 1970's, paleoclimatologists began constructing a blueprint 
of how the Earth's temperature changed over the centuries before 1850 and 
the widespread use of thermometers. Out of this emerged a view of the past 
climate based on limited data from tree rings, historical documents, 
sediments and other proxy data sources. Today, many more paleoclimate 
records are available from around the world, providing a much improved view 
of past changes in the Earth's temperature.



http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/jones2004/jones2004.html
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleolast.html



What Does Ice Core Data Tell Us About Earth’s Climate History?

> From paleo records, we know that the climate of the past million years has 
been dominated by the glacial cycle, a pattern of ice ages and glacial 
retreats lasting thousands of years. There have been four ice ages and 
intervening warmer periods during the past 400,000 years.

Below is a schematic representation of recent climate trends and future 
projections in historical perspective. The 20th and 21st centuries are shown 
to the same (linear) scale. Earlier periods are shown in terms of increasing 
powers of ten years ago but are linear within each period. 
http://www.bom.gov.au/info/climate/change/gallery/77.shtml


Eighteen-thousand years ago, at the peak of the last ice age, scientists 
estimate that nearly 32% of the earth's land area was covered with ice, 
including much of Canada, Scandinavia, and the British Isles. These glaciers 
developed because the earth was in the midst of an ice age. Today ice 
coverage is about 10% of the Earth's land surface.



http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/primer_history.html


What Climate Existed in the Carboniferous Period?

Some 30 million years before dinosaurs appeared, known as the Carboniferous 
Period - 300 million years ago - a time when terrestrial Earth was ruled by 
giant plants and insects, average global temperatures in the Early 
Carboniferous Period were hot- approximately 20° C (68° F). Atmospheric 
concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Early Carboniferous Period 
were approximately 1500 ppm (parts per million).

Interestingly, the last half of the Carboniferous Period witnessed periods 
of significant ice cap formation over polar landmasses-- particularly in the 
southern hemisphere. Alternating cool and warm periods during the ensuing 
Carboniferous Ice Age coincided with cycles of glacier expansion and 
retreat.

Lycopsid stomatal indices from the fossil records show low CO2 levels during 
the Permo-Carboniferous glaciation are in agreement with glaciological 
evidence for the presence of continental ice and coupled models of climate 
and ice-sheet growth on Pangea. Moreover, the Permian data indicate 
atmospheric CO2 levels were low 260 Myr ago, by which time continental 
deglaciation was already underway. Positive biotic feedbacks on climate, and 
geotectonic events, therefore are implicated as mechanisms underlying 
deglaciation.

Late Palaeozoic evidence for ice and atmospheric CO2 concentrations 
reconstructed from paleosols and predicted by a geochemical model of the 
long-term global carbon cycle (solid line). Red boxes indicate CO2 estimates 
from the current study. The dashed horizontal line indicates the threshold 
atmospheric CO2 level above which theoretical studies predict deglaciation 
on Pangea and the maintenance of an ice-free state.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=130500







Illustrated below is how geologists believe Earth's landmasses were arranged 
306 million years ago, during the Late Carboniferous Period.
Following the Carboniferous Period, the Permian Period and Triassic Period 
witnessed predominantly desert-like conditions, accompanied by one or more 
major periods of species extinctions. CO2 levels began to rise during this 
time because there was less erosion of the land and therefore reduced 
opportunity for chemical reaction of CO2 with freshly exposed minerals. 
Also, there was significantly less plant life growing in the proper 
swamplands to sequester CO2 through photosynthesis and rapid burial.
http://mysite.verizon.net/mhieb/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

Our plucky planet has survived at least two runaway greenhouse events, one 
of them just barely. About 55 million years ago, a tremendous methane burp 
trapped enough sunlight to heat Earth by as much as 13° Fahrenheit (7° 
Celsius), disrupting the climate for more than 100,000 years. [NASA/Goddard 
EOS Project Dec 12/01]

An even bigger global warming hiccup occurred 250 million years ago, when a 
carbon-clogged atmosphere melted all of Earth’s ice and methane. The ensuing 
“Great Dying” nearly extinguished all life.
When plants shrivel, says paleontologist and extinctions expert Peter Ward, 
“everything dies.” Aquatic creatures suffocated from lack of oxygen. As the 
ocean turneds sterile, gasping land animals fled rapidly rising sea levels 
from a global meltwater tsunami.
Over the ensuing 500,000 years, a few species struggled to find a foothold 
in Earth’s alien environment. It took another 20 million to 30 million years 
for the first coral reefs to re-establish themselves, and for forests to 
regrow. More than 100 million years passed before ecologies reached their 
former healthy diversity. [University Of Wyoming Jan 13/04]
Ward’s team found no residues from a comet or asteroid impact. It looks like 
volcanism and methane releases caused this greenhouse cull. [Washington Post 
Jan 21/05] http://www.willthomas.net/Convergence/Weekly/Global_Warming.htm




What Are Greenhouse Gases?

Greenhouse gases allow sunlight to enter the atmosphere freely, but trap the 
heat in the atmosphere, like a greenhouse, hence the name. The earth's 
atmosphere is generally transparent to short-wave radiation, which means the 
sunlight enters the atmosphere freely. Hence most of this energy passes 
through the atmosphere and strikes the earth's surface. The portion of 
incoming solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface, is either 
absorbed by the land and the oceans or is reflected back toward space by 
water, snow, ice, and other reflective surfaces (the measure of an object's 
reflectivity is called its albedo).

Energy absorbed at the Earth's surface is then re-radiated into the 
atmosphere as infrared radiation (heat). Some of this infrared radiation is 
in turn absorbed and re-emitted by "greenhouse gases", which acts as a 
blanket, resulting in a warming of the earth's surface and lower atmosphere.

Without greenhouse gases, over time, the amount of energy sent from the sun 
to the Earth’s surface should be about the same as the amount of energy 
radiated back into space, leaving the temperature of the Earth’s surface 
roughly constant. Without atmospheric absorption and reradiation of infrared 
energy the average surface air temperature of the Earth would be about 30° C 
lower.



Many gases exhibit these “greenhouse” properties. Some of them occur in 
nature (water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide), while 
others are exclusively human-made (like gases used for aerosols).
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1.html
http://www.agu.org/eos_elec/99148e.html
http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~mco//Phys171/Climate/files/L15_Notes.pdf


This is a simplified diagram illustrating the global long-term radiative 
balance of the atmosphere. Net input of solar radiation must be balanced by 
net output of infrared radiation. About a third of incoming solar radiation 
is reflected and the remainder is mostly absorbed by the surface and 
atmosphere. Outgoing infrared radiation is absorbed by greenhouse gases and 
by clouds keeping the surface about 33 °C warmer than it would otherwise be.


The sun plays a vital role in the earth's climate system, providing the 
energy which drives both atmospheric and oceanic circulation, and ultimately 
driving the climate system. This solar energy reaches the earth's atmosphere 
in the form of electromagnetic radiation (infrared radiation, radio waves, 
visible light, and ultraviolet rays)


www.geo.umn.edu/courses/1001/climate_human.html

72% of the totally emitted greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide (CO2), 18% 
Methane (CH4) and 9% Nitrous oxide (NOx). Carbon dioxide emissions therefore 
are the most important cause of global warming. CO2 is inevitably created by 
burning fuels like e.g. oil, natural gas, diesel, organic-diesel, petrol, 
organic-petrol, and ethanol. 
http://timeforchange.org/CO2-cause-of-global-warming

What Are Climate Forcings?
The temperature of the Earth is determined by a balance of the energy 
entering the Earth-atmosphere system and the energy leaving the system. An 
energy imbalance imposed on the climate system either externally or by human 
activities is termed a climate forcing. Persistent climate forcing cause the 
temperature of the Earth to change until an energy balance is restored. The 
amount of change is determined by the magnitudes of the climate forgings and 
the feedbacks within the climate system that amplify or diminish the effect 
of the forgings.
Climate during the last ice age, which peaked 20,000 years ago, was 
dramatically different than it is today. Global climate forcing was about 6 
1/2 W/m2 less than in the current interglacial period. This forcing 
maintained a planet 5 °C colder than today, implying a climate sensitivity 
of 3/4 ± 1/4 °C per W/m2.
http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh2.html



Precise data are available for trends of the long-lived greenhouse gases 
(GHGs) that are well-mixed in the atmosphere, i.e., CO2, CH4, N2O and CFCs.



The growth rate of the GHG climate forcing peaked in the early 1980s at a 
rate of almost 0.5 W/m2 per decade, but declined by the 1990s to about 0.3 
W/m2 per decade (Figure 8). The primary reason for the decline was reduced 
emissions of CFCs, the production of which was phased out because of their 
destructive effect on stratospheric ozone.
http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh4.html

Is The Earth Out of Energy Balance With Space?




Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) measurements show the 
reflected solar radiation (left) and emitted heat radiation (right) for 
January 1, 2002. In both images, the lightest areas represent thick clouds, 
which both reflect radiation from the Sun and block heat rising from the 
Earth's surface. Notice the clouds above the western Pacific Ocean, where 
there is strong uprising of air, and the relative lack of clouds north and 
south of the equator. The animation, created from daily data, shows how 
rapidly these measurements change. (Credit: NASA)

At present, planet Earth is out of energy balance with space by 0.85 watts 
per meter squared (W/m2) and will reach a new equilibrium by warming up 
another 0.6 degrees which is committed from past emissions. This is equal to 
a 1-watt light bulb shining over an area of one square meter or 10.76 square 
feet. Although seemingly small, this amount of heat affecting the entire 
world would make a significant impact. To put this number in perspective, an 
imbalance of 1 W/m2 maintained for the last 10,000 years is enough to melt 
ice equivalent to 1 kilometer (6/10ths of a mile) of sea level.
http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/news/2005/story04-28-05.html

“The greatest danger of a positive planetary energy imbalance is its effects 
on the fringes of Greenland and West Antarctica. As these areas are softened 
by melt-water and rainfall, they begin to discharge icebergs into the ocean 
more rapidly. As warming continues the ice sheet area with surface snow-melt 
increases and the melt season becomes longer, bringing positive feedbacks 
into play, including reduced ice sheet albedo (wet ice is darker, absorbing 
more sunlight), warming coastal waters and rising sea level that remove 
grounded coastal ice shelves that previously had impeded movement of glacial 
iceberg streams to the ocean, and sinking of the ice sheet that increases 
the temperature at its surface. The potential result, if this process is 
allowed to proceed beyond a critical point, is much more rapid discharge of 
ice into the ocean.” http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/imbalance_release.pdf

How Sensitive Is our Planet’s Climate To Forcings?

NASA scientist James Hansen explains, “Climate sensitivity is the response 
to a specified forcing, after climate has had time to reach a new 
equilibrium, including effects of fast feedbacks. A common measure of 
climate sensitivity is the global warming caused by a doubling in 
atmospheric CO2 concentration. Climate models suggest that doubled CO2 would 
cause 3 °C global warming, with an uncertainty of at least 50%. Doubled CO2 
is a forcing of about 4 W/m2, implying that global climate sensitivity is 
about 3/4 °C per W/m2 of forcing.”
http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh.html

"Paleoclimate data show that the Earth’s climate is remarkably sensitive to 
global forcings. Positive feedbacks predominate. This allows the entire 
planet to be whipsawed between climate states. One feedback, the ‘albedo 
flip’ property of water substance, provides a powerful trigger mechanism. A 
climate forcing that ‘flips’ the albedo of a sufficient portion of an ice 
sheet can spark a cataclysm. Ice sheet and ocean inertia provides only 
moderate delay to ice sheet disintegration and a burst of added global 
warming. Recent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions place the Earth perilously 
close to dramatic climate change that could run out of our control, with 
great dangers for humans and other creatures. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the 
largest human-made climate forcing, but other trace constituents are 
important. Only intense simultaneous efforts to slow CO2 emissions and 
reduce non-CO2 forcings can keep climate within or near the range of the 
past million years. The most important of the non-CO2 forcings is methane 
(CH4), as it causes the 2nd largest human-made GHG climate forcing and is 
the principal cause of increased tropospheric ozone (O3), which is the 3rd 
largest GHG forcing. Nitrous oxide (N2O) should also be a focus of climate 
mitigation efforts. Black carbon (“black soot”) has a high global warming 
potential (~2000, 500, and 200 for 20, 100 and 500 years, respectively) and 
deserves greater attention. Some forcings are especially effective at high 
latitudes, so concerted efforts to reduce their emissions could still “save 
the Arctic”, while also having major benefits for human health, agricultural 
productivity, and the global environment."
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/~jhansen/docs/RoyalSoc_16Jan2007.pdf


Hansen says "Climate forcing this century under business as usual (BAU) 
would dwarf natural forcings of the past million years, indeed it would 
probably exceed climate forcing of the Middle Pliocene, when the planet was 
not more than 2-3°C warmer and sea level 25±10 m higher (Dowsett et al. 
1994). The climate sensitivities we have inferred from paleoclimate data 
assure that a BAU GHG emission scenario would produce global warming of 
several degrees Celsius this century, with amplification at high latitudes."

In relation to the IPCC, Hansen says its "analyses and projections do not 
well account for the nonlinear physics of wet ice sheet disintegration, ice 
streams, and eroding ice shelves, nor are they consistent with the 
paleoclimate evidence we have presented for the absence of discernable lag 
between ice sheet forcing and sea level rise."


How do Milankovich cycles affect the sun-earth interaction?
Slow changes in the Earth’s orbit lead to small but climatically important 
changes in the strength of the seasons over tens of thousands of years. 
Climate feedbacks amplify these small changes, thereby producing ice ages. 
Milankovich cycles are cycles in eccentricity (the shape of the Earth's 
orbit around the Sun.), axial tilt (the inclination of the Earth's axis in 
relation to its plane of orbit with the Sun), and precession (the change in 
the direction of the Earth's axis of rotation relative to the Sun at the 
time of perihelion and aphelion) which influence the amount of solar 
radiation striking the Earth at different times. Taken in unison, variations 
in these three cycles creates alterations in the seasonality of solar 
radiation reaching the Earth's surface. These times of increased or 
decreased solar radiation directly influence the Earth's climate system, 
thus impacting the advance and retreat of Earth's glaciers.

The variation in the orbit, is the only one of the cycles that affects the 
actual amount of radiation reaching the Earth known as "eccentricity,'' has 
two cycles -- one every 100,000 years and one every 413,000 years.

The Earth's eccentricity varies primarily due to interactions with the 
gravitational fields of Jupiter and Saturn. Currently the difference between 
closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) and furthest distance (aphelion) is 
only 3.4% (5.1 million km). This difference amounts to about a 6.8% increase 
in incoming solar radiation.
Perihelion presently occurs around January 3, while aphelion is around July 
4. When the orbit is at its most highly elliptical, the amount of solar 
radiation at perihelion is about 23% greater than at aphelion. This 
difference is roughly 4 times the value of the eccentricity. "The 
eccentricity influences seasonal differences:  when the Earth is closest to 
the sun, it gets more solar radiation.  If the occurs during the winter, the 
winter is less severe. If a hemisphere has its summer while closest to the 
sun, summers are relatively warm."

The variation in obliquity, due to the Earth's rotation axis wobbles, causes 
a slow 2.4° change in the tilt of the axis with respect to the plane of the 
Earth's orbit. Obliquity variation has the potential to have a fairly direct 
effect on seasonal extremes. After all, it is the obliquity that causes our 
seasons in the first place - if the Earth's axis were perpendicular to its 
orbital plane, there would be no seasons at all.

The difference in tilt affects where on the Earth receives the most and 
least solar radiation, but has global climatic consequences. Oscillations in 
the degree of Earth's axial tilt occur on a periodicity of 41,000 years from 
21.5 to 24.5 degrees. Presently the Earth is tilted at 23.44 degrees from 
its orbital plane, roughly half way between its extreme values.

The more tilt means more severe seasons - warmer summers and colder winters; 
less tilt means less severe seasons - cooler summers and milder winters.  
For an increase of 1o in obliquity, the total energy received by the summer 
hemisphere increases by approximately 1%.  The cool summers are thought to 
allow for the yearly build up of snow and ice in high latitudes, possibly 
leading to the development of an ice sheet. Obliquity change also causes 
equator ward motion of the tropical circles and the pole ward motion of the 
polar circles.

The variation in precession is the change in orientation of the Earth's 
rotational axis.
The precession cycle takes about 19,000 - 23,000 years.  Precession is 
caused by two factors:  a wobble of the Earth's axis and a turning around of 
the elliptical orbit of the Earth itself. Precession affects the direction 
of the Earth's axis.  The change in the axis location changes the dates of 
perihelion (closest distance from sun) and aphelion (farthest distance from 
sun), and this increases the seasonal contrast in one hemisphere while 
decreasing it in the other hemisphere.

When the axis is aligned so it points toward the Sun during perihelion, one 
polar hemisphere will have a greater difference between the seasons while 
the other hemisphere will have milder seasons. The hemisphere which is in 
summer at perihelion will receive much of the corresponding increase in 
solar radiation, but that same hemisphere will be in winter at aphelion and 
have a colder winter. The other hemisphere will have a relatively warmer 
winter and cooler summer. When the Earth's axis is aligned such that 
aphelion and perihelion occur during spring and autumn, the Northern and 
Southern Hemispheres will have similar contrasts in the seasons. At present 
perihelion occurs during the Southern Hemisphere's summer, and aphelion is 
reached during the southern winter. Thus the Southern Hemisphere seasons 
should tend to be somewhat more extreme than the Northern Hemisphere 
seasons.
Currently, the Earth is closest to the sun in the Northern Hemisphere 
winter, which makes the winters there less severe. Another consequence of 
precession is a shift in the celestial poles. 5000 years ago the North Star 
was Thuban in the constellation Draco. Currently the North Star is Polaris 
in the constellation Ursa Minor. 12,000 years from now the Northern 
Hemisphere will experience summer in December and winter in June because the 
axis of the earth will be pointing at the star Vega instead of it's current 
alignment with Polaris.

These variables are only important because the Earth has an asymmetric 
distribution of landmasses, with virtually all (except Antarctica) located 
in the Northern Hemisphere.



At times when Northern Hemisphere summers are coolest (farthest from the Sun 
due to precession and greatest orbital eccentricity) and winters are warmest 
(minimum tilt), snow can accumulate on and cover broad areas of northern 
America and Europe. At present, only precession is in the glacial mode, with 
tilt and eccentricity not favourable to glaciation.

Milankovitch's work was an attempt at explaining the ice ages, and it built 
upon previous astronomical theories of climate variation postulated by 
Joseph Adhemar and James Croll in the 19th century. Although the 
Milankovitch theory is well-grounded astronomically, it remains 
controversial. The theory predicts different effects at different latitudes, 
and thus its use as a predictor of global (or at least hemispheric) climate 
change is not unambiguous. The exact mechanisms by which the relatively 
modest variations in the Earth's orbit and axis direction might result in 
such large effects as the ice ages are not well established.

http://geography.about.com/od/learnabouttheearth/a/milankovitch.htm
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/seasons_orbit.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
http://www.bbm.me.uk/portsdown/PH_731_Milank.htm
http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~geol445/hyperglac/time1/milankov.htm



What Are Positive or Negative Feedback Mechanisms?
Feedback is a word to describe a situation in which a part of the output of 
a process is added to the input and subsequently alters the output. In this 
way feedback can influence how the process operates.  Feedbacks can either 
amplify (a positive feedback) or dampen (a negative feedback) the initial 
perturbation. A climate feedback is an internal climate process that 
amplifies or dampens the climate response to an initial forcing.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/08/climate-feedbacks/
http://rowland.worc.ac.uk/mec/Climate/Feedback/Index.html

Feedback in climate systems can take two forms:

Positive feedback in which the feedback reinforces the original input 
resulting in amplification of the output of the process. This means that 
small changes in the input to the system will be cause the system to produce 
larger and larger changes, resulting in instability.

Ocean warming provides a good example of a potential positive feedback 
mechanism. The oceans are an important sink for CO2 through absorption of 
the gas into the water surface. As CO2 increases it increases the warming 
potential of the atmosphere. If air temperatures warm it should warm the 
oceans. The ability of the ocean to remove CO2 from the atmosphere decreases 
with increasing temperature. Hence increasing CO2 in the atmosphere could 
have effects that exacerbate the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.
Similar examples can be drawn for warmer air temperatures increasing the 
rate of glacier and sea ice melting. As the ice melts it changes the surface 
characteristics of the surface as the underlying ocean or land will have a 
lower albedo than the ice and hence an enhanced ability to absorb solar 
radiation.
Likewise, the increase in temperature would permit more water vapor to be 
stored in the atmosphere. The amount of water vapor the atmosphere can hold 
increases exponentially with temperature so increases in temperature can 
yield increases in atmospheric water vapor. The increased water vapor, as a 
greenhouse gas, enhances the greenhouse effect and could lead to further 
warming as long as this positive feedback isn't modified by an increase in 
cloudcover that could lead to a negative feedback (bee below).

Negative feedback in which the feedback counteracts the original input 
resulting in reduction of the output of the process. This means that small 
changes in the input to the system will be cause the system to produce 
smaller and smaller changes, resulting in the output to the system becoming 
stabilised.

A good example of a negative feedback mechanism will be if the increase in 
temperature increases the amount of cloud cover. The increased cloud 
thickness or extent could reduce incoming solar radiation and limit warming.
On the other hand it is not obvious that if additional cloud cover happens 
at what latitudes and at what times might it occur. Also it is not obvious 
what types of clouds might be generated. Thick low clouds would have a 
stronger ability to block sunlight than extensive high (cirrus) type clouds.
Low clouds tend to cool, high clouds tend to warm. High clouds tend to have 
lower albedo and reflect less sunlight back to space than low clouds. Clouds 
are generally good absorbers of infrared, but high clouds have colder tops 
than low clouds, so they emit less infrared spaceward. To further complicate 
matters, cloud properties may change with a changing climate, and human-made 
aerosols may confound the effect of greenhouse gas forcing on clouds. With 
fixed clouds and sea ice, models would all report climate sensitivities 
between 2°C and 3°C for a CO2 doubling. Depending on whether and how 
cloud cover changes, the cloud feedback could almost halve or almost double 
the warming.
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/samson/feedback_mechanisms/

Here are some links between parts of the climate system including feedbacks 
that may accelerate climate change and its impacts. Observations suggest 
some of these feedbacks may already be operating.






How Much Energy Is Required to Warm an Entire Planet?

Here are a few estimates of the energy used to melt ice and warm the air, 
land and ocean in the past 50 years.

Ice melting: assume that the 10 cm rise in sea level between 1950 and 2000 
was due to melting ice (thermal expansion of warming ocean water contributes 
about half of the rise, but this error is partly balanced by melting sea ice 
and ice shelves, which do not raise the sea level). If the initial 
temperature of the melted ice was –10 °C and its final temperature was that 
of the mean ocean surface (+15 °C), then the energy used is 105 cal/g (80 
cal/g for melting). The heat storage is thus 10 g/cm2 × 105 cal/g × 4.19 
J/cal × surface area of Earth (~5.1 × 1018 cm2) × ocean fraction of Earth 
(~0.71) ≈ 1.6 × 1022 J ≈ 1 watt-year.

Air warming: for a 0.5 °C increase in air temperature, the heat storage in 
the air is: 0.5 °C × the atmospheric mass of air (≈ mass of 10 m 
column of water ≈ 1000 g/cm2) × heat capacity air (≈ 0.24 
cal/(g·°C) × 4.19 J/cal × surface area of Earth ≈ 0.26 × 1022 J 
≈ 0.16 watt-year.

Land warming: The mean depth of penetration of a thermal wave into the 
Earth's crust in 50 years, weighted by ΔT, is about 20 m. If the 
Earth's crust has a density of ~3 g/cm3 and a heat capacity of ~0.2 
cal/(g·°C), and the fractional land coverage of Earth is about 0.29, then 
the land heat storage is 2 × 103 cm × 3 g/cm3 × 0.2 cal/(g·°C) × 0.5 °C × 
4.19 J/cal × surface area of Earth × 0.29 ≈ 0.37 × 1022 J ≈ 0.23 
watt-year.

