Some of you may not have the capacity/strength to read the whole report and, like me, will be hoping for some kind of digest. Here is the 4 page summary of conclusions from the 51 page Supplementary Report. Below you will find a round up of some of the initial reactions. If you find other useful comments please paste them into the comments box at the bottom of this post.
While it is important to maintain a healthy skepticism of any long-term projections based on sets of modelling assumptions, the Garnaut Report is, and will be, politically important. The Supplementary Draft Report: Targets and trajectories was released on 5 September 2008. This follows the release of the Draft Report on 4 July 2008 and provides the Review’s proposals for emissions reduction trajectories and targets for Australia within an international context. The Report is informed by the economic modelling undertaken jointly with the Australian Treasury as well as the Review’s own independent modelling. The Final Report is due by 30 September 2008.
Garnaut’s central idea remains an Emissions Trading Scheme and there are many who are saying that an atmospheric carbon target of 400 ppm is actually too high…
For anyone wanting to read the Report in full, this latest addition (PDF 513KB) is now available at http://www.garnautreview.org.au
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Dr Andrew Glikson from the Research School of Earth Science at the Australian National University sent a brief submission to Crikey. It crunches some sobering numbers:
According to leading US climate and paleo-climate scientists, the current CO2 levels of 387 ppm (433 ppm CO2 + CH4 equivalent) are dangerously close to the 450 ppm CO2 level at which the polar ice sheets formed 34 million years-ago. This projection is consistent with the current fast ice melt rates in the Arctic Sea, Greenland and west Antarctica, including melting of the Wilkins ice shelf last July — one of the first times mid-winter ice shelf breakdown was observed.
The sensitivity of the atmosphere has been underestimated. Ice core studies of the Pleistocene (1.8 Ma to 11,700 years-ago) glacial-interglacial cycles display abrupt global warming and cooling events on time scales of few years to decades, including sharp climate tipping points at 14,700, 12,900 and 11,700 years-ago.
IPCC climate projections and plans for emission caps restricting temperature rises to two or three degrees and time tables for carbon emission reduction targets such as 15 percent by 2020 or 60 percent by 2060, take little account of the rates of ice sheet melt/water feedbacks loops and carbon cycle feedback loops, including release of methane hydrates from sea bottom sediments and from bogs.
Plans for climate stabilization at 450 ppm may not be able to prevent melting of the polar ice sheets. Plans for stabilization at 650 ppm may not be able to stop runaway greenhouse effects and associated extinctions.
Today Ross Garnaut has reduced expectations of Australian climate change action to a point below which anyone other than Andrew Bolt and a handful of suddenly sweating penguins could object. According to Garnaut, the best we can hope for is substantial international cooperation and an aspirational atmospheric carbon target of 450ppm.
550ppm is more likely and looks like being the mark the Australian Government will pursue. This constitutes surrender … politically, to the forces that will rage against any diminution of their capacity to dig, burn, export and boil, and environmentally to the silent but more deadly forces that by scientific consensus are placing our eco-system in almost irreparable peril.
The Garnaut targets mooted today are as clear an indication as any that our political process seems incapable of delivering the stern medicine required to arrest climate change, even under the stewardship of a government elected with a clear mandate to act. They acknowledge that we will always move first to pursue comfort and compromise. It looks, sadly, as though we will do that to our cost.
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From Environment Victoria:
Sadly, not the result any of us had hoped for – Garnaut recommends a 5% unconditional emissions reduction target by 2020 (yes, I said 5%) on 2000 levels, (which nationally are the same as 1990 levels, but sets a bad precedent state by state) with the possibility of a 10% target in the context of an international agreement (yes, I said 10%). His recommendation seems to be based upon the fact that Australia has a growing population, so these figures equate to a higher per capita reduction. He does acknowledge that to reach 450ppm stabilisation we would need to go to at least 25-40%, and he also acknowledges that 25-40% cuts or his targets are not safe targets, however his targets are not predicated on minimising emissions but on economic and political factors.
His 2050 target is 80% reductions, which is at least stronger than ALP current position if inadequate.
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Friends of the Earth Australia fear The Supplementary Draft Report released by Professor Garnaut models emission reduction targets that would lock us into a future of catastrophic runaway climate change.
“By adopting targets of 450 parts per million or 550 parts per million, he guarantees Australia will face the worst affects of climate change, with increasing droughts, species extinction, rising sea levels and loss of the Great Barrier Reef,” said Louise Morris, Friends of the Earth Climate Campaigner.
“In this report Professor Garnaut admits that “Australia is in no danger of leading the world in greenhouse gas mitigation” and with the recommendations of paltry reduction targets in the near future that continue our high emissions, he is making sure this stays the status quo.”
