[Pil-pc-oceania] Monbiot Updates His Global Warming Book : Necessary steps to avoid global warming (Greenleap)

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  Necessary goals for effective handling of global warming: George Mon 
  Posted by: "Philip Sutton" Philip.Sutton at green-innovations.asn.au   philipsuttonoz 
  Thu Aug 30, 2007 6:30 am (PST) 
  From:
  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/379803.html
  George Monbiot Updates His Global 
  Warming Book 
  28.08.2007
  Here is a portion of George Monbiot's speech at the Camp for Climate Change in 
  London Aug. 18, '07. He has been studying and writing about global warming for 
  over twenty years and is the Author of "Heat" which is about climate change and 
  what needs to be done about it. He explains that because of recent scientific 
  discoveries the book needs an extreme update. 

  ************** 

  I'm going to start with some bad news, and the bad news is this. Two 
  degrees is no longer the target. And the news is contained in a recent 
  paper written by James Hansen of NASA in the Philosophical Transactions 
  of the Royal Society(1). And what Hansen shows is that the profoundly 
  pessimistic assumptions in the latest IPCC Report are insufficiently 
  pessimistic. 

  And the reason for this is as follows. The IPCC assumes that the melting 
  of the ice sheets at the poles will take place in a gradual and linear fashion. 
  And Hansen's own work with the paleontological record shows that that is 
  an "entirely implausible" (to use his term) scenario. 

  The last time we had two degrees of warming in the Pliocene 55 million 
  years ago, the ice sheets at the poles did not melt - as the IPCC proposes - 
  over a millennia, but within the course of one century. And they did not cause 
  a maximum sea level rise within the course of one century - as predicted by 
  the IPCC - of 59 centimeters, but of 25 meters. 

  And Hansen proposes that through a series of factors - the collapse of the 
  buttresses that prevent the ice from sliding into the sea, the melt water 
  trickling down through crevasses and lubricating the base of the ice sheets, 
  and melt water on the surface of the ice sheets changing the albedo, making 
  the ice darker and therefore absorbing more heat, will lead to the sudden 
  and - certainly in geological terms - almost immediate collapse of both the 
  West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets within the course of one a century 
  at somewhat less than two degrees of warming. 

  Not only does this lead to the immediate affect of inundation of most of the 
  inhabited world - something like 60% of the people live within 50 km of the 
  coast - it also means that you get a severe and sudden change in global 
  albedo change as white stuff at the poles gives way to dark stuff absorbing 
  much more solar radiation. 

  And he proposes that we can't go beyond 1.5 to 1.7 degrees of warming 
  above 1990 levels. 

  Combine this with what Richard was talking about and the stuff contained 
  in the IPCC's 4th Assessment Report which shows that in order to have a 
  maximum cap of two degrees of warming we need an 85% global reduction 
  even before you take population growth into account. So when that's added 
  to the fact that we're going to have something like a 50% increase in population, 
  you can see that that pushes way over 90% even before you take the issue 
  of global equity into account which means that the rich nationsmust cut the 
  emissions much further than anybody else, you realize that we are talking at 
  a minimum of a 100% cut, and it looks like it might have to go to 110% or 115%. 

  You laugh but we're talking about sequestration and we're talking about such 
  things for example, as growing biofuel and burying it, simply for growing as 
  much bio mass as we can and sticking it back on the ground....something..... 
  anything to stave off this catastrophe. 

  We're not talking anymore about measures which require a little bit of tweaking 
  here and there, or a little bit of political tweaking here and there. We're talking 
  about measures which require global revolutionary change. 

  And that is a much tougher message than any that I've put out before, and this 
  is the first opportunity really that I've had since that paper came out, to express 
  the fact that what I thought were rather bold and revolutionary proposals in my 
  book "Heat", those proposals don't go nearly far enough. Those proposals 
  have been superseded and we need to start thinking on a different scale 
  altogether.......... 

  And I'm afraid the second uncomfortable message I have to put out to you tonight 
  is that when it comes to dealing with a problem of this scale, small is no longer 
  beautiful. We have to start thinking on the biggest possible terms.... 

  We have very very little time in which to act. We have very very little time in which 
  to bring about the largest economical and political transformation the world has 
  ever seen. 

  *************** 

  The entire speech along with other speakers can be listened to free online courtesy 
  of the UK IMC. Mr. Monbiot is the second speaker at 15 minutes in. 
  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/378866.html 

  1) Dr. James Hansen's Paper, 7/15/07 
  http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/l3h462k7p4068780/fulltext.html 
  ------------
  This message has been posted to the Greenleap List by:
  Philip Sutton
  Greenleap List Manager


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