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Our guest today worked on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AR4 report which you may recall shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former vice president Al Gore. His expertise has lead him to testify before the Senate as well as garnering him an invitation to the White House to consult on Climate Change. He has been a professor of geophysics at the University of Michigan for more than forty years, travels regularly to Antarctica, and has conducted scientific research on all seven continents.  He is the author of “Uncertain Science . . . Uncertain World”, and he joins us today to talk about the science of Climate Change and his latest book “A World Without Ice”. Dr. Henry Pollack.

Some climate information that came up during our discussions with Dr. Pollack paraphrased by the Newlygreens Editorial Staff:

The IPCC report is often cited as the leading compilation on Climate Science. One of the criticisms of the IPCC report is that it is compromised by the political influence of various nations. Ironically, critics of climate change also accuse it of being alarmist. Well, as you might expect, you can’t have it both ways. In reality the projections and forecasts of the impacts of climate change constantly outpace those made in IPCC reports. If you think the picture the reports paint of the future is alarming now, you should see what the science says when undiluted by the competing interests of politics.

Another criticism is that the Summary for Policy Makers overstates certainty that man-made causes are causing the changes we see.  There are numerous lines of evidence that indicate man is having a considerable influence on global climate through large-scale land use changes, and the emission of pollution via the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas.

The IPCC report on Climate Change is now several years old. Prior to the UN Copenhagen meeting last December a group of leading Climate Scientists released the Copenhagen Diagnosis that showed several examples of how the IPCC projections of future impacts were in fact too conservative and were being outpaced by reality. (Executive Summary below in the Show Notes) A few examples of this are:

6a)  IPCC Follow Up -
We have seen a 40% reduction in sea ice in the Arctic over the last 40 years and we are on course to loose all summer ice in the near future.  The IPCC made projections about how fast we might expect to loose the remaining ice at the North Pole but it now seems that reality is outpacing those predictions.  We will be the first generation of humans EVER to see an Arctic with no ice in the summer.

6b)  IPCC Follow Up –
Greenland – Jakobshavn (Ya-kob-zha-van) Glacier - the actual rate of ice loss is significantly greater than that which was forecast in IPCC AR4.
Jakobshavn Isbrae holds the record as Greenland’s fastest moving glacier and major contributor to the mass balance of the continental ice sheet. Starting in late 2000, following a period of slowing down in the mid 1990s, the glacier showed significant acceleration and nearly doubled its discharge of ice through 2006. 7-8% of all ice lost from Greenland is coming off the Jakobshavn glacier - NASA Greenland has either been neutral or loosing ice since 1960.

6c)  IPCC Follow Up -
Anthropogenic (Human) Forcing Factors Detailed:
GHG Emissions – Ralph David Keeling – Keeling Curve – 1957 GHG concentration was 315 ppm, was increasing at a rate of 1 ppm per year.  By 70′s it was growing at a rate of 1.4 ppm/yr, by the 80′s it had grown to 1.6 ppm/yr, today it is at 2.2 ppm/yr.  GHG emissions are growing logarithmically.  The IPCC AR4 report made projections as to what this growth would be.  Reality is outpacing projections of the IPCC AR4 report.

At the Copenhagen talks last December no one in attendance was debating the science of climate change. As far as global politics are concerned, the science is conclusive. The debates and breakdown was over what to do about it.

9)  Who do we trust?  There are essentially 4 central questions about Climate Change

1. Is the Climate Changing and what evidence is there?
2. What’s Causing it?
3. What will be the consequences?
4. What should we be doing about it?
   The lines between science and politics are often blurred when discussing climate change. Particularly when we get down to deciding how best to address it. Climate skeptics will attack the factual evidence for any of these central questions in the hopes of creating doubt. Through doubt comes inaction, through inaction we maintain business as usual, through business as usual those who profit from our polluting ways can continue to do so. Unfortunately, they also shift the ever increasing cost of dealing with that pollution onto the backs of every person on the planet. Each passing year that burden gets heavier. More concerning is that there will come a point when the pollution becomes too great to clean up as natural systems fall into a run-away positive feedback. We can not allow things to go that far.

“A World Without Ice” details the changes in climate from the last Ice Age up to present using ice as a lead character to tell your story. Ice provides a compelling narrative of climate.
In his book he says…“Nature’s best thermometer, perhaps it’s most sensitive and unambiguous indicator of climate change is ice.  Ice asks no questions, presents no arguments, reads no newspapers, listens to no debates, is not burdened by ideology, carries no political baggage, it just melts.”

11)  We’ve had extreme climate variability in the past like the 1816 The Year Without Summer, or the Little Ice Age from 1650-1725 where global temperatures dropped significantly for decades.  These were caused by either solar or volcanic events at a time when man had a minute influence on the natural environment. The paradigm today is quite different. Man now exerts more influence than many of nature’s natural forcings. In fact if human influence today was still as it was a few hundred years ago we would actually be seeing a relative cooling, not the warming we see.

Until recently I had thought of the North and South Poles as being relatively similar other than the fact that there is land under the Antarctic and a sea under the Arctic, but they are actually quite different in their respective climates and how they are responding to climate change. The North pole is on course to completely melt in the summer within a few decades. The Antarctic is considerably more stable thanks in large part to air currents and is currently oscillating +/- 4% in ice mass.