Ocean warming: Levitus found a mean ocean warming of 0.035 °C in the upper 3 
km of the ocean. The heat storage is thus: 0.035 °C × 3 × 105 g/cm2 × 1 
cal/g × 4.19 J/cal × surface area of Earth × 0.71 ≈ 16 × 1022 J 
≈ 10 watt-years.

Note that 1 J = 1 W·s, the number of seconds in a year ≈ π × 107, 
and the surface area of the Earth ≈ 5.1 × 1018 cm2; therefore, 1 
watt-year over the entire surface of the Earth ≈ 1.61 × 1022 J.

http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh3.html#Box4


What is the Carbon Cycle?

Carbon is continuously cycled between reservoirs in the ocean, on the land, 
and in the atmosphere, where it occurs primarily as carbon dioxide. On land, 
carbon occurs primarily in living biota and decaying organic matter. In the 
ocean, the main form of carbon is dissolved carbon dioxide and small 
creatures, such as plankton.
Carbon dioxide is removed from the air by green plants during 
photosynthesis, and some carbon dioxide dissolved in water to be used by 
many invertebrate marine organisms to build their calcium carbonate shells. 
The respiration of living organisms releases some carbon dioxide. As the 
marine organisms die, their shells may sink to the sea bed, mixed with mud, 
and eventually compressed to form sedimentary rocks. When plants and animals 
die their wastes are decomposed, and the carbon they contain is oxidised and 
returns to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Fossil fuels, comprising 
organic remains whose decomposition was arrested millions of years ago, 
release carbon dioxide when they are burned. (Green Facts – The Greenhouse 
Effect and Other Key Issues, Michael Allaby, 1990)
The largest reservoir is the deep ocean, which contains close to 40,000 Gt 
C, compared to around 2,000 Gt C on land, 750 Gt C in the atmosphere and 
1,000 Gt C in the upper ocean. The atmosphere, biota, soils, and the upper 
ocean are strongly linked. The exchange of carbon between this 
fast-responding system and the deep ocean takes much longer (several hundred 
years).



http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/models/carbon_cycle/intro_global.html


Source: Mac Post (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/models/carbon_cycle/intro_global.html

Is The Carbon Cycle Out of Balance?

Since the industrial revolution, people have been putting more carbon 
dioxide into the atmosphere than plants, soils and oceans have been able to 
absorb. People have strained the system. Carbon dioxide levels in the 
atmosphere have risen, and are continuing to rise. As a result of increased 
levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, global climate is 
changing.
http://www.greenhouse.crc.org.au/about_greenhouse/carboncycle.cfm

The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is gradually and steadily 
increasing. The graph shows the CO2 concentration at the summit of Mauna Loa 
in Hawaii from 1958 through 1999.



The Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 measurements constitute the longest continuous 
record of atmospheric CO2 concentrations available in the world. The Mauna 
Loa site is considered one of the most favorable locations for measuring 
undisturbed air because possible local influences of vegetation or human 
activities on atmospheric CO2 concentrations are minimal and any influences 
from volcanic vents may be excluded from the records.


The values are in parts per million (ppm). The seasonal fluctuation is 
caused by the increased uptake of CO2 by plants in the summer.
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/C/CarbonCycle.html#imbalance.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-mlo.htm

What Are Carbon Sinks?
The UNFCCC defines sinks as any process, activity or mechanism which removes 
a greenhouse gas, an aerosol or a precursor of a greenhouse gas from the 
atmosphere.
Forests play an important role in the carbon cycle, removing carbon dioxide 
from the atmosphere and storing it as carbon in plant material and soil in a 
process known as sequestration. Half a tree's mass is carbon, so large 
amounts of carbon are stored in forests and they are the largest store of 
terrestrial carbon. Planting new forests, managing existing forests and 
reducing clearing can provide a relatively cost-effective way of combating 
climate change. However, forests can also turn into a carbon source. This 
might occur when a forest is burned in a bushfire or struck by disease. The 
factors that determine whether a forest or other ecosystem is maintained as 
a carbon sink include rainfall patterns, bushfires, vegetation changes, 
nutrients, soil composition, evaporation rates and the interactions between 
them.

Trees are very efficient at sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. A cubic 
meter of air contains about 0.117 grams of carbon, while a cubic meter of 
wood contains about 250 kg of carbon, This means that a cubic meter of wood 
contains the same amount of carbon as 1.4 million cubic meters of air. Trees 
are not only capable of fixing carbon but also of concentrating it to an 
incredible extent. A forest growing at the rate of 10 m3 wood per hectare 
per year is absorbing the carbon from 14 million m3 of air (a column of air 
1400 meters high on one hectare). The combination of photosynthesis and a 
tree's ability to lay down wood (cellulose and lignin) acts as a powerful 
concentrator of carbon from the atmosphere into a fixed form. There is no 
parallel human technology that is capable of performing this kind of carbon 
concentration.
http://www.kfoa.co.nz/faqs.htm#6


How Much CO2 Equivalent Can Our Planet Absorb Naturally?
In 1990, our CO2 emissions amounted to 6 to 7 billion tons carbon equivalent 
(often noted 6 to 7 Gtce, (giga=billion in scientific notation).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calculates that the sinks on 
earth in biological and chemical activity in oceans, forests, and soils 
permanently remove around 4 billion tonnes of carbon from the carbon cycle 
each year. This, then, is our global emissions target; anything extra we put 
in the air remains there and increases the greenhouse effect.
In practice emitting only 4 Gtce of CO2 per year means for 6 billion human 
beings, equitably allocated, that they can emit 666 kg carbon equivalent of 
CO2 per person and per year. The challenge is compounded by the fact that 
emissions are rising with a long-term trend of 1.5% per year. Furthermore, 
global population is likely to increase to 9 billion people or more, and 
income per capita is likely to increase by 100% or more by the end of the 
century.
Climate change is very likely to reduce the capacity of natural processes to 
remove carbon. The capacity of oceans and soil to hold carbon falls as they 
become warmer. The Hadley Centre for Climate Change believes that within 
forty years the vast carbon sink of the Amazon will go into reverse; dying 
back and releasing its carbon stocks into the atmosphere.
The first comprehensive study of the ocean storage of carbon dioxide derived 
from human activities - anthropogenic CO2 - determined that the oceans have 
taken up some 118 billion metric tons of this carbon dioxide between 1800 
and 1994.
Studies over the last decade have indicated that the land plants are taking 
up CO2 at rates comparable to the oceans, but scientists have determined 
that over a 200 year time frame, land plants have released more of the gas 
to the atmosphere than they have taken up.
If the ocean had not removed 118 billion metric tons of anthropogenic carbon 
between 1800 and 1994, the CO2 level in the atmosphere would be about 55 
parts per million greater than currently observed," said Christopher Sabine, 
an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 
Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and the lead author of one of the 
papers.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-15-03.asp

Furthermore, we find that the current natural sinks for anthropogenic 
emissions, around 4
gigatonnes of carbon per year (or 4 GtC a-1) will be reduced to around 2.7 
GtC a-1 in 2030. 2.7 GtC a-1 therefore, is the amount of greenhouse gases we 
will be able to emit in 2030, without increasing atmospheric concentrations. 
When this global emission limit is shared out between the projected world 
population of 8.2 billion people, we get a per capita emission limit of 0.33 
tonnes of carbon per year.
In the UK we currently emit around 3 tonnes of carbon equivalent per person 
per year, so
we will require to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 90%, compared with 
current
levels, by 2030.
Further research by the Hadley Centre may have identified a major climate 
trigger point
related to dieback of vegetation in Amazonia, which if confirmed, would 
require a further
tightening of these emission reduction targets. The time lag between a drop 
in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and a corresponding fall 
in mean surface temperature, means that emissions stabilisation at 440 ppm 
may have to be achieved sooner than 2030.
http://portal.campaigncc.org/files/THE_CUTTING_EDGE_CLIMATE_SCIENCE_TO_APRIL_05.pdf

Professor James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia Theory, says that "if 
we continue to inject CO2 into the atmosphere as we have been, we will have 
released in thirty years from now more than a million million tons of CO2. 
Moreover, the sun is now hotter than it was 55 Myears ago and we have 
disabled about 40% of Gaia’s regulatory capacity by using land to feed 
people. This is why climate scientists are so concerned that we have already 
set in motion damaging climate change. The history of global heating 55 
million years ago suggests that the injection of gaseous carbon compounds 
took place over a period of about 10,000 years, much slower than we are now 
doing.
In his paper, Professor Elderfield’s suggests that because of the slow rate 
of introduction CO2 rose by no more than 70 and 160 ppm. Compared with our 
present pollution with CO2 this is a small increase, we have already raised 
CO2 by 100 ppm with an injection of only 500 Gigatons. In thirty years, if 
we continue business as usual, we will have added 1000 Giga tons and raised 
CO2 by 200ppm, more than is thought to have been present in the early 
Eocene. The great rapidity of our pollution of the atmosphere with carbon 
gases is as damaging as is the quantity. The rapidity of our pollution gives 
the Earth system little time to adjust and this is particularly important 
for the ocean ecosystems; the rapid accumulation of CO2 in the surface water 
is making them too acid for shell forming organisms. This did not happen 
during the Eocene event because there was time for the more alkaline deep 
waters to mix in and neutralize the surface ocean."
http://www.icheme.org/pr_and_media/latest_news/jclecture_transcript.pdf



To avoid the most dangerous consequences of climate change, the EU Heads of 
State at the EU Council agreed in March 2005 halt global warming below 2ºC 
above pre-industrial temperatures. To reach this goal, the carbon dioxide 
concentration in the atmosphere needs to be stabilised below 450 ppm 
(possibly after some limited temporary overshooting of this value).
www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/warmingfacts.pdf

Does Climate Change Affect Soil Moisture?

The percentage of Earth's land area stricken by serious drought more than 
doubled from the 1970s to the early 2000s, according to a new analysis by 
scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). 
Widespread drying occurred over much of Europe and Asia, Canada, western and 
southern Africa, and eastern Australia. Rising global temperatures appear to 
be a major factor, says NCAR's Aiguo Dai, lead author of the study.

Dai and colleagues found that the fraction of global land experiencing very 
dry conditions (defined as -3 or less on the Palmer Drought Severity Index) 
rose from about 10-15% in the early 1970s to about 30% by 2002. Almost half 
of that change is due to rising temperatures rather than decreases in 
rainfall or snowfall, according to Dai.

To see how soil moisture has evolved over the last few decades, Dai and 
colleagues produced a unique global-scale analysis using the Palmer index, 
which for decades has been the most widely used yardstick of U.S. drought. 
The index is a measure of near-surface moisture conditions and is correlated 
with soil moisture content.


Since the Palmer index is not routinely calculated in most of the world, Dai 
and colleagues used long-term records of temperature and precipitation from 
a variety of sources to derive the index for the period 1870-2002. The 
results were consistent with those from a historical simulation of global 
land surface conditions, produced by a comprehensive computer model 
developed by scientists at NCAR, NASA, Georgia University of Technology, the 
University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Arizona.
By factoring out rainfall and snowfall, Dai and colleagues estimated how 
much of the global trend in soil moisture was due solely to rising 
temperatures through the extra evaporation they produce.
"The warming-induced drying has occurred over most land areas since the 
1970s," says Dai, "with the largest effects in northern mid and high 
latitudes." In contrast, rainfall deficits alone were the main factor behind 
expansion of dry soils in Africa's Sahel and East Asia. These are regions 
where El Niño, a more frequent visitor since the 1970s, tends to inhibit 
precipitation.
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2005/drought_research.shtml



Why Should We Be Worried About a Warming of Just 1-5°C?

Most people do not realise that even small changes in the global average 
temperature can result in very significant impacts. When people hear 
scientists warn of 2°, 3° and 5°C increases in temperature they relate this 
to the changes in temperature that they feel on any day, which is always a 
range of temperatures larger than 2 to 5°C. The key to understanding is to 
look back to the last ice-age where the world and Australia were very 
different places, even though the global average temperature at that time 
was only about 5°C lower than today.
http://www.iag.com.au/pub/iag/sustainability/publications/climate/media/Climatechange.pdf

Hansen says “The temperature change between full glacial and interglacial 
conditions is about 10ºC in Antarctica, about 3ºC at the Pacific Warm Pool 
on the equator, and 5±1ºC on global average. We know the change of surface 
conditions on the planet quite well, the ice sheet area being the dominant 
change.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/keeling_talk_and_slides.pdf

Oceanographer Wallace Broecker illustrates the danger of disrupting the 
climate with a metaphor, saying that “The climate is an angry beast, and 
we’re going to give it a big nudge.” He suggests “if we’re going to stop the 
CO2 rise, capturing it and putting it away is going to be a large part of 
it. The technologies being developed would transform it into a liquefied 
form, which could then be buried in saline aquifers, the deep ocean or 
remote deserts. But any way you solve this problem, it’s going to be a big 
deal, involving 20 percent of the energy budget. Still, it’s not going to 
cripple any country to pay 20-30 percent more for energy – We’ve gone 
through that already with the rise in oil prices.”
http://www.weeklybeat.net/2007/03/30/pouvassarglobwarm.html


How Long Does C02 Last in the Atmosphere?
Lets look at how CO2 concentration decays, in the CO2 impulse response 
function of Bern SAR and Bern TAR models. The CO2 concentration is 
approximated by a sum of exponentially decaying functions, one for each 
fraction of the additional concentrations, which should reflect the time 
scales of different sinks. The coefficients are based on the pulse response 
of the additional concentration of CO2 taken from the Bern model 
(Siegenthaler and Joos, 1992).


r 	=	concentration
CCO2 	=	constant (approximately 0.47 ppmv/GtC, but use this parameter to 
fine tune your results)
ECO 2  	=	emissions of CO2
tCO2,S 	=	atmospheric exponential decay time of the sth fraction of the 
additional concentration (171.0, 18.0 and 2.57 years)
fCO2,0  	=	first fraction (0.152)
fCO2,S  	=	respective fractions (0.253, 0.279 and 0.316)




http://unfccc.int/resource/brazil/carbon.html




Tim Flannery, Australian author and scientist, who wrote "The Weather 
Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth" 
sates that "One of the most important things we need to ponder about global 
warming is the long lasting effect of pumping carbon dioxide in to the 
atmosphere. Around 56% of all of the carbon dioxide produced by humans since 
we started using coal and oil as sources of energy is still present in the 
atmosphere today. Even if we quickly shift to safer forms of energy, over 
half of this carbon dioxide will still be in the atmosphere in a century’s 
time.
http://www.calitreview.com/Interviews/flannery_8030.htm
What Is The Relationship Between CO2 and Global Mean Temperature?



When you look at the ice cores data covering the last 650,000 years the 
Earth can be seen to undergo natural changes from glacial conditions to 
warmer times like the present.

"The link between temperature and carbon dioxide, as well as methane 
concentrations in the past is surprisingly constant over time. Only through 
the impact of humans during the last centuries, atmospheric green house 
gases have been raised above their natural levels”, explains Dr Hubertus 
Fischer of the Alfred Wegener Institute.
http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1125-climate.html

The CSIRO Atmospheric Research Greenhouse Information Paper explains that 
“concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane increased almost in phase with 
the glacial-interglacial warmings. Carbon dioxide concentrations lagged the 
coolings during glacial onset. However, the exact phasing of temperature and 
carbon dioxide changes is not the main issue. The important finding is that 
greenhouse gas variations caused up to half of the amplitude of the 
temperature changes over the glacial-interglacial periods.”
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/e-print/open/greenhouse_2000c.htm

"During the exit from glacial periods (for example the transition from the 
last cold period, between about 18000 and 11000 years ago), both temperature 
and CO2 increased slowly and in parallel. Close analysis of the relationship 
between the two curves shows that, within the uncertainties of matching 
their timescales, the temperature led by a few centuries. This is expected, 
since it was changes in the Earth’s orbital parameters (including the shape 
of its orbit around the Sun, and the tilt of Earth’s axis) that caused the 
small initial temperature rise. This then raised atmospheric CO2 levels, in 
part by outgassing from the oceans, causing the temperature to rise further. 
By amplifying each other’s response, this “positive feedback” can turn a 
small initial perturbation into a large climate change. There is therefore 
no surprise that the temperature and CO2 rose in parallel, with the 
temperature initially in advance. In the current case, the situation is 
different, because human actions are raising the CO2 level, and we are 
starting to observe the temperature response. “

http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/News_and_Information/news_stories/story.php?...



Is There Scientific Consensus on Climate Change?
The evidence for human induced global warming is given in the recently 
published report “Climate Change 2007: The Physical Basis – Summary for 
Policy Makers” by Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 
Change http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf
The report is authoritative as it is based on an extensive and rigorous 
review of the published results of thousands of scientific investigations 
carried out worldwide. It is trustworthy since the delegates of 113 nations, 
including those of climate sceptic nations, have challenged and approved its 
contents. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report 
concluded that, "Most of the observed increase in globally averaged 
temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed 
increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations." The report defines 
"very likely" as a greater than 90% probability and represents the consensus 
of the scientific community.

IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific 
bodies in the US whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have 
issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences 
report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: 
"Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of 
human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean 
temperatures to rise". The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC 
assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and 
answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the 
last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas 
concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific 
community on this issue". Others agree. The American Meteorological Society, 
the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years 
concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is 
compelling.
http://scienceweek.com/2005/sc050121-2.htm

To read other scientific reports and international agreements which 
demonstrate this global consensus, please read:
http://www.eesi.org/publications/Fact%20Sheets/Consensus%20on%20Climate%20Change.htm

In addition, the following institutions specializing in Climate, Atmosphere, 
Ocean and/or Earth sciences have published the same conclusions:
·	NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)
·	National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
·	National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
·	State of the Canadian Cryosphere (SOCC)
·	Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
·	Royal Society of the United Kingdom (RS)
·	American Geophysical Union (AGU)
·	National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
·	American Meteorological Society (AMS)
·	Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)
The consensus is so strong that legally carbon dioxide is now considered a 
pollutant in the US. I am sure many countries will soon follow suit. The US 
Supreme Court recently decided due to overwhelming evidence that carbon 
dioxide is a pollutant under federal law and can be regulated because it 
traps heat around the earth.
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/environment/010728.html

Climate change is an issue which the UK Government’s Chief Scientific 
Adviser, Sir David King, described as “the most severe problem that we are 
facing today – more serious even than the threat of terrorism”

Is The IPCC Report Unbiased Or Is It Political?

In a SPIEGEL article in May 2007 “Is the IPCC Doing Harm to Science?” Uwe 
Buse explains that in drafting the SPM, or Summary for Policymakers, the two 
groups debating the issue had little in common except a mutual interest in 
reaching a consensus. On the one side were the authors of the report, all 
scientists, who have done little else in the last three years than work on 
this report. On the other side were the politicians, members of delegations 
from almost every country on earth. Sitting in alphabetical order in the 
chamber, their main concern was to adjust the report to suit their 
individual economic, environmental and foreign policies.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,480766,00.html

In January 2005 Christopher Landsea resigned from work on the IPCC AR4, 
saying that he viewed the process "as both being motivated by pre-conceived 
agendas and being scientifically unsound" because of Kevin Trenberth's 
public contention that global warming was contributing to recent hurricane 
activity Chris Landsea Leaves. Roger A. Pielke who published Landsea's 
letter writes: "How anyone can deny that political factors were everpresent 
in the negotiations isn't paying attention", but notes that the actual 
report "maintain[s] consistency with the actual balance of opinion(s) in the 
community of relevant experts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_controversy#Criticism_of_IPCC

One weakness of the IPCC is that it has decided to exclude the contribution 
of "accelerated melting", where the disintegration of ice shelves and 
lubrication of glaciers by meltwater speeds up the flow of ice into the 
oceans, because it is difficult to model. However in the coming century it 
could have a big impact.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6321351.stm

On February 1st, 2007, the eve of the publication of IPCC's major report on 
climate, a new study was published in the peer-review journal Science, in 
which research by an international group of scientists suggests that 
temperatures and sea levels have been rising at or above the maximum rates 
proposed during the last IPCC report in 2001.[36] The study compared IPCC 
2001 projections on temperature and sea level change with what has actually 
happened. Over the six year span of time, the actual temperature rise was 
near the very top (in the top 10%) of the "range" given by IPCC's 2001 
projection. In the case of sea level rises, the actual rise was above even 
the top of the range IPCC had given.
There are many additional examples of scientific research which has 
indicated that previous estimates by the IPCC, far from overstating dangers 
and risks, have actually understated them (this may be due, in part, to the 
expanding human understanding of climate, as well as to the conservative 
bias, noted above, which is built into the IPCC system).
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=1069
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6321351.stm



“Dozens of federal agencies report science but much of it is edited at the 
White House before it is sent to Congress and the public. It appears climate 
science is edited with a heavy hand. Drafts of climate reports were 
co-written by Rick Piltz for the federal Climate Change Science Program. But 
Piltz says his work was edited by the White House to make global warming 
seem less threatening. "The strategy of people with a political agenda to 
avoid this issue is to say there is so much to study way upstream here that 
we can’t even being to discuss impacts and response strategies," says Piltz. 
"There’s too much uncertainty. It's not the climate scientists that are 
saying that, its lawyers and politicians."

Piltz worked under the Clinton and Bush administrations. Each year, he 
helped write a report to Congress called "Our Changing Planet." Piltz says 
he is responsible for editing the report and sending a review draft to the 
White House.  Asked what happens, Piltz says: "It comes back with a large 
number of edits, handwritten on the hard copy by the chief-of-staff of the 
Council on Environmental Quality." Asked who the chief of staff is, Piltz 
says, "Phil Cooney." Piltz says Cooney is not a scientist. "He's a lawyer. 
He was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, before going into 
the White House," he says. Cooney, the former oil industry lobbyist, became 
chief-of-staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Piltz 
says Cooney edited climate reports in his own hand. In one report, a line 
that said earth is undergoing rapid change becomes “may be undergoing 
change.” “Uncertainty” becomes “significant remaining uncertainty.” One line 
that says energy production contributes to warming was just crossed out. "He 
was obviously passing it through a political screen," says Piltz. "He would 
put in the word potential or may or weaken or delete text that had to do 
with the likely consequence of climate change, pump up uncertainty language 
throughout."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985_page2.shtml




Is There Evidence In the Past of Abrupt Climate Change?

Professor Richard Alley, one of the world's leading climate researchers, 
tells the fascinating history of global climate changes as revealed by 
reading the annual rings of ice from cores drilled in Greenland. In the 
1990s he and his colleagues made headlines with the discovery that the last 
ice age came to an abrupt end over a period of only three years. Here Alley 
offers the first popular account of the wildly fluctuating climate that 
characterized most of prehistory--long deep freezes alternating briefly with 
mild conditions--and explains that we humans have experienced an unusually 
temperate climate. But, he warns, our comfortable environment could come to 
an end in a matter of years. The record suggests that "switches" as well as 
"dials" control the earth's climate, affecting, for example, hot ocean 
currents that today enable roses to grow in Europe farther north than polar 
bears grow in Canada. Throughout most of history, these currents switched on 
and off repeatedly (due partly to collapsing ice sheets), throwing much of 
the world from hot to icy and back again in as little as a few years. 
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6916.html

Scientists who read the history of Earth's climate in ancient sediments, ice 
cores and fossils find clear signs that it has shifted abruptly in the past 
on a scale that could prove disastrous for modern society. Peter B. 
deMenocal, an associate professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of 
Columbia University, said that about 8,200 years ago, a very sudden cooling 
shut down the Atlantic conveyor belt. As a result, the land temperature in 
Greenland dropped more than 9 degrees Fahrenheit within a decade or two. 
"It's not this abstract notion that happens over millions of years," 
deMenocal said. "The magnitude of what we're talking about greatly, greatly 
exceeds anything we've withstood in human history."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/28/AR2006012801021_pf.html

Fossil and ice core evidence shows that Earths climate can shift drastically 
within 10 years—establishing radically different temperatures and 
precipitation patterns that can persist for centuries or longer. “Even as 
the earth as a whole continues to warm gradually, large regions may 
experience a precipitous and disruptive shift into colder climates,” the 
Director of the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution told world 
leaders.
During the Younger Dryas about 12,700 years ago, average temperatures in the 
North Atlantic region abruptly plummeted nearly 8° F and remained that way 
for 1,300 years.
http://www.willthomas.net/Convergence/Weekly/Global_Warming.htm



What Is The Probable Resulting Climate For Given Emissions?



This diagram is a very good graphic for understanding the relationship 
between:
·	atmospheric levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases
·	probabilities that certain levels of warming will occur, and
·	the setting of emissions limits.
In 1997 Azar & Rodhe, using the best available information at the time, put 
together the model described in this slide.

You can see how atmospheric CO2 levels rose, using historical date up till 
about 1990, then 6 alternative stabilisation scenarios are generated using 
computer modelling.  The scenarios show atmospheric levels of CO2 that grow, 
at least for a while, and then end up at 350 ppm, 450 ppm, 550 ppm, 650 ppm, 
750 ppm and 1000 ppm of CO2 in the air.  The 350 ppm stabilisation level is 
the closest to the pre-industrial maximum, 280 ppm, but nevertheless exceeds 
it by 25% and is even 18% over the highest CO2 level experienced in the last 
million years or more.
Source: Azar, C., & Rodhe, H., 1997. Targets for Stabilization of 
Atmospheric CO2.  Science 276, 1818-1819. . Dashed line a) refers to an 
estimate of the maximum natural variability of the global temperature over 
the past millennium, and dashed line b) shows the 2oC temperature threshold.
What Are The Chances of Exceeding a Range of Temperatures at a Particular 
Level of CO2 Equivalent?


We now have a compilation of more recently estimated probabilities in the 
report of the Stern Review, 2006 (Box 8.1, p. 195).  This data has been 
re-laid out here to make it easier to see the relationship between 
atmospheric concentrations of CO2 equivalent and the probabilities of 
triggering a range of different temperatures.  I have also added estimates 
of (a) expected species losses; (b) the likelihood of runaway warming; (c) a 
qualitative characterisation of the total impact associated with different 
temperature rises.
http://beyondzeroemissions.org/files/GSI_Science_ghg_reduction_targets.ppt


In the Technical Summary of the Fourth Assessment report we find a similar 
table with C02 equivalent levels, and expected equilibrium temperatures 
resulting from these.


Now, if we remember what James Hansen says
(1) In the last interglacial period, temperatures were around 1 degree 
higher than now and sea levels 5-6 m higher
(2) Therefore, just 1 degree warming is dangerous climate change; 2-3 
degrees warming is a different planet as at that temperature sea level were 
25±10 m higher.
(3) 1 degree warming will be caused by 450 ppm CO2
(4) The last time icesheets collapsed was during melt water pulse 1A at the 
beginning of our current warm period when sea levels rose 1 m every 20 
years.
(5) We still have to expect another 0.5 degree warming from past emissions 
because planet Earth is presently out of energy balance with space. It will 
come to a new equilibrium at that higher temperature, provided we do not 
enter a positive feed back loop with a run-away climate

The target is therefore to stay under the 450 ppm CO2 limit. It can be 
achieved by the Stern Review's stabilization path for 450 ppm CO2e 
(including other GHG emissions). In this path, emissions must be made to 
peak by 2010 and then be reduced by 60% by 2030 (not 2050). Every Gt of CO2 
we are from now on blowing into the atmosphere is 1 Gt too much. It will 
just increase the future equilibrium temperature.
Let us assume that the threshold temperature at which our icesheets in 
Greenland and West Antarctica start an unstoppable disintegration (not just 
surface melting as assumed in the latest IPCC report) is 0.8 degrees then we 
can burn a maximum of oil, gas and coal equivalent to just 0.3 (=0.8 - 0.5) 
degree warming. Not even Hansen knows the exact figure as no reliable ice 
sheet model is available. But he says we are very close to a tipping point.



During the last Ice Age, when the earth was on average less than 10 degrees 
colder than today, the concentration of carbon dioxide was 190 parts per 
million (0.019 percent). At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, it was a 
rather stable 270 to 280 ppm. In the last 200 years, the atmospheric 
concentration of CO2 has risen to more than 350 ppm, the highest it has been 
in some 160,000 years, according to studies of air pockets trapped long ago 
in glacial ice. This increase is primarily due to the burning of fossil 
fuels, though other factors, including large scale forest fires have become 
a significant factor as well.
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/Dec97Tokar.htm

Last century's global warming of 0.6 degrees - 0.8 degrees in Australia - 
may sound small, but an extra 1.5 to two degrees will mean the loss of coral 
and other delicate ecosystems. It is the most rapid warming the planet has 
seen in 10,000 years. In that time, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere 
remained constant at around 280 parts per million. It is now nearly 380ppm, 
a level the earth has not experienced for at least 400,000 years.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/11/26/1101219743320.html

A study by a former chief economist of the World Bank, Sir Nicholas Stern of 
Britain, called climate change is "the greatest and widest-ranging market 
failure ever seen," with the potential to shrink the global economy by 20 
percent and to cause economic and social disruption on par with the two 
world wars and the Great Depression.


We have to follow the 450 ppm CO2e stablization path from the Stern Review 
in which emissions must be made to peak around 2010 and then decline by 60% 
in just 20 years if we want to keep the climate within safe levels. It seems 
we cannot even burn all oil and gas plus coal without wrecking our climate 
for good.

Tony Blair said the Stern Review showed that scientific evidence of global 
warming was "overwhelming" and its consequences "disastrous".
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/987/6B/Slides_for_Launch.pdf



How Does Sea Level Rise Relate to Temperature?

Climatologist James Hansen, Direcor of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space 
Studies, says "At the peak of the last interglacial period (100-120,000 
years ago), temperatures were around 1 degree higher than now and sea levels 
5-6 meter higher. This is from paleoclimate data, not from debatable 
models." He therefore concludes in his paper on Greenland Ice sheet 
disintegration "A Slippery Slope: How Much Global Warming Constitutes 
"Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference" that 1 degree more warming is 
dangerous climate change. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/hansen_slippery.pdf

Here is reconstructed global sea level for the last 500 kyr by Richard 
Bintanja, Roderik S.W. van de Wal & Johannes Oerlemans

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7055/fig_tab/nature03975_F3.html

Hansen says, to find our planet at 2 or 3°C warmer than now, as it will be 
this century in “business-as-usual” scenarios, we must go back to the middle 
Pliocene, about 3 million years ago. At that time sea level was 25 ± 10 m 
greater than today.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/keeling_talk_and_slides.pdf

These sea level rises can happen fast. The last 7000 years were relatively 
stable, however 14,000 years ago, sea level rose by about 25 m in some parts 
of the northern hemisphere, over a period of less than 500 years, in an 
event called meltwater pulse 1A. This was probably due to a collapsing ice 
shelf. http://www.answers.com/topic/meltwater-pulse-1a


What Kind of Sea Level Rise Can We Expect in The Future?

Stefan Rahmstorf, Professor of Physics of the Oceans Potsdam Institute for 
Climate Impact Research in Germany and member of the Panel on Abrupt Climate 
Change and of the Advisory Council on Global Change of the German 
government, states that sea level appears to be rising about 50% faster than 
models suggest – consistently for the 1961-2003 and the 1993-2003 periods, 
and for the TAR models and the AR4 models in the IPCC report. This suggests 
that it is at least a plausible possibility that the models may 
underestimate future rise.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/the-ipcc-sea-level-numbers/#bottom_line

In his semi-empirical relation he states that “sea-level rise is roughly 
proportional to the magnitude of warming above the temperatures of the 
pre–Industrial Age. This holds to good approximation for temperature and 
sea-level changes during the 20th century, with a proportionality constant 
of 3.4 millimeters/year per °C. When applied to future warming scenarios of 
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this relationship results in 
a projected sea-level rise in 2100 of 0.5 to 1.4 meters above the 1990 
level.” In another article he says “Even if warming were to be stopped at 3 
ºC, sea level will probably keep rising by several meters in subsequent 
centuries in a delayed response”


“Ice sheets have the largest potential effect, because their complete 
melting would result in a global sea-level rise of about 70 m. Yet their 
dynamics are poorly understood, and the key processes that control the 
response of ice flow to a warming climate are not included in current ice 
sheet models for example, meltwater lubrication of the ice sheet bed, or 
increased ice stream flow after the removal of buttressing ice shelves.”
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Nature/rahmstorf_science_2007.pdf

"Rahmsdorf (2006) has noted that if one uses observed sea level rise of the 
past century to calibrate a linear projection of future sea level, BAU 
warming will lead to sea level rise of the order of one meter in the present 
century. This is a useful observation, as it indicates that sea level change 
would be substantial even without non-linear collapse of an ice sheet. 
However, this approach cannot be taken as a realistic way of projecting 
likely sea level rise under BAU forcing. The linear approximation fits the 
past sea level change well for the past century only because the two terms 
contributing significantly to sea level rise were (1) thermal of ocean water 
and (2) melting of alpine glaciers.
Under BAU forcing in the 21st century, sea level rise undoubtedly will be 
dominated by a third term (3) ice sheet disintegration. This third term was 
small until the past few years, but it is has at least doubled in the past 
decade and is now close to 1 mm/year, based on gravity satellite 
measurements discussed above. As a quantitative example, let us say that the 
ice sheet contribution is 1 cm for the decade 2005-2015 and that it doubles 
each decade until the West Antarctic ice sheet is largely depleted. That 
time constant yields sea level rise of the order of 5 m this century. "

For more information, read:
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/warmingfacts.pdf

Should the Greenland ice sheet melt completely, as models suggest it could, 
that would result in a sea level rise of about twenty-three feet (seven 
meters). Reductions in sea ice extent and snow cover cause a reduction in 
surface reflectivity, meaning that more energy is absorbed at the surface 
and less is radiated, causing further warming, which in turn leads to 
further melting: what scientists refer to as a 'positive feedback'. At the 
same time, melting arctic ice, combined with increased precipitation and 
river runoff, may lead to a freshening of the ocean in the North Atlantic, 
disrupting the critical salinity balance and leading to a collapse in the 
ocean circulation pattern that brings warm water to Europe from the tropics. 
As a consequence, global warming could lead to regional cooling in the 
Northeast Atlantic region.
http://www.projectthinice.org/warming/impact_global_consequences.php

How Long Will It Take For The Climate to Respond to Forcings

In an article published in Science in 2005, called “In a Earth's Energy 
Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications” the authors state “The lag in the 
climate response to a forcing is a sensitive function of equilibrium climate 
sensitivity, varying approximately as the square of the sensitivity (1), and 
it depends on the rate of heat exchange between the ocean's surface mixed 
layer and the deeper ocean (2–4). The lag could be as short as a decade, if 
climate sensitivity is as small as 0.25°C per W/m2 of forcing, but it is a 
century or longer if climate sensitivity is 1°C per W/m2 or larger (1, 3). 
Evidence from Earth's history (3–6) and climate models (7) suggests that 
climate sensitivity is 0.75° ± 0.25°C per W/m2, implying that 25 to 50 years 
are needed for Earth's surface temperature to reach 60% of its equilibrium 
response (1).”
Link to www.sciencemag.org


How Long Will It Take to Stabilise The Climate, and Sea Levels?
Even after we have stabilised C02 emissions temperature and sea level will 
continue for centuries, or even several millennia.



A report, from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, claims 
Britain could look radically different with sea levels rising as much as 
11.4m by the year 3000 if greenhouse gas emissions are not sharply reduced. 
The worst-case scenario would see global and regional warming, raising the 
world's average surface temperature by 15C and lifting sea levels by more 
than 11m. Even in the "business as usual", middle scenario, increased 
emissions would probably precipitate abrupt climate change events, such as 
the weakening and shifting of currents in the Atlantic Ocean. Sea water 
acidity would also increase dramatically, posing a major threat to marine 
organisms. Dr Tim Lenton, the UEA lead author on the paper and a climate 
change modeller, said: "If we follow business-as-usual then we will commit 
future generations to dangerous climate change, and if we exploit 
unconventional fossil fuels we could return the Earth to a hot state it 
hasn't seen since 55 million years ago. "The best-case scenario, keeps the 
temperature rise in the year 3000 at 1.5 degrees of warming and sea level 
rise to under a metre, because it has avoided the Greenland ice sheet 
melting." "The main result is that the choices we make in the coming decades 
have implications that play out over the next thousand years and beyond. If 
we start to make a serious reduction in emissions, then we could avoid 
dangerous climate change thresholds and leave a stable climate in the year 
3000."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4720104.stm

"If human beings follow a business-as-usual course, continuing to exploit 
fossil fuel resources without reducing carbon emissions or capturing and 
sequestering them before they warm the atmosphere, the eventual effects on 
climate and life may be comparable to those at the time of mass extinctions. 
Life will survive, but it will do so on a transformed planet. For all 
foreseeable human generations, it will be a far more desolate world than the 
one in which civilization developed and flourished during the past several 
thousand years."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19131

What Constitutes Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference With Nature?

James Hansen says “The Earth’s history provides our best indication of the 
levels of change that are likely to have deleterious effects on humans and 
wildlife, and constitute “dangerous anthropogenic interference” with nature. 
The Earth’s temperature, with rapid global warming over the past 30 years, 
is now passing through the peak level of the Holocene, a period of 
relatively stable climate that has existed for more than 10,000 years. 
Further warming of more than 1ºC will make the Earth warmer than it has been 
in a million years. “Business-as-usual” scenarios, with fossil fuel CO2 
emissions continuing to increase ~2%/year as in the past decade, yield 
additional warming of 2 or 3°C this century and imply changes that 
constitute practically a different planet.
I present multiple lines of evidence indicating that the Earth’s climate is 
nearing, but has not passed, a tipping point, beyond which it will be 
impossible to avoid climate change with far ranging undesirable 
consequences. The changes include not only loss of the Arctic as we know it, 
with all that implies for wildlife and indigenous peoples, but losses on a 
much vaster scale due to worldwide rising seas. Sea level will increase 
slowly at first, as losses at the fringes of Greenland and Antarctica due to 
accelerating ice streams are nearly balanced by increased snowfall and ice 
sheet thickening in the ice sheet interiors. But as Greenland and West 
Antarctic ice is softened and lubricated by melt-water and as buttressing 
ice shelves disappear due to a warming ocean, the balance will tip toward 
ice loss, thus bringing multiple positive feedbacks into play and causing 
rapid ice sheet disintegration. The Earth’s history suggests that with 
warming of 2-3°C the new equilibrium sea level will include not only most of 
the ice from Greenland and West Antarctica, but a portion of East 
Antarctica, raising sea level of the order of 25 meters (80 feet).
Contrary to lethargic ice sheet models, real world data suggest substantial 
ice sheet and sea level change in centuries, not millennia.“
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/keeling_talk_and_slides.pdf


What Are Tipping Points?

Systems can be found in various states. The diagrams below illustrate some 
states such as stable, untable, steady, and threshold states.


Stable	Unstable	Steady	Threshold

If we push a stable system with any forcing it quickly returns to its 
initial state, however hard we push it. This allows us to easily predict the 
outcome. Unstable systems are very vulnerable to changes, and can sometimes 
change irreversibly when forced in a certain direction. One may be able to 
predict the outcome, but it is very sensitive to inputs. Steady systems, if 
forced, do not change much, because they are fairly insensitive to forcings. 
Linear systems change proportionally to forces, and are predictable. 
Threshold systems in contrast are non-linear and can be difficult to predict 
because they can cope with certain amounts of forcings, however after 
reaching a certain tipping point, rapid change can occur.

When the writer Malcolm Gladwell unleashed the idea of tipping points on the 
popular imagination in his book of the same name1, he was comparing the way 
aspects of life suddenly shift from obscurity to ubiquity to effects 
normally studied in epidemiology. Gladwell's tipping points were 
manifestations of the catchiness of behaviours and ideas.
The Tipping Point is the name given by epidemiologists for the dramatic 
moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once. The flu, for 
example, can be held in check for a long time without being an epidemic. But 
suddenly, once some threshold is crossed in terms of number of people 
infected, things get much worse very quickly. Gladwell’s premise is that in 
addition to applying to viruses, this type of pattern is observed in many 
other situations.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7095/full/441802a.html
http://www.fabtime.com/tippingpoint.shtml

John Rundle, Professor of Physics, Geology and Engineering says “Complex 
systems are observed to undergo sudden changes in behavior when the system 
“tips” from one dominant dynamical pattern to another. The transition in 
system dynamics is associated with the nucleation and growth of 
fluctuations, together with a threshold in the state space of the system. 
The threshold can be characterized as a “tipping point”. Tipping points, or 
first-order transitions, can be associated with stock market crashes, 
earthquakes, hurricanes, and epidemics.”
http://cse.ucdavis.edu/public/files/courses/PHYS_250II.pdf



In nonlinear models, rapid changes resulting from crossing a threshold in 
some forcing function are common. Data on a number of aspects of the climate 
system suggest that it also has thresholds, multiple equilibria, and other 
features which can result in episodes of rapid change [ Broecker et al., 
1985; Mayewski et al., 1993; McElroy, 1994]. The behavior of the 
thermohaline circulation of the oceans (THC) is one of the most frequently 
cited examples of nonlinear dynamics in the earth climate system and a 
potential source of rapid future change.
http://www.agu.org/revgeophys/schime01/node14.html

Peter Smith, a professor of sustainable energy at the University of 
Nottingham, says “The scientific opinion is that we have a ceiling of 440 
parts per million (ppm) of atmospheric carbon before there is a tipping 
point, a steep change in the rate of global warming," Professor Smith said. 
"The rate at which we are emitting now, around 2ppm a year and rising, we 
could expect that that tripping point will reach us in 20 years' time. That 
gives us 10 years to develop technologies that could start to bite into the 
problem."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1864802,00.html


Dr. Rajendra Pachauri the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 
Change (IPCC) told 114 government representatives in Mauritius in 2005 that 
our planet has “already reached the level of dangerous concentrations of 
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere” that could cause the climate to abruptly 
flip. Rather than causing gradual changes over many centuries, Fortune 
belatedly reported, “growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system 
that controls the world’s climate can lurch from one state to another in 
less than a decade.” Like a trigger that is pulled without effect until the 
climate change cannon suddenly fires at us point-blank, a severe climate 
flip could occur within the next 25 years. “If it does,” Fortune feared, 
“the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies.” [Fortune Jan/04]
http://www.willthomas.net/Convergence/Weekly/Global_Warming.htm

Earth this century could cross a climate threshold or "tipping point that 
could lead to intolerable impacts on human well-being," says the 166-page 
report prepared for the United Nations. It was written by 18 experts in 
climate, water, marine science, physics and other disciplines, seven of them 
Americans. "It is still possible to avoid an unmanageable degree of climate 
change, but the time for action is now," says panelist John Holdren, a 
Harvard University professor of environmental policy.
Without action, the panel says, a litany of harmful consequences awaits: the 
spread of disease, less fresh water, more and worse droughts, more extreme 
storms and widespread economic damage to farming, fishing and forests. In 
the USA, which emits about 25% of the world's carbon dioxide, it could mean 
more intense hurricanes, heat waves, wildfires and droughts.
The two-year study, issued by the U.N. Foundation, says the risk of tipping 
over that climate threshold rises sharply if Earth's temperature increases 
3.6 to 4.5 degrees above what it was in 1750 (it is 1.2 degrees above that 
point now).
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-02-27-global-warming_x.htm

What Are The Uncertainties About Climate Change?

Although models have indicated gradual change, evidence suggested that 
abrupt change could occur due to internal feedbacks and thresholds within 
the climate system which could shift it into a dramatically different mode 
of operation. One such example often cited is the possibility that the North 
Atlantic thermohaline circulation – the Gulf Stream – may collapse with the 
effect of dramatically cooling Scotland’s climate. Witnesses to the inquiry 
suggested that the Gulf Stream was not at present thought likely to be 
subject to sudden change24. Some evidence raised the issue of the possible 
die-back of the Amazon forest after a certain level of warming, removing its 
vast capacity to absorb carbon and turning it into a net carbon source25. 
Similarly, warming soils could cease to be carbon sinks and emit more 
carbon. The ocean’s capacity to remove CO 2 from the atmosphere may also 
decrease significantly.
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/committees/environment/reports-05/rar05-05-vol01-01.htm

Dr. Hermann Ott is the director of the Berlin office of the Wuppertal 
Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, one of Europe's leading 
climate policy research organizations. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, 
he says that global warming is inevitable and mankind must take steps for 
the softest landing possible. It will also mean fundamental changes in the 
way we live.  He says if we do not act decisively, I would assume an 
increase of between 3 and 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. But 
it could easily be 6 degrees. That's a little bit greater than the 
difference between now and the last ice age. Europe will look very 
different, but of course, the effects are not going to be the same 
everywhere. In some parts of the world you'll have a change of 10 degrees or 
11 degrees. In others you will have only an increase of 1 or 2 degrees. If 
we talk about skepticism among scientists, it's not about whether or not 
man-made climate change exists, it's more about what the impacts are going 
to be.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,342431,00.html


What Changes Can We Expect In Terms of Climate Change and Its Implications?

A 40-page consultancy report written for the Australian Business Roundtable 
on Climate Change said:

"Australia is one of the many global regions experiencing significant 
climate change as a result of global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) 
from human activities. The average surface air temperature of Australia 
increased by 0.7 °C over the past century – warming that has been 
accompanied by marked declines in regional precipitation, particularly along 
the east and west coasts of the continent. These seemingly small changes 
have already had widespread consequences for Australia.

Such changes in climate will have diverse implications for Australia’s 
environment, economy, and public health. The biodiversity, ecosystems, and 
natural habitats of Australia are world renowned, yet potentially the most 
fragile of the systems that will be exposed to climate change. For example, 
the Great Barrier Reef, a UNESCO World Heritage area, has experienced 
unprecedented rates of coral bleaching over the past two decades, and 
additional warming of only 1 °C is anticipated to cause considerable losses 
or contractions of species associated with coral communities.

Australian crop agriculture and forestry may experience transient benefits 
from longer growing seasons and a warmer climate, yet such benefits are 
unlikely to be sustained under the more extreme projections of global 
warming. Furthermore, changes in precipitation and, subsequently water 
management, are particularly critical factors affecting the future 
productivity of the Australian landscape. The declines in precipitation 
projected over much of Australia will exacerbate existing challenges to 
water availability and quality for agriculture as well as for commercial and 
residential uses.

For example, limiting future increases in atmospheric CO2 to 550 ppmv, 
though not a panacea for global warming, would reduce 21st century global 
warming to an estimated 1.5–2.9 °C, effectively avoiding the more extreme 
climate changes. Lower stabilisation levels, such as 450 ppmv CO2 would 
reduce future warming even further, to approximately 1.2–2.3 °C. For 
Australia, such constraints on global warming would give natural ecosystems 
and their associated species greater time to adapt to changing environmental 
conditions, reduce the likelihood of major adverse consequences for 
agriculture and forestry, help ensure Australia’s public health 
infrastructure can keep pace with emerging health challenges, and reduce the 
chance of large-scale singularities. Nevertheless, even with a 350 ppmv 
stabilisation level, the Earth will not be able to avoid its current 
commitment to additional future warming. Therefore, prudence dictates that 
GHG mitigation activities be pursued in conjunction with adaptive responses 
to address the residual risks posed by this commitment."
http://www.csiro.au/resources/pfbg.html

According to Dr. Geoff Love, Director of the Australian Bureau of 
Meteorology "Since the middle of the 20th century, Australian temperatures 
have, on average, risen by about 1°C with an increase in the frequency of 
heatwaves and a decrease in the numbers of frosts and cold days. Rainfall 
patterns have also changed - the northwest has seen an increase in rainfall 
over the last 50 years while much of eastern Australia and the far southwest 
have experienced a decline."
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/

"Studies predict Australia will be ravaged earlier and more severely by 
climate change than almost anywhere on Earth. Declining rainfall has cost 
Perth two-thirds of its surface water supply, and in 1998 the rainfall 
deficit began to spread east, parching the western plains. Now Sydney's dams 
are at an all-time low.

So, what would Australia look like in a world that is two degrees warmer? 
Two degrees of additional warming is sufficient to kill about half the 
world's coral reefs. Above that we're looking at a world without substantial 
coral reefs, making the Federal Government's protection of one-third of the 
Great Barrier Reef futile.

In 1988 Australia proclaimed the Wet Tropics World Heritage area in 
north-eastern Queensland. Extinctions of its unique fauna will start at one 
degree of warming, and after two degrees will accelerate rapidly.

