Climate Cafe

A new paper released yesterday presents a summary from the Business Travel Coalition - Beyond the Airlines $2 Can of Coke, Catastrophic Impact on the US Economy From Oil Price Trauma in the Airline Industry about the impacts of high aviation fuel prices and the imminent impact on airlines and associated trickle-down economics seem pretty clear.   

It will affect everything…

The synergy of yesterday’s stunning presentation from Dr. James Hansen, Director of NASA’s Goddard Space Institute’s address to the National Press Club on June 23, 2008 yesterday (which is rocketing around the world - see the ABC News Summary) and the dire warnings about C02 targets , and the above paper from the Business Travel Coalition and the imminent impact on airlines and associated trickle-down economics seem pretty clear.

It seems in Canada that the Green Shift proposed by the Federal Liberals is a necessary shift. Carbon taxing, even lower CO2 targets and many other mitigations and adaptations will soon be part of the new carbon economy.  

Where will tourism shift?  My sense is that tourism as we know it today globally, and nationally in Canada is about to be revised in ways that we just do not know, cannot predict, and will come with a speed that we have never seen before….This will have impact and implications for any projections and discussions at the national level with the CTC, at the provincial level and at the local level.  I think, more and more, that “our tourists” are going to be regional tourists….not international or US arrivals.  

My sense:  This will be a composite result of high gas costs which are here to stay; the collapse of many airlines and associated supply management issues on food and other air-transported things; and our various individual and country responses to adapt or mitigate to a global CO2 target that has to be reduced much more than we thought. Now, more than ever, it’s time to be creative and collaborative.

These papers just came out in the last couple of days.

Note:  Dr. James Hansen’s address to the National Press Club in the US was a twenty-years later update to his June 23 1988 testimony to Congress that global warming was underway.  This time, though, his presentation provided direct reference as to why the tipping point is near.  He says, “The disturbing conclusion, documented in a paper I have written with several of the world’s leading climate experts, is that the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million) and it may be less.  Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm and rising about 2 ppm per year.  Stunning corollary: the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation.”

Hansen says the EU target of 550 parts per million of C02 - the most stringent in the world - should be slashed to 350ppm. He argues the cut is needed if “humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed”. The team studied core samples taken from the bottom of the ocean, which allow C02 levels to be tracked millions of years ago. They show that when the world began to glaciate at the start of the Ice age about 35m years ago, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere stood at about 450ppm. “If you leave us at 450ppm for long enough it will probably melt all the ice - that’s a sea rise of 75 metres. What we have found is that the target we have all been aiming for is a disaster - a guaranteed disaster,” Hansen told the Guardian. 

The fundamental reason for his reassessment was what he calls “slow feedback” mechanisms which are only now becoming fully understood. They amplify the rise in temperature caused by increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases. Ice and snow reflect sunlight but when they melt, they leave exposed ground which absorbs more heat. 

As ice sheets recede, the warming effect is compounded. Satellite technology available over the past three years has shown that the ice sheets are melting much faster than expected, with Greenland and west Antarctica both losing mass. 

Hansen said his findings were not a recipe for despair. The good news, he said, is that reserves of fossil fuels have been exaggerated, so an alternative source of energy will have to be rapidly put in place in any case. Other measures could include a moratorium on coal power stations which would bring the C02 levels to below 400ppm.