The Hidden Climate Catastrophe
The climate crisis is much worse than we think it is and all we have so far are false solutions and a deeply flawed process for dealing with the problem.
In August, 2021, the IPCC published the first instalment of the 6th assessment report (AR6) working group 1 (WG1) - The Physical Science Basis. Just like previous ARs, there is the predictable explosion of publicity. Environmental NGOs go into overdrive and the world suddenly goes into ‘save the planet’ mode for a period of time. Usually the ARs come out initially when a major climate summit is pending. This year, the UN climate summit is coming to my home town of Glasgow. So what’s at stake? The IPCC message - typically - is stronger than the previous ARs. But this time its quite clear that there are no caveats in the message. Simply put:
It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred
The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of many aspects of the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years
Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since AR5
The first point to make here is that scientific reports on climate change tend to be conservative. There’s a reason for this that needs to be explained in order to understand the bigger picture.
In 2018, the report What Lies Beneath: The Understatement of Existential Climate Risk, was published by the National Centre for Climate Restoration, based in Melbourne, Australia. This hard hitting report pulls no punches. Despite the historic commitments of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and the current phase punctuated by the Paris Agreement, ‘the debate around climate change policy has never been more dysfunctional.’ To illustrate the point, the report quotes Orwell:
In his book 1984, George Orwell describes a double-think totalitarian state where most of the population accepts “the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane.”
Policy makers exist in an alternative reality of short-termism, where immediate economic concerns dominate and the bottom line is paramount.
The solution to address the climate problem by dealing with the science in concert with policy makers was the establishment of the IPCC in 1988. With AR6 now in the offering, the IPCC has over the years has done vital and important work. It does however have its shortcomings. The IPCC bases its findings on probability, which creates its own issues - the point being that what might be improbable isn’t impossible. Consensus is an important element, much of which takes place between the scientific community and policy makers, who generally have little understanding of science. It’s a bit like mixing oil and water, the result being that:
IPCC conclusions are subject to intense political oversight before being released, which historically has had the effect of substantially watering-down sound scientific findings.
The issue here is that the world is a very different place now than what it was in 1988. Climate change has become an existential risk. That means:
an adverse outcome that would either annihilate intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential.
Given that threat, underestimation could become a fatal distraction. The report recommends a risk management approach:
It is clear that existing processes will not deliver the transformation to a carbon-negative world in the limited time now available.
We urgently require a reframing of scientific research within an existential risk-management framework. This requires special precautions that go well beyond conventional risk management. Like an iceberg, there is great danger in “what lies beneath”.
Research shows that some elements within the scientific community aren’t helping matters. Climate studies are generally conservative, ‘erring on the side of least drama’, leading scientists to ‘underpredict or downplay future climate changes’. One of the foremost experts in the field, NASA’s former chief climate scientist, Professor James Hansen, made his views clear. The report notes:
scientific reticence hinders communication with the public about the dangers of global warming and potentially large sea-level rises. More recently he wrote that “the affliction is widespread and severe. Unless recognized, it may severely diminish our chances of averting dangerous climate change.”
The report notes the findings of a study, observing that:
climate scientists are resistant to participation in public/policy engagement, leaving this task to a minority who are attacked by the media and even by their own colleagues.
According to Professor Kevin Anderson of the University of Manchester, there’s:
“an endemic bias prevalent amongst many of those building emission scenarios to underplay the scale of the 2°C challenge. In several respects, the modelling community is actually self-censoring its research (focus) to conform to the dominant political and economic paradigm…”
This then is the problem that permeates the IPCC. This is where a greater emphasis on risk assessment is required, in order to:
“ … deal adequately with low-probability, high-consequence outcomes, which can dominate calculations of total risk, and are thus worthy of special attention. Without such efforts, we court the kinds of ‘failures of imagination’ that can prove so costly across risk domains”.
That means taking everything into account, including those high impact low probability events that can’t be eliminated just because of the low likelihood of them occurring. At some point the probability ratio can change. That needs to be considered. As Professor Michael E. Mann notes, ‘risk is defined as the product of the likelihood and consequence of an outcome’.
Such is the state of affairs that the Paris agreement as it stands is not fit for purpose, with warming predicted at 3–5°C. The magnitude of such changes would be catastrophic, with a possible reduction in human population by at least 80%, with extreme heat waves that could curtail many global activities. The issue with existential risks are that we can’t learn lessons from them as there is no recovery from them.
A key component in IPCC climate predictions are general circulation models (GCMs). These are computer based predictions that attempt to establish climate change scenarios of various elements e.g. sea level rise. But again the problem with many of the predictions are underestimation, particularly when it comes to feedback loops, as they don’t account for them. Semi-empirical models tend to be more effective as they tap into the paleoclimate record:
In privileging GCMs over semi-empirical models, the IPCC downplays insights from Earth’s climate history.
Positive feedback loops amplify a process exponentially until it reaches a threshold. Once a critical threshold is reached, the process hits a tipping point. An example is melting sea ice. Ice reflects radiation from the sun. As the ice melts, less radiation is reflected and more is absorbed by the ocean, leading to increased melting. A tipping point could be the collapse of an ice sheet leading to a sudden rise in sea levels. This process has been considerably underestimated by climate models. Tipping points can be difficult to predict as the science is still developing in this area of study.
There are three key areas of concern here. First, soil carbon could become depleted:
The projected loss of soil carbon resulting from climate change is a potentially large but highly uncertain feedback to warming, however there is likely to be strong carbon-climate feedbacks from colder northern soils.
Secondly, deforestation ‘could cut in half the carbon sink of tropical rainforests.’ The Amazon is a case in point. Research indicates that on its current trajectory, it’s role as a carbon sink is in decline.
Thirdly, permafrost represents a huge carbon reserve, amounting to around 1.5 trillion tons. The ramifications here are dire:
The effect of the permafrost carbon feedback has not been included in the IPCC scenarios, including the 2014 report. This is despite clear evidence that “the permafrost carbon feedback will change the Arctic from a carbon sink to a source after the mid-2020s and is strong enough to cancel 42–88% of the total global land sink”. In 2012, researchers found that, for the 2100 median forecasts, there would be 0.23–0.27°C of extra warming due to permafrost feedbacks. Some scientists consider that 1.5°C appears to be something of a “tipping point” for extensive permafrost thaw.
Another major issue is methane hydrates, which will be discussed in more detail later. This has links with two other key tipping points - the collapse of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Much of this feeds into the global constant of sea level rise, which the IPCC has failed to adequately address.
Ultimately the IPCC process is a compromise. By the time the ARs come out, they are already three years out-of-date. What goes into the reports is based on consensus. Firstly, the scientists involved in the process debate what research is included. That can lead to omissions of ‘alarmist’ research. The next step is reaching agreement with policy makers. This is when the process becomes political. As the report notes:
the powerful coordinating authors for reports are selected by political representatives of the 195 member nations of the IPCC.
Invariably this means that more influential states move the narrative:
In 2014, The Guardian reported increasing evidence that “the policy summaries on climate impacts and mitigation by the IPCC were significantly ‘diluted’ under political pressure from some of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, including Saudi Arabia, China, Brazil and the United States”.
The IPCC and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are part of a process that was hatched in the late 1970s. The first World Climate Conference held in February 1979 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), was effectively the launching pad for the eventual setting up of the IPCC in 1988 and UNFCCC during the 1992 ‘Earth Summit’, as I covered here.
The Conferences of the Parties (COPs) under the UNFCCC follow a similar process of consensus as the IPCC with the same levels of political interference prevailing. The Paris Agreement established in 2015 is voluntary and has little impact. As the report notes:
The UNFCCC primary goal is to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. But what is “dangerous”? Traditionally, policymakers have focused on the 2°C target, but the Paris Agreement emphasises “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”.
The point made by the authors is that we have already crossed the ‘dangerous’ threshold, so setting a target is largely meaningless.
What Lies Beneath exposes serious shortcomings in a climate mitigation process based initially on hard science. The result is ‘soft’ science that fails to deal with the core issues. The science is softened by policy makers who simply don’t grasp the reality of the situation, because it conflicts with short term ideological commitments. That makes them complicit ‘in destroying the very conditions which make human life possible. There is no greater crime against humanity.’ It all boils down to this:
The dominant neo-liberal framing of progress, through globalisation and deregulation, suppresses regulatory action which would address the real climate challenge because it undermines the prevailing political–economic orthodoxy.
Some of the elements raised in this report will be explored in more detail below.
In September 2021, the report, Climate change risk assessment 2021, was published by Chatham House, covering exactly what the above report advocated, putting risk assessment at the forefront of climate prediction. The report makes for sobering reading. The first point the paper makes is that if countries continue with their current nationally determined contributions (NDCs), the terms of the Paris Agreement will not be met. This means that:
If emissions follow the trajectory set by current NDCs, there is less than 5 per cent chance of keeping temperatures well below 2°C, and less than 1 per cent chance of reaching the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target.
This estimate is based on the IPCC’s common emissions scenario. The paper notes the shortcomings of some climate models. However:
some initial results from the latest climate models, part of the IPCC’s ongoing Sixth Assessment Report cycle, demonstrate greater climate sensitivity (temperature response to a doubling of atmospheric CO₂) than shown in earlier models.