After surviving for millions of years, creatures such as golden bowerbirds, 
green ringtail possums and mountain frogs will be no more, having gone 
extinct on our watch. Kakadu is the jewel in the crown of Australia's top 
end. Predictions are that with two degrees of warming its World Heritage 
wetlands will be destroyed by rising oceans and storms.

At two to three degrees of warming, Australia's alpine zone will become 
restricted to six peaks, and many of its species will become extinct. At two 
degrees of warming two-thirds of the 98 species of dryandra (a banksia 
relative from Western Australia) will be extinct, as will many other Western 
Australian plant and animal species. And this is a small sample of the 
changes in store.

Why should we care about our biodiversity? First it's of great economic 
importance. Imagine tourism without the reef, rainforests and Kakadu. 
Imagine the world without the $30 billion yielded each year by coral reefs. 
Of course, biodiversity is much more important than that, for it feeds and 
clothes us, gives us clean air and water, and protects us from illness. Who 
knows, for example, where the next cancer cure is coming from?"
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/14/1087065079591.html?from=storyr...



What Is Happening To Our Species In Relation to Climate Change?

Terry Root, who begun a study of the effects of climate on passerine birds 
in North America says that “For any given animal, the thermal neutral zone 
is the temperature range in which the animal doesn't have to raise its 
metabolism to cool or warm itself. The animal can also live in the wings of 
this distribution, outside of its optimal range, where it needs to expend 
energy to warm or cool itself. But when the temperature gets hotter or 
colder than the zone of tolerance for that animal, it will die or move. This 
shows that temperature is very important to animal ranges. Species 
abundances are also highly determined by this curve, as a species will be 
most abundant in the optimal temperature range, less abundant in the wings, 
and not exist at all outside of its zone of tolerance.
Species ranges are largely determined by vegetation, which is itself 
strongly related to climatic variables. For yet other species, their ranges 
are associated with both temperature and vegetation. The possibility exists 
that with global warming, as the temperature rises, species whose ranges are 
related primarily to temperature are going to move north. But those related 
to both temperature and vegetation cannot move until the vegetation moves. 
So communities may be torn apart and some species may be driven to 
extinction.
But when the temperature gets hotter or colder than the zone of tolerance 
for that animal, it will die or move. This shows that temperature is very 
important to animal ranges. Species abundances are also highly determined by 
this curve, as a species will be most abundant in the optimal temperature 
range, less abundant in the wings, and not exist at all outside of its zone 
of tolerance.
For some species, the absolute minimum temperature is the key factor, while 
for others, it's other measures. This is species-dependent for many reasons. 
One reason is that microclimate effects impact species differently. Another 
is that one species may simply not be able to physically survive below a 
certain temperature, while another's survival is based upon whether it has 
stored up enough fat to last through a cold spell. In some species of 
reptiles, temperature determines sex ratios.”
http://www.agci.org/publications/eoc96/AGCIEOC96SSSII/AGCIEOC96RootSSSII.html

In an interview with news magazine Spiegel, Hansen comments “studies have 
found that 1,700 species have already moved poleward at a rate of six 
kilometers per decade in recent decades. But climate zones are moving 
poleward at a faster rate, about 50 km per decade, and it will become 100 km 
per decade with business as usual. Combine that with the fact that so many 
species have been confined to certain areas due to humans having taken over 
so much of the planet, and you'll see it may be very difficult for them to 
migrate. So it's likely that a large fraction of the species could go 
extinct.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,476275,00.html

So our estimates show that species extinction rates are 1,000 to 10,000 
times higher than in the past. This makes current rates of species loss at 
least equivalent to the mass extinctions of the past - and in as short a 
time.
We do seem to be on the brink of a large-scale extinction spasm. But a major 
difference now is that almost all extinctions are due to the impact of human 
activities. People now so dominate the earth that very few species are 
completed unaffected by our existence.
http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=914




The Holling 4-Box Model of ecosystem succession (Holling 1992) represents 
four basic ecological states common to all complex systems with respect to 
connectedness (x-axis) and stored capital (y-axis). This general concept 
model illustrates the phase shifts following significant perturbation 
(disturbance) to reorganization (microbial scale), exploitation 
(pioneer/opportunistic species), and conservation (climax).



Exploitation. In this state, opportunistic species are able to colonize in 
places that were previously inhospitable or unattainable. This state usually 
follows some sort of perturbation, or threshold (ecological or physical), 
that allows for the introduction of new species and communities.
Conservation. In this ecological state, the communities that have 
established footholds following perturbation, have matured and exhibit 
climax ecological conditions. Ecological networks (or webs) have been 
well-established and tend to function efficiently. Small perturbations and 
oscillations between states can occur; however, primary functions and 
communities are relatively stable.
Release. Significant physical or ecological events result in an often 
catastrophic system alteration. These events include fires, storms, disease, 
or invasion by pests or competing species.
Reorganization. Finally, as a consequence of these significant 
perturbations, the ecosystem reorganizes. Reorganization can result in 
ecosystems that are similar to their previous states or they can end up 
being quite different (Costanza and others, 1993).

The degree to which an ecosystem can retain stability in the face of extreme 
perturbation is called resilience. Ecosystems possessing high resilience can 
be pushed to extremes without reorganizing into a different form of stable 
state. Systems lacking resilience can be “pushed” into an alternative stable 
state, of which there may be more than one. Perturbations need not be sudden 
events, such as hurricanes and fire. They are often gradual and cumulative, 
such as the processes of eutrophication, grazing pressure, or climate 
change. In these cases, the system is slowly pushed to the capacity to 
retain its stability and goes through a release phase, as shown in Figure 1. 
However, in reorganizing, the key components of the original ecosystem are 
either removed or substituted with alternative components. Keystone species 
are those on which a large number of other species in the ecosystem depend. 
During release and reorganization, keystone species that formed the basis 
for the original ecosystem structure are replaced by others (opportunists). 
The new configuration provides a new organizational trajectory and thus a 
new stable state. In some cases, this shift in stable state can be 
irreversible. Alternatively, if the perturbation is removed or reversed 
(e.g., by a reduction in nutrient load), the system may follow a nonlinear 
response and ultimately may only approximate the original state. The new 
state can have a significantly different response relationship to the 
original perturbation. This process of nonlinearity in stressor-response 
behavior is called hysteresis. Hysteresis describes the potential difference 
between an ecosystem’s response to a perturbation and its removal, or 
reversal, over time.
http://www.csc.noaa.gov/coastal/economics/irreversibility.htm

Climate change is now worsening the danger to Australian animals, writes Tim 
Flannery. “Australia has the worst record of animal extinction of any 
continent. Since European colonisation began, about one tenth of our mammals 
- 23 species in all - have vanished. The victims are a diverse lot, ranging 
from obscure native rats and mice, to bandicoots, wallabies and the 
thylacine.
The computer models used by scientists to predict how species will fare as 
our planet warms indicates that between two in 10 and six in 10 of all 
species alive on Earth today will become extinct if our planet warms by just 
three degrees. And our Earth is likely to warm by that much this century if 
we just continue as we are.
Once, nature conservation looked easy. We just had to proclaim national 
parks, or fund scientists to conduct recovery programs, and all would be 
well. The threat of global warming has changed all of that. Now, the key to 
the survival of countless species lies in the way you use your electricity 
and car, and in the way you vote.”
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/we-can-all-fight-the-threat-to-our-rare-species/2007/01/14/1168709612195.html

I an article entitled "Butterfly Lessons" Elizabeth Kolbert follows a trail 
of butterflies, mosquitoes and frogs to show how much our climate has 
changed already and how dramatic the coming change may yet be. Her series 
looked at how these delicate creatures are moving into new habitats as the 
planet warms. Her real point was that all life, from microorganisms to human 
beings, will have to adapt, and in ways that could be dangerous and 
destabilizing.
She concluded her series last year with this shattering thought: "It may 
seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could 
choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the 
process of doing."

Thomas E. Lovejoy, who heads the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, 
Economics and the Environment, fears that changes in the Amazon's ecosystem 
may be irreversible. Scientists reported last month that there is an 
Amazonian drought apparently caused by new patterns in Atlantic currents 
that, in turn, are similar to projected climate change. With less rainfall, 
the tropical forests are beginning to dry out. They burn more easily, and, 
in the continuous feedback loops of their ecosystem, these drier forests 
return less moisture to the atmosphere, which means even less rain. When the 
forest trees are deprived of rain, their mortality can increase by a factor 
of six, and similar devastation affects other species, too.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/17/AR2006011700895.html
http://www.desmogblog.com/all-hail-elizabeth-kolbert


What Can We Do To Save The Climate From Going Haywire?

Robert Socolow, an engineering professor, and Stephen Pacala, an ecology 
professor, who together lead the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton, 
a consortium designing scalable solutions for the climate issue, argued in a 
paper published by the journal Science in August 2004 that human beings can 
emit only so much carbon into the atmosphere before the buildup of carbon 
dioxide (CO2) reaches a level unknown in recent geologic history and the 
earth’s climate system starts to go “haywire.” The scientific consensus, 
they note, is that the risk of things going haywire — weather patterns 
getting violently unstable, glaciers melting, prolonged droughts — grows 
rapidly as CO2 levels “approach a doubling” of the concentration of CO2 that 
was in the atmosphere before the Industrial Revolution.

David Zink explains "There is no single answer; no magic bullet to deliver 
us into an energy-sustainable society. Visualize an interlocking, 
coordinated grid of wind farms, solar panels and towers, biofuel processing 
plants and outlets, more and better public transportation, and other 
elements. That’s what we’ll need: many pieces to put this puzzle together. 
And, we’ll need something that is anathema to the “market solutions” clique 
such as the automotive and gas corporations and their cronies who got us 
into the predicament of poorly planned suburbs, the car-dependent culture, 
and long commutes in single-occupant vehicles."
http://www.newday.com/films/Taken–for–a–Ride.html
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/5042/1/250/

According to Pacala: If we basically do nothing, and global CO2 emissions 
continue to grow at the pace of the last 30 years for the next 50 years, we 
will pass the doubling level — an atmospheric concentration of carbon 
dioxide of 560 parts per million — around midcentury. To avoid that — and 
still leave room for developed countries to grow, using less carbon, and for 
countries like India and China to grow, emitting double or triple their 
current carbon levels, until they climb out of poverty and are able to 
become more energy efficient — will require a huge global industrial energy 
project.
To convey the scale involved, Socolow and Pacala have created a pie chart 
with 15 different wedges.



Some wedges represent carbon-free or carbon-diminishing power-generating 
technologies; other wedges represent efficiency programs that could conserve 
large amounts of energy and prevent CO2 emissions. They argue that the world 
needs to deploy any 7 of these 15 wedges, or sufficient amounts of all 15, 
to have enough conservation, and enough carbon-free energy, to increase the 
world economy and still avoid the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere. Each 
wedge, when phased in over 50 years, would avoid the release of 25 billion 
tons of carbon, for a total of 175 billion tons of carbon avoided between 
now and 2056.
Here are seven wedges we could chose from: “Replace 1,400 large coal-fired 
plants with gas-fired plants; increase the fuel economy of two billion cars 
from 30 to 60 miles per gallon; add twice today’s nuclear output to displace 
coal; drive two billion cars on ethanol, using one-sixth of the world’s 
cropland; increase solar power 700-fold to displace coal; cut electricity 
use in homes, offices and stores by 25 percent; install carbon capture and 
sequestration capacity at 800 large coal-fired plants.” And the other eight 
aren’t any easier. They include halting all cutting and burning of forests, 
since deforestation causes about 20 percent of the world’s annual CO2 
emissions.
“There has never been a deliberate industrial project in history as big as 
this,” Pacala said. Through a combination of clean power technology and 
conservation, “we have to get rid of 175 billion tons of carbon over the 
next 50 years — and still keep growing. It is possible to accomplish this if 
we start today. But every year that we delay, the job becomes more difficult 
— and if we delay a decade or two, avoiding the doubling or more may well 
become impossible.”
http://www.kunstler.com/Grunt_Friedman_green.html
http://www.eenews.net/special_reports/climate_repair/


What Are The Limitations of Coal and Geosquestration?

In a speech in 2006 on peak oil, climate change, and the daunting arithmetic 
of carbon fuels, Jeremy Leggett explains, “We need a mass withdrawal from 
carbon emissions. We must leave the coal in the ground. The bottom line is 
that coal is the killer. We have plenty of it, and we do have the option of 
seeing if every Government research lab IN THE WORLD is wrong. If we panic 
and use coal it will be our epitaph.”


http://transitionculture.org/2006/08/24/jeremy-leggett-peak-oil-and-climate-change/

To read more about Jeremy Leggett’s epiphany which led him from the oil 
industry to Greenpeace, read:
http://www.carbonwar.co.uk/chapter1.htm

James Hansen suggests that within the next 10 years or so that we will 
realise that we have no choice but to bulldoze our old style coal fired 
power plants. He says "we can burn coal, provided we capture the CO2 and 
sequester it but in the meantime we should be emphasizing energy efficiency 
so that we don't need new old style coal fired power plants".
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s1870955.htm
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/wsf_09nov2006f.pdf

In an interview with Tony Jones on the Lateline program Tim Flannery said 
coal exports are no longer in Australia's national interest. “The social 
licence of coal to operate is rapidly being withdrawn globally, and no 
government can protect an industry from that sort of thing occurring. We've 
seen it with asbestos. We'll see it with coal. The reason is that, when you 
look at the proportion of the damage being done by coal now, it is 
significant, but that grows greatly in future. We have to deal with that 
issue if we want a stable climate.”
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1842715.htm


Geosequestration means we keep using coal, but instead of pumping carbon 
dioxide into the air, capture it in the power station, compress it into 
liquid CO2, pipe it to a suitable location, then inject it deep underground 
in rock formations where it would remain trapped for thousands of years. But 
can such an extraordinary idea work and will it work in time? The Australian 
government hopes it will. It's investing hundreds of millions of dollars 
into geosequestration research, support the renewable energy industry can 
only dream of. Geosequestration research is still in its early days and 
maybe in the next five to 10-15 years we will be having demonstrations and 
potential commercial applications of various capture technologies. Dr Iain 
MacGill recommends we should really be seeing action on those other 
abatement options such as energy efficiency, renewables and gas generation 
that are proven. We know they work and we know that they are at reasonable 
cost.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1195633.htm

Germany's Green party demanded a halt to plans in to build new coal-fired 
power stations. Baerbel Hoehn, the leader of the parliamentary committee for 
agriculture in Germany recently queried the viability of plans to extract 
CO2 from exhaust gases and to store it indefinitely. As a result, new 
coal-fired plants were "economic and political nonsense," Hoehn said.
http://rawstory.com/news/dpa/German_aid_organization_warns_clima_04062007.html

Experts funded by industry to work on geosequestration have argued that only 
25 per cent of total annual emissions could realistically be captured and 
sequestered (Allison & Nguyen 2004) at the very significant cost of between 
US$65–105 per tonne (Cook et. al. 2000). This would add around A$0.7–0.12 
per kWh to coal electricity costs. To bring these figures alive, Energy 
Australia charges domestic customers in Sydney approximately $0.10 per kWh 
for electricity, so on these estimates, sequestration could more than double 
the price of electricity.
http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2004/09/lovegrove.html

Given that geosequestration is economically feasible only for new 
electricity generation plants, this means that only 3 per cent of our 
electricity needs can use this technology by 2010, and only 25 per cent by 
2020. And since the electricity sector contributes only a third of our 
overall greenhouse gas emissions, geosequestration could only reduce the 
total by at best 1 per cent by 2010 and 8 per cent by the year 2020. So even 
if we take that path, rising energy demands mean that by 2020 Australia's 
emissions will still be at least about 118 per cent of 1990 levels. 
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2801



What Is Happening In The Arctic, and In the Oceans?

In November of 2004, a report by 250 scientists warned that the Arctic is 
warming twice as fast as the global average, which threatens to wipe out 
several species including polar bears, and melt summer ice around the North 
Pole by 2100. One of the reasons for the increased warming is that the dark 
water and ground in the arctic soak up more heat from the atmosphere than 
ice or snow. The levels of carbon dioxide today are about 379ppm and 
increasing, a comparable level to 55 million years ago when there was no ice 
on the planet due to the warmth of the atmosphere.
http://www.colby.edu/sts/st215/projects/stations/nuuk/index.html

In November 2005, Rutgers-led team shows rising ocean levels are tied to 
human-induced climate change. Global ocean levels are rising twice as fast 
today as they were 150 years ago, and human-induced warming appears to be 
the culprit, say scientists at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 
and collaborating institutions. Using core samples of sediments along the 
New Jersey coast, the scientists found that rates of sea level change have 
climbed significantly over the past 200 years, coinciding with the beginning 
of the industrial revolution when carbon dioxide emissions began to 
dramatically increase.
http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1125-climate.html

Mark Lynas, author of 'Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet' says
"At one degree we would likely see the extinction of most of the world's 
tropical coral reefs, which are already very close to their thermal tolerant 
threshold, and of course we've been seeing bleaching events in the Caribbean 
and also on the Great Barrief Reef. So that could happen by 2020, 2030 that 
most of those are gone. We would also see the disappearance of the ice-cap 
on Kilimanjaro, and we might even see new deserts spreading across the 
western half of the United States, which would have a big impact on the 
agricultural production there obviously.

At two degrees probably the most significant thing is the eventual loss of 
the Greenland ice sheet, that's all it will take to melt the entire thing 
and that will eventually raise global sea levels by seven metres or so. One 
of the main conclusions of the book is that we should try and peak global 
emissions of greenhouse gases within the next 10 to 15 years, because that's 
what we need to do if we are to avoid going over the two-degree threshold. 
And at three degrees we face the increasing likelihood of positive feedbacks 
which could tip, tipping point if you like which could make global warming 
run out of control. The most significant of those is the die-back of the 
Amazonian rainforest which many scientists are now predicting which would 
release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and that would then give 
us another degree of warming.

So we'd then be straight onto four degrees, which would probably melt most 
of the permafrosts in Siberia and give us even more positive feedback from 
all of the methane that would come out of that. So the tipping points are 
the real concern I think amongst the scientific community now and in order 
to avoid crossing some of these very crucial thresholds we do have to 
probably reduce greenhouse gases within the next 10 to 15 years."

FLAMER: In your book you mentioned that the same phenomenon, this six 
degrees of warming happened 251-million years ago. Is this maybe mother 
nature restoring the balance?

LYNAS: There has been previous greenhouse warming episodes in earth's 
history, and that's in fact in my later chapters, that gives me an idea of 
what would happen to the planet if we made it happen again. In previous 
times these have been associated with very long term volcanic outgassing of 
carbon. So these are natural events obviously which had nothing to do with 
humankind. What's happening now is that we're sort of short-circuiting this 
whole process by digging up coal, oil and gas, burning it and all very 
rapidly, much more rapidly than has ever happened before in geological 
history and just dumping it all into the atmosphere. So we've changed the 
chemistry of the atmosphere already completely beyond what it seen for 
probably 10 or so million years. So this is a very big change beyond what 
the earth naturally experiences and the most likely outcome if we don't get 
off this track is as you suggest of mass extinctions.
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/asiapac/programs/s1891755.htm



Do We Need To Reconsider GDP Or Even Capitalism?

In 1995, Redefining Progress created a more accurate measure of progress 
called the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). It starts with the same 
accounting framework as the GDP, but then makes some crucial distinctions: 
It adds in the economic contributions of household and volunteer work, but 
subtracts factors such as crime, pollution, and family breakdown.


http://www.rprogress.org/newprograms/sustIndi/gpi/index.shtml
Despite sustained economic growth throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s many 
Australians seem unaware of any increase in their welfare. Many are 
disgruntled, fractious and suspicious of the claims by politicians that the 
economy is doing well. There is a widespread perception, confirmed by social 
researchers such as Hugh Mackay and Richard Eckersley, that life in 
Australia is not improving, but is in fact deteriorating. If growth is so 
good for us, people are asking, how come it seems that things are getting 
worse?
Undoubtedly, one reason for this divergence between the performance of the 
economy and the perceptions of ordinary people has been the fact that the 
growth of income has been skewed towards the wealthy. But the problem runs 
much deeper than the age-old one of maldistribution of income. The problem 
lies in how we define and measure prosperity in Australia. Our official 
statistics provide a profoundly misleading picture of changes in national 
well-being. The national accounts that generate GDP fail to recognise that 
the growth process produces 'ill-being' in addition to well-being, 'bads' as 
well as goods.
The major problems with using GDP as a measure of changes in national 
well-being are:
·	the failure to account for the way in which increases in output are 
distributed within the community;
·	the failure to account for the contribution of household work;
·	the incorrect counting of 'defensive' expenditures as positive 
contributions to GDP; and
·	the failure to account for changes in the value of stocks of both built 
and natural capital.
The way in which the GPI attempts to overcome these shortfalls is outlined 
in What is the GPI?

http://www.gpionline.net/NSsite/rethink.htm

Sir John Whitmor, Executive Chairman of Performance Consultants 
International Limited, writes in the Resurgence Magazine that “capitalism is 
an obscene failure. We have a world in which 40,000 people die every day for 
lack of basic needs although surplus exists; our habitat and countless 
species are being destroyed at an alarming rate by commercial exploitation; 
wars are fought over the desire to control natural resources. Capitalism 
makes lethal weaponry available to all, tears down our rainforests and 
deprives the thirsty of their water rights - all for profit. Furthermore, a 
recent survey showed us that six out of every ten people who work within the 
capitalist system are miserable. Yes; let's face it, capitalism is a 
failure, a miserable failure.
However, horrendous as those things are, they are but the short-term 
manifestations of an even more serious long-term malaise. All-consuming 
consumerism has brought the psycho-spiritual evolutionary journey of Western 
man and woman to a standstill, or even into regression, in a few decades. 
Through the glorification of material excess as the ultimate goal in life, 
and by rewarding effort for gain rather than for good, people are led into 
the 'never-enough' disappointment trap. The illusion of progress, the 
numbing and dumbing of human development, and the diminishing of the human 
spirit have been foisted on us, and especially on our children, by the 
priests and profits of capitalism.
We are stuck at the level of quantitative material gain, and neglect 
qualitative living and learning. We have acquired much technical knowledge 
from and for our material advancement, but we have lost the wisdom to deploy 
it well. Unscrupulous Western businesses promote the pointless acquisition 
of excess, of the frivolous, of over-priced branded goods manufactured in 
far-away places by children working punitive hours in shocking conditions 
for a pittance. More alarming still is that it may be the best job they can 
get.
To secure a market, poorer countries are compelled to sell their natural 
resources abroad too cheaply, and those that toil to harvest them go hungry, 
while comparable growers in the rich countries receive government subsidies. 
These are nothing less than crimes perpetrated by the arrogant upon the 
ignorant and innocent. Political and corporate leaders, along with the 
silent majority by whose apathy their actions are condoned, suffer from a 
blend of myopia and denial of epidemic proportions.”
http://www.resurgence.org/2005/whitmore233.htm

In her book ‘The Real Wealth of Nations’ Riane Eisler writes “The greatest 
problems of our time--poverty, inequality, war, terrorism, and environmental 
degradation--can be traced to flawed economic systems that fail to value and 
support the most essential human work: caring for people and the planet.”
http://www.bkconnection.com/ProdDetails.asp?ID=9781576753880

In “Natural Economic Order” Silvio Gesell, once Finance minister in the 
short-lived Bavarian Republic uses a story of Robinson Crusoe to explain how 
the interest-based economic system is flawed. RC meets a Stranger who wants 
use his food and other supplies, however, RC requests that the Stranger pays 
interest. However, the stranger’s religion forbids him from paying or 
receiving interest, so the Stranger proposes to RC that he will help with 
keeping the food and supplies intact, as he is very knowledgeable about how 
to preserve food and cloths in the conditions on the island. RC soon 
realizes that the Stranger could prove to be a very valuable companion who 
can help him manage living on the island, and allows him to use his food and 
tools without interest. In the discussion about money that he has with the 
Stranger, RC eventually gives up his belief in Marxist theory about money, 
and fully embraces the economic practice of the Stranger.
http://www.systemfehler.de/en/crusoe.htm

For further information on “The GDP Myth - Why "growth" isn't always a good 
thing”, read: 
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/1999/9903.rowe.growth.html


Is The Current Fossil Fuel Based Economy On a Crash Course With Nature?

