Climate Change 2018: That Was The Year That Wasn't

Disclaimer:  I am now retired, and am therefore no longer an expert on anything.  This blog post presents only my opinions, and anything in it should not be relied on.

We begin our experience of climate change in 2018 with the legacy of 2017, a year that was in many ways the worst so far.  It began with a new US President committed to reversing the minor gains against carbon emissions that the “lead dog” US had already achieved, and with unprecedented off-season Arctic sea ice melting.  It ended with massive out-of-season climate-change-driven wildfires in California, four hurricanes together packing unprecedented force and causing thousands of deaths (Puerto Rico) and close-to-unprecedented physical damage (in dollars), apparent increases in US carbon emissions after 2 years of declines, and unprecedented Arctic warmth in December.  And those are just the lowlights.

In the year since I retired, I have had the chance to read extensively if capriciously in climate change literature, and I hope to share some of those books’ insights with readers in later posts.  Here, I want to briefly note some of the key initial climate change trends of 2018:

·         Atmospheric CO2 continues its relatively rapid pace of increase

·         Arctic sea ice is at a historic low for this time of year, and global sea ice at an all-time low

·         Solar energy cost gains are counteracted by inadequate country emissions pledges and US backsliding

CO2 Increases:  The Broken Record

The important thing to remember about atmospheric CO2 measurements is that they tell us how we are really doing.  You will see all sorts of encouraging (and discouraging) developments that should affect carbon emissions over the course of the year, especially the ones that claim to measure whether global emissions are up or down.  However, global emission measures are flawed by self-reporting and incomplete data, which may increasingly underestimate the emissions.  Atmospheric CO2, measured since 1959 at Mauna Loa in Hawaii, provides not only a measure of overall emissions but also a reality check as to whether our efforts at curbing human and human-related emissions are bearing fruit.

In February 2018, as it seems I have said many times before – so many times that I sound like a broken record – atmospheric CO2 continues to increase at an unprecedented pace, all things considered.  Initial indications are that 2017 CO2 increased by 2.11 ppm, less that the 3 ppm the previous two years.  However, this is a drop of about 0.9 ppm from 2 El Nino years, while the only comparable El Nino year in the past, 1998, saw a drop of about 2 ppm the next year.  Meanwhile, with February ¾ done, the increase for this month appears to be about 2.4 ppm.

The result is that it is almost certain that atmospheric CO2 is about 408 ppm, up 8-9 ppm since 2015.  While this is less than I feared 1 ½ years ago, it still suggests that we will reach 410 ppm some time around the end of this year and 420 ppm in 2022 – and we have already seen the drastic effects of breaching 400 ppm.

Arctic Sea Ice:  What Does Not Stay in the Arctic

For this, the best I can do is quote Joe Romm and Michael Mann (thinkprogress.org/record-arctic-temperatures-85b0c287a78b/):  “2018 has already set a string of records for lowest Arctic sea ice … [but] what happens in the Arctic doesn’t usually stay in the Arctic”  because this low Arctic sea ice weakens and moves the polar vertex (wintertime circular winds around the North Pole), driving relatively cold air south where it impacts both northern America as far south as Florida and northern Eurasia.  So what we are seeing is both extreme cold from this disruption, and extreme warmth when the disruption is not operating (as now