World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns

[dipsydoodle]

The world is likely to build so many new fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.

Anything built from now on that produces carbon will continue to do so for decades to come, and this "lock-in" effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change, the world's foremost authority on energy economics has found. If this infrastructure is not rapidly changed within the next five years, the results are likely to be disastrous.

"The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, told the Guardian. "I am very worried – if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum . The door will be closed forever."

Every month now counts: if the world is to stay below 2C of warming, which scientists regard as the limit of safety, then emissions must be held to no more than 450ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; the level is currently around 390ppm. But the world's existing infrastructure is already producing 80% of that "carbon budget", according to a new analysis by the IEA, published on Wednesday. This gives an ever-narrowing gap in which to reform the global economy on to a low-carbon footing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/09/fossil-fuel-infrastructure-climate-change

[Ship of Fools]

1. Looks like the party's over.

[The Doctor.]

2. Actually, I believe that door has long since closed.

A chain reaction has already begun. It's too late for anything but the most radical action now.

All we can do now is tell the future how sorry we are we let it happen.

[Downwinder]

9. WE are already generating more heat than the planet can dissipate.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. "within about four years, China's per capita emissions were likely to exceed those of the EU"

There's the biggest danger of all.

[dipsydoodle]

4. But they appear to remain at least 6 years behind the US

China will not allow its carbon dioxide emissions per person to reach levels seen in the US, according to the minister in charge of climate policy.

Xie Zhenhua, vice chair of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that to let emissions rise that high would be a "disaster for the world".

Chinese per-capita emissions may reach US levels by 2017, a recent study said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15444858

[hatrack]

5. Uh, yeah - when YOY atmospheric carbon increases hit 6% - well beyond worst-case projections . . .

. . . it's pretty much out of our hands at this point anyway, given the longevity of atmospheric CO2 combined with positive feedbacks.

But by all means, let's continue to spend lots of money on "clean coal" TV commercials to maintain America's lead in that key industrial sector, Warm And Fuzzy Bullshit.

[marmar]

6. The train has left the station, and the tracks behind it are mangled.

nt

[Karenina]

14. That's what I felt when Reagan took down the solar panels...

[txlibdem]

15. The true traitor to us all: Reagan

I agree with you 100%. Reagan worked tirelessly to kill or castrate all of President Carter's energy conservation and renewable energy legislation. This is 1979 we're talking about, and it took Reagan till 2004 to kill off the last of Carter's initiatives (IIRC).

When our great grandchildren look out from their domed cities and wonder who killed the world... tell them it was Ronald Reagan.

[valerief]

7. As the wealth gap widens, the emissions safety gap closes. But rich people are getting

richer and that's the most important thing in the world, not survival.

[bemildred]

8. Much too late, 50 years ago might have been able to do something to stabilize, not now. nt

[Zoeisright]

10. So long to the human race.

We have had DECADES of warning. But we've chosen to ignore the scientists. There is no way anything is going to change fast enough. And magical thinking (God will save us, someone will come up with a new invention to fix it) is only hurting us.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, dipsydoodle.

[dash_bannon]

12. Jor El Warned Krypton...

...and they ignored him.

People in the media talk like global warming is something that's going to happen in the future, and talk about alternate energy schemes and sustainability like it's a theoretical concept.

The clock's ticking and we're acting like we've got lots of time.

I guess it must not be in human nature to react to threats until we see them with our own eyes.

If that's the case, we're toast.

[certainot]

13. radio is a main tool feeding denial and our universities support RW radio by broadcasting sports on

those stations.

limbaugh is king denier and almost singlehandedly made "email gate" a factor, and 15 out of 16 of the NCAA basketball tournament finalists broadcast on limbaugh stations, giving that crap credibility.

get those unis to find alternatives and the main denier tool goes down.

[pscot]

16. K&R

[padruig]

17. Economists should never be allowed to comment on climate ...

Economists should never be allowed to comment on climate, their math skills lack sufficient rigor.

At this time there is no consensus about how much excess CO2 is 'safe' so to suggest that if we remain under two degrees C of warming is 'ok' is simply false on the face of it.

The arguments that go on in climate science today deal with two principle questions, both of which are coupled to questions of policy and action.

The first question is how sensitive our global climate is to in-situ changes in atmospheric CO2. The second question is how fast does this sensitivity couple with how fast climate trends will express themselves.

The last IPCC report was a mess because once it was published we had already pushed the generated CO2 outside the upper bounds of the model. Further it did a very inconsistent job of reflecting our understanding of the extent of increasing CO2 as a forcing function upon climactic trends.

We are currently seeing more CO2 in the earths atmosphere than we have ever experienced in human history. Last year we have measured a new high water mark in CO2 generation and unless someone has a genie in a bottle that can build down coal fired plants at a greater rate than China is putting them online, we will never get this problem to approach anything like a steady state.

The problem stems largely upon the magical thinking that we can continue to produce very high levels of CO2, greater than the earth can successfully sink by either geochemical or biological capture and that everything will be rosy.

Our models are focused on predicting forward change and not addressing the question of how much CO2 we have to pull from the environment to begin the process of stabilization.

Unlike John Cabal in the film adaptation of H.G. Wells "The Shape Of Things To Come" we are neither intellectually mature enough nor technically savvy enough to control our CO2 generation nor its impact.