Oystein Dahle, former Vice President of Esso in Norway said "Socialism 
collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. 
Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the 
ecological truth." That's a lot of wisdom distilled into those two 
sentences.
http://www.planetfriendly.net/business.html

Capitalism tends to downplay the full dimensions of the ecological crisis 
and even of capitalism’s impact on the environment in the process of trying 
to force everything into the locked box of a specific economic crisis 
theory. Capitalism’s tendency to displace environmental problems (the fact 
that it uses the whole biosphere as a giant trash can), means that the earth 
remains in large part a “free gift to capital.” Nor is there any prospect 
that this will change fundamentally, since capitalism is in many ways a 
system of unpaid costs.

In his book, The Enemy of Nature, Joel Kovel, refers to ecological crisis 
arising from capital’s degradation of its own conditions of production on an 
ever increasing scale.” He remarks that, “This degradation will have a 
contradictory effect on profitability itself …either directly, by so fouling 
the natural ground of production that it breaks down, or indirectly,” 
through the reinternalization of “the costs that had been expelled into the 
environment.”
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0902foster.htm

A company that opts to dispose of chemical wastes as effluent into a nearby 
river over seeking to recycle such wastes or send them to a disposal 
facility clearly does so because it is the least cost option; acting in that 
manner is a rational action motivated by a desire to maximize profits. The 
question that needs to be asked is why is pollution the least-cost action? 
It is because the value of the river is unaccounted for by the capitalist 
system.
http://home.earthlink.net/~jhadler/pegs.html
In an interview with American Scientist, award-winning scientist, 
environmentalist and broadcaster David Suzuki says that one of the most 
important messages the media does not cover properly is that “there is not 
enough of a critical analysis of the fact that the way the economists see 
the world is destructive. Economists "externalize" most of the natural 
world—biodiversity, ozone layer, fossils, water, topsoil and so on. The 
"services" performed by nature are not accounted for in our economic system, 
so that a tree, for example, is seen as having no value until money is spent 
to watch it (ecotourism) or cut it down. Economics is based on the enormous 
creativity and productivity of human beings, and so it is assumed that 
steady growth is possible (which it is not) and necessary! No one asks the 
important questions, such as what is an economy for, how much is enough, is 
it providing what people really need.”
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/InterviewTypeDetail/assetid/29529;jsessionid=baa9...

In an article “Can Capitalism go Green?” Andy Gianniotis argues that 
“Corporate competition is a fundamental cause of the global environmental 
crisis. Corporations that use the cheapest - usually the dirtiest - 
production processes are at a competitive advantage and can increase profits 
and/or market share.” He believes “it is the capitalist system which is at 
fault. Free use and pollution of the environment have been key to business 
profits since capitalism emerged.  If polluting companies were forced to pay 
the full environmental and social costs, they would go out of business.” In 
conclusion he argues, there is no "win-win" scenario: it is capitalism OR 
the environment.
http://wusa.uow.edu.au/files/u3/articles/green_capitalism.pdf

Some of the public health costs of air pollution include: high rates of 
school absenteeism, lost work time and wages, rising health insurance costs, 
lower work productivity, and millions of dollars spent in direct costs for 
medical and hospital care, medication and treatment.
http://www.mass.gov/dep/air/community/airhealt.htm







Will Environmental Policies Stifle The Economy?



As this figure illustrates, the economy exists entirely within society, 
because all parts of the human economy require interaction among people. 
However, society is much more than just the economy. Friends and families, 
music and art, religion and ethics are important elements of society, but 
are not primarily based on exchanging goods and services.

Society, in turn, exists entirely within the environment. Our basic 
requirements -- air, food and water -- come from the environment, as do the 
energy and raw materials for housing, transportation and the products we 
depend on.

Finally, the environment surrounds society. At an earlier point in human 
history, the environment largely determined the shape of society. Today the 
opposite is true: human activity is reshaping the environment at an 
ever-increasing rate. The parts of the environment unaffected by human 
activity are getting smaller all the time.
http://www.sustainablemeasures.com/Sustainability/ABetterView.html

In a Nature Article “The Value of the World's Ecosystem Services and Natural 
Capital” (May 1987), it was calculated that for the entire biosphere, the 
value (most of which is outside the market) is estimated to be in the range 
of $16 - 54 trillion/yr., with an average of $33 trillion/yr. Because of the 
nature of the uncertainties, this must be considered a minimum estimate. As 
a comparison, global GNP is around $18 trillion/yr.
The services of ecological systems and the natural capital stocks that 
produce them are
critical to the functioning of the earth's life support system. They 
contribute significantly to human welfare, both directly and indirectly, and 
therefore represent a significant portion of the total economic value of the 
planet. Because these services are not fully captured in markets or 
adequately quantified in terms comparable with economic services and 
manufactured capital, they are often given too little weight in policy 
decisions. This neglect may ultimately compromise the sustainability of 
humans in the biosphere.
https://admindb.nceas.ucsb.edu/projects/2058/nature-paper.pdf

The following is a conceptual model of how patterns of human and ecological 
responses
emerge from the interactions between human and biophysical processes and how 
these patterns affect ecological resilience in urban ecosystems. For 
example, population growth in an area (driver) leads to increased pavement 
and buildings (patterns), leading to increased runoff and erosion 
(processes), causing lower water quality and decreased fish habitat 
(effects), which may lead to a new policy to regulate land use (driver).


http://www.biology.duke.edu/wilson/EcoSysServices/papers/AlbertiEtal2003.pdf



The following framework addresses the question of how we can incorporate the 
importance of ecosystem goods and services in economic decisions.


http://statistics.defra.gov.uk/esg/reports/ecosystem/mainrep.pdf

It therefore seems obvious that we need to protect the environment with 
policies to sustain our societies, and ideally our economy as well. However, 
some major changes may be necessary to change our societies to more 
sustainable ones. We may also have to sacrifice our energy-intensive, highly 
mobile, carbon-based lives so that we stay within the limits of our planets 
coping capacity.

We need to ask ourselves critical questions such as:
·	What do we need economic growth for?
·	Do we want fuel or food?
·	Can we forgo short-term profit for longer-term benefit?
·	When a country is stressed environmentally, can we afford more 
immigration?
·	Is unlimited economic growth and population growth sustainable on a 
limited planet?

Even if the necessary policies stifle the economy it will be better for the 
long-term future of mankind to learn to live within the limits imposed by 
nature.

Some people believe our economy need not suffer from new policies and that 
with the right incentives business can profit from being greener. Others see 
our narrowly focused capitalist societies on a crash course with nature.

In February 2007 Prof. John P. Holdren and president of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, explained that “well-being has 
environmental, sociopolitical, and cultural dimensions as well as economic 
ones, and the goal of sustainable well-being entails improving all of these 
dimensions in ways and to end points that are consistent with maintaining 
the improvements indefinitely. This challenge includes not only improving 
sustainably the standard of living in developing countries, but also 
converting to a sustainable basis the currently unsustainable practices 
supporting the standard of living in industrialized ones.” He also stresses 
that for civilization to meet this immense challenge business, government, 
and law, as well as on the societal wit and will to integrate all of these 
elements in pursuit of the sustainable-well-being goal will be necessary. 
Holdren suggested that addressing such challenges effectively to improve the 
overall well-being of humanity will require a radical reconfiguration of 
policy and economies—and daily life—on a global scale. Holdren described a 
world poised at an unprecedented moment of decision: Without swift and 
urgent action, he said, the problems could spiral toward disastrous, 
permanent changes for all of life on Earth.
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2007/0216am_holdren_address.shtml
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/315/5813/737

Ehrlich and Holdren (1971) investigated the effects of population on 
resource use and environmental impact and proposed a simple relationship to 
describe the effect. The impact (I) of any population can be expressed as a 
product of three characteristics: the population's size (P), its affluence 
or per-capita consumption (A), and the environmental damage (T) inflicted by 
the technologies used to supply each unit of consumption.

In equation form this is represented as:
I = PAT

A decrease in population or affluence can reduce environmental impact, or, 
better
technology can moderate the effects of growth in either of population or 
affluence. The
use of inappropriate technologies can exacerbate the problem.

Schulze proposed to modify the formula to include a behavioural aspect (B) 
so that
I = PBAT

http://dclh.electricalandcomputerengineering.dal.ca/enen/2006/ERG200611.pdf.
http://dieoff.org/page112.htm
http://www.population-growth-migration.info/essays/IPAT.html
http://www.jstor.org/view/00063568/ap040391/04a00090/0




Secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, in stated in Nov 2006  
that climate change is now an economic threat, but that there is still time 
for all our societies to change course. He suggests that low emissions need 
not mean low growth or stifling a country's development aspirations. Indeed 
the savings can buy time for solar, wind and other alternative energy 
sources to be developed and made more cost-effective. This may be a path to 
a safer and sounder model of development.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/07/AR2006110701229.html

At the Climate Change Conference, 15 November, Kofi Annan said “It is 
increasingly clear that it will cost far less to cut emissions now than to 
deal with the consequences later. And let there be no more talk of waiting 
until we know more. We know already that an economy based on high emissions 
is an uncontrolled experiment on the global climate.”
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sgsm10739.doc.htm



Due to the realities of climate change and resource depletion, some jobs 
will decline or disappear entirety, however, other jobs and industries will 
also be created. It will soon be realised that we have to re-industrialise 
our economy based on renewable energies. This can actually create new jobs, 
new demand, and a system that is actually more sustainable and kind to our 
planet and future generations.

Voters in Washington have opted for a “Clean Energy Initiative (I-937)” 
which requires the largest electric utilities to get 15 percent of their 
electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020. The reduction in air 
pollutants will be like taking two million cars off Washington’s roads. 
Similar legislation has been enacted in 20 other states.
Backers of I-937 included a broad coalition of utilities, businesses, labor 
(the United Steelworkers, SEIU, and Aerospace Machinists played a leading 
role), farmers, the League of Women Voters, the Audubon Society of 
Washington, even a group calling itself the Republicans for Environmental 
Protection.
Supporters hope that the initiatives will kick-start energy efficiency and 
renewable energy projects across the state. That will help create thousands 
of family-wage jobs in engineering and construction, especially in rural 
areas, and provide crucial additional income to rural landowners. Farmers 
hosting wind projects will earn more than $5,000 a year per wind turbine, 
helping keep family farms alive.
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/5042/1/250/

Flannery, Australia's current Man of the Year, says "Implementing CO2 
reduction measures means opposing entrenched interests and in the short term 
some possible loss of jobs and export dollars, though these would quickly be 
made up as investments in emerging technologies kick in. If approached 
properly, these measures have the potential to grant the Australian economy 
a "pioneer advantage" in a world market for sustainable technologies and 
goods."
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/14/1087065079591.html?from=storyr...


So, there are multiple reasons for taking action against climate change, by 
reducing pollution, greenhouse gases, deforestation etc. There are also 
strong reasons to preserve coastal fisheries, air sheds, aquifers, and the 
like. We have to stop experimenting with the earth's climate and using the 
atmosphere as our dumping ground for greenhouse gases.

What Is Sustainable Development?

For a policy to be sustainable, it must respect all five principles. We want 
to live within environmental limits and achieve a just society, and we will 
do so by means of sustainable economy, good governance, and sound science.



http://www.sustainable-development.gov.uk/what/principles.htm

What Are The Costs of Inaction?

Everyone has heard of the saying "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of 
cure", however, many fail to apply this advice to global warming. Look at 
the pain and expense of treating groundwater contamination, rather than 
avoiding it; or of trying to restore forest ecosystems decimated by acid 
rain, rather than halting acidification; or of treating cancers, rather than 
emphasizing prevention. Trying to fix climate change after the fact is even 
more difficult.

"We are now at a crucial point. As the Royal Commission on Environmental 
Pollution stated, “If we go for business as usual … we are destined for 
something unimaginable.”
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/committees/environment/reports-05/rar05-05-vol01-01.htm

Climate changes can result in catastrophic costs to nations, argues Dr 
Epstein, so says that insurers already estimate that health-related and 
environmental restoration claims over the next 30 years may reach US$50 to 
$125 billion.
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/twr125g.htm

According to preliminary estimates, natural and man -made catastrophes 
during 2005 resulted in 112,000 deaths and total financial losses were of 
the order of US$225 billion of which some US$80 billion was insured, making 
2005 the costliest year ever for insurers.



A new report from the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) predicts 
that climate change will cost Germany a staggering €800 billion by 2050 -- 
with higher energy costs, declining tourism, increased insurance costs and 
damage caused by extreme weather. The DIW study is based on the assumption 
that the average global temperature will increase by 4.5 degrees Celsius. 
That is the upper level of the forecast by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change (IPCC). The report warns: "If there is not an appreciable 
intensification in climate protection, then by 2100 the resulting costs of 
climate change could reach €3 trillion.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,471762,00.html


Greens leader Bob Brown has warned that over 700 thousand Australian homes 
and businesses are threatened by climate change. "This is a huge threat on 
the Australian nation and its economy and its social well-being and Mr 
Howard's got his head in the sand," Senator Brown said in Hobart.
As many as 711,000 Australian homes will be in peril from rising sea levels, 
and vulnerable wildlife species could begin to disappear by 2030, according 
to the report released last night in Brussels and containing the work of 
2,500 scientists. Bob Brown said 20,000 to 30,000 houses and businesses in 
Tasmania alone would be at risk from climate change. "That's probably a 
modest calculation of where the risk is going to hit this century," he said, 
adding the endangered area stretched from Sandy Bay, near Hobart, all the 
way up the west coast. "The Howard government simply does not understand the 
crisis, it does not see how great it is for this nation and the important 
structural changes that need to be made to our economy if we are going to 
meet the urgent need for changes in reductions in greenhouse gases within 
the next decade." He predicted a "massive loss of security" for people who 
have invested in and live by the coast, notably in tourism and fisheries, 
and said it would be impossible for property owners to insure against sea 
level rises in the future. In response to the crisis, the senator urged the 
federal government and the Labor opposition to ditch policies supporting 
coal exports and coal-fired power generation and get behind renewable 
energy.
http://www.worldnewsaustralia.com.au/region.php?id=136126&region=7








What Opportunities Do Businesses See In Taking Action on Climate Change?

The LOHAS Journal ("Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability") estimates 
green enterprise as a $229 billion market sector. CleanEdge.org reports 
clean/green technology as the third largest venture capital investment 
category in 2006. In California alone, investments in clean tech could 
create up to 114,000 new jobs by 2010.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/01/23/creating_greencollar_jobs.ph...

Investment banks and fund managers are starting to invest money into 
tackling climate change. For instance, The Universities Superannuation 
Scheme (USS) has up to 80 million euros (US$106.5 million) invested in green 
businesses, versus its total assets of 29 billion pounds (US$56.78 billion).
Nick Robins, head of Sustainable and Responsible Investment (SRI) funds at 
Henderson Global Investors, says “New policies need to do a better job 
attracting short term investors into technologies like energy efficiency, 
widely seen having a big impact on climate change”
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/41201/story.htm

Read about how 50 businesses, and more specifically a certain strain of 
imaginative, entrepreneurial business, that has found the upside in 
addressing global malfunction and still are able to make a profit while 
saving the world. For instance, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's 
market-based approach to confronting global warming will create huge new 
markets across California. Read more here:
http://www.fastcompany.com/fast50_07/

Don  Henry,  executive director  of  the  Australian Conservation   
Foundation  (ACF),  said, "Business  must  ensure  it  is  at  the cutting 
edge of the move to a clean, green  economy  to  ensure  Australia gets  its 
 share  of  the  future  jobs  and the  economic  benefits  that  will  
flow from it".
http://wusa.uow.edu.au/files/u3/articles/green_capitalism.pdf

A few corporations are even demanded regulation. In January the chairman of 
Shell, Lord Oxburgh, insisted that "governments in developed countries need 
to introduce taxes, regulations or plans ... to increase the cost of 
emitting carbon dioxide". He listed the technologies required to replace 
fossil fuels, and remarked that "none of this is going to happen if the 
market is left to itself". In August the heads of United Utilities, British 
Gas, Scottish Power and the National Grid joined Friends of the Earth and 
Greenpeace in calling for "tougher regulations for the built environment"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1574003,00.html
What Can We Learn From Leading Countries, and What Can We Learn From Past 
Failures?

Lester R. Brown suggests we take Sweden as a role model, where they are not 
increasing taxes but rather restructuring taxes. "They are systematically 
reducing income taxes and raising taxes mostly on energy-related things. It 
could be automotive fuel or carbon emissions more broadly. Electricity. 
Taxes on automobiles, and so forth. They are now talking about being the 
world's first oil-free economy within 15 years. Oil will be out of the 
economy entirely. "

In Lester R. Browns book "Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a 
Civilization in Trouble" he states that "Each year the world’s taxpayers 
provide an estimated $700 billion of subsidies for environmentally 
destructive activities, such as fossil fuel burning, overpumping aquifers, 
clearcutting forests, and overfishing. An Earth Council study, Subsidizing 
Unsustainable Development, observes that “there is something unbelievable 
about the world spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually to 
subsidize its own destruction.”
Iran provides a classic example of extreme subsidies when it prices oil for 
internal use at one tenth the world price, strongly encouraging car 
ownership and gas consumption. The World Bank reports that if this 
$3.6-billion annual subsidy were phased out, it would reduce Iran’s carbon 
emissions by a staggering 49 percent. It would also strengthen the economy 
by freeing up public revenues for investment in the country’s economic 
development. Iran is not alone. The Bank reports that removing energy 
subsidies would reduce carbon emissions in Venezuela by 26 percent, in 
Russia by 17 percent, in India by 14 percent, and in Indonesia by 11 
percent.
Some countries are eliminating or reducing these climate-disrupting 
subsidies. Belgium, France, and Japan have phased out all subsidies for 
coal. Germany reduced its coal subsidy from $5.4 billion in 1989 to $2.8 
billion in 2002, meanwhile lowering its coal use by 46 percent. It plans to 
phase out this support entirely by 2010. China cut its coal subsidy from 
$750 million in 1993 to $240 million in 1995. More recently, it has imposed 
a tax on high-sulfur coals.
A study by the U.K. Green Party, “Aviation’s Economic Downside,” describes 
the extent of subsidies currently given to the U.K. airline industry. The 
giveaway begins with $17 billion in tax breaks, including a total exemption 
from the federal tax. External or indirect costs that are not paid, such as 
treating illness from breathing the air polluted by planes, the costs of 
climate change, and so forth, add nearly $7 billion to the tab. The subsidy 
in the United Kingdom totals $391 per resident. This is also an inherently 
regressive tax policy simply because a substantial share of the U.K. 
population cannot afford to fly very often if at all, yet they help 
subsidize this high-cost mode of transportation for their more affluent 
compatriots.
Eliminating environmentally destructive subsidies reduces both the burden on 
taxpayers and the destructive activities themselves. A world facing the 
prospect of economically disruptive climate change, for example, can no 
longer justify subsidies to expand the burning of coal and oil. Shifting 
these subsidies to the development of climate-benign energy sources such as 
wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal power is the key to stabilizing the 
earth’s climate. Shifting subsidies from road construction to rail 
construction could increase mobility in many situations while reducing 
carbon emissions.
Many subsidies are largely hidden from taxpayers. This is especially true of 
the fossil fuel industry, whose subsidies include such things as a depletion 
allowance for oil pumping in the United States. Even more dramatic are the 
routine U.S. military expenditures to protect access to Middle Eastern oil, 
which were calculated by analysts at the Rand Corporation before the most 
recent Iraq war to fall between $30 billion and $60 billion a year, while 
the oil imported from the region was worth only $20 billion.
A 2001 study by Redefining Progress shows U.S. taxpayers subsidizing 
automobile use at $257 billion a year, or roughly $2,000 per taxpayer. In 
addition to subsidizing carbon emissions, this also means that taxpayers who 
do not own automobiles, including those too poor to afford them, are 
subsidizing those who do.
One of the bright spots about this subsidization of fossil fuels is that it 
provides a reservoir of tax deductions that can be diverted to 
climate-benign, renewable sources of energy, such as wind, solar, and 
geothermal energy. To subsidize the use of fossil fuels is to subsidize 
crop-withering heat waves, melting ice, rising seas, and more destructive 
storms. Perhaps it is time for the world’s taxpayers to ask if this is how 
they want their hard-earned money to be spent."
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch04_ss7.htm

Lester R. Brown says that "It may well be that the leadership will come from 
individual countries just deciding to go ahead and do things, realizing that 
the Kyoto Protocol is just not anywhere near enough. What Sweden is doing 
could emerge as a role model for other countries to follow it."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,70455-0.html

In Germany renewable energies are becoming an increasingly important job 
creation  engine. Between 2004 and 2005 alone, the number of jobs in this 
sector rose from
157,000 to 170,000. In addition to the steady expansion in Germany, 
increasing exports of German technology are generating enormous growth 
rates. Exports account for 80% of the industry’s revenues.
In 2005, the German wind power industry was responsible for roughly half of 
the total world market volume of more than twelve billion euros. Solar cells 
from Germany have a world-market share of 16%. Germany is near the top of 
the international league table. The German solar industry is also booming. 
It achieves sales of three billion euros and the market is growing by 20% a 
year. When it comes to wind energy, Germany is already a world champion: 
18,000 megawatts of wind power are installed in the country. No other 
renewable energy source supplies more electricity than wind power. Roughly 
one third of the world’s wind turbines and half of the wind power plants in 
the European Union are located in Germany. Wind power generates almost twice 
the amount of electricity that the capital city Berlin consumes in a year. 
Wind energy’s share of Germany’s total electricity supply will significantly 
grow from 2008 onwards: in two years’ time, the construction of more than 30 
offshore wind farms will commence in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. It is 
envisaged that they will supply 25,000 megawatts of electricity by the year 
2030.
Practically no other industry in Germany offers growth prospects as high as 
those of renewable energies. According to figures published by Bundesverband 
Erneuerbare Energien, 300,000 new jobs will be created by 2020. This 
development is largely due to Germany’s Renewable Energy Law. This 
legislation lays down government-guaranteed minimum remuneration for 
electricity from renewable energy sources. The law aims to increase 
renewable energies’ share of overall electricity production in Germany to at 
least 12.5% by 2010 and at least 20% by 2020.
http://www.germanembassy.org.au/en/economy/aktuelles_en/FS_Energy_E_180906.pdf



What Surprises Can We Expect?
New evidence from satellites now indicates that aerosols—pollution made up 
of fine, airborne particles—have a dampening effect on rainfall. Cloud 
physicist Daniel Rosenfeld writes in the Science Magazine ("Aerosols, clouds 
and climate"; June 2006): "Because pollution aerosols act as cloud 
condensation nuclei, clouds forming in a more polluted atmosphere contain a 
larger number of drops that are slower to merge and fall as precipitation". 
Air pollution more easily stifles rain from short-lived tropical clouds than 
from the longerlasting clouds common in northern latitudes, says Rosenfeld. 
This may explain why rainfall in the tropics has decreased despite 
predictions that global warming would make the area wetter, he says.
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20000311/fob1.asp

Whenever rising temperatures thaw the polar icecaps to any significant 
degree, the fresh melt-water pools on the surface, inhibiting the driving 
mechanism that runs the global circulation system.



There is now strong evidence to suggest that on some occasions in the recent 
past those huge gyres shut down entirely. When this occurred, the hydrates 
disintegrated, releasing their methane into the atmosphere in a series of 
gigantic ‘burps’. Some of these methane burps appear to have been large 
enough to raise the global temperature by 5–10°C in just a few decades.



This appears to have been the case about 55 million years ago at the 
Paleocene-Eocene boundary when the release of some 1,200–2,500 gigatons of 
hydrate methane generated a sea-temperature rise of 4°–5°C, triggering a 
mass extinction of marine species. The global temperature spike of 8°–10°C 
that occurred at this time appears to have been vastly greater and more 
abrupt than could possibly have been generated by the gradual rise in 
atmospheric CO2 that preceded it.

http://www.mnforsustain.org/energy%20punctuation%20marks%20morrison.htm



What is Humanities Ecological Footprint?

