Carbon Output Must Near Zero To Avert Danger

Calderia is the doc that identified ocean acidification. He is a top name.
This link is to a google scholar search of Calderia and Wickett. Lots of interesting information there, but not the article referenced in the WP story below.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&resnum=0&q=caldeira+wickett&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=ws


Carbon Output Must Near Zero To Avert Danger, New Studies Say
A heavy haze could be seen in Beijing in August 2007. Two recent reports call for a heightened global effort to reduce carbon emissions.


The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.

Their findings, published in separate journals over the past few weeks, suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide.

Using advanced computer models to factor in deep-sea warming and other aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon dioxide (CO2), the scientists, from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message: The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further.

"The question is, what if we don't want the Earth to warm anymore?" asked Carnegie Institution senior scientist Ken Caldeira, co-author of a paper published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "The answer implies a much more radical change to our energy system than people are thinking about."

Although many nations have been pledging steps to curb emissions for nearly a decade, the world's output of carbon from human activities totals about 10 billion tons a year and has been steadily rising.

For now, at least, a goal of zero emissions appears well beyond the reach of politicians here and abroad. U.S. leaders are just beginning to grapple with setting any mandatory limit on greenhouse gases. The Senate is poised to vote in June on legislation that would reduce U.S. emissions by 70 percent by 2050; the two Democratic senators running for president, Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), back an 80 percent cut. The Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), supports a 60 percent reduction by mid-century.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who is shepherding climate legislation through the Senate as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the new findings "make it clear we must act now to address global warming."

"It won't be easy, given the makeup of the Senate, but the science is compelling," she said. "It is hard for me to see how my colleagues can duck this issue and live with themselves."

James L. Connaughton, who chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality, offered a more guarded reaction, saying the idea that "ultimately you need to get to net-zero emissions" is "something we've heard before." When it comes to tackling such a daunting environmental and technological problem, he added: "We've done this kind of thing before. We will do it again. It will just take a sufficient amount of time."

Until now, scientists and policymakers have generally described the problem in terms of halting the buildup of carbon in the atmosphere. The United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change framed the question that way two decades ago, and many experts talk of limiting CO2concentrations to 450 parts per million (ppm).

But Caldeira and Oregon State University professor Andreas Schmittner now argue that it makes more sense to focus on a temperature threshold as a better marker of when the planet will experience severe climate disruptions. The Earth has already warmed by 0.76 degrees Celsius (nearly 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Most scientists warn that a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) could have serious consequences.

Schmittner, lead author of a Feb. 14 article in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, said his modeling indicates that if global emissions continue on a "business as usual" path for the rest of the century, the Earth will warm by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. If emissions do not drop to zero until 2300, he calculated, the temperature rise at that point would be more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit....

Read the rest at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/09/AR2008030901867.html?wpisrc=newsletter

essential goal, as has been pointed out on DU before.

See, for example, the discussion of leading climatologist Jim Hansen at:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=133777&mesg_id=133777

The latest scientific findings have dramatically superseded the 2007 IPCC Report warnings of severe problems in the developing world already and dire global consequences in future decades. The time frame has been dramatically reduced. Thus the top US climate scientist Dr James Hansen says that the “tipping point” for the melting of Arctic ice has already been reached at 385 ppm atmospheric CO2 and it is apparent that the present atmospheric CO2 is sufficient to completely remove summer-time Arctic sea ice (some scientists say this may be completely gone by 2013). However most alarming is the potential instability of large ice sheets, especially those of West Antarctica and Greenland.

According to Dr Hansen, in calling for an immediate moratorium on coal power, “If disintegration of these ice sheets passes their tipping points, dynamical collapse could proceed out of our control. If it melts completely, West Antarctica alone contains enough water to cause about 20 feet (6 meters) of sea-level rise. There are also tipping points in life systems. Today, as global temperature increases at a rate of about 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, isotherms (a line of average temperature) are moving poleward at a rate of about 50-60 kilometers (35 miles) per decade. In response, some species are moving.”

