ceedee's posterous

Today's Guardian poll of attendees at a climate conference last month in Copenhagen exposes the gulf between political rhetoric and scientific thinking. Of more than 250 experts surveyed, more than half said the 2C target could still be achieved but only 18 thought that it would be. By the end of the century, most thought average temperatures would rise by some 4C.

The figure is not plucked from their imaginations. The authoritative report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 laid it out in simple terms. If carbon emissions continue to rise at present rates, then the IPCC's best guess is a 4C rise by 2100. The Guardian poll merely highlights a belief that the warning has simply failed to penetrate. As one said: "I think a full understanding of what must be done quickly, and the consequences of insufficient action, is lacking among the policy makers and the public." Another said: "Current government actions are playing into the hands of ... an electorate that doesn't quite understand how serious climate change is."

Business leaders have delivered a surprise attack on the government's environmental policy, arguing that ministers are not doing enough to cut global warming emissions or make sure the UK does not run out of power.

The CBI says billions of pounds of necessary investment will move to the US and China unless the government takes "urgent action".

It comes amid widespread disappointment that the G20 heads of state failed to come up with any real push on green issues as part of a $1.1tn (£743bn) financial aid package for the global economy.

The warning from the CBI follows a series of announcements by major energy companies, including Shell, BP and Centrica, that they would axe or reconsider investment in "low carbon" energy such as wind and solar power and carbon capture for coal-fired power stations.

Richard Lambert, the CBI's director general, said "politics and policy", not the recession, were delaying investment in the UK. He said the government's policies were on the "right path", but companies were "jittery" about investing in the UK because of delays with planning permission, poor National Grid connections, slow funding for new technology, and uncertainty over long-term carbon prices.

The government needs "to get on with it," said Lambert, ahead of today's launch of a new strategy for the energy industry. "If they don't, the risk is that the private capital needed will not come here in the volumes required."

Further evidence of the growing crisis of confidence in the green energy sector is exposed today by a survey which revealed that more than three quarters of Britain's green energy companies were now facing enormous financial difficulties gaining vital access to loans and investment money - a finding that has seriously shaken the industry's parent body.

Out of 39 member companies that responded to a poll by the Renewable Energy Association (REA), 32 said they were suffering from a shortage of cashflow and other problems, while only six said they were not affected at all.

“I was in Siberia a few weeks ago, and I am now just back in from the field in Alaska. The permafrost is melting fast all over the Arctic, lakes are forming everywhere and methane is bubbling up out of them.”

“Lakes in Siberia are five times bigger than when I measured them in 2006. It’s unprecedented. This is a global event now, and the inertia for more permafrost melt is increasing.”

This is what University of Alaska ecologist Katey Walter is quoted as saying in a New Scientist article published last week titled Arctic meltdown is a threat to humanity. The article then proceeds to go through the worst-case scenarios that could result from the widespread warming of the Arctic, specifically changes in the thermohaline global ocean current and mass methane releases from permafrost and submarine hydrates.

Simply put, mass releases of methane could, if modelers like David Lawrence of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are right, create heating that feeds on itself (aka “positive feedback”) - warmer Arctic temperatures releases more methane that warms the Arctic further and so on. And if the Arctic changes enough and Greenland melts enough, then the thermohaline current could slow down, resulting in widespread changes ranging from a dramatic reduction in Asian monsoons to a general cooling of Europe. While not mentioned in the New Scientist article, the Carboholic has reported on the possibility of a weaker thermohaline current making oxygen depletion much worse throughout the global ocean, essentially making almost 2/3rds of the ocean unlivable for most existing marine life and 9% of the ocean entirely unlivable for any organism that relies on oxygen.

On potential problem is that the New Scientist article claims that climate models don’t presently include the heat of microbial decomposition of permafrost or the existence of a permanently thawed layer of permafrost that gradually grows due to said decomposition. If this is true, then it could make the real future that much worse than it already is expected to be based on existing models and trends in carbon dioxide emissions, sea level rise, et al.

It certainly doesn’t help that, after a decade of stability, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere started rising again in 2007.

As bad as all that is, there was an interesting aside in the article:

Incidentally, the changing winds might also be to blame for some of the cold and snowy weather in North America and China in recent winters, Overland says. Unusual poleward flows of warm air over Siberia have displaced cold air southwards on either side.

If true, then the unusually cold winter we’ve been having is a direct result of anthropogenic global climate disruption.