The Ecological Footprint is a tool used to measure the impact of human 
activities on the environment. It estimates the surface area required to 
produce everything that an individual or population consumes (transport, 
accommodation, food, etc.) and to absorb the resulting waste. It is 
expressed in hectares (ha) per person per year or in planets.

The concept of an ecological footprint was put forward by Matthias 
Wackernagel and William E Rees in their 1996 book 'Our Ecological Footprint: 
Reducing Human Impact on the Earth'. It has come to embrace a range of 
ideas. Their preferred definition of sustainability can be summarised as 
‘delivering quality of life for all within the means of nature’. The aim is 
to quantify our use of nature, and compare this with the carrying capacity 
of our ecosystems, so that we can assess environmental sustainability.
http://www.geography.btinternet.co.uk/ecoprint.htm

Your ecological footprint includes area for:
·	Crops to grow your vegetables, cereals and fibres
·	Pasture to grow your animal products
·	Forest to grow your timber and paper products
·	Sea and estuary to grow your seafood and absorb pollutants
·	Bushland to absorb your carbon dioxide and other pollutants
·	Land covered by the roads and buildings and dam water you use
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/education/ecologic/bigfoot/low/

Worldwide, there exist 1.8 biologically productive global hectares per 
person.
http://www.earthday.net/footprint/index.asp

Australia's Ecological Footprint in the Living Planet Report 2004 was 7.7 
global hectares (gha) per person. [A global hectare refers to one hectare 
(approximately soccer field size) of biologically productive space with 
world-average productivity.] This is over 3 times the average global 
Footprint (2.2 gha), and well beyond the level of what the planet can 
regenerate on an annual basis - an equivalent of about 1.8 global hectares 
per person per year.
The most significant factor contributing to the Australian Ecological 
Footprint is carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels (constituting 
approximately half of the total Australian Footprint).
http://www.epa.vic.gov.au/ecologicalfootprint/ausFootprint/default.asp

As Catton (1986) observes: "The world is being required to accommodate not 
just more people, but effectively 'larger' people . . ." For example, in 
1790 the estimated average daily energy consumption by Americans was 11,000 
kcal. By 1980, this had increased almost twenty-fold to 210,000 kcal/day 
(Catton 1986). As a result of such trends, load pressure relative to 
carrying capacity is rising much faster than is implied by mere population 
increases.
http://dieoff.org/page110.htm




http://www.321energy.com/editorials/chefurka/chefurka051207.html

Humanity’s Ecological Footprint appears to have breached ecological limits 
and is thus unsustainable. We must address both our population size and the 
size of our Footprints in order to keep our planetary use of natural 
resources in balance.
http://www.rprogress.org/footprint/ecolFoot.shtml
http://www.rprogress.org/newprojects/ecolFoot/faq/index.shtml#food4

Here are the basic components that are used in various ecological footprint 
calculators:

Santiago de Chile	RP Calculator(12 questions)	BFF Calculator (11 questions)
Food·	vegetarian·	animal products·	water	Food·	type of diet·	amount·	food 
waste·	food 'miles'		Food·	type of diet·	food 'miles' and freshness
	Housing & furniture		Housing·	number of people·	house size·	electricity 
source·	energy efficiency		Housing·	number of people·	house 
size·	heating/cooling bills·	electricity source·	energy efficiency
Transport·	road·	rail·	air·	coastal/water-ways	Transport·	car mileage·	ride 
sharing·	fuel efficiency·	air travel	Transport·	main travel mode ·	vacation 
distance and travel mode
Goods·	paper·	nonsynthetic clothes·	tobacco·	others		Waste·	volume of 
waste·	recycling habits(Note: waste is used as a proxy for commodities)

http://www.prosus.uio.no/english/sus_dev/tools/oslows/Use%20of%20EF%20for%20SGA%20-%20Main%20Report.doc
How Do Entropy, Economy and Environment Relate?

William E. Rees, from the School of Community and Regional Planning at The 
University of British Columbia says, “Beyond a certain point, the continuous 
growth of the economy can be purchased only at the expense of increasing 
disorder or entropy in the ecosphere.
.

This is the point at which consumption by the economy exceeds natural income 
and would be manifested through the continuous depletion of natural capital 
--reduced biodiversity, air/water/land pollution, deforestation, atmospheric 
change, etc. In other words, the empirical evidence suggests that the 
aggregate human load already exceeds, and is steadily eroding, the very 
carrying capacity upon which the continued humane existence depends. 
Ultimately this poses the threat of unpredictable ecosystems restructuring 
(e.g., erratic climate change) leading to resource shortages, increased 
local strife, and the heightened threat of ecologically induced geopolitical 
instability.”
http://dieoff.org/page110.htm

Once natural capital is exhausted or degraded to a critical level, either 
resources become scarce, or our waste stream becomes detrimental. Economic 
throughput, it is argued, requires a source of natural capital regardless of 
the size and efficiency of human capital. Because throughput in economic 
systems originates from a stock of natural capital and ultimately requires 
ecosystem functions to “recycle” or renew exhausted throughput, the economy 
becomes a subset of the world’s ecosystem (Daly 1996).

Herman Daly proposed two views of the world's natural capital supply and 
economy: empty world and full world.

The empty world view assumes a near limitless reserve of natural capital, 
because the rate of consumption (i.e., the size of the economy) is 
relatively small compared with the rate of resource renewal or the total 
supply of nonrenewables. In the full world view, resources are scarce or 
consumed at rates nearing the natural capacity to renew. These views 
illustrate how as growth occurs, the economic system eventually becomes 
limited by the supply of natural capital. Under this model, the global 
carrying capacity is limited by the ability of natural capital to support a 
minimum level of sustainable resources. One factor that may affect this 
difference in perspective is that, historically, extraction and materials 
utilization costs are directly paid by the firms engaged in the activity; 
thus, there has been unremitting economic pressure to reduce extraction 
costs and minimize material use. In contrast, disposal and recycling of 
wastes has been a “free” service of the environment, so it is not surprising 
that it has often met or gone beyond its true biological limit.

http://www.csc.noaa.gov/coastal/economics/irreversibility.htm


What Are the Equity Issues of Energy?

In an artile “Energy 21: Making The World Work” by Walt Patterson, energy 
expert and author of twelve books and hundreds of papers, articles and 
reviews, on nuclear power, coal technology, renewable energy, energy 
systems, energy policy and electricity writes “Why talk about energy and 
purpose? The short answer is that we’ re making a mess of it. The world 
isn’t working well enough. More than two billion people ­
One third of humanity ­ have no access to the kinds of energy benefits the 
rest of us take for granted; and the proportion of ‘energy have-nots’ is 
increasing, not decreasing. Worse still, the key fuels and energy 
technologies of the ‘energy haves’, like us ­ fossil fuels, large dams, 
nuclear power ­ all face problems that may become insuperable.”
http://www.waltpatterson.org/Energy21.pdf
http://www.waltpatterson.org/aboutwaltpatterson.htm


Are There Limits To Growth?

More than 30 years ago, a book called The Limits to Growth created an 
international sensation. Commissioned by the Club of Rome, an international 
group of businessmen, statesmen, and scientists, The Limits to Growth was 
compiled by a team of experts from the U.S. and several foreign countries. 
Using system dynamics theory and a computer model called "World3," the book 
presented and analyzed 12 scenarios that showed different possible patterns 
—and environmental outcomes— of world development over two centuries from 
1900 to 2100.  The original “Limits to Growth” report forecasted that the 
current rate of growth and patterns of consumption could continue for 
another 50-80 years before things begin to go seriously wrong. It suggested 
that population must stop growing, and we must change our cultural habits of 
consumption, because we cannot continue to make today’s claims on the 
environment.

Here is the “business as usual” scenario:


The authors do suggest a few general guidelines for what sustainability 
would look like, and what steps we should take to get there:

•    Extend the planning horizon. Base the choice among current options much 
more on their long-term costs and benefits.
•    Improve the signals. Learn more about the real welfare of human 
population and the real impact on the world ecosystem of human activity.
•    Speed up response time. Look actively for signals that indicate when 
the environment or society is stressed. Decide in advance what to do if 
problems appear.
•    Minimize the use of nonrenewable resources.
•    Prevent the erosion of renewable resources.
•    Use all resources with maximum efficiency.
•    Slow and eventually stop exponential growth of population and physical 
capital.

http://www.mnforsustain.org/meadows_limits_to_growth_30_year_update_2004.htm
http://www.chelseagreen.com/2004/items/limitspaper/Reviews


Population Limits

In an article “The End of World Population Growth” in science magazine 
Nature, the authors calculate that “there is around an 85 per cent chance 
that the world's population will stop growing before the end of the century. 
There is a 60 per cent probability that the world's population will not 
exceed 10 billion people before 2100, and around a 15 per cent probability 
that the world's population at the end of the century will be lower than it 
is today. For different regions, the date and size of the peak population 
will vary considerably.” 
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v412/n6846/full/412543a0.html;jsessionid=A87F90156EA6EE113CF9B448AAF9A402

In the Journal of Mammalogy, an article “Population Cycles In Small Mammals: 
The Α-Hypothesis” gives possible explanations for population cycles. 
“In the peak population phase, density is high and competition among 
individuals for resources, which may be of low quality or in short supply, 
increases. Individuals respond to crowding, resource shortages, and 
competition for resources by altering spacing, aggression, and social 
dominance. The changes described for the peak phase continue during the 
early decline phase, and the downtrend in population size should accelerate. 
Toward the end of this phase, quality of the social and ecologic environment 
begins to improve. Behavioral and physiologic responses to the stressful 
environment should thus decline. Consequently, population parameters, 
primarily age at maturity and juvenile survival, begin to improve.
When the population enters the low (or trough) phase, density is lowest in 
the cycle, resources are recovered, and most of the animals raised, born, or 
conceived during stressful environments have been replaced by those 
conceived or born in an improved environment. Because of these improvements, 
age at maturity declines, juvenile survival increases, and mean age of 
reproductive individuals decreases. Generation time should decrease, and 
reproductive life span and recruitment of adults should increase, leading to 
increase in population size. Changes in population parameters lag behind 
changes in quality of ecologic and social environments, and changes in 
population size lag behind changes in population parameters.”
http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1644%2F1545-1542(2001)082%3C0573%3APCISMT%3E2.0.CO%3B2










Resource Limits

Let us look at the arithmetic of growth so we can understand growth limits. 
Al Bartlett draws on the work of M. King Hubbert, who developed a concept 
for forecasting the nationwide or worldwide production of non-renewable 
fossil fuel resources: in short, that they can be expected to follow a 
bell-shaped curve.

As an example let us take a known quantity of a finite nonrenewable 
resource. Let us assume we have 20,000 tonnes of this resource, and that 
with a consumption of 100 tones per year, the resource will last for 200 
years at a steady consumption rate. Growth in consumption is thus is 0% per 
year. If we plot the consumption over time, we get a rectangle. The area 
under the curve gives us the total quantity of the finite resource.

Now, what if we introduce production growth? We assume that the Gaussian 
Error Curve is a reasonable approximate scenario for the curve of rate of 
production P(t) is growing at some fractional rate k > 0, P(t) = P(0) 
exp(kt), where P(0) will be assumed to be 100 tonnes/y, the time t is 
expressed in years, and ó is the standard deviation of the Gaussian curve in 
years.

Now, if we consume this resource at a faster rate, say with a constant 
growth in consumption of 1% per year, we will reach the end of the lifetime 
of this resource quicker. Similararly scenarios with a higher steady growth 
of 2%, 3%, 4% and 5% are depleted even faster. The graphs for consumption 
look like this. Note the four curves all have the same area of 20,000 
tonnes.


Even though it is consistent with accepted economic goals, it is unrealistic 
to imagine that an economy could maintain a constant unchanging P(t) until 
the last bit of a resource has been extracted.

To be more realistic we note that positive rates of growth of P(t) will 
cause the graph of P(t) vs. t to pass through the maximum after which P(t) 
will decline and approach zero. We can model this behavior mathematically 
with the following formula:

P=P(0)(-0.5(t/ó)2)

Let us look at the Gaussian scenarios for values of standard deviation ó of 
curves of 10y, 15y, 20y, 30y, 40y, 50y, 60y, 70y, and 80y. Curves all have 
same area of 20,000 tonnes. The graph for the production rates look like 
this:



The smaller the value of sigma, the higher and narrower is the Gaussian peak 
and the more rapid is the decline of the R/P Ratio.

Bartlett then draws a line that envelopes the whole family of curves: 
whatever the actual production curve is in real life, it should basically 
sit somewhere inside the envelope curve.


The envelope of the family of Gaussian curves divides the (P, t) plane into 
“allowed” and “forbidden” areas. The declining exponential curve divides the 
“allowed” area into an upper area that is “terminal” and a lower area that 
is “sustainable.”



What this demonstrates is that there is no way to grow infinitely into the 
future, in other words growth itself is unsustainable. So if growth can’t be 
sustainable, then what can? Well, in short, decay.



If a resource will last R(0)/P(0) years at present rates of production, and 
if the rate of production of the resource follows the curve that starts at 
P(0) and has a constant fractional decrease per unit time whose magnitude is 
greater than or equal to P(0)/R(0) per year, then the production can be 
truly said to be sustainable.

For example, if R(0)/P(0) = 200 years, then the sustainability coefficient 
k(s) = P(0)/R(0) = 1/200 = 0.005 per year (half a percent per year). If 
R(0)/P(0) = 100 years,
then a curve of P(t) that declines 1% per year is sufficient to allow the 
resource to last forever!

If a nation mines its fossil fuels at an ever-decreasing rate, it is 
possible to ensure that there will always be some resources available to 
future generations, except that every generation will have fewer resources 
left to them than the previous one (such is the nature of mining, oil 
production and resource depletion in general).

Here’s how it works. Imagine you have $1000 of savings, and you use $100 of 
this each week. At that rate of consumption, you have 10 weeks left - in 
other words, if you continue to use $100 a week, you will be broke in 10 
weeks. But if after the first week you can drop your weekly spendings to $90 
a week, then you will still essentially have 10 weeks left. And if after the 
second week (when you’re down to $810), you drop to $81 a week, you will 
still have 10 weeks left. If this trend continues, you can ensure that you 
always have 10 weeks left, and you can claim to be spending your savings at 
a ‘sustainable’ rate.

The mathematics dictate that economic, business, and government policies 
must be radically reformed to match the exponential decay scenario if humans 
are to continue to base our existence on the consumption of non-renewable 
fuels and claim that it is sustainable. Bartlett’s work highlights the 
deception of terms like ‘sustainable growth’.

As far as our energy goes, a more desirable approach would be to consume our 
regular “income” (i.e. from renewable sources) rather than eat into nature’s 
“savings” (i.e. non-renewable fuel deposits). Basing the very notion of 
“progress” on ever-increasing consumption of non-renewable fuels is a recipe 
for ruin.

http://www.energybulletin.net/29145.html





Matthew Simmons is the CEO of the world’s largest Energy Investment Bank, 
Simmons & Company International. He recently wrote that he had reread Limits 
to Growth and was amazed at its accuracy. Limits to Growth began in the 
1970s with the Club of Rome, a group who sought to raise awareness of 
environmental problems. The first conclusion was a view that if present 
growth trends continued unchanged, a limit to the growth that our planet has 
enjoyed would be reached sometime within the next 100 years. This would then 
result in a sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and 
industrial capacity. The second key conclusion was that these growth trends 
could be altered. Moreover, if proper alterations were made, the world could 
establish a condition of "ecological stability" that would be sustainable 
far into the future. The third conclusion was a view that the world could 
embark on this second path, but the sooner this effort started, the greater 
the chance would be of achieving this "ecologically stable" success.
Simmons suggests some natural break will undoubtedly stop the economic 
progress which devours a precious and dwindling energy supply. He also 
reminds us that gap between rich and poor cannot continue to grow without 
finally creating massive civic turmoil. History shows if the gap gets too 
great, the poor will finally "come over the walls of prosperity" and attempt 
to redistribute this wealth.
http://greatchange.org/ov-simmons,club_of_rome_revisted.html

Journalist Ross Gelbspan in his book "The Heat is On: the Climate Crisis, 
the Cover-up, the Prescription" he states that the impacts of 
overpopulation, peak food, climate change and other limits to growth 
threaten to combine into a severe test of the ability of civilization to 
continue. Gelbspan's website http://www.heatisonline.org is one of the best 
sources for understanding these issues.

World population is increasing exponentially. The gap between rich and poor 
is widening, in China now 60% of the wealth is controlled by 1% of the 
population. Our ecological footprint was overshot in the 1970s. Wackernagel 
developed the ecological footprint model, not perfect but the best seen yet. 
We are now at 120% of global capacity, and can’t go much higher. Some 
indicators of overshoot are the deterioration in renewable resources, 
surface and ground water, forests, fisheries, agricultural land, rising 
levels of pollution. Also growing demand for capital, resources and labour 
by military and industry to secure, process and defend resources, and rising 
levels of personal debt. Insurance company losses are also rising. Climate 
has already peaked, global food production will peak in the next 15 years, 
even with no energy crisis, water is nearing its peak, oil being just one 
peak of many.
http://www.energybulletin.net/19773.html

Jacques Cousteau, a French, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, scientist, 
photographer and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in 
water says “We must alert and organise the world's people to pressure world 
leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our 
environmental crises - exploding population growth and wasteful consumption 
of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie 
every environmental problem we face today."
http://www.betterworld.net/quotes/population-quotes.htm

Richard Heinberg makes the point that “unless we scale back the operation of 
human society so that it exists within the limits of the biosphere, we are 
destined to crash into those limits sooner or later.”
http://www.riverreview.org/RH%20interview.htm

One way to look at natures declining economy, and increasing human economy 
is to imagine the Earth starting off with Nature’s economy – that is – all 
the natural habitats, marine and terrestrial.  Then beginning perhaps 8 
thousand years ago humans started removing parts of nature’s Economy (the 
natural environment) to make room for their own economic sectors – the first 
being primary production.  Then a bit over 250 years ago another sector of 
the human economy started to expand dramatically and that was the secondary 
sector – manufacturing. This was the start of the industrial revolution and 
from, then on, and increasingly so, the human sectors of the economy started 
to grow.
So now we have a clear picture of Nature’s economy being increasingly 
rapidly removed and the human economy increasingly rapidly expanding.





















The overwhelmingly negative impact of the growing human economy on the 
quality or health of Nature’s economy is that the ratio of indirect costs of 
producing products in the human economy (externalities) versus the direct 
costs is a hyper-exponential function.
The ratio goes from being less than one (direct costs are perceived by 
people to exceed the indirect costs) to all of a sudden switching massively 
so that, seemingly, in the blink of an eye the indirect or external costs 
are the overwhelmingly important cost.
It is now clear that we very recently reached this inflection point and in 
fact have probably just gone past it – which is why we are now deluged with 
more and more information suggesting that we are in deep trouble over the 
environment.
http://beyondzeroemissions.org/files/GSI_Science_ghg_reduction_targets.ppt


In 1992 The U. S. National Academy of Science and the Royal Society of 
London have presented a joint statement which warns: "There is an urgent 
need to address economic activity, population growth, and environmental 
protection as interrelated issues, and as crucial components affecting the 
sustainability of human society." The statement notes that the contribution 
of science to dealing with these problems is only "mitigating”. "If current 
predictions of population growth prove accurate and patterns of human 
activity remain unchanged, science and technology may not be able to prevent 
either irreversible degradation of the environment or continued poverty for 
much of the world."
It urges the adoption of "global policies" aimed at "more rapid economic 
development throughout the world, more environmentally benign patterns of 
human activity, and a more rapid stabilization of world population."
http://www.jstor.org/view/00987921/di962024/96p0052i/0
http://www.cep.unt.edu/ISEE/ns3-3-92.htm
http://www.spinninglobe.net/cousteau.htm

"More fundamentally, our present economic system is based on the illusion of 
endless “growth”. Banks lend (and thus effectively create) money on the 
understanding that it will be paid back with interest. This can only 
continue as long as the economy continues to “grow”. Yet “growth” is 
intimately linked to growth in the use of fossil fuels. It always has been, 
and recent attempts to demonstrate “decoupling” of the two are far from 
convincing. Nor are we persuaded by the view that a move to renewables will 
create new economic opportunities – it will, but not nearly enough to 
compensate for the increasing redundancy and irrelevance of large parts of 
the economy in a post-oil age."
http://www.eafl.org.uk/default.asp?topic=OilEconomy

James Howard Kunstler, American author and social critic writes in his book 
The Long Emergency that as we face the end of the cheap-fossil-fuel era “the 
circumstances will require us to downscale and re-scale virtually everything 
we do and how we do it, from the kind of communities we physically inhabit 
to the way we grow our food to the way we work and trade the products of our 
work. Our lives will become profoundly and intensely local. Daily life will 
be far less about mobility and much more about staying where you are. 
Anything organized on the large scale, whether it is government or a 
corporate business enterprise such as Wal-Mart, will wither as the cheap 
energy props that support bigness fall away. The turbulence of the Long 
Emergency will produce a lot of economic losers, and many of these will be 
members of an angry and aggrieved former middle class.” Kunstler also writes 
that wishful notions about rescuing our way of life with "renewables" are 
also unrealistic due to the enormous problem of scale and the fact that the 
components for renewable systems require substantial amounts of energy 
themselves.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/7203633/the_long_emergency/


Data from the EIA shows energy consumption in the United States from 
1635-2000 by source.



Annual consumption of petroleum and natural gas exceeded that of coal in 
1947 and then quadrupled in a single generation. Neither before nor since 
has any source of energy become so dominant so quickly.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/eh/frame.html

Stern tested for causality between GDP and energy use in a multivariate 
setting using a model of GDP, energy use, capital and labour inputs. He 
measured energy by both its thermal inputs and by the Divisia aggregation 
method discussed above. The model took account of changes in energy use 
being countered by substitution with labour and/or capital. Weighting for 
changes in energy composition showed that a large part of the economic 
growth effects of energy were due to the substitution of higher quality 
energy sources such as electricity for lower quality energy sources such as 
coal.

The following GDP/Energy Ratio shows the diminishing returns to high quality 
energies. Historical increases in the real GDP/E ratio are associated with 
shifts in the type of energies used and the types of goods and services 
consumed and produced.




The law of diminishing returns implies that the first uses of high quality 
energies are directed at tasks best able to make use of the physical, 
technical, and economic aspects of an energy type. See the data at the end 
of paragraph 2.2. As the use of a high quality energy source expands, it is 
progressively used for tasks less able to make use of the attributes that 
confer high quality. This implies that the amount of economic activity 
generated per heat unit diminishes as the use of high quality energy 
expands.

Brian Fleay concludes that there are no alternative transport fuels in sight 
that can replace the performance of petroleum products as we have used them 
for the past 60 years, nor are these likely to emerge. This era will be seen 
by future generations as unique, a period created and so far sustained by 
oil primarily from the giant oil fields. Up-to-date information on EPR’s is 
unlikely to alter the relative relationships of the fuels shown in Figure 8. 
We have been picking the eyes out of a large hydrocarbon resource base.
http://www.stcwa.org.au/papers/data/Energy_Quality.pdf


William Stanton (2003), in his book "The Rapid Growth of Human Populations 
1750-2000. Histories, Consequences, Issues Nation by nation." states that 
'All human history is of populations expanding when resources are available 
and shrinking when they are not'. Stanton speculates that 'political 
correctness', 'civilized standards', current ideas about 'human rights', and 
the concept of 'the sanctity of human life' will disintegrate in the face of 
resource conflicts and massive movements of refugees from lands whose 
carrying capacity has been reduced by combinations of soil 
depletion/erosion, desertification, sea level rise and the lack of continued 
access to non renewable energy stores.

Jared Diamond, Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los 
Angeles, attempts to analyse why some past and present day societies have 
collapsed.
In his prologue, Diamond indicates his considered view of the train of 
events which often underlie collapse, when of past collapses he writes: 
“Population growth forced people to adopt intensified means of agricultural 
production” “and to expand agriculture from the prime lands” “onto more 
marginal land,” “Unsustainable practices led to environmental damage 
”resulting in agriculturally marginal lands having to be abandoned again”.
He lists consequences for societies as including “food shortages, 
starvation, wars among too many people fighting for too few resources” and 
the overthrowing of government elites “by disillusioned masse”. “Eventually, 
population decreased through starvation, war, or disease, and society lost 
some of the political, economic, and cultural complexity that it had 
developed at its peak”

http://www.population-growth-migration.info/reviews.html#Bartlett





How Do We Know We Have Reached Overshoot?