“Climate scientists are telling us we are already locked into a .6 degree average increase. Prof Garnaut admits that adopting cuts of 5-10% aimed towards 450 parts per million will lock us into a 2.6degree increase.”
“The current loss of the Arctic sea ice and the inevitable loss of the ice sheets and permafrost is happening at 380 ppm, this will condemn us to runaway climate change. Therefore only targets of below 350 ppm that aim at returning us to a safe climate can be justified,” said Ms Morris
“Under Professor Garnauts’ strongest recommendations we have more than 50% chance of irreversible melt of the Greenland ice sheet, almost 80% death rate in tolerant coral species and around 23% of species committed to extinction. This is simply not acceptable. We are talking about the lives of billions and the survival of most life on this planet. We cannot trade that against the ability for the fossil fuel industries to continue profiting from polluting.”
“We have an opportunity that will escape us if we fail to act now. We must work towards what we know is necessary, not easy. We need to cut our emissions by at least 50% by 2020 and 100% by 2050 if we are to stand any chance of having a stable climate that will allow us to live in a world with adequate food, clean water and opportunities for sustainable industries.”
“To achieve this we need a moratorium on new coal and political leadership that is up to this most important of all challenges.” Ms Morris concluded.
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Time is the father of truth…
An invitation form David Spratt to endorse a letter to Ross Garnaut
Below and attached is a proposed letter to Ross Garnaut from climate action and local environment groups.
The idea of the letter came from Alison Potter of Climate Change Balmain-Rozelle.
You will notice we have an initial sign-on of about 10 groups.
If your group would like to sign on, can you please respond with name of person and group by 6pm on Tuesday 16 September.
Thank you!
David Spratt
for Climate Emergency Network
update@climateemergencynetwork.org
0417070099
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A letter to Ross Garnaut from climate action groups
Dear Professor Garnaut,
In your recent letter to scientists and environmental groups, you asked for further input into your final report on the question of the 450ppm target and “overshoot”, and Australia’s position given the uncertainties about the outcome of future global negotiations.
As community-based climate action and advocacy groups across Australia, we wish to make two points.
1. 450 ppm is not not a reasonable target for a safe-climate future, nor is planning to overshoot 450 ppm
A 450 ppm target may not be sufficient to avoid dangerous climate change. With the added risk of a sustained overshoot causing threshold effects and triggering tipping points, this target holds a very real possibility of climate change running away from the human capacity to stabilise it..
There is now a growing recognition, led by the USA’s most prominent climate scientist, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Science chief Dr James Hansen, for a target in the range of 300-325ppm CO2. This is necessary, says Hansen, in order to restore the Arctic sea-ice and avoid the collapse of the Greenland and Himalayan ice-sheets, catastrophic sea-level rises and dangerous levels of ocean acidification. Hansen has noted that:
“Recent greenhouse gas emissions place the Earth perilously close to dramatic climate change that could run out of our control, with great dangers for humans and other creatures. There is already enough carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere for massive ice sheets such as West Antarctica to eventually melt away, and ensure that sea levels will rise metres in coming decades. Climate zones such as the tropics and temperate regions will continue to shift, and the oceans will become more acidic, endangering much marine life. We must begin to move rapidly to the post-fossil fuel clean energy system. Moreover, we must remove some carbon that has collected in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. “(1)
A temperature cap of 2-2.4°C, as proposed at Bali and now the subject of international negotiations, would take the planet beyond the temperature range of the last million years and into extreme danger (2). The tipping points for large ice sheet and species loss have already been crossed, as we are witnessing in the Arctic. It is no longer a case of how much more we can safely emit, but whether we can quickly stop emissions and produce a cooling before we hit tipping points and amplifying feedbacks — such as large-scale release of greenhouse gases from melting permafrost — that will take the trajectory of the earth’s climate system beyond any hope of human restoration.
Some of the scientific input to the Review may have been reticent to give sufficient emphasis to what you have termed the scientific “bad possibilities” with “immense impacts” and “highly adverse outcomes”. These are much more than “10% likely”, the risk you suggested at your Sydney public meeting. As just one example, there is a substantial body of evidence that indicates long-term climate sensitivity (the temperature rise for a doubling of CO2) is closer to 6°C than 3°C as widely assumed in climate models, including those that underlie the Review’s modelling (3). For example, CO2 levels have approximately doubled from 190 ppm at the depth of the last ice age 20,000 years ago to 380 ppm today, whilst the temperature has increased around 5°C, with more to come for the present level of CO2, due to thermal inertia. Matching greenhouse gas levels with the Earth’s temperature over the last 450,000 years has established climate sensitivity with slow feedbacks to be 6°C. (4)
This would mean that 450ppm may produce a rise of around 4°C, not the 2°C on which the Review’s modelling is predicated.
