I’ve had some e-mail from readers about something James Lovelock said recently, which I also happened to stumble over, and I think it deserves a little discussion.
In the article James Lovelock on the value of sceptics and why Copenhagen was doomed, we find the following tidbit (emphasis added):
On what it will take to convince the public that meaningful action is required to tackle climate change:
There has been a lot of speculation that a very large glacier [Pine Island glacier] in Antarctica is unstable. If there’s much more melting, it may break off and slip into the ocean. It would be enough to produce an immediate sea-level rise of two metres, something huge, and tsunamis. I would say the scientists are not worried about it, but they are keeping a close watch on it. That would be the sort of event that would change public opinion. Or a return of the Dust Bowl in the mid-west. Another IPCC report won’t be enough. We’ll just argue over it like now.
The question the leaps to mind, of course, is whether the Pine Island Glacier, a mass of ice so large it has its own Twitter account, big enough to trigger an “immediate sea-level rise of two metres”. That would be one hell of a lot of mass added to the oceans. Even ignoring the almost infinitely fudge-able term “immediate”, two meters is still two meters.
I mentioned this in a discussion thread on Skeptical Science, and someone pointed out that an article from New Scientist in January covered the PIG situation. I found the article and saw that it contains this text:
The model suggests that within 100 years, PIG’s grounding line could have retreated over 200 kilometres. “Before the retreating grounding line comes to a rest at some unknown point on the inner slope, PIG will have lost 50 per cent of its ice, contributing 24 centimetres to global sea levels,” says Richard Hindmarsh of the British Antarctic Survey, who did not participate in the study.
The wording here is open to some interpretation, but I think this is saying that 50% of PIG’s ice would equal 24 cm of sea level rise, and that it would take at least several decades for that to happen. I can’t tell if the 100 years reference points to the entire PIG mass loss or “merely” half or neither.
I thin it’s pretty clear that unless Lovelock has some other source of information, his statement about an “immediate” two meter SLR increase isn’t close to being accurate and he should retract it, or minimally, not repeat it. If he has solid information to back up such a startling claim, I hope he comes forward with it; it’s certainly something that needs to be talked about openly and brought to the attention of policymakers.
In general, I think this is part of a pattern with Lovelock. He’s clearly extremely very pessimistic about our environmental situation. Witness the flurry of coverage in the last couple of days about his comments in the interview linked above. He says we’re not “clever enough to handle as complex a situation as climate change”, among other eyebrow-raising observations.
I’m most definitely not going to make the easy, smug, and disrespectful argument that “Lovelock is 90, so he’s obviously losing his grip on reality” argument (which I’ve heard from people who know no more of him than I do, which is to say nothing at all). Nor do I think it’s fair to say that we should uncritically accept every word he utters just because he’s the person who brought us the Gaia concept. I think the most useful way to approach his comments, and the one that shows him exactly the proper level of respect, is simply to ask of any of his scientific claims: Where’s your proof?
Our situation is far too serious, and the ramifications far too large, to accept blindly anyone’s scientific statements.
I think he probably meant 2ft not 2m, which is still quite spectacular if it happens over say a 2-8yr period.
The the total ice in that region, PIG and Thwaites Glacier equivalent to about 2m of sea level rise on melting.
That could explain it, but we just don’t know. The real issue here is how bad this makes climate science in general look. “Look at the crazy guy over there making bizarre claims! Those guys will say and do anything to further their agenda!”, etc.
In general, I find Lovelock to be a very weird mixture of pragmatism and doomerism, with a light dusting of plain old cynicism, so I try hard to ignore almost everything he says. But this one was so cut and dried, and had caught the attention of enough people that I felt I had to say something about it.
Very good to flag the Two meter thing Lou. Because of Lovelock’s background he is someone who is listened to, he earned that a long time ago.
Two feet definitely sounds like a credible number – but his main point that this was made in reference to (that it will take an enormous obvious Global Warming related calamity to push energy policies past the inertia to where we need to go for our own future self preservation) – unfortunately is appearing quite true.
It seems the best we can hope for from the current administration in the US (likely the best one we’ll get for the next decade) is to get the energy “boat” turned in the right direction (regarding energy policy) and not nearly good enough to keep us out of the feedbacks and runaway warming in the future. Thank goodness is looks like the US Administration is starting to push for this at least. We’ll have to rely on obvious effects of the warming in the future to push us further on energy policy as time goes on.
I’d would love to see Lovelock proven wrong on this point (about it taking a large global warming calamity of some sort to get things moving enough to handle this appropriately), but reality has been bearing out his prediction on this – I hope to god this changes.
I’m with you 100% on the apparent need for a “climate 9/11″ to get us moving at anywhere close to the rate that’s needed. We’re so shortsighted, so easily distracted by people telling what we want to hear instead of what we need to hear, that I think nothing short of a Really Big Event will change anything.
The problem is that the list of the things that could have that desired, sobering effect is remarkably small, especially if you want to consider first those events that would not signal we’re hopelessly cooked. A hurricane ripping the guts out of a major US city in the South or the East coast wouldn’t do it. Katrina ravaging New Orleans didn’t come close. Strangling, prolonged droughts won’t either, because those are too drawn out and too easily dismissed by the deniers as something that “happens all the time”. Likewise, I’m not optimistic about the wake-up value of an ice-free (or nearly so) Arctic.
The optimal event, as best I can tell, is a gigantic piece of ice breaking off of Antarctica. And I don’t mean the size of Manhattan, but the size of Wyoming. This would likely not result in a huge direct human impact, but it would get a ton of coverage, with lots of wide-eyed reporters asking people like the NSIDC’s Mark Serreze or Richard Alley or James Hansen what the hell is going on, what does it mean, will it happen again, etc.
I think the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events will crescendo over the next few years and will be enough to tip North Americans in to the ‘alarmist’ bin.
Have a look at whats happening in china in reaction to GW driven events…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/31/china-announces-extreme-weather-measures
Before posting, I googled the Pine Island Glacier and found a link to http://climatecodered.blogspot.com/2010/01/pine-island-glacier-loss-must-force.html
which contains a comment in the third paragraph from the bottom, ” Pearce also notes the work of Terry Hughes of the University of Maine, who says that the collapse of the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers – already the biggest causes of global sea-level rises – could destabilise the whole of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Pearce is also swayed by geologist Richard Alley, who says there is ‘a possibility that the West Antarctic ice sheet could collapse and raise sea levels by 6 yards [5.5 metres]‘, this century.”
This is also an unsubstantiated claim, except perhaps in the original article, which I could not find.
Two feet also seems a lot more likely, but maybe that is where Lovelock got the idea of two meters.
Yep. Pine Island Glacier has been called the cork in the bottle of the WAIS (West Antarctic Ice Sheet) I read that surveys indicate the glacier is losing 16 feet of altitude per year… this has the effect of lifting it off the bottom and moving the grounding line upstream – further destabilizing. The rate of change is already fast, the rate is increasing. Interesting times ahead.