A race to prevent natural disaster

When it comes to climate change, according to Dr Vicky Pope, Head of Climate change Met Office, Hadley Centre UK, “Governments and the public need to understand the consequences of choosing particular greenhouse gas emission targets, but they also need to understand what will happen if targets are missed or if they cannot be agreed on by all countries. Failures by countries to achieve targets could have far-reaching consequences. “
Current projections by the EPA that Irelands greenhouse gas emissions are predicted to grow over the next few years are extremely alarming in particular as Ireland is required under the Kyoto Agreement to achieve a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
The latest climate projections published from the EPA demonstrate that radical and urgent changes are required in Irish society in order that we may meet our commitments on climate change. One may ask why do we need to do this? Modern lifestyles suggest we live in a bubble, cocooned away from the terrible and frightening natural disasters buffering the many nations of the world today. We sometimes forget we live on a planet, the only one we know of that can support life, provides us with the air we breath, the water we drink and the food and natural resources we need to survive.

Well if we continue to do nothing and behave as if there is no tomorrow, no penalty for our unsustainable and excessive lifestyles than the very foundation of our economy, our wellbeing and our existence are threatened. The implications of an environmental collapse are far more serious than what we may see now in terms of the current financial crisis.

In tackling climate change we have no choice, morally and economically but to alter the way we live and lead more sustainable lives. The burden of not meeting our obligations under Kyoto and refusal to acknowledge the looming catastrophe will impose apart from anything else very significant financial penalties on the State and means you and me the taxpayer will ultimately have to pay for it. To avoid the worst catastrophic effects of climate change, we will have reduce our emissions by 20% in the next decade, then reduce them by at least sixty to eighty percent by the middle of the century.

But what if we don’t ? Research undertaken by the Met Office, Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom shows clearly that failures of countries to meet their targets could have worrying and significant consequences for the world's climate.

According to Dr Vicky Pope Head of the climate change advice centre at the Hadley centre “Even with large and early cuts in emissions, these projections indicate that temperatures are likely to rise to around 2C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. If action is delayed or is slow, then there is a significant risk of much larger increases in temperature. The uncertainties in the science mean that even if the most likely temperature rise is kept within reasonable limits, we cannot rule out the possibility of much larger increases. Adaptation strategies are therefore needed to deal with these less likely, but still real, possibilities.”

The international renowned Hadley Centre have conducted a series of "what if" climate projections, to give a better understanding of the temperature rises we could expect if action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions is slow or delayed.
In the first scenario, emissions continue to rise throughout the century. In the other scenarios, emission reductions have been imposed at various times and at various rates.
In the most optimistic scenario, emissions start to decrease in 2010, and reductions quickly reach 3% per year, This contrasts sharply with current trends where the world's overall emissions are increasing at 1% per year - faster than even the worst cases used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emissions scenarios.
“What is very clear is that some increase in temperature is inevitable in the next century, and that the decisions and actions that the world takes now will have a profound impact on the climate later this century” according to Dr Vicky Pope.
She said “Only an early and rapid decline in emissions gets anywhere close to the target of 50% reduction in emissions by 2050 put forward by the G8. If the world does not reduce its global warming emissions then, temperatures could rise as high as 7C above pre-industrial values by the end of the century.”
This would lead to severe and irreversible impacts. The implications of these levels of temperature increases will be catastrophic to our environment, society and economy. So why wait, we must act now.
However the central climate projections are not the only things we should be worried by. In any worse case scenario the ability of the earth to absorb carbon dioxide may contribute to much greater risk of global warming reaching irreversible dangerous tipping points. Recent research suggests that the ability of the oceans and forests to absorb carbon is reducing, scientific studies have shown that the planet can no longer absorb the amount of carbon generated by human activities.
Dr Vicky Pope says that “Plants, soils and oceans currently absorb about half of the carbon dioxide emitted by humankind's activities, limiting rises in atmospheric CO2 and slowing global warming. As temperatures increase, this absorption is very likely to decrease. For example, plant matter in the soil breaks down more quickly at higher temperatures, releasing carbon more quickly, and amplifying the warming trend. Methane released from the thawing of permafrost will add to the warming. The impact of such methane release is currently not included in climate change calculations, and becomes more of a risk for larger temperature rises. Hence, the risks of dangerous climate change will not increase slowly as greenhouse gases increase. Rather, the risks will multiply if we do not reduce emissions fast enough.”

So the obvious question is what are we waiting for ? The parallels between the financial crisis and the looming environmental crisis were never so clear. If we wait and do nothing the system will collapse, except this time it wont just be the banks but a planetary meltdown.

Next month some of the worlds leading scientists and experts will be speaking at the Partnership for Change-Climate Conference in Cork on the 14th Nov including Dr Vicky Pope, head of climate change for UK Government at the Met Office's Hadley Centre.