Given this understanding, overshooting of any magnitude and duration is flirting with disaster. Overshooting assumes that there is a robust mechanism operating to remove the carbon dioxide “overshoot” from the air to lower the level of greenhouse gases from the peak, before the full force is felt. But if the weakening of the carbon sinks, as predicted and observed (5) –including the permafrost time-bomb–is sufficiently large, this drawdown effect will not be strong enough. In this case, unless the natural carbon sinks are supplemented by humanity deliberately drawing down atmospheric carbon on a huge scale, “overshooting” will be a failed strategy, and atmospheric greenhouse gases will be stranded at a far higher level than planned.
We are already near or past thresholds for irreversible climate change impacts, including loss of the Arctic sea-ice and the Arctic ecosystem, significant ice sheet loss and multi-metre sea-level rises, and loss of significant carbon sinks. In these circumstances, the notion of having “room to move” through “overshooting” is fanciful.
We could also point to new research on permafrost which has doubled the estimated carbon content of permafrost (to be more that the total atmospheric carbon equivalent); estimated that the unstoppable loss of permafrost carbon will be triggered around 9-10°C regional warming; and shown that sea-ice loss can boost Arctic warming to 3.5 times the global average (6). A tipping point of a regional 9-10°C rise could be reached in Siberia as early as mid-century and now seems very likely by century’s end if a global target in the range of 450-550 ppm is adopted. The consequences are, of course, unspeakable.
We are confident that many in the climate science community would support modelling of the 300-325ppm target. We urge you to recommend in your final report that this been done as a matter of urgency, in conjunction with an up-to-date review of the scientific “bad possibilities” that are becoming more and more evident. “Middle of the road” outcomes on which the modelling was based are unlikely to eventuate; much worse outcomes are likely and must be considered if policy-making is to be robust enough to remain credible.
2. Australia should not wait for an international agreement before acting
In Asia, more than a billion people populate river basins that draw melt-water from the Himalayan-Hindu Kush ice sheet during the dry season, yet it is expected that the ice-sheet could be effectively gone by mid-century (7). What are our values here? Should we “wait and see” if the whole world will act, before we do? Or should we take the only possible moral course and do what we need to do now, without waiting, because if other nations acted similarly it may be possible to stop those billion people facing a catastrophe beyond words?
We cannot wait, as one of the world’s highest per capita emitters (even excluding the impact of our coal and gas exports). We have a greater responsibility to lead, in proportion to our our responsibility for the problem. Your interim target of 550 ppm is at least a 3-degree target, likely much more with higher climate sensitivity. Playing a game of “blink” with the international community when the stakes are the survival of most people and species is clearly indefensible.
If all nations know that we all have to take drastic action, then the first and best choice is for all nations is to act unilaterally, because we can and must. We do not have to wait for an international agreement. To decide not to act with urgency now is to choose failure.
There is a suggestion that we should not act decisively now because it would involve too great a cost. That is a political judgement, not a scientific one. Yet it may not be valid.
Recent McKinsey&Company research (8) found that a significant portion of emissions reduction measures are cash-positive, so there can be no reason to wait. Consultants are now reporting to government that within two decades the cost of stationery energy from solar-thermal and geo-thermal sources will likely be lower than from coal because of the rate of innovation and economies of scale attached to the former, and the burden of rising global coal and gas prices attached to the latter. If we decide to plan and oversee a rapid transition of Australia’s stationary energy system to renewable sources, we could halve Australian emissions within a decade or two. Why wait for an international agreement when it is in our own national interest to act now on stationary energy?
This was at the core of the challenge to America Al Gore issued in July:
“Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100% of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years…This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. To those who argue that we do not yet have the technology … I’ve seen what they [entrepreneurs who will drive this revolution] are doing and I have no doubt that we can meet this challenge. “(9)
We urge you in your final report to advocate this inspiring and transformative challenge for Australia. We believe that if Australians “have a go”, we can lead the world by example, instead of carrying on this dangerous international gamble with the planet’s future.
Sincerely,
Carole Ride, Darebin Climate Action Network
Steve Meacher, C4 Healesville
Damien Lawson, Friends of the Earth Australia
David Spratt, Carbon Equity
Deborah Hart, Locals into Victoria’s Environment (LIVE)
Lizette Salmon, Wodonga and Albury Towards Climate Health (WATCH)
Jonathan Doig, Sutherland Climate Action Network
Adrian Whitehead, Target 300
Richard Laverack, Frankston Climate Change Action Group
Lee Fuller, Emerald for Sustainability
Catherine Manning, Southern Victoria Community Action Group Inc.
More to come….
Notes:
(1) J. Hansen, frontispiece, Climate Code Red, D. Spratt and P. Sutton (Scribe 2008).
(2) J. Hansen, M. Sato et al. (2006), “Global temperature change”, Proceedings National. Academy of Sciences 103: 14288-14293.
