Solving the Climate Crisis

Solving the Climate Crisis

With Al Gore and the IPCC wining the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday, lots of people are talking about global warming. The remaining holdouts and dead-enders continue to bray about hoaxes and imaginary disputes, but by and large the dominant focus of conversation about climate disruption boils down to a simple question: what do we do about it?

A simple question, but not a simple answer, in part because there are multiple possible responses, and they're not necessarily mutually-compatible. They cover three broad categories: Prevention (actions that reduce the risks of global warming or soften its eventual impact); Mitigation (actions directed at reducing the harm of global warming, and as possible reducing its sources); and Remediation (actions intended to reverse global warming and its effects). Each of these entails its own set of political, economic and environmental risks.

One of the reasons why the answers are not cut-and-dried is an aspect of global warming that, as yet, still does not receive the kind of mainstream attention it deserves: climate commitments. It turns out that, no matter what we do, we are committed to a certain amount of continued warming and climate change. Moreover, the longer we wait to start acting seriously, the more of a commitment we'll build up.

Much of this commitment comes from the physics of climate change. There is an enormous amount of lag in geophysical systems. We see that in particular in the delay between actions that increase or decrease climate forcings and the resulting climate impacts. Some of that lag comes from how long it takes for certain chemicals to cycle out of the atmosphere, some comes from how warming itself changes natural cycles, and much of it comes from the thermal inertia of the oceans -- the slow pace at which ocean temperatures change. Climate scientists generally describe this climate lag as being around 20-30 years -- so, even if we were to cut off all additional carbon emissions right this very second, we'd still see another two to three decades of warming.

That's if we're lucky. If, in that 20-30 years, the rising temperatures start triggering climate feedback effects (such as large-scale methane emissions from melting permafrost, or the reduction of the polar ice cap causing more heat to be absorbed by the dark water), problems could continue even past the 20-30 year mark. And, of course, we're not going to cut off all additional carbon emissions any time soon, so that 20-30 year countdown hasn't even started.

It should be clear at this point that the longer we wait, and the more of a climate commitment we build up, the more likely it is that we'll see feedback effects.

So with that, here are the three key solution arguments for climate disruption:

...