The paper outlines various indicators and how they are likely to unfold in the future.
The impact of heatwaves are already being felt across the globe. These will become exasperated in the future, affecting work, food production, water availability, through increased drought conditions. Food security is already being affected. Many regions have experienced severe drought conditions leading to crop failure. This is compounded by water insecurity. Mega-droughts could become more common. Flooding is another issue, especially around coastal regions due to sea level rise. But heavy rainfall over drought stricken areas will cause flash floods and widespread erosion.
The paper covers how cascading systemic impacts will directly affect human systems. It identifies six key risk areas:
National and international security
Economic and trade disruption
Migration pressures
Food security
Health crises
Energy security
These are detailed in a systems diagram:
As the paper notes:
Cascading risks will ultimately cause higher mortality rates, drive political
instability and greater national insecurity, and fuel regional and international conflict. The cascading risks over which the participating experts expressed greatest concern were the interconnections between shifting weather patterns, resulting in changes to ecosystems, and the rise of pests and diseases, which, combined with heatwaves and drought, will likely drive unprecedented crop failure, food insecurity and migration of people. Subsequently, these impacts will likely result in increased infectious diseases (greater prevalence of current infectious diseases, as well as novel variants), and a negative [sic] feedback loop compounding and amplifying each of these impacts.
The risks are clear, but they appear to be beyond the comprehension of those who have paid lip service to the climate emergency.
The next section covers the major (hidden) threats.
Climate denial has been an endemic problem hampering action on climate change right from the outset in order to protect vested interests. Organised resistance against climate action began in 1989, with the formation of the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), by a number of fossil fuel companies and others, in response to the formation of the IPCC the previous year. It was eventually disbanded in 2002. Documents released in April 2019 exposed the efforts of this lobby to disrupt and undermine the IPCC, particularity in the run-up to Kyoto in 1997. The activities of the GCC would later influence policy decisions by the George W. Bush administration, leading to the US withdrawing from the Kyoto protocol.
Climate denial was rife under Bush and one of the key companies pushing against climate change was ExxonMobil. It was their efforts that disposed former IPCC chair Dr Bob Watson, a climate scientist, from his position, aiming to undermine the third assessment report. I documented Bush’s tenure in my Paris article and highlighted an article from Rolling Stone on how:
the White House has implemented an industry-formulated disinformation campaign designed to actively mislead the American public on global warming and to forestall limits on climate polluters.
And how AR4 had come under scrutiny following Exxon’s earlier interventions:
After the publication of the Third Assessment Report in 2001 the fossil-fuel industry recognised that the scientific information presented by the IPCC posed a massive threat to its future profitability and steps were taken to gain control of its process and agenda. The leader of the Senate in the Washington administration went on record at this time to castigate climate change as “The greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”, a sentiment later echoed by the President himself.
Then there was COP 15 in Copenhagen (Barrack Obama was now in the White House):
COP15 failed. Why? The answer is revealed in this Ecologist article. Based on revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden, ‘we now know that the US National Security Agency (NSA) gathered intelligence from key countries involved in the Copenhagen talks.’ The article notes:
The NSA documents show that the US monitored communications between countries before the summit, and planned to spy on the negotiations during the conference.
As COP26 in Glasgow approaches and the AR6 IPCC report has made its first tentative impact, the climate battle continues, but this time on a more subtle level. The scientific evidence is now so substantial that overt outright denial is less prevalent. This report from InfluenceMap outlines how it will shape up:
With increasing scrutiny from investors, regulators and the public, however, outright denial has increasingly become an unviable tactic for these major companies. In its place, oil and gas companies have developed an increasingly nuanced and subtle set of messaging techniques, often utilizing elements of the science on climate change in misleading ways.
Many of these messages are used on Facebook and social media platforms, a new frontier and tool for influencing the debate around climate. With a wealth of information on its 2.85 billion monthly active users, Facebook presents advertisers with unparalleled opportunities to promote their message in a highly targeted and effective manner.
The IPCC doesn’t have much to say about climate denial. There may be a discussion in the WG2 report as the AR5 WG2 report (p.204) makes this brief note:
Grothmann and Patt (2005) developed and tested a socio-cognitive model of proactive private adaptation to climate change showing that perceptions of adaptive capacities were important as well as perceptions of risk. If a perceived high risk is combined with a perceived low adaptive capacity (see
Section 2.4.2.2; Glossary), the response is fatalism, denial, and wishful
thinking.
With powerful lobbyists behind the politicians, it shouldn’t come as a great surprise that the wider UN climate process has failed to make any meaningful impact. Kyoto was dead in the water before it was even put out. And even if a legal instrument is established in Glasgow, which is likely as it’s a culmination of the Paris process, by the time it is implemented it will be hopelessly inadequate.
The rate of climate change is usually represented by warming levels compared with a baseline, reckoned to be the start of the industrial revolution. The IPCC notes:
The period 1850–1900 represents the earliest period of sufficiently globally complete observations to estimate global surface temperature and, …is used as an approximation for pre-industrial conditions.
Based on these parameters, the average global temperature has risen by 1.2˚C. In response, several scientific papers have highlighted the underestimation with alternative research based on computer models and other evidence over and above that used by the IPCC. A paper from the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society by a group of scientists from various universities that includes Reading, Edinburgh and East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, recommend using the period 1720–1800 as the pre-industrial baseline. A letter published in Nature Geoscience takes a similar approach along with another in Nature Climate change, both of which were noted in the What Lies Beneath report. Based on this research, the actual global temperature profile is higher by around 0.1˚C. By its very nature there is a degree of uncertainty as to what is the actual change, but the evidence points to a higher figure than what is cited. Obviously this reduces the time-frame under which a certain target will be breached.
Methane Hydrate is a hidden peril, which could hold the key to runaway global warming. And it’s happened before. It’s widely agreed that huge quantities of methane release was responsible for the end Permian mass extinction, which took place around 250 million years ago. A paper published in the journal Palaeoworld investigates the event. ‘About 90% of marine species, 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species, 30% of insect orders and an indeterminate percentage of terrestrial and marine plants succumbed during this catastrophe.’ The initial warming process was started by the release of CO2 from Siberian Trap volcanism, which then triggered a positive feedback loop that led to the breakdown of methane hydrates. The paper concludes:
Our observations on the global warming process, such as the release of massive amounts of carbon dioxide and subsequently followed by methane from hydrates, and their impacts on life during the end Permian may have important lessons for humanity and the problems associated with climate change in the 21st century.
A more recent event was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), occurring around 55 million years ago. A study from 2019 comes to similar conclusions that the release of methane hydrates would have been a factor in an accelerated warming process and that there are parallels here with the current warming process. It would therefore be expected that a disturbance of methane hydrates should be happening now.
In 2020, a major research project was undertaken by a group of scientists from Russia and Sweden. The ISSS-2020 Arctic Ocean Expedition’s aim is to ‘investigate cryosphere-climate-carbon couplings on the extensive East Siberian Arctic Ocean Shelf.’ And:
understanding subsea and coastal permafrost thawing, hydrate collapse and the processes that result in releases of potent greenhouse gases such as methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.
It forms part of a 15 year study. A paper produced by the project in 2017 investigates, Current rates and mechanisms of subsea permafrost degradation in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf.
An interesting finding from the study was the impact of Arctic drilling:
Numerous gas blowouts followed by long-lasting gas flow have been reported from permafrost areas disturbed by exploratory drilling in Siberia, both on-land and offshore. Such gas blowouts were reported from shallow permafrost-related gas-hydrate accumulations at depths of only a few tens of metres, starting from 20m depth.
What can also occur is the permeation of salt into sub-sea permafrost following a thaw. This reduces the freezing point, which could ultimately result in the destruction of coastal formations due to heat transfer and salt intrusion. Offshore erosion from melt water could exasperate the process as well as ice scouring, from icebergs or glaciers, which can gouge channels in the seafloor. If this happens in an area with submerged methane deposits, it will release the highly pressurised gas. Given that a warming climate will produce more icebergs with accelerated glacial movement, this could become an accentuating tipping point.
The IPCC makes reference to impact of global warming (p.1270), but takes the position that it would take millennia for this impact to occur. Most of the hydrates would be converted into CO2, suggesting a release of only 2% this century.
But its not just polar regions where evidence of methane release is happening. A study off the Brazilian coast has found evidence of methane release. A certain amount of methane will be consumed by microorganisms releasing CO2. Some of this will be absorbed into the ocean. This study consolidates the fact that methane hydrates are very much a global phenomenon.
A critical issue that emerges from these studies is the manifestation of feedback loops. One feedback mechanism can lead to a cascade reaction of other connected loops. Domino theory illustrates the point. Tip over the first domino in a row and the rest topple over. Imagine this scenario. High levels of CO2 warm the planet, including the oceans. The oceans absorb CO2 causing acidification, itself a tipping point for other reactions. CO2 is also derived from methane release, which is absorbed. This elevates another tipping point, ocean hypoxia, a condition where oxygen is depleted in the water. Hypoxia can be caused by other factors, but it tends to be related to acidification as well as warming, what the National Center for Coastal Ocean Science describes as a Double Whammy for Marine Life. Other studies confirm the link with climate change.