(3) N. Bellouin, O. Boucher et al. (2005) “Global estimate of aerosol direct radiative forcing from satellite measurements”, Nature 438: 1138-41; M. O. Andreae, C. D. Jones et al. (2005) “Strong present-day aerosol cooling implies a hot future”, Nature 435: 1187-90; J. Hansen, M. Sato, et al. (2007) “Dangerous human-made interference with climate: a GISS modelE study”, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 7: 2287-312.
(4) J. Hansen, M. Sato et al., “Target atmosphere CO2: where should humanity aim”, submitted to Science, 7 April 2008, arxiv.org/abs/0804.112
(5) C. D. Jones, P. M. Cox et al. (2003) “Strong carbon cycle feedbacks in a climate model with interactive CO2 and sulphate aerosols”, Geophysical Research Letters 30: 1479; T. H. Lenton, H. Held et al. (2008) “Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system”, Proceedings National Academy Sciences 105: 1786-93; D. Solovyov and A. Doyle, “Siberian thaw could speed up global warming”, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 September 2007; J. Randerson, “Forests battle to soak up carbon”, The Age, 4 January 2008; J. B. Miller (2008) “Carbon cycle: Sources, sinks and seasons”, Nature 451: 26-27; C. LeQuere, C. Rodenbeck, et al. (2007) “Saturation of the southern Ocean CO2 sink due to recent climate change”, Science 316: 1735-38; A. Woodcock, “Scientists fear climate change speed-up as oceans fail to hold greenhouse gases”, The Scotsman, 21 October 2007.
(6) E. A. G. Schuur, James Bockheim et al. (2008) “Vulnerability of permafrost carbon to climate change: Implications for the global carbon cycle”, BioScience 58: 701-714; D. V. Khvorostyanov, P. Ciais, et al. (2008) “Vulnerability of east Siberia’s frozen carbon stores to future warming”, Geophysical Research Letters 35: 10703; D. M. Lawrence, A. G. Slater et al. (2008) “Accelerated Arctic land warming and permafrost degradation during rapid sea ice loss during rapid sea ice loss”, Geophysical Research Letters 35: 11506.
(7) Reuters, “Vanishing Himalayan Glaciers Threaten a Billion”, 5 June 2007; IPCC (2007), Working Group II Report: “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” Summary for Policymakers”, chapter 10; WWF Nepal Programme (2005) An overview of glaciers, glacier retreat, and subsequent impacts in Nepal, India and China.
(8) A. Lewis, S. Gorner et al., An Australian Cost Curve for Greenhouse Gas Reduction (McKinsey&Company: Sydney, 2008).
(9) http://www.wecansolveit.org/pages/al_gore_a_generational_challenge_to_repower_america
Dear Australian Friends,
Put your name to this urgent petition by Monday demanding Australia’s chief advisor on climate change, Professor Garnaut, recommend tough greenhouse gas cuts in his final report to the government.
We have just a 5 day window to influence the final Garnaut climate change report – the report that looks likely to shape Rudd’s climate policies for years to come.
If the PM adopts Professor Garnaut’s draft report released last week, you can say goodbye to any claim on global leadership on climate change – not to mention the Great Barrier Reef and the Kakadu Wetlands. Garnaut’s current draft gives up on a decent global deal to avert climate catastrophe before we’ve even tried.
The Garnaut Secretariat has agreed to accept public input into the final draft before next Monday, so let’s take full advantage of the opportunity. Put your name to this petition, tell your friends — and, if enough of us join together, we’ll deliver with GetUp a massive notice to Professor Garnaut before the Monday 3pm deadline:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_surrender_garnaut
It is unlikely that the PM will announce deeper cuts than those included in the Garnaut Report – that’s why it is so important that we demand Garnaut be as ambitious as possible. Up against some of the most ferocious lobbying this country has seen, we only have these few remaining days, to counter the voices of big business and the polluting industries.
We’ve all worked so hard to get to this point, let’s not let the government stumble at this hurdle by getting bad advice. Garnaut wrongly believes that there isn’t the political will to form a bold global consensus and so has recommended a 10% carbon pollution reduction target by 2020. Before he makes his final decision, let’s leave him in no doubt that Australians are part of the global consensus, and we demand bold action on climate — with the delivery of this petition:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_surrender_garnaut
Professor Garnaut agrees that without significant emission reductions we face catastrophic climate change, he just needs to be persuaded that the national and international will is there to take the necessary steps to avert it. That is one thing we can provide him with. Put your name to the petition now, and we’ll deliver it to him direct before this small window closes.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_surrender_garnaut
With hope,
Brett, Ben, Iain, Alice, Paul, Graziela, Pascal, Ricken and Milena — the Avaaz team
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