Falling resource stocks and rising pollution levels are the first clues. 
Here are some other symptoms:
*  Capital, resources, and labor diverted to activities compensating for the 
loss of services that were formerly provided without cost by nature (for 
example, sewage treatment, air purification, water purification, flood 
control, pest control, restoration of soil nutrients, pollination, or the 
preservation of species).
*  Capital, resources, and labor diverted from final goods production to 
exploitation of scarcer, more distant, deeper, or more dilute resources.
*  Technologies invented to make use of lower-quality, smaller, more 
dispersed, less valuable resources, because the higher-value ones are gone.
*  Failing natural pollution cleanup mechanisms; rising levels of pollution.
*  Capital depreciation exceeding investment, and maintenance deferred, so 
there is deterioration in capital stocks, especially long-lived 
infrastructure.
*  Growing demands for capital, resources, and labor used by the 176 World3: 
The Dynamics of Growth in a Finite World military or industry to gain access 
to, secure, and defend resources that are increasingly concentrated in 
fewer, more remote, or increasingly hostile regions.
*  Investment in human resources (education, health care, shelter) postponed 
in order to meet immediate consumption, investment, or security needs, or to 
pay debts.
*  Debts a rising percentage of annual real output.
*  Eroding goals for health and environment.
*  Increasing conflicts, especially conflicts over sources or sinks.
*  Shifting consumption patterns as the population can no longer pay the 
price of what it really wants and, instead, purchases what it can afford.
*  Declining respect for the instruments of collective government as they 
are used increasingly by the elites to preserve or increase their share of a 
declining resource base.
*  Growing chaos in natural systems, with "natural" disasters more frequent 
and more severe because of less resilience in the environmental system.
http://www.energybulletin.net/693.html

What Does Human History Tell Us About Civilisation and Equilibrium?

Duncan first presented the Olduvai theory more than 11 years ago at a 
meeting of the American Society of Engineering Educators in Binghamton, New 
York, as follows:
The broad sweep of human history can be divided into three phases.
The first, or pre-industrial phase was a very long period of equilibrium 
when simple
tools and weak machines limited economic growth.
The second, or industrial phase was a very short period of 
non-equilibrium that
ignited with explosive force when powerful new machines temporarily lifted 
all
limits to growth.
The third, or de-industrial phase lies immediately ahead during 
which time the
industrial economies will decline toward a new period of equilibrium, 
limited by the
exhaustion of nonrenewable resources and continuing deterioration of the 
natural
environment. (Duncan, 1989)


Can The (R/P) Ratio Predict The Lifetime of Fuels?
The reserve/production (R/P) ratio is often used as a shorthand way of 
indicating how long current reserves will last at current production rates. 
However this ratio fails to take growth into account.

For example, at present the U.S. has about 270,000 million short tons (MMst) 
of coal, and a production rate of about 1,000MMst per year. Dividing, we 
obtain an R/P ratio of about 270. This is where the sound bite "we have more 
than 200 years of coal left" comes from.

If we want to take production growth into account, the following table can 
help determine when the reserve will run out. This table gives answers to 
questions such as, "If a non-renewable resource would last, say 50 years at 
present rates of consumption, how long would it last if consumption were to 
grow say 4 % per year?"

0 %	10	30	100	300	1000 	3000	10,000
1 %	9.5 	26	69	139 	240 	343	462
2 %	9.1 	24	55	97  	152	206 	265
3 %	8.7	21	46	77   	115 	150	190
4 %	8.4	20	40	64   	93	120	150
5 %	8.1  	18	36	56   	79	100	124
6 %	7.8	17 	32	49   	69	87	107
7 %	7.6	16	30	44  	61	77	94
8 %	7.3	15	28	40   	55	69	84
9 %	7.1 	15	26	37  	50	62	76
10 %	6.9	14	24	34   	46	57	69
	Example 1.  If a resource would last 300 years at present rates of 
consumption, then it would last 49 years if the rate of consumption grew 6 % 
per year. Example 2.  If a resource would last 18 years at 5 % annual growth 
in the rate of consumption, then it would last 30 years at present rates of 
consumption. (0 % growth). Example 3.  If a resource would last 55 years at 
8 % annual growth in the rate of consumption, then it would last 115 years 
at 3 % annual growth rate.

This table involves using the formula for the EET where:
R = known size of the resourcer0 = current rate of consumptiont = time in 
years	e  = base of natural logarithmsk = fractional growth per year

EET  =  Te  =  ( 1 / k )  ln ( k R / r0   + 1 )

This equation is valid for all positive values of  k  and for those negative 
values of  k  for which the argument of the logarithm is positive.

http://www.mnforsustain.org/bartlett_forgotten_fundamentals_of_the_energy_crisis_partI.htm
http://www.mnforsustain.org/bartlett_forgotten_fundamentals_of_the_energy_crisis_partII.htm



What is Peak Oil?

Every oil field goes through a production cycle of increase-peak-decline. 
The peaking of oil production is caused by a combination of geological 
limitations in oil wells (fluid mechanics) and economic drivers 
(maximization of profits). When oil is first pumped, it’s under pressure and 
comes out easily – production rises. But over time, oil pressure drops. 
Water is pumped in to maintain pressure. At the half way point, it reaches 
peak oil, then decline sets in. When oil fields in a region are aggregated 
you can tell if the area has peaked or is in decline by looking at past 
statistics.

When we mine our minerals and fossil fuels from the Earth's crust. The 
deeper we dig, the greater the minimum energy requirements. Of course, the 
most concentrated and most accessible fuels and minerals are mined first; 
thereafter, more and more energy is required to mine and refine poorer and 
poorer quality resources. New technologies can, on a short-term basis, 
decrease energy costs, but neither technology nor “prices” can repeal the 
laws of thermodynamics.
http://dieoff.org/page175.htm

Although half of the oil remains at the peak in production, the other half 
of the oil is
harder to extract, it becomes more and more filled with water and requires 
more and more
energy to pump it out. Enormous effort has gone into trying to discover more 
oil and to extract more from the reserves that remain. Eventually as wells 
are abandoned the region becomes less and less important and other regions 
are used. National oil supplies can be examined to see how they appear in 
this cycle of oil depletion.

Each litre of petrol that we burn in our cars is the distilled residue of 
some 23 tonnes of ancient organisms, and the oil products consumed by modern 
civilisation in a single day cost the entire planet some 13 months of 
continuous photosynthesis to produce and store. Thanks to the Earth’s 
generous reserve of fossil hydrogen, we have had a free ride into the 
twenty-first century. But our good fortune is about to run out.

Peak Oil, or Hubbert’s Peak (named after oil geologist Marion King Hubbert), 
is now upon us. In 1956 Hubbert predicted that American oil production would 
peak in the early 1970s.


http://www.bu.edu/cees/people/faculty/kaufmann/index.html


He was criticised by the oil industry but his forecast proved accurate. US 
production has declined ever since 1971. Hubbert also predicted that global 
oil production would peak around the year 2000. He appears to have erred 
slightly in this case, yet if it were not for the huge production losses 
caused by the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, Hubbert’s global prediction would 
also have been accurate.

Hubbert based his predictions primarily on the declining rate of oil 
discovery. Despite massive exploration and improved technology the last 
major oil discoveries were made in the 1970’s. All the world’s major 
oilfields are between 50 and 70 years old and oil is now being consumed 
about four times faster than it can be found. Global oil discovery peaked in 
the 1960s.


http://hubbert.mines.edu/news/Ivanhoe_96-1.pdf

Since the mid-1980s, oil companies have been finding less oil than we have 
been consuming.

The Hubbert curve H is given below:



http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/Sivertsson_Thesis.pdf




The global oil production curve is the superimposition of many country 
production curves which are at various stages of growing, peaking and 
declining production

Matt Muschalik, Member of ASPO, has used world crude production data from 
the Energy Information Administration (EIA) showing that various countries 
are at various production stages, with terminal decline, recent peak, flat 
production, or growing production. Currently, world crude production is a 
flat peak that is still benign with an undulating plateau.


http://www.eia.doe.gov/ipm/supply.html



We can also look at oil production in terms of whether it came from onshore 
or offshore, rather than by country. We can see that world onshore crude 
already peaked in the late 70ies. Currently, 120% of oil supply growth comes 
from offshore crude.




Peak oil theories are about calculating the timing of the global peak and 
the decline rates thereafter. ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil 
and Gas) predicts a peak around 2010. www.peakoil.net

Most independent energy analysts agree that ‘Peak Oil’ is now upon us, and 
some believe that the peak has already passed.
http://www.mnforsustain.org/energy%20punctuation%20marks%20morrison.htm
http://www.mnforsustain.org/oil_%26_gas_factsheet_thompson_b.htm
http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php

Matt Simmons, explains that peak oil “in the starkest possible terms, means 
that we are no longer going to be able to grow. It’s like with a human being 
who passes a certain age in life. Getting older does not mean the same thing 
as death. It means progressively diminishing capacity, a rapid decline, 
followed by a long tail.” He also alluded to the idea that peak oil may lead 
to a diminishing ability to care for the environment because “there is no 
better friend of the environment that economic prosperity.”
http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/blackout.htm

Retired oil geologist Colin Campbell, founder of Association for the Study 
of Peak Oil and Gas, with 40 years of experience in the industry estimates 
oil production decline is as follows:
2010:  90 mb/d
2015:  85 mb/d
2020:  75 mb/d
http://www.peakoil.ie/newsletter/en/htm/Newsletter73.htm
So from 2010 to 2020: (75-90)/90 = -17%

Retired senior consultant to the National Iranian Oil Company, Dr Ali Samsam 
Bakhtiari forecasts even steeper decline rates. In his presentation to the 
Senate hearing “Australia's future oil supply and alternative transport 
fuels” in July 2006 he stated that we may face 32% decline rates by 2020 
according to his WOCAP model.
http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/S9515.pdf



Data from the BP Statistical Review shows decline rates in 17 oil producing 
countries



The graph shows decline rates for 17 countries in terminal decline (peak in 
1999). Despite modern technology, decline could not be stopped. Neither will 
oil prices change oil geology. Production peaked in the US (1970), in UK 
(1999), Australia (2000) and Norway (2001).

If this is a model for the world we can expect decline rates between 1 - 2 % 
for the first 3 years after peak oil, then increasing to 5 % in the 3 years 
thereafter.

	For business and political reasons, there have been very misleading reports 
of sizes of stocks of oil. Seven major oil-extracting countries have for 
years reported unchanged reserves, as well as had spurious reserve revisions 
beginning in 1980sC.J.Campbell, explains: · Kuwait added 50% in 1985 to 
increase its OPEC quota, which was based partly on reserves. No 
corresponding new discoveries had been made. Nothing particular changed in 
the reservoir. · Venezuela doubled its reserves in 1987 by the inclusion of 
large deposits of heavy oil that had been known for years. · It forced the 
other OPEC countries to retaliate with huge increases · Note too how the 
numbers have changed little since despite production.. · Some of the 
increase was justified but it has to be backdated to the discovery of the 
fields concerned that had been found up to 50 years before. 
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/de/lecture.html
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/campbell/images/com12.gif

No theory (e.g. Hubbert) can accurately predict the year in which global 
production will peak because both reserve and production data are 
unreliable, if not manipulated for strategic reasons. IEA and EIA statistics 
can differ by 1 mb/d.

However, with time peak oil facts can be proven with statistics 
retrospectively. To complicate matters, there can be multiple peaks (bumpy 
production plateau in transition phase) due to complex feed back loops 
between capacities, production, demand and prices. There are also logistical 
limitations (drilling rigs, offshore platforms, refineries, pipelines, 
tankers), climate change impacts and geo-political problems. Due to these 
uncertainties it may take several years after the global peak to detect it 
with certainty. Therefore preparation for peak oil before the peak is 
necessary to allow for a smoother transition to other alternatives. If peak 
oil occurs later than predicted, we can expect steeper declines as depletion 
in mature, giant fields (app. 1/3 of the total) in the next years will 
overwhelm the whole production system.



How Long Does It Take To Prepare For Peak Oil?

Released in Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and 
titled "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk 
Management," the report examines the likely consequences of the impending 
global peak. It was authored principally by Robert L. Hirsch
http://www.counterpunch.org/heinberg07302005.html

Robert Hirsch concluded that it will take the USA 20 years to prepare 
properly for peak oil with a crash program. The report's Executive Summary 
begins with the following paragraph:
“The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an 
unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel 
prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely 
mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. 
Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to 
have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in 
advance of peaking.”
Indeed, the U.S. and other industrialized countries rely on petroleum as a 
key component in transportation, agricultural, chemical and plastics 
industries. As pointed out in the Hirsch Report, a decline in production 
will reshape the way we live and trigger economic crisis that may resemble 
the economic crisis following the 1973-1974 embargo (p. 27). Hirsch 
estimates that the economic loss to the U.S. could be measured on a trillion 
dollar scale. And unlike other energy transitions -- such as the move from 
wood to coal, or from coal to oil -- Hirsch points out that the peaking of 
oil “will be abrupt and revolutionary.”
http://www.daverollo.com/peakoilres0607


What Is The Creaming Curve?

If the cumulative wildcats are plotted against the cumulative discovery, a 
creaming
curve is obtained. It can be fitted with a hyperbola, the creaming curve 
hyperbola.
The hyperbola models the amount of oil discovered per drilled wildcat. The 
discovery
per drilled wildcat can be approximated by this hyperbola under the 
assumption that
the largest fields are found first. Extended to e.g. twice as many wildcats 
as the
present number, the hyperbola can give a good estimate of the amount of oil 
that will
ultimately be produced by a country or region.


http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/Sivertsson_Thesis.pdf

This is the so-called creaming curve.



·	It plots discovery against exploration wildcats. They are the wells that 
either do - or do not - find a new field.
·	The largest fields are usually found first for obvious reasons, being too 
large to miss.
·	The curve flattens until new discoveries are too small to be viable. It 
gives a good idea of how much is left to find.
·	We have produced almost half what is there, and we have found about 90%
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/de/lecture.html


Is It Possible to Replace Declining Oil Production With Alterative Fuels?

No alternative fuel can fill such gaps. Biofuels will make a couple of 
percent at best. See the documentation prepared by the biofuels taskforce:
http://www.dpmc.gov.au/biofuels/index.cfm

All Australian sugarcane distilled into ethanol will just yield 5 litres per 
week per car.

A conversion to electric or hydrogen cars at a massive scale is completely 
unrealistic. In NSW we are already running out of cooling water for our 
dirty coal fired power plants and power shortages of -14% can be expected 
end of next year.



This comes from a report "Potential Drought Impact on Electricity Supplies 
in the NEM" which the MCE commissioned NEMMCO to provide in 2007.
http://www.nemmco.com.au/nemgeneral/900-0001.htm (graph 10)

Our grid would collapse if any attempt were made to convert to electric cars 
in sizeable numbers even if they were available.

In order to get a feeling what it will mean to replace oil please visit this 
site:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/jan07/4820/ncmo01



The world would need to build 52 nuclear power plants each year for 50 years 
to replace the world's annual crude production of 26 Gb ( = 1 cubic mile of 
oil).

Muschalik says “we'll be lucky if we can manage to set aside oil to run our 
essential services (including for agriculture) and provide enough power to 
run electric trains and replace our dirty coal fired power plants. It should 
be crystal clear that peak oil -  in combination with the limitations of 
using fossil fuels due to global warming - is the beginning of the end of 
using cars, trucks and planes the way we know it.”

"One key threat in relation to peak oil is an increase in the use of coal, 
tar sands, methane hydrates etc. The world does have considerable reserves 
of coal – at current rates of use the world has around 200 years’ reserves, 
the UK about 50 . But burning more coal will only add to greenhouse gases. 
Coal is more “carbon-intensive” than oil (ie releases about 13% more per 
unit of energy than oil), but the more important point is that coal’s 
current contribution of about 17% of UK energy is about the level to which 
we need to reduce greenhouse emissions. That is, if we stopped burning oil 
and gas but kept coal use at the present level, that would be about the 
level which the world could sustain. Worldwide coal accounts for about 25% 
of energy needs, which again is about right or possibly too high. (Also, of 
course, if we sought to use coal for all of our energy needs, the UK reserve 
would be exhausted in 10 years – and we shouldn’t expect anyone else to sell 
us theirs!).
Oil recovered from tar sands is again more carbon-intensive, particularly 
because of the huge amounts of energy (currently natural gas) needed to 
extract it. Exploiting methane hydrates, proposed by some as a 
“magic-bullet” cure to the world’s energy shortage, could be catastrophic in 
terms of global warming...."
http://www.eafl.org.uk/default.asp?topic=OilEnergy




Can Taxes Help Improve Signals to Businesses to Save Energy?

Kaufman and Cleveland argue that the market mechanisms will not receive 
adequate signals (resource price increases) in time to bring on alternative 
options to replace oil; they argue that depletion will not occur in an 
orderly and smooth pattern but will manifest itself via sharp rises in oil 
prices.
http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/Committee/rrat_ctte/Oil_Supply/Submissions/sub96.pdf



Peter Newman, Director of the Institute for Sustainability and Technology at 
Murdoch University, Perth and Chair of the Western Australian Sustainability 
Roundtable
writes, “The car is the technology which involves the biggest number of 
employees, the highest advertising budget, the largest annual accidental 
death rate and the biggest contribution to global warming. How do you begin 
to approach managing something so popular and yet so destructive? There are 
three ways: technology (civilizing the car), economics (pricing it) and 
planning (reducing the need to travel and providing other options).”
http://www.abc.net.au/science/explore/climatechange/experts/peternewman/
http://www.newint.org/issue313/exit.htm

Transport price signals - Monitoring changes in European transport prices 
and charging policy in the framework of TERM
http://reports.eea.europa.eu/technical_report_2004_3/en/Technical_report_3-2004_web.pdf


Does The Suburban Way of Life Have A Future?

The documentary film "The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of 
the American Dream" produced by the Post-Carbon Institute (see 
www.postcarbon.org), explores why we need to adapt cities, transport choices 
and lifestyles to living with less and more expensive oil. 'End of Suburbia' 
is a thought-provoking documentary looking at how oil underpins suburban 
development and vulnerability to the approaching end of the era of cheap 
oil.
http://www.envict.org.au/inform.php?menu=8&submenu=660&item=896

Thomas Wheeler, in his review of the documentary writes "The End of 
Suburbia" marshals an impressive array of evidence that the growing energy 
demands of the "American dream" in suburbia will eclipse our planet's 
ability to provide it. The suburban way of life will soon become 
economically and ecologically impossible to maintain. We will see the 
inevitable collapse of the suburban lifestyle and the end of the American 
Dream. And it will happen within our lifetimes. How bad will it get? Put it 
this way. We are looking at the mother of all downsizings. For those who are 
familiar with the issues of peak oil and resource depletion, the usual 
suspects are here. They include Richard Heinberg, Michael Klare, Matthew 
Simmons, Michael C. Ruppert, Julian Darley, Dr. Colin Campbell, and Kenneth 
Deffeyes, among others. All of these individuals provide valuable 
information and insights concerning the coming energy crisis and the impact 
it will have on the lives of people on the North American continent.


But the standout star of the film is author and critic of contemporary 
culture, James Howard Kunstler. The sometimes humorous and always 
entertaining presence of Kunstler is prominent throughout the 
documentary--and for good reason. He grabs your attention. He explains in 
refreshingly blunt, easy-to-comprehend language that suburbia is screwed. 
His undiluted, tell-it-like-it-is style is a potent mix of George Carlin 
humor and wit wrapped around an incisive Chomsky-like comprehension and 
understanding. With Kunstler you get an intellectually penetrating person 
armed with a functioning bullshit detector wrapped up in an intensely candid 
New York attitude. Kunstler has a blog on the web he calls "The Clusterfuck 
Nation Chronicles" (kunstler.com). Need I say more?

Kunstler calls the project of suburbia "the greatest misallocation of 
resources in the history of the world" and says "America has squandered its 
wealth in a living arrangement that has no future." You immediately get the 
idea he's not exactly a fan of suburbia. How and why did this happen?
"The End of Suburbia" outlines the seemingly rational and logical impulse 
behind the project of suburbia, tracing the beginnings to the late 19th 
century when it was originally envisioned as an antidote to city life and an 
escape from the hideous aspects of industrialism. Modern suburbia traces its 
beginnings to just after World War II when the suburban project took off 
with a massive housing boom and the increasing dominance of the automotive 
industry. This car-centered suburban project ended up being the template for 
the massive development of the second half of the 20th century. That project 
was wrapped up, packaged, and sold to the American public as "The American 
Dream."
"The End of Suburbia" points out that the rise of the suburbs was made 
possible by abundant and cheap oil. It allowed for the creation of a system 
of habitation where millions of people can live many miles away from where 
they work and where they shop for food and necessities. And there is no 
other form of living that requires more energy in order to function than 
suburbia. But the voracious and expanding energy needs of our industrial 
society, our insane consumer culture, and the affluent suburban lifestyles 
are brushing up against the disturbing reality of finite energy resources.

The biggest impact will be felt by those who currently live in the sprawling 
suburbs of North America. The end of cheap oil will signal the end of their 
way of life. Frankly, many of the things we take for granted will come to an 
end. "The End of Suburbia" makes clear that the effects of energy depletion 
go way beyond paying more at the pump. It will literally get down to the 
question of how you will feed yourself and your family.
Although the documentary mostly avoids the gloom and doom of some peak oil 
theorists, it does occasionally touch on some of the darker aspects of 
fossil fuel depletion, notably how it will impact food production. The film 
briefly looks at the energy-intensive process needed to bring food to 
supermarkets. Our modern industrial agriculture relies heavily on petroleum 
for pesticides and natural gas for fertilizer, not to mention the energy 
used in planting, growing, harvesting, irrigating, packaging, processing and 
transporting the food. It stands to reason that if suburbia is going to 
collapse, it also means this centralized model of agriculture will collapse 
too.

"The End of Suburbia" shows how the suburban way of life has become 
normalized and reveals the enormous effort currently put forth to maintain 
it. On a foreign policy level, it means continued aggressive attempts to 
secure access to the remaining reserves of oil on the planet in order to 
prop up and maintain the increasingly dysfunctional and obscene suburban 
lifestyle. But "The End of Suburbia" makes it crystal clear that suburban 
living has very poor prospects for the future. Any attempt to maintain it 
will be futile. There will eventually be a great scramble to get out of the 
suburbs as the global oil crisis deepens and the property values of suburban 
homes plummet. Kunstler asserts that the suburbs will become "the slums of 
the future."

What about alternative sources of energy? "The End of Suburbia" points out 
that no combination of alternative fuels can run and maintain our current 
system as it is now.
What about hydrogen, you ask? The film does a great job of shooting down the 
hysterical applause for hydrogen. The idea of a hydrogen economy is mostly 
fantasy. Hydrogen is not a form of energy. It is a form of energy storage. 
It takes more energy to make hydrogen than you actually get from hydrogen. 
Same with ethanol. It is a net energy loser. It takes more gasoline to 
create and fertilize the corn and convert it to alcohol than you get from 
burning it. When you look at all the conceivable alternatives the conclusion 
is there is no combination of any alternatives that will allow us to 
continue consuming the way we do.

What is in our future? The consensus is the suburbs will surely not survive 
the end of cheap oil and natural gas. In other words, the massive 
downscaling of America--voluntary or involuntary--will be the trend of the 
future. We are in for some profound changes in the 21st century. The 
imminent collapse of industrial civilization means we'll have to organize 
human communities in a much different fashion from the completely 
unsustainable, highly-centralized, earth-destroying, globalized system we 
have now. There will need to be a move to much smaller, human-scale, 
localized and decentralized systems that can sustain themselves within their 
own landbase. Industrial civilization and suburban living relies on cheap 
sources of energy to continue to grow and expand. That era is coming to an 
end. One of the most important tasks right now is to prepare for a very 
different way of life.