To say life on Earth depends on the oceans would be an understatement. Phytoplankton are the worlds principle producer of oxygen, supplying the planet with an estimated 80% of its oxygen supply. A 2010 study published in Nature, Global phytoplankton decline over the past century, indicates that phytoplankton has been steadily declining over the past century at a rate of around 1% a year. The study notes:
Generating roughly half the planetary primary production, marine phytoplankton affect the abundance and diversity of marine organisms, drive marine ecosystem functioning, and set the upper limits to fishery yields. Phytoplankton strongly influence climate processes and biogeochemical cycles, particularly the carbon cycle.
It concludes:
The long-term global declines observed here are, however, unequivocal. These results provide a larger context for recently observed declines …and are consistent with the hypothesis that increasing ocean warming is contributing to a restructuring of marine ecosystems, with implications for biogeochemical cycling, fishery yields and ocean circulation.
It is now well understood that ocean circulation patterns are vital for the distribution of nutrients, essential for maintaining the diversity of marine life, and that storm systems and ocean currents are part of this process. Plankton depend on these processes. They also prop up the food chain. Almost all marine organisms depend either directly or indirectly on phytoplankton. The effects of CO2 emissions on these organisms represents another feedback loop in the chain. One particular ocean cycle acts as a vital artery here.
The thermohaline circulation current - also called the great ocean conveyor belt - is a global system whereby warm surface water increases its salinity through evaporation and cools and sinks at polar regions to create a deep sea current that eventually rises to the surface. This animation from NASA shows how it works.
The main focus of attention has been on the Atlantic section of the system or the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). This is one system that has attracted some wider attention. Hollywood even made a disaster movie out of it!
Recent research indicates that the AMOC is slowing down and appears to be approaching a tipping point that could result in its collapse. The impacts of such a collapse is discussed in a paper published in Climate Dynamics, Global and European climate impacts of a slowdown of the AMOC in a high resolution GCM. The main impacts would be:
• Widespread cooling throughout the North Atlantic and northern hemisphere in general, with cooling in Europe of several degrees.
• Much greater sea ice coverage in the North Atlantic.
• Less precipitation and evaporation in the northern hemisphere mid-latitudes.
• Large changes in precipitation in the tropics with a southwards shift of the Atlantic Intertropical Convergence Zone.
• A strengthening of the North Atlantic storm tracks.
In addition there could be increased snow cover during winter and food production could be impacted due to cooler conditions and reduced water availability.
The paper concludes:
The consequences of an AMOC collapse and the potential impacts on human and natural systems are very large and would affect not only Europe but large regions across the globe. […]Many impacts from an AMOC collapse could be of comparable size to, or larger than those from global warming, and although some impacts from global warming would be lessened, others would be reinforced by an AMOC collapse.
The impacts of this on the marine ecosystem would be dramatic. Deep water nutrient mixing would be impacted and plankton biomass could be reduced by up to 50%. This article from Earthtalk outlines the mechanics of the AMOC and the consequences of a shutdown. It notes that:
a slowdown in AMOC will cause a slowdown in the entire thermohaline circulation current which will affect climate not just in the north Atlantic, but globally.
In addition:
one of the world’s largest carbon sinks will be lost, exacerbating the effects of greenhouse gas emissions; and the horizontal temperature gradient will increase and drive superstorms of unprecedented power. There is evidence that such a shutdown of the AMOC occurred 118,000 years ago during the previous interglacial period (the Eemian). On the Bahamian island of Eleuthera, seven massive 1,000-ton boulders are positioned atop a 15-meter-high cliff. According to several studies, they were transported there by super storms.
The IPCC has ‘medium confidence’ that the AMOC will not experience an abrupt collapse before 2100 (p.81).
The article also introduces a curious phenomenon known as the “cold blob”. Also curious is its technical name, the North Atlantic warming hole (NAWH), despite it being ‘a region of reduced warming located in the North Atlantic Ocean’. This video goes into more detail.
A study from scientists at Penn State university has reported that the NAWH is linked to a slowdown of the AMOC. It is influenced by melting ice from the Greenland ice cap. It could also impact the behaviour of the jet stream. But more research is needed.
There is another anomaly in the Arctic, that could drastically change the dynamics of the North Atlantic. A team of scientists have been working on the Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project from 2003 to 2019. An article from Yale Environment outlines the story of this potent phenomenon. The Beaufort Gyre is a semi-permanent wind-driven current in the Arctic Ocean. It is driven consistently by a steady flow of westerly’s. Within the Gyre, a huge accumulation of fresh water has built up. In the past, the Gyre has intermittently released quantities of fresh water into the Atlantic, generating a cooling effect on the climate. Such an event happened in the 1970’s, known as the Great Salinity Anomaly. But due to the effects of increased warming in the Arctic, the Gyre has intensified. It is reckoned that if the wind direction changed, this would release the massive buildup of fresh water into the Atlantic, dubbed as a “ticking climate bomb.” The ramifications of such a release could directly impact the AMOC, generating another key tipping point, turning the ‘cold blob’ into a very large chilled lake.
