M.I.T. joins climate realists, doubles its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1 degrees C

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Climate Change has joined the climate realists. The realists are the growing group of scientists who understand that the business as usual emissions path leads to unmitigated catastrophe (see, for instance, here and below).

The Program issued a remarkable, though little-remarked-on, report in January, "Probabilistic Forecast for 21st Century Climate Based on Uncertainties in Emissions (without Policy) and Climate Parameters" (see here), by over a dozen leading experts. They reanalyzed their model's 2003 projections model using the latest data, and concluded:

The MIT Integrated Global System Model is used to make probabilistic projections of climate change from 1861 to 2100. Since the model's first projections were published in 2003 substantial improvements have been made to the model and improved estimates of the probability distributions of uncertain input parameters have become available. The new projections are considerably warmer than the 2003 projections, e.g., the median surface warming in 2091 to 2100 is 5.1°C compared to 2.4°C in the earlier study.

Their median projection for the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide in 2095 is a jaw-dropping 866 ppm.

 

Projected decadal mean concentrations of CO2. Red solid lines are median, 5% and 95% percentiles for present study: dashed blue line the same from their 2003 projection.

Why the change? The Program's website explains:

What does economic 'recovery' mean on an extreme weather planet?

This is a guest essay by Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and an editor of the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. Englehardt is also the author of The End of Victory Culture and the editor of The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire. This post was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission.

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It turns out that you don't want to be a former city dweller in rural parts of southernmost Australia, a stalk of wheat in China or Iraq, a soybean in Argentina, an almond or grape in northern California, a cow in Texas, or almost anything in parts of east Africa right now. Let me explain.

As anyone who has turned on the prime-time TV news these last weeks knows, southeastern Australia has been burning up. It's already dry climate has been growing ever hotter. "The great drying," Australian environmental scientist Tim Flannery calls it. At its epicenter, Melbourne recorded its hottest day ever this month at a sweltering 115.5 degrees, while temperatures soared even higher in the surrounding countryside. After more than a decade of drought, followed by the lowest rainfall on record, the eucalyptus forests are now burning. To be exact, they are now pouring vast quantities of stored carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas considered largely responsible for global warming, into the atmosphere.

In fact, everything's been burning there. Huge sheets of flame, possibly aided and abetted by arsonists, tore through whole towns. More than 180 people are dead and thousands homeless. Flannery, who has written eloquently about global warming, drove through the fire belt, and reported:

UN unveils ambitious ‘green’ food programme

NAIROBI — The UN Environment Programme has unveiled an ambitious seven-point plan to feed the world without polluting it further...

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Time to get charged up about advances in smaller, faster lithium-ion batteries

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Why is it so hard for farmers to donate their crops?

Because there aren't enough roadblocks to getting hungry people healthy food, here's another one. And it's something that could be fixed with a small dollop of legalese (ideally right on top of the stimulus package). Someone at Bread for the City, which runs the biggest D.C. food pantry, pointed me to a post on their blog that sets up the problem thusly:

[L]iterally tons of fresh fruits and vegetables will be grown this year that will never make it to market for one reason or another. (For instance, major supermarkets turn away curvy cucumbers since they don't stack well ...) In a country where about half of all food grown is wasted, the gap between the field and the market is where a shockingly large amount of the loss occurs.

Their goal is to get this "wasted" food to the people who need it. Naturally, it's not easy (although nothing about helping the poor ever is). But it's not finding the produce that's the problem -- many farmers are more than happy to participate. It's getting it: the food pantries have to organize teams of volunteers to harvest, pack, and transport the produce themselves. Why not just have the farmers do it for them? Sometimes they do, of course. But for many farmers already on the edge financially, throwing in labor and fuel as part of the deal just isn't possible. The tax-savvy among you will no doubt object -- what about the write-off?

Stephan Faris’ book is a grim reality check

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Some perspective on tax-and-dividend and a better alternative

James Hansen has again been lecturing Congress on the virtues of tax-and-dividend. I'm no policy expert, but neither is Dr. Hansen, so I'm going to share some of my own amateur observations for the benefit of fellow Grist wonks.

Hansen did some calculations and came up with the following dividend estimates for a $115/ton (equivalent to $1/gallon) tax:

Single share: $3000/year ($250 per month, deposited monthly in bank account)

Family with 2 children: $9000/year ($750 per month, deposited monthly in bank account)

Wow! Free money! That sounds enticing. Of course, the money has to come from somewhere, so people's energy costs would, on average, increase by the same amount. But with that much money sloshing around there are bound to be huge inequities. For example, I live in northern California, where we have a mild climate and little coal power, and I don't need to drive much, so I might see my net income rise by maybe a couple thousand dollars. That would be nice, but folks back east who are paying more wouldn't like it one bit.

The tax rate and dividend should increase with time. ...

[The tax rate should increase until fossil fuel energy is not competitive with clean energy.]

Nothing's going to happen until the tax rate is high enough to overcome the price barrier. Once it does, there will be a "tipping point" at which clean energy will start to overtake fossil fuels and a variety of positive feedback mechanisms (competition, technology, economies of scale, learning by doing) will make the transition self-sustaining and gradually less dependent on price supports. So what is needed is a high price incentive right away -- not a gradually escalating incentive.

However, a high price incentive does not imply a high tax; it is possible to have an initially high and declining carbon price incentive implemented through an initially low and increasing carbon tax.

NYC's Scott Stringer releases a plan for remaking the urban food system

For those of us wondering what it would take to "localize" urban food systems, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has some answers. In a just-released study called "Food in the Public Interest," Stringer's office analyzes the New York City "foodshed" (a term we'll be hearing a lot of in the future) and comes up with a lengthy set of recommendations. If it does anything, the report emphasizes just how daunting a task it will be to reform food policy in this county.

Much of what Stringer hopes to accomplish (especially in the area of nutrition programs) will be handled at the federal level. Still, the report emphasizes the outsized impact on issues that involve land use and commercial development that the control over zoning and business licensing regulations gives to local authorities. Attempting to eliminate food deserts in low-income areas by creating "Food Enterprise Zones" and reducing red tape in the permitting of food processing companies is exactly the kind of thing that zoning and licensing reforms can address.

Interestingly, the report's conclusions on food deserts align with a recent study by two SUNY-Buffalo researchers. They suggest the solution may lie in thinking small (increase the number of neighborhood grocery stores) rather than big (spending tax money on attracting chain supermarkets). Indeed, the same focus on local regulations applies to the expansion of urban agriculture (first step: overturn New York City's beekeeper ban!) and to the development of a wholesale farmers' market and food storage network (so that industrial and commercial buyers can better take advantage of local agricultural output).