.....

On Saturday February 9, 2008 I attended a Climate Convergence Conference in Melbourne of about 200 people from a variety of Climate Action Groups, This Climate Conference involved a series of talks from activists, workshops, audience participation (I wasn’t an official speaker but got a good response from standing up and telling them all about the mounting Third World Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust due to rising food prices) and the launch of an excellent, must-read, Friends of the Earth-sponsored book entitled “Climate Code Red – the Case for a Sustainability Emergency” by David Spratt (from Carbon Equity) and Philip Sutton (Greenleap Strategic Institute). The essence of “Climate Code Red” ( it can be downloaded: http://www.climatecodered.net / ) is that the World is facing a Climate Emergency and a Sustainability Emergency because we have passed crucial atmospheric CO2 “tipping points”, “Climate Code red” further declares that, as demanded by Dr James Hansen, we need not “CO2 emissions reduction targets” or “zero CO2 emissions” but NEGATIVE CO2 EMISSIONS to return the Planet to a safe, sustainable 300-350 ppm CO2.

At this Melbourne Climate Convergence meeting various activist groups decided to form a Climate Emergency Coalition to urgently spread the message and to lobby for a Declaration of a State of Emergency in Australia and the World to meet the Sustainability Emergency. As Dr Hansen has said (see above), we urgently need a lowering of atmospheric CO2 to about 300-350 ppm and a major step nowmust be an immediate moratorium on coal power - we must keep fossil fuels in the ground to save Humanity and the Biosphere.

http://mwcnews.net/content/view/20133/42

Climate change is the most studied topic in human history, and the more we learn, the worse it looks. I don't think it is going to be too much longer before the evidence about precisely what is happening is going to solidify and allow some extremely high confidence predictions to emerge.

When that happens I think we will do whatever it is the science tells us we need to do; be it a crash program to build 5000 new breeder reactors or cranking up a new global infrastructure out of wind and solar. We just need to know the timeline facing us so that we know the right response. Uncertainty is a bitch.

The only solid argument I've ever heard from climate change opponents is the one that goes:

1. The earth, strictly speaking, doesn't generate much heat.
   
2. All of our warmth really comes from the sun.
   
3. Historically, the sun's heat output has always varied a little.
   
4. So, if the planet's a little "warm" right now, a solar cool down (a statistical dip) could spontaneously *fix* everything.
   

I'm not sure that's an accurate summary but you probably get the idea, and in any event, it's likely you know more about this general subject than I do.

You could probably get a much more complete answer from a site like http://www.climatescience.org, or http://www.realclimate.org

But, my thinking of your hypothetical is that if a solar cool down were to occur, then it will have an influence on how climate change proceeds.

What's important to know though, is that the balance we are upsetting with the co2 operates on both the biologic and the geologic time scales. Put another way, we are making a global geologic time scale change to nature of the biosphere of this planet. Keep that in mind.

So let's say we continue on the present course of fossil fuel use and a period of reduced solar intensity allows us to maintian our present way of living. We discover vast new fields of high quality petroleum under what used to be the Arctic sea ice and fuel prices stabilize.

We naturally follow the path of least economic resistance and continue to pump the CO2 into the air instead of spending the extra money (and it WILL COST A LOT) to capture the so2 and lock it away. And really, everything does seems fine; the reduced 'insolation' factor is keeping us cool even as we increase the CO2 level to more than 1000 parts per million (a trend that we are now on) by 2100. No worries, right?

Is that the scenario you are considering?

You need to know that CO2 cycles through the skin of the planet and has a lot of roles besides that of contributing to the regulation of the climate. To judge the overall risks and benefits of your solar cooling we'd need to know what those roles are and how the systems those roles affect will be impacted by going from an average of 280 parts per million to a level 4 times that.

Mother nature removes CO2 from the biological cycle by turning it into stone mostly. That takes a really long time to happen. Much of the CO2 that eventually turns to stone is largely moved through the oceans by direct absorption from the air or by the shells of microscopic sea critters that fall to the bottom and... you know the routine, they turn to stone after a long long time.

So here we have 4 times the concentration of co2 in the air; now, that is going to now affect the chemistry of the ocean over a very, very long time.

According to the scientist that the OP is about, Prof. Calderia, the ph value (have you ever maintained a pool?) of the ocean is already changing. We are now at 380 ppm.

What do you think will happen to the ocean's ph by the time we hit 1000 ppm in 2100?

I'm not exactly sure myself, and frankly I really hope I don't have to anything more than speculate about it.

But hey, look on the bright side, the sun just might decide to vary its intensity by just the right direction by just the right amount at just the right time and we'd be comfortable while we watched it happen.

Yep, the sun just might do that...

I included a link in the OP to a google search of Caldiera's papers on ocean acidification, in case you'd like to read up on what he has measured and what he thinks it means.

Although, technically speaking, if you're talking about the sun, it's got to be all on the bright side, no?

I found out a little more here:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071113142105.htm

Excerpt:

While some scientists predict the next solar cycle -- expected to start in 2008 -- will be significantly weaker than the present one, others are forecasting an increase of up to 40 percent in the sun's activity, said Woods.

Woods is the principal investigator on NASA's $88 million Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment, or SORCE, mission, launched in 2003 to study how and why variations in the sun affect Earth's atmosphere and climate. In August, NASA extended the SORCE mission through 2012. The extension provides roughly $18 million to LASP...

...Solar cycles, which span an average of 11 years, are driven by the amount and size of sunspots present on the sun's surface, which modulate brightness from the X-ray to infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The current solar cycle peaked in 2002

I was actually thinking a slight cool down might give more time to plant massive, artificial mangrove swamp/wetlands (that scrubs CO2, I think) and start working on alternative energy sources.

But the same page on ScienceDaily had a related link that casts doubt on the whole 'solar variations' climate influence model:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041001092000.htm

Computer models of Earth's climate have consistently linked long-term, high-magnitude variations in solar output to past climate changes. Now a closer look at earlier studies of the Sun casts doubt on evidence of such cycles of brightness, their intensity and their possible influence on Earth's climate.

But unless we are adding lots of permanent acreage it isn't actually doing much scrubbing. The problem with drawing down co2 with plants is that most of the plants are recycled fairly quickly. When they die and decay the co2 is released back into the environment.

Life in the oceans can be limited by a number of factors; such as lack of the minerals needed to sustain basic life. These minerals wash down from the land and fertilize the water, so to speak. Vast areas of the ocean are so far away from land that they might almost completely lack something like iron.

Anyway some fellow figured that if we could spread iron dust on such an oceanic desert we might get it to blossom with life and convert large areas of the ocean into a sort of factory where much of the new microscopic life forms it's shells from a co2 dissolved in the water. The theory goes that these shells form, fall to the seafloor of the deep ocean and accumulate there without decaying, eventually turning into stone but immediately removing carbon from the biological cycle.
So they spread the dust over a 10 mile by 10 miles plot and boom - that deep ocean lifeless blue color turned a vibrant green within days.

It works.

Some questions they weren't able to answer, though, was how much of the tiny shells fell to the seafloor and how much floated away or was redissolved in the water. Without that, they can't tell if it is an economically feasible way of addressing the problem.

I think it was published in Science.

What I'm struck by when I read your citation is the time span of the solar variability you are pointing to. The 11 year cycle and the sunspot cycle are one variable. They calculate that these together are one of many equally or more significant variables affecting climate. By themselves they represent litte risk of large scale change.
Other, long term cycles are hypothesized, but they assert there is little direct evidence of these other solar cycles at this time, is that right?

If so, then I'd say the real message is to keep looking for evidence until we can say there is or isn't with a little more surety.

Thanks for the read.