The IPCC makes a vague reference to the Beaufort Gyre (p.2186):
The SROCC [IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate] complemented the AR5 assessment by reporting that the polar Beaufort Gyre in the Arctic expanded to the northwest between 2003 and 2014, contemporaneous with changes in its freshwater accumulation and alterations in wind forcing.
Tropical peatlands isn’t something you hear much about. But recent discoveries reveal that there is more peat in the tropics than was originally thought.
A paper published in the Journal Land Use Policy, A review of the drivers of tropical peatland degradation in South-East Asia, gives an informative outline on the impacts on peatlands in South-East Asia. Tropical peatland differs from northern peatlands. It forms at high temperature and precipitation, is comprised mainly of undecomposed remains of woody plants and is usually covered by tropical rainforest. They represent over 20% of global peatland
carbon stocks. The South-East Asian region contains the largest store of tropical peatland at around 75%.
The paper examines the main drivers of peatland degradation. Logging is a major problem in the region, particularly ‘rampant’ illegal logging, facilitating conversion into agricultural plantations, particularly large-scale palm oil and wood (pulp), over the last 20 years or so. This has destroyed large areas of peatland and related forest. And it appears to be continuing, as the paper notes:
Large-scale agriculture and industrial plantations are predicted to continue to drive high rates of peat swamp forest loss and degradation, owing to the Indonesian Government’s plan to double its annual palm oil production by 40 million tons by 2020 and triple the total area of industrial timber plantations to 14.7 Mha by 2030.
Along with the land conversion comes the construction of drainage canals to siphon off surface water. But:
the construction of drainage canals within peatland ecosystems disrupts the natural hydrological balance by increasing the surface water run-off and reducing water-storage capacity. The groundwater table drawdown enhances peat oxidation, consolidation and shrinkage, leading to peat subsidence and carbon emissions and increased fire risks, which will aggravate climate change.
And fire has become a major problem in the region. It it used as a means of rapid and effective land clearance. But many of the fires have gone out of control and the destructive impact has been massive. It’s the main driver of peat degradation, destroying millions of hectares and resulting in ‘the removal of both above and below groundcarbon stocks, and the destruction of woody and non-woody vegetation (parent trees and saplings) and seed banks.’
Needless to say this has resulted in huge emissions of CO2, through the destruction of an immensely vital carbon store, ultimately becoming a driver of climate change. Already these impacts are being felt in the region through the effects of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The report highlights prolonged droughts during El Niño phases and flooding during La Niña. It is during extended drought periods that peatlands are at their most vulnerable. And its likely to get worse, with overall rainfall in the region predicted to drop. The ramifications are immense. It will likely trigger a feedback loop that will result in wider loss of the water table affecting the entire ecosystem in the region. In short:
These vast carbon emissions will contribute to enhanced regional and global climate change.
And its the same story elsewhere. In the Congo and in South America, forests and wetlands are under threat.
The final area of concern is a source of considerable direct destruction and a significant emitter of greenhouse gases. It is also one of the biggest financial black holes on the planet. If some of the money spent on conflict over the past few decades had been spent on sustainable development instead, we probably wouldn’t be facing a climate crisis.
In a previous article, I outlined how the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defence (MOD) had published climate change reports, the first back in 2007. Yet despite the apparent awareness, nothing changes.
According to a report from Institute for Policy Studies (emphasis in the original):
Over the 20 years since 9/11, the U.S. has spent $21 trillion on foreign and domestic militarization.
Of that total, $16 trillion went to the military — including at least $7.2 trillion for military contracts.
Another $3 trillion went to veterans’ programs, $949 billion went to Homeland Security, and $732 billion went to federal law enforcement.
For far less than it spent on militarization since 9/11, the U.S. could reinvest to meet critical challenges that have been neglected for the last 20 years:
$4.5 trillion could fully decarbonize the U.S. electric grid.
$2.3 trillion could create 5 million jobs at $15 per hour with benefits and cost-of-living adjustments for 10 years.
$1.7 trillion could erase student debt.
$449 billion could continue the extended Child Tax Credit for another 10 years.
$200 billion could guarantee free preschool for every 3-and-4-year old for 10 years, and raise teacher pay.
$25 billion could provide COVID vaccines for the populations of low-income countries.
Yet the defence mandarins themselves admit that climate change is the greatest security threat facing us. Research conducted by Brown university’s Watson Institute, reveals the Costs of War. The report points out:
Unlike some elements of the present US administration, which is in various modes of climate denial, the US military and intelligence community act as if the negative security consequences of a warming planet are inevitable. The DOD has studied the problem for decades and begun to adapt its plans, operations and installations to deal with climate change.
Yet:
the Pentagon does not acknowledge that its own fuel use is a major contributor to climate change.
The report estimates the climate costs of the ‘war on terror’ following 9/11:
The best estimate of total US military greenhouse gas emissions (including
installations and operations) from 2001 when the wars began with the US invasion of Afghanistan, through FY2018, is 1,267 million metric tons of greenhouse gases (measured in CO2equivalent, or CO2e). The Overseas Contingency Operations (war-related) greenhouse gas emissions portion of those emissions—including for the major war zones of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Syria— is estimated to be more than 440 Million Metric Tons of CO2e for the period of FY2001-2018.
According to global estimates of CO2 emissions by country, the Pentagon would be 47th in the table, above Morocco, if it was a country.
An in-depth study from the Royal Geographical Society takes a deep dive into the sprawling US military machine, how it functions and its impact on the planet - its “carbon boot‐print”, through the concept of geopolitical ecology:
Geopolitical ecology is a theoretical framework that combines political ecology with critical geopolitics to gain deeper insight into the impact of large geopolitical institutions on environmental change.
The beating heart of the machine is the US Defense Logistics Agency, specifically here the ‘Energy’ sub agency (DLA-E). To sum up its function:
The DLA‐E has a worldwide distribution infrastructure for hydrocarbon fuels delivery and provides logistical and planning support to the military's geographic combat commands and warzones around the world. The DLA‐E is also the primary purchase‐point for hydrocarbon‐based fuels for the US military, both domestically and internationally.
Without this infrastructure the US military's capabilities would be substantially impeded. It is an essential component that allows its ‘everywhere war’ to persist. This sets up a symbiotic relationship between the military and corporations through elaborate supply chains. The paper quotes Laleh Khalili, describing the US military’s role as “a wielder of capitalist infrastructural power”:
This role includes not only the US military's provision of large contracts to private businesses, but also especially the construction of the physical and virtual infrastructures that underlie the emergence of liberal capitalism overseas. Nor is this activity limited to wartime. In fact, it is in moments of global economic and political transition, and in ostensible peacetime, that the US military's infrastructural power has been a dispositif central to the task of disseminating liberal capitalism.
What he is effectively saying is that the military is a core driver of global neoliberalsim - itself the root cause of the calamity that is unfolding before us. This is further expressed by the paper in terms of a ‘ “new logistical imperialism” which better highlights the geoeconomic role of the US military in fostering global supply chains.’
The carbon ‘boot print’ of the military is substantial. During world war 2, a solider typically consumed a gallon of fuel per day. By the Vietnam war, it was 9 gallons per day. Today its around 22 gallons per day. This translates to about 14 million gallons of fuel worth $53 million per day. In order to serve the Empire:
Between 2015 and 2017, the US military was active in 76 countries, including seven countries on the receiving end of air/drone strikes, 15 countries with “boots on the ground,” 44 overseas military bases, and 56 countries receiving counter‐terrorism training. Each of these missions requires energy – often considerable amounts of it – and the DLA‐E is the institution that supplies it.
This is why the Pentagon began looking at renewables back in 2008, during a period of high oil prices. However that suddenly waned in the wake of the fracking boom in the US. But even in the absence of any actual conflict overseas, ‘the US military would [still] be the largest institutional consumer of oil in the world.’
The figures for fuel consumption and emissions noted above don’t include various other indirect supply chains that could result in even higher relative figures. Also noted - unsurprisingly - is the fact that the lions share of fuel consumption comes from the air force:
military jet fuel (JP‐8) is, like all jet fuel, molecularly similar to kerosene, and it emits CO2 water, SOx, and NOx (known in aggregate as carbon‐dioxide equivalent, CO 2e). These pollutants are more potent than terrestrial equivalents because burning at higher altitude produces different kinds of chemical reactions, resulting in warming 2–4 times greater than on the ground. This difference in GHG output is one of the reasons why impact is significant, as the bulk of fuel consumed by the US military is jet fuel used for the Air Force or Navy.
Whatever way you look at it, the very way the military operates, locks it into fossil fuel consumption. There’s a limit to the level of ‘greening’ that can possibly take place. There has been an effort to incorporate biofuels in the shape of the US navy’s ‘Great Green Fleet’. But these are a non-starter, as I’ve pointed out previously. It would appear then that nature, like everything else, is for the taking.
There can be little doubt, taking account of all the dependency paths, the destruction that invariably accompanies conflict, and all the other military forces of the world, ‘defence’ has a very significant environmental impact, which of course includes the UK MOD, which, according to a report by Declassified, has been underestimating its carbon impacts. In conclusion:
the headline summary is that social movements concerned with climate change must be every bit as vociferous in contesting US military interventionism. Whatever is left of the anti‐war movement must keep environmental impacts at the front of the critique. What this means in practice is that, among other things, using the potential of climate‐change‐induced conflict to argue for swifter adoption of renewables to conduct warfare is fundamentally contradictory and self‐defeating. The logics, logistics, and bureaucratic structures embedded in the overarching modalities of the US war apparatus are inextricably tethered to hydrocarbons.
This isn’t something that you'd typically find on the agenda of environmental organisations though. One organisation that has covered this issue is the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT). Their Arms to Renewables campaign has been running in the UK since the publication of their report back in 2014. The message is simple:
Real security involves tackling the causes of problems, not creating more, and climate change is one of the biggest that we face. A full transition away from arms manufacturing and towards the development of renewables must and can start now.
The What lies Beneath report used the expression ‘executive myopia’. A very apt description for those in the Washington establishment (and their allies) who are incapable of recognising that they represent the greatest security threat facing us.
All this raises a question. What’s the point of hanging around for a massive IPCC report that follows a seven year cycle, when climate research is forthcoming on an almost daily basis? Why not focus on real science and real research rather than a compromised second-hand version?
The UNFCCC comes under the same scrutiny. It is as noted above a distraction, or as James Hanson put it:
we approach the gas bag season – the next Conference of the Parties (COP26) is scheduled for November 1-12. Gas bag politicians won’t show you the data that matter because that would reveal their miserable performances. Instead, they set climate goals for their children while adopting no polices that would give such goals a chance. Some of them may have been honestly duped about the science and engineering, but many must be blatant hypocrites.
Already COP26 is turning into a farce before it even starts. As Common Dreams reports ‘vaccine apartheid’ is threatening equitable representation at COP26. The result of this is a call from over 1,500 global civil society organisations to postpone the summit. The Climate Action Network (CAN) released a statement:
a safe, inclusive, and just global climate conference is impossible given the failure to allow vaccines to reach millions of people in poor countries, the rising costs of international travel and accommodation, and the uncertainty in the course of the Covid19 pandemic.
Many of the countries in the global south who would have been represented at COP are on the UK’s ’red list’ of restricted countries, most of which are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, will not be able to travel to the UK because of the COVID restrictions. But its not these countries fault:
Less than 2% of people in low-income countries—many of which are currently being ravaged by the highly infectious Delta variant—have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, according to Our World in Data. Just 3% of Africa's population has been fully vaccinated.
Rich countries, meanwhile, are swimming in excess doses and blocking an effort at the World Trade Organization to suspend Big Pharma's patent protections, leaving in place an intellectual property regime that has artificially restricted global vaccine supply. Recent research by the analytics firm Airfinity found that wealthy nations will have a surplus of around 1.2 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses by the end of the year.
Another bugbear has been the availability of accommodation, as reported by the Guardian. In previous COPs local authorities have made public buildings available such as gyms or community centres. Although the pandemic hasn’t helped matters, Glasgow City Council has nevertheless came under fire. According to a Council spokesperson:
One of the reasons Glasgow was selected by the UK government to host Cop26 was due to a range of accommodation options being available and accessible within an acceptable commuting distance of the city.
The UK government’s accommodation partner, MCI, has secured high quality hotel rooms across properties in central Glasgow, surrounding areas and Edinburgh. All with a range of transport options close by or within walking distance of the main venue.
In addition, MCI has only secured around a third of the market availability for hotel rooms in Glasgow, Edinburgh and the surrounding areas so alternative options for booking hotel accommodation are still available, along with other types of accommodation in the central belt.
Then there’s the lobbying. Corporate Europe Observatory highlights what happened at the previous COP in Madrid in 2019, something that has become the familiar face of the UNFCCC process, effectively bankrolled by vested interests. It is irrational in the extreme to undermine action against an existential threat, but that is the self-delusional entity that pervades the system.
This then is the process that we are relying upon to tackle the climate crisis, a process driven by a deeply flawed system, that will push false solutions through the narrow pipeline of business as usual. What are the alternatives? that will be the subject of a follow-up article.
The next post will examine the false solutions that will ostensibly solve the climate crisis. These will be compared to genuine solutions that may mitigate the worse effects of the climate catastrophe.
That was a helluva effort, and worth the long read. Thank you. Unfortunately, the conclusion remains the same - immediate greed is more powerful than the future.
Yes. Unfortunately I think you're right there.