Climate Change Facts from Dr. Pollack
Evidence – Warming of the Climate System is Unequivocal” – IPCC  ::  Instrumental Record measures atmospheric, land and sea temperatures via weather stations, buoys, ships, and satellites. The UK record comes primarily from data tabulated by The Hadley Center and the University of East Anglia.  NASA Goddard Center tabulates it’s own record using independent standards, as do NOAA, and science agencies in Germany, Japan and others.  There is strong correlation between all these independent records.  The instrumental record shows an increase of .2 of a degree per decade.  Millions of temperature measurements.  9 of the last 10 years are the warmest in the last 150 years.  17 out of 20 are in the warmest in last 2 decades.  Warming is non-uniform, the Arctic, the South Pacific, are showing the greatest warming

Evidence – The evidence in support of man-made climate change is like the strings of a hammock, there are many, many interwoven theories, and data sets.  Even if one were to be proven to be in error, the numerous other threads still support the weight of the prevailing wisdom. It is the strength of the overall body of evidence that makes such a compelling case.

Evidence – Arctic and Antarctic Ice data – National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado keeps the records. The record shows 4% of variability in the Antarctic with the exception of the western peninsula. Pine Island Glacier (60-70km) is speeding up and has the potential to drain substantial amounts of ice off of Antarctica.

Evidence – Antarctic – Adelie Penguins are leaving Western Peninsula, Chinstrap and Gentoo penguins moving in.

The Copenhagen Diagnosis is a supplemental science document released as an update to the IPCC 4th Assessment prior to the Copenhagen conference in December of 2009.

Copenhagen Report 2009 – EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The most significant recent climate change findings are:

• Surging greenhouse gas emissions: Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were 40% higher than those in 1990. Even if global emission rates are stabilized at present-day levels, just 20 more years of emissions would give a 25% probability that warming exceeds 2°C, even with zero emissions after 2030. Every year of delayed action increases the chances of exceeding 2°C warming.
• Recent global temperatures demonstrate human-induced warming: Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.19°C per decade, in very good agreement with predictions based on greenhouse gas increases. Even over the past ten years, despite a decrease in solar forcing, the trend continues to be one of warming. Natural, short-term fluctuations are occurring as usual, but there have been no significant changes in the underlying warming trend.
• Acceleration of melting of ice-sheets, glaciers and ice-caps: A wide array of satellite and ice measurements now demonstrate beyond doubt that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate. Melting of glaciers and ice-caps in other parts of the world has also accelerated since 1990.
• Rapid Arctic sea-ice decline: Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models. The area of summertime sea-ice melt during 2007-2009 was about 40% less than the average prediction from IPCC AR4 climate models.
• Current sea-level rise underestimated: Satellites show recent global average sea-level rise (3.4 mm/yr over the past 15 years) to be ~80% above past IPCC predictions. This acceleration in sea-level rise is consistent with a doubling in contribution from melting of glaciers, ice caps, and the Greenland and West-Antarctic ice-sheets.
• Sea-level predictions revised: By 2100, global sea-level is likely to rise at least twice as much as projected by Working Group 1 of the IPCC AR4; for unmitigated emissions it may well exceed 1 meter. The upper limit has been estimated as ~ 2 meters sea level rise by 2100. Sea level will continue to rise for centuries after global temperatures have been stabilized, and several meters of sea level rise must be expected over the next few centuries.
• Delay in action risks irreversible damage: Several vulnerable elements in the climate system (e.g. continental ice-sheets, Amazon rain forest, West African monsoon and others) could be pushed towards abrupt or irreversible change if warming continues in a business-as-usual way throughout this century. The risk of transgressing critical thresholds (“tipping points”) increases strongly with ongoing climate change. Thus waiting for higher levels of scientific certainty could mean that some tipping points will be crossed before they are recognized.
• The turning point must come soon: If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2 °C above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilize climate, a decarbonized global society – with near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases – needs to be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO2 by 2050. This is 80-95% below the per-capita emissions in developed nations in 2000.

Causes -
Natural Forcing Factors -

1. Solar activity
2. Volcanic Eruptions (Tambura 1816 The Year Without Summer)

Anthropogenic (Human) Forcing Factors :

1. Land Use causing reduced albedo (reflectivity) and reduced vegetation to absorb GHG
2. Industrial Aerosol emissions – Smog, Soot, Black Carbon
3. Man-made Green House Gas (GHG) emissions

Natural Forcings Detailed
Solar – There is a 11 year cycle of solar activity with peaks and valleys.  The Little Ice Age occurred during a period of very little solar activity caller the Maunder Minimum (1650-1725). Since around 1950 solar activity has been decreasing (during the periods we have been observing the accelerating rate of temperature increase).

Consequences -

• More extreme rain events.  For each degree of average global temperature increase we add 4% to the atmospheric humidity.
• Arctic Permafrost – Tundra travel season has decreased from 7 months to 4 months (Ice Road Truckers)
• Methane Hydrates – Ice burning, occur under the sea and in the permafrost.  Danger of positive feedback increasing in the next three centuries.
• Sea Level Rise – the rate of rise is increasing.  50% higher than over the whole of the last century.  IPCC projections – reality has outpaced projections. Revised 2100 projections are for 3-6 feet (1-2 meters) of sea level rise.  Every 1 meter displaces approximately 100 million climate refugees particularly in the Ganges river delta, that’s the same as 7 Hurricane Katrinas every year for 100 years!  There are historic cases where sea level was 3-6 meters higher than today with about 4 degrees higher global temperature so it is possible we could be well over 2 meters by century’s end.
• Food, water.

Solutions -

• We are looking to hold the concentrations to 450ppm to hold the temp to 2 degrees increase.  With every delay the severity of the necessary cuts become increasingly drastic, more difficult, and more costly.

“The definition of a pessimist is someone who sees the difficulty in every opportunity.  The definition of an optimist is someone who sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill