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Under a Green Sky by Peter Ward
Under a Green Sky by Peter Ward
Peter Ward, Professor of Palaeontology at University of Washington, is a leading scholar on the causes of mass extinction. Under A Green Sky, published in 2007, explains the risk that the stopping of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation could cause mass extinction, as the same thing has happened numerous times in Earth geological history. This explanation is important to understand why the sequencing of climate policy has to reverse to make higher albedo the top priority while work on carbon proceeds more gradually.
Extinction has become a major field of scientific research. Under A Green Sky provides an excellent history of the major paradigm shifts that have occurred in extinction studies. Until the 1980 Alvarez article detailing the asteroid theory for the end of the dinosaur age, Ward says most science assumed that all extinctions were caused by terrestrial processes. Even after abundant geological evidence of the asteroid many scientists refused to believe it. Even after the Chicxulub Crater was confirmed as the cause in 1991, it took until 2010 (after the publication of this book) for the official scientific consensus to change. But the asteroid led to a sort of asteroid craze in the media, with some scientists even publishing papers wrongly attributing other extinctions to asteroids.
The Permian Extinction about 252 million years ago, known as the Great Dying, is the biggest ever, killing off more than half of all species, with estimates up to 96% of marine species going extinct at that time. Ward explains that it was caused by a series of giant belches of hydrogen sulphide, a deadly gas caused when ocean currents stop. The line of causation, as Ward explains in this interview with Wired, is that vast fields of lava opened up, known as the Siberian Traps. This in turn caused CO2 level to rise, warming the planet and stopping ocean currents. When oceans stop overturning with oxygen-rich water from the surface descending to the deep, life in the deep dies. This is known as Euxinia, named after the stratified waters of the Black Sea where there is no oxygen below the surface layer. When the whole world ocean became euxinic, the rotting of the anoxic deep made so much hydrogen sulphide that it ended the Permian Era. Under a Green Sky is named for this event, which Ward says could have also happened in a dozen other mass extinctions.
This is exactly what is likely to happen to our planet in coming centuries if we do not embrace solar geoengineering now as the primary climate security agenda. While obviously the carbon problem has to be fixed, it is nowhere near as urgent or amenable to solution as albedo. The inertia and momentum of the fossil fuel economy are so vast that there is no prospect, without higher albedo, that the world could avoid the high risk of a Permian-type catastrophe. Ward observes that all the mass extinction events except the singular K-T asteroid event appear to have been caused by hydrogen sulphide from high levels of CO2. That shows the immensely dangerous precedents for the current unprecedented speed of CO2 increase. But it does not mean that directly addressing the CO2 problem must be the best solution, as generally assumed. Rebrightening the planet is needed to buy time to develop workable carbon strategies.
I first encountered Peter Ward when I read his brilliant co-authored book Rare Earth, which explains why the high complexity of life on Earth is likely to be extremely rare in the universe. The numerous factors that have combined to enable our four billion years of evolution reveal that life is inherently far more fragile and sensitive to shock than is generally assumed.
Peter Ward continues to campaign for better understanding of the geological context of climate change, including in an excellent recent discussion with Nate Hagens and a TED talk in 2013. Although I have not found any comment from him on geoengineering, he does say in the Wired interview that we have to save the ice caps, because if the ice caps go, the hydrogen sulfide scenario is the inevitable next step. Despite the heavy seriousness of extinction, he writes with a friendly anecdotal personal style, with numerous great stories of his geological adventures around the world, making his work accessible to a broader audience. With a recent study suggesting the AMOC could suddenly shut down any time from 2025, appreciating this geological risk of hydrogen sulphide poisoning is helpful to understand the security context of drastic changes to ocean currents.
Robert Tulip
4 February 2024
Robert.tulip@anu.edu.au
Epic Fail at COP28: Time for a New Approach!
Epic Fail at COP28: Time for a New Approach!
COP stands for Conference of the Parties. It is an annual meeting of nations that signed the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to assess progress and make further plans to deal with climate change. Thousands of organization, corporation, and government representatives also attend in an effort to influence COP outcomes.
Official reports on the state of the climate and progress toward meeting the 2015 Paris
Agreement 1.5°C and 2.0°C targets for limiting global warming set the stage for COP28 opening on November 30. The findings were alarming to many, but apparently, not alarming enough for negotiators gathered in Dubai to accept reality. Bottom line, the temperature is rising at an accelerating pace and progress toward meeting the Paris targets is sorely lagging. Nonetheless, COP28 delegates refused to admit that the current global climate strategy is an epic fail.
Central to the failure is the strategy’s sole reliance on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removing accumulated emissions from the atmosphere to limit temperature rise. A much broader approach is urgently needed to restore and stabilize climate conditions that can sustain all life forms. It is time to integrate climate cooling into a credible global strategy.
Climate change and the severity of its impacts are increasing much faster than calculated by various models and analyses projecting future conditions. This truth is being told by current events, not speculative assumptions. The reports released to inform COP28 deliberations confirm 2023 as the worst year yet of climate change with the Global South and vulnerable populations around the world bearing the brunt.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) provisional State of the Global Climate report presented data through the end of October showing 2023 average global temperature at about 1.40°C (±0.12°C) above the pre-industrial 1850-1900 baseline. The report also documents other record highs and lows. According to WMO Secretary-General Professor Petteri Taalas, “Greenhouse gas levels are record high. Global temperatures are record high. Sea level rise is record high. Antarctic sea ice is record low. It’s a deafening cacophony of broken records.”
The first draft United Nations Global Stocktake was also released pre- COP28. It projected that even if countries implement their National Determined Contribution climate action plans, total emissions in 2030 will be just 2% below 2019 levels. This is a far cry from the 43% reduction needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C. The accompanying UN 2023 Emissions Gap Report finds that current pledges under the Paris Agreement put the world on track for a 2.5-2.9°C temperature rise above pre-industrial levels this century.
After 12 days of negotiations, COP28 triumphantly accepted a revised Stocktake renamed the "The UAE Consensus" and deemed the gathering a success. Chief among the “good news” reported are agreements to transition away from fossil fuels to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and to triple renewables and double energy efficiency by 2030. Commitments to reduce methane emissions; focus more on nature, land, and food systems; and operationalize the Loss and Damage Fund were also in the mix.
The “bad news” is that The UAE Consensus agreements are non-binding and unenforceable. Moreover, independent analyses indicate they will not come close to keeping temperatures from exceeding the 1.5°C or 2.0°C targets.
The world doesn’t need another trail of broken promises. The handshaking and back thumping of COP28 leaders bring to mind the Albert Einstein quote: “The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again but expecting different results.”
World leaders must initiate actions that halt temperature rise in the near-term with the ultimate goal of returning global warming to under 1°C. Achieving new, more ambitious goals would require: 1) rapidly reducing both carbon dioxide and methane emissions in accordance with more rigorous Nationally Determined Contributions; 2) scaling up carbon removal to reduce atmospheric carbon concentrations; and 3) until 20th Century climatic conditions are restored, implement climate cooling measures that reboot and amplify Nature’s cooling capacity.
It’s time to seriously pursue preventing “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” as called for in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. All the dallying to date now necessitates including climate cooling in the international pathway to a sustainable and livable climate. Waiting until COP29 to start the process will be too late. The reality is that time is up!
Michael MacCracken has been serving pro bono as the Climate Institute Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs since his retirement from the University of California in 2002. A graduate of Princeton (B.S.E. 1964) and the University of California, Davis (Ph.D., 1968), he led climate change studies at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1968-93. He then served as senior scientist and executive director of the coordination office for the first interagency Office of the U.S. Global Change Research Program from 1993-97. From 1997-2001 he was executive director of the coordination office for the first US National Climate Impacts Assessment. From 2003-07, he was president of the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences. Michael is a member of the Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC) Steering Circle.
Suzanne Reed is a graduate of Smith College and the Yale School of the Environment. She has served as a Professional Staff Member of the US Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee (now Energy and the Environment), a Commissioner of the California Energy Commission, and a Chief of Staff in the California State Legislature. Now retired, she is a climate activist and CoFounder of the Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC), a diverse, international group of scientists, engineers, technologists, and public policy experts.
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