While "The End of Suburbia" doesn't provide any easy answers, it does 
provide a much-needed look at the reality of the situation many in North 
America will be facing in the coming years. For that reason, "The End of 
Suburbia" is one of the most important must-see documentaries of the year.

http://baltimorechronicle.com/080304ThomasWheeler.shtml

Can New Technology Make Civilisation Sustainable?

Hailed as the philosopher poet of the ecological movement, best-selling 
author Derrick Jensen returns with a passionate forecast of how industrial 
civilization, and the persistent and widespread violence it requires, is 
unsustainable. Jensen's intricate weaving together of history, philosophy, 
environmentalism, economics, literature and psychology has produced a 
powerful argument that demands attention in the tradition of such important 
books as Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization and Brigid Brophy's Black 
Ship to Hell.
In Volume I: The Problem of Civilization, Jensen lays out a series of 
provocative premises, including “Civilization is not and can never be 
sustainable” and “Love does not imply pacifism.” He vividly imagines an end 
to technologized, industrialized civilization and a return to agragrian 
communal life.
If Volume I lays insightful framework for envisioning a sustainable way of 
life, Volume II: Resistance catapults this discussion into a passionate call 
for action. Using his premises as guidelines for exploring real-world 
problems, Jensen guides us toward concrete solutions by focusing on our most 
primal human desire: to live on a healthy earth overflowing with uncut 
forests, clean rivers, and thriving oceans that are not under the constant 
threat of being destroyed.
http://www.endgamethebook.org/

Endgame – Volume II begins with 20 premises. Here are a few:

Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is 
especially true for industrial civilization.

Premise Two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or 
sell the resources on which their communities are based until their 
communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their 
landbases to be damaged so that other resources – gold, oil, and so on – can 
be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they 
can to destroy traditional communities.

Premise Three: Our way of living – industrial civilization – is based on, 
required, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread 
violence.

Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo 
any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of 
living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilisation will continue to 
immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it 
(civilisation, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this 
degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.

Premise Seven: The longer we wait for civilisation to crash – or the longer 
we wait before we ourselves bring it down – the messier the crash will be, 
and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during 
it, and for those who come after it.

Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the 
needs of the economic system. Another way to put Premise Eight: Any economic 
or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it 
is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, 
and intelligence (as well as justice) require the dismantling of any such 
economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging 
out landbase.

Premise Ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The 
culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.



Other great reviews of his books and comments about the author can be found 
on Amazon.

One reviewer wrote, “Jensen believes "this culture will not undergo any sort 
of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living." 
Civilization, he says in volume II, is killing the planet, so "civilization 
needs to be brought down now." Jensen dwells through several chapters on the 
need to destroy tens of thousands of river dams, whether with 
pickaxe-wielding citizen armies or through the use of well-placed explosive 
charges; other chapters consider how simple it would be to paralyze the 
American capitalist system if small activist cells were to disrupt railway, 
highway, pipeline and other elements of commercial infrastructure.”
http://www.amazon.com/Endgame-Problem-Civilization-Derrick-Jensen/dp/158322730X


In an article “Techno-Fix And Sustainability: Grappling With illusions”, 
Milo Clark, a writer and researcher focused on strategic issues, argues on 
Swans that there are two major illusions clouding our judgement. “One says 
we'll figure out technologies to fix things -- Techno-fix. The other says 
we'll figure out how to work with it or to restore balances -- 
Sustainability. Both assume we can fix what we have already done, are doing 
or will do.”

“All the techno-fix strategies are substitution strategies. All 
sustainability strategies are also substitution strategies. Substituting 
reprocessed used cooking oils for diesel fuel substitutes only one tiny 
component of the overall system which produces and runs the vehicle. 
Substituting hydrogen or hybrid technologies similarly deals only with small 
components of a very complex, very global extractive and earth exploitive 
system.

Whether hybrid, hydrogen or hallucination drives our techno-fix 
transportation, the vehicles involved continue to use and to expand use of 
metals and other irreplaceable or non-biodegradable materials. Lighter 
bodies and engine blocks use aluminium which is produced by horrendous 
amounts of electricity. More sophisticated technologies require more exotic 
metals, whether platinum or palladium used in catalytic converters, or 
others needed for hybrid or hydrogen systems. Anything dug out of earth 
anywhere reduces the amount of that resource available later.

A simple formula for minimally exploitive systems reads: Use local resources 
processed by local people primarily for local uses in ways which generate 
surpluses for local reinvestment. With this litmus test, any system can be 
tested. Every one will flunk, even rigorous Permaculture.”
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/mgc125.html

Net Energy Analysis with EROI

One technique for evaluating the costs of energy systems is net energy 
analysis, which compares the quantity of energy delivered to society by an 
energy system to the energy used directly and indirectly in the delivery 
process, a quantity called the energy return on investment (EROI).

Biophysical and ecological economists argue that net energy analysis has 
several advantages over standard economic analysis. First, net energy 
analysis assesses the change in the physical scarcity of energy resources, 
and therefore is immune to the effects of market imperfections that distort 
monetary data. Second, because goods and services are produced from the 
conversion of energy into useful work, net energy is a measure of the 
potential to do useful work in economic systems. Third, EROI can be used to 
rank alternative energy supply technologies according to their potential 
abilities to do useful work in the economy.

The overall decline in the EROI for petroleum extraction in the U.S. 
suggests that
depletion has raised the energy costs of extraction. This is generally 
consistent with the overall pattern of oil extraction, i.e., both extraction 
and the EROI for extraction show a decline since the early 1970s. There is 
no single measure of the quality of the oil and gas resource, but a number 
of such indicators describe its physical deterioration. These include a 
decline in field size, depletion of natural drive mechanisms, and more 
enhanced oil recovery that is extremely energy intensive. To the extent that 
the EROI does reflect the scarcity of petroleum in some meaningful way, then 
energy quality is an important consideration. The ultimate limit to an 
energy resource’s usefulness to society is the energy break-even point, 
i.e., where the energy delivered to society is equaled by the energy used in 
the delivery process. But not all “units” of energy are equally useful to 
society, particularly in regards to their ability to perform specific tasks 
in the production of goods and services. A more appropriate indicator is a 
quality-corrected EROI that reflects the net availability of energy to 
actually produce goods and services that reflects choices people make about 
how to use energy. These choices are based on perceived differences in what 
Zirnkau et al. call the form-value of different energy types. The 
quality-corrected EROI is consistently lower than the uncorrected version. 
This suggests that in a more meaningful economic sense, petroleum I more 
scare than we might otherwise think. It also suggests that the transition to 
alternative energy sources, which is driven in part by the scarcity of 
conventional fuels, may be triggered sooner than is suggested by 
conventional net energy analyses.

http://www.bu.edu/cees/people/faculty/cutler/articles/Net_%20Energy_US_Oil_gas.pdf
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Net_energy_analysis


Will We Have To Rethink Our Current Economic System In a Low-Energy World?

In an article called “Can Peak Oil Save Us?” on a website “Eat the State - A 
Forum For Anti-Authoritarian Political Opinion, Research And Humor”, Colin 
Wright says “The biggest challenge may be convincing people that our current 
economic system, after a century of state and corporate propaganda, is not 
the only option. In fact, I would argue that the current system is one which 
supported a growing population and a growing GDP during the up phase of the 
energy curve. (And that is why the working classes went along with it, 
bought off with the trickle-downs.) In a world of diminishing energy, we 
will need to rethink our economy--and that implies our relations to one 
another. Peak Oil will provide us with that opportunity, perhaps sooner than 
we expect.”

Over 70 years ago, in a country using little oil, Bertrand Russell wrote in 
In Praise of Idleness that we could meet all our needs with less than four 
hours of work per day
http://eatthestate.org/11-14/CanPeakOil.htm


In an article called ‘The Global Economy: A Flawed Ecosystem’, Louis Michon, 
a professional communicator working for the Canadian Space Agency writes “In 
his work entitled Living Systems (1978), researcher James Grier Miller of 
the University of California establishes a hierarchy of the planet’s living 
systems. From living cells to human groups to supranational systems, Miller 
shows the structural continuity between living organisms, ecosystems and 
human society. Humanity, its infrastructures and its activities, in short 
the global economy, form a vast system fuelled by a measurable quantity of 
energy, matter, time and information, just as ecosystems.
Natural systems are wonders of balance and stability resulting from millions 
of years of evolution. The global economy, which is barely 500 years old, 
has not achieved this level of refinement. Our economic system is embryonic 
and unrealistic, with a goal to achieve continual growth rather than 
balance. Growth creates wealth, but it can also result in major social and 
ecological imbalance.” […] “In today’s world, promoting uncontrolled 
economic growth is also a matter of greed. Achieving wealth is much easier 
in a booming economic system than in a stable one. But as capital flows in 
the same way as fluids, increased wealth entails loss somewhere else in the 
system. The impoverishment of the world’s poorest populations, national debt 
and the devastation of ecosystems are the direct consequences of 
unsustainable development and unrestrained growth.
Ecosystems are more sustainable than the economy because their growth 
potential is finite. No ecological system has developed to the point of 
swallowing up all others. The limited lifespan of living beings, adaptation 
to a specific environment (water, desert or other), dependence on light, and 
geographical distance are all factors that limit the expansion of ecological 
systems. Constant growth is by definition unsustainable. Ecosystems maintain 
their stability by recycling most of the energy and matter they use, 
allowing only diversity and complexity to grow.
Uncontrolled economic growth benefits mostly the rich. By upholding major 
differences between the energy use, material consumption, infrastructures 
and population density of rich and poor regions of the world, growth breeds 
inequality.” […] “Growth also leads to the concentration of economic 
activities in time and space, resulting in agriculture, industrialization 
and urbanization that are intensive and polluting. Rich nations have 
consumed a disproportionate quantity of matter and energy over the past few 
centuries. They have also polluted a large portion of the earth’s land, air 
and oceans. If excessive growth is one of the causes of unsustainable 
development, its main indicator is pollution. Here again, greed is the 
culprit. To save on production costs, the private sector often transfers 
waste and toxic materials into the environment—where they become anonymous 
and collectively owned. Obviously, it is more profitable for polluters to 
let the community and future generations pay for the clean-up.” […]

“In the economic system, pollution and unsustainable activities relate to 
incomplete equations. Truncated equations allow producers to hide costs, 
which they otherwise would have to transfer to consumers or pay themselves.” 
[…]

“In a sustainable development context, all inputs and outputs, whether 
matter, energy, time or knowledge, must be calculated. Sustainable 
development also requires that the entire biosphere and several generations 
to come be taken into account when calculating the societal cost-benefit 
ratio of both private and public economic decisions. In 1920, in The 
Economics of Welfare, British economist A.C. Pigou formulated an economic 
model by which all social costs were included in the market prices. More 
recently, in his acclaimed essay The Ecology of Commerce, American author 
Paul Hawken demonstrates how toxic and non-sustainable our present economy 
is. He proposes a form of industrial ecology, based on the market economy 
and on the private sector, to foster sustainable development.”
http://www1.worldbank.org/devoutreach/fall02/textonly.asp?id=177



How Will Peak Oil Affect Food Supply?

Jeremy Leggett, author of Half Gone (titled The Empty Tank in the US), makes 
the following points: A quarter of the US’s daily need for oil (five million 
barrels) comes from the highly volatile Middle East. “The US government 
could wipe out the need for all their five million barrels, and staunch the 
flow of much blood in the process, by requiring its domestic automobile 
industry to increase the fuel efficiency of autos and light trucks by a mere 
2.7 miles per gallon.” Instead, between 1987 and 2001, US average US vehicle 
fuel efficiency fell by 1.8 miles per gallon, noting that during the period 
1975 to 2003 SUV market share grew from 2% to 24%. And what’s this to do 
with our food supply? Jeremy cites National Geo as estimating you could 
drive a car from LA to NYC on the oil required to farm and bring to market 
just one cow.
This is not to say we don’t need an economy based on oil. No, the Soil 
Association also include a calculation from the Irish organisation the 
Foundation foe the Economics of Sustainability or Feasta who suggest that a 
40 litre (11 gallon) fill-up at a petrol (gasoline) station is the 
equivalent of about four years of human manual work and therefore “a 
human-muscle-power-based economy would therefore be between seventy and a 
hundred times less productive than the present fossil-fuel powered one.”
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/05/jeremy_leggett_1.php

The dominant models of intensive agriculture and the global food trade 
depend on vast inputs of oil. In a post peak oil world, the combination of 
higher transport costs, climate change and increased conflict will 
necessitate us all relying far more on re-localised food supplies. Even 
though it requires far lower amounts of oil, organic farming is not exempt 
from the need to adapt.
http://www.soilassociation.org.uk/web/sa/saweb.nsf/ed0930aa86103d8380256aa70054918d/782258a29fab0530802571960046dd25!OpenDocument



How Will Climate Change Affect Electricity Production?

Mother nature’s self-regulating system is already directly reducing the 
supply of electricity through coal by reducing the water supply available 
for cooling the power stations in some parts of Australia. It seems our 
planet is trying to scale back our energy and resource hungry economy and it 
should be seen as a wake-up call to humanity. This may be the last warning 
before we reach a tipping point, if it has not been reached already. “The 
Revenge of Gaia” that James Lovelock speaks about is close ahead. It may 
require a radical change in the whole way our society is politically and 
economically organised.

Rio Tinto will cut 160 contractor and employee jobs at the mine over the 
next two months. If irrigators were to be cut off from water supplies after 
June 30 it would be economically devastating to the 50,000 farmers in the 
basin, who accounts for about 41% of Australia’s agricultural output, 90% of 
the country’s irrigated crops and $22 billion worth of agricultural exports. 
The resulting cutback in crops for domestic supply would cause massive 
direct and indirect job losses in the basin’s towns and in the country’s 
food-processing industries, and a possible four-fold increase in retail food 
prices across Australia.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/711/36915

Coal and hydro power generation require very large amounts of water, and the 
Snowy scheme depends on it for 86 per cent of its generation capacity. The 
head of the CSIRO's Australian climate change science program, Paul Holper, 
said: "Lack of water could become a problem for power generation. "You've 
got to find a supply of water to set aside for power generation, but there 
is already a shortage of water for agriculture. So this is going to become 
more of a problem."
The stock market has already sent an alarm signal. The price of electricity 
futures has almost doubled so far this year.
In January the price of a megawatt hour for delivery to NSW in 2008 was $38. 
This week the price rose to just over $72, a 90 per cent rise in less than 
five months. The electricity price in Queensland has more than doubled. The 
volume of trading in electricity futures has roughly quadrupled this year.
According to a market assessment from the Sydney Futures Exchange, it ranks 
as one of the biggest commodity price increases ever seen, and is not driven 
by market speculation but is caused by the convergence of several negative 
trends, dominated by the water shortage.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21758983-1702,00.html

Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham said the five power stations in 
the Latrobe Valley used the equivalent of almost a third of Melbourne's 
total water use.
"This week it was reported that three Latrobe Valley coal-fired power 
stations — Loy Yang A, Loy Yang B and Yallourn — are using 96.5 billion 
litres of water a year at a subsidised cost," he said. "The decision to 
invest Victorians' money in a new coal-fired power station, which will fuel 
climate change, was a bad one but is one that can be reversed given that no 
approvals have been granted and no contracts signed."
The calls come after Rio Tinto said this week that water shortages meant it 
would have to halve production of coal-fired energy and cut 160 jobs at its 
Tarong mine in Queensland.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/green-groups-fear-water-going-up-in-steam/2007/05/17/1178995324339.html

NSW Greens MP John Kaye said the NSW Government should abandon any idea of 
building another coal-fired power station, after it last week commissioned 
an inquiry into the construction of a new plant. "NSW and the eastern 
seaboard of Australia faces brownouts, largely because many of the state's 
coal-fired power stations are running out of water," he said. "Building 
another coal burner would only increase our vulnerability to droughts and 
increase the risk of electricity brownouts because of water shortages."
Some energy experts believe NSW will face power brownouts next year, because 
its main emergency generator, the water-powered turbines of the Snowy Hydro, 
may have to sit idle as dams drop to record lows.
The NSW Government is apparently contemplating how it can guarantee baseload 
capacity, without privatising the rest of the electricity industry.
Dr Kaye said renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency would 
continue to operate through droughts and reduce the risks of brownouts.  
Wind generation, solar photo-voltaic panels and energy efficiency took 
almost no water to operate while hot rocks geothermal, biomass and solar 
thermal used some but could be designed to be less thirsty than coal, he 
said.
Greens leader Bob Brown said 30 per cent of the eastern seaboard's energy 
need could be met with better efficiencies and renewable energies that 
didn't need water.
"What we are seeing here is that the very core of the climate change 
problem, burning coal, is now being hit itself by climate change," Senator 
Brown said.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21758983-31037,00.html

Nuclear power engineer Professor John Price of Monash University in 
Melbourne says "gigantic" amounts of water are required to cool a nuclear 
power station.
"I'm talking about tonnes per second," says Price, who has designed nuclear 
power stations in the UK. According to the taskforce, headed by nuclear 
physicist Dr Ziggy Switkowski, nuclear power plants are less efficient than 
coal-fired plants and thus require more cooling. One estimate, from a recent 
report to the Queensland government, suggests a 1400 megawatt nuclear power 
station would use around 25 gigalitres of water a year.
This is about 1.26 times the water used by an equivalent coal-fired power 
station, says the report by Dr Ian Rose of Roam Consulting, a 
Queensland-based company with expertise in energy modelling.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2006/1794871.htm

Senator Brown states that both the Howard Coalition nor Rudd Labor will 
tackle our biggest cause of climate change – burning coal. Both the parties 
support burning more, not less. “This is an extreme position considering the 
massive economic and environmental crisis the world is facing. The nation 
should rapidly transform to being the world’s largest exporter of solar 
power technology, other renewable energy options and energy efficiency 
technology – creating thousands of jobs and a multi-billion dollar export 
income in tandem with the replacement of coal,” Senator Brown said.
“Australia can no longer put its head in the sand. Even if we do nothing to 
phase out coal exports, our customers will. The Europeans are already 
talking about sanctions and restrictions on coal imports. The issue is not 
just what we think the future of coal is, but what our customers think the 
future is. Business in Europe is not going to accept the Australian 
government freeloading with coal,” Senator Brown said.
http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/1839/print

The MIT report into the future of coal clearly outlines the size of the 
problem. It says fossil fuel sources today account for 80 per cent of world 
energy demand, with coal representing 25 per cent, gas 21 per cent, 
petroleum 34 per cent and nuclear power 6.5 per cent. Only 0.4 per cent is 
met by renewable sources of energy such as geothermal, solar and wind.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21476590-7583,00.html

In the end, we'll see that renewable energies will be cheaper, easier and 
faster to implement and with less risk. We are now wasting precious time by 
assuming that the concept of "clean coal" will allow us to continue business 
as usual.

Is The Planetary Situation Urgent?

Ross Gelbspan, a 30-year-journalist, is author of The Heat Is On (1998) and 
Boiling Point (2004), believes so. He explains, “Planetary changes which 
were supposed to occure toward the end of the century, according to 
scientific computer models, are actually happening today. Dr. Paul Epstein, 
a leading climate researcher at Harvard Medical School, citing the rapid 
intensification of storms around the world, said: "We are seeing [storm] 
impacts today that were previously projected to occur in 2080."  Other 
examples include:

* The Greenland ice sheet, one of the largest glaciers on the planet, is 
melting from above and losing its stability as meltwater from the surface 
trickles down and lubricates the bedrock on which the ice sheet sits. Should 
that ice sheet slide into the ocean, it would raise sea levels on the order 
of 20 feet. The rate of sea level rise has already doubled in the last 
decade as a result of melting glaciers and the thermal expansion of warming 
oceans.

* The proportion of severely destructive hurricanes that have reached 
category 4 and 5 intensity has doubled in the past thirty years, fueled by 
rising surface water temperatures.

* Oceans are becoming acidified from the fallout of our fossil fuel 
emissions. The ph level of the world's oceans has changed more in the last 
100 years than it did in the previous 10,000 years.

Those troubling signals are made all the more disturbing by the fact that 
climate change does not necessarily follow a linear, incremental trajectory. 
 As the climate system crosses invisible thresholds, it is capable of 
large-scale, unpredictable leaps.

"[T]here are tipping points out there that could be passed before we're 
halfway through the century," said Tim Lenton, an earth systems modeller at 
Britain's University of East Anglia.

That reality is compounded by the fact that carbon dioxide, the main 
heat-trapping gas, stays in the atmosphere for at least 100 years. Some of 
the impacts that are surfacing today were likely triggered by carbon emitted 
in the 1980s, before the recent burst of carbon-powered development in 
China, India, Mexico, Nigeria and other developing countries.

And then there is the problem of "feedback loops," which means that small 
changes caused by warming can trigger other much larger changes.

For example, the Siberian and Alaskan tundras, which for centuries absorbed 
carbon dioxide and methane, are now thawing and releasing those gases back 
into the atmosphere.  A rapid release of greenhouse gases from these regions 
could trigger a spike in warming.

Scientists recently detected a weakening of the flow of ocean currents in 
the Atlantic basin because of an infusion of freshwater from melting sea ice 
and glaciers. At a certain point, they say, the change in salinity and water 
density could change the direction of ocean currents, leading to much more 
bitter and severe winters in northern Europe and North America.

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=5896&method=full
James Lovelock, 84-year-old scientific originator of the Gaia Hypothesis 
says that because of human interference, Earth can no longer maintain the 
homeostasis resulting from the counterbalancing of chemistries exuded by all 
life-forms:
“What makes global warming so serious and so urgent is that the great Earth 
system, Gaia, is trapped in a vicious circle of positive feedback. Extra 
heat from any source, whether from greenhouse gases, the disappearance of 
Arctic ice or the Amazon forest, is amplified, and its effects are more than 
additive. It is almost as if we had lit a fire to keep warm, and failed to 
notice, as we piled on fuel, that the fire was out of control and the 
furniture had ignited. When that happens, little time is left to put out the 
fire before it consumes the house. Global warming, like a fire, is 
accelerating and almost no time is left to act. “We do not have 50 years; 
the Earth is already so disabled by the insidious poison of greenhouse gases 
that even if we stop all fossil fuel burning immediately, the consequences 
of what we have already done will last for 1,000 years. Every year that we 
continue burning carbon makes it worse for our descendants and for 
civilization.”
http://www.willthomas.net/Convergence/Weekly/Global_Warming.htm

Can We Believe Climate Skeptics?

George Monbiot, who has received the United Nations Global 500 Award for 
outstanding environmental achievement, explains that "Climate change denial 
has gone through four stages. First the fossil fuel lobbyists told us that 
global warming was a myth. Then they agreed that it was happening, but 
insisted it was a good thing: we could grow wine in the Pennines and take 
Mediterranean holidays in Skegness. Then they admitted that the bad effects 
outweighed the good ones, but claimed that it would cost more to tackle than 
to tolerate. Now they have reached stage 4. They concede that it would be 
cheaper to address than to neglect, but maintain that it's now too late. 
This is their most persuasive argument."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1574003,00.html

Monbiot says we must be extremely wary of the groups and self-appointed 
experts campaigning against “risk-aversion” or “compensation culture” or 
“junk science” or “eco-fascism”. The chances are that someone is paying them 
to do it.

In and interview with Time, James Hansen said of climate deniers 
“Incredibly, there are still staunch deniers who would prefer to listen to a 
science fiction writer [Michael Crichton, author of "State of Fear," which 
challenges global warming science] rather than a real scientist. It is 
perhaps not a coincidence that the strongest deniers among the politicians 
have connections to the fossil fuel industry.”
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1176828,00.html

It is true that you can find lines of evidence which appear to support 
global warming critics and, in most cases, professors who will speak up in 
their favour. But this does not mean that any of them are correct. You can 
sustain a belief in these propositions only by ignoring the overwhelming 
body of data and science.

"Climate sceptics in Australia function to promulgate these essentially 
dodgy kinds of studies. And I don't think that is too strong language to say 
they are dodgy," says Dr James Risbey, a climatologist at Monash 
University's School of Mathematical Sciences.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/11/26/1101219743320.html


What TV Channels May Show Documentaries With Evidence of Global Warming?

Watch PBS, Nova, Frontline, The Discovery Channel, National Geographics, and 
Animal Planet. Hardly a week goes by that one of these channels does not 
show evidence of global warming. Most of these programs are not even about 
global warming, but the evidence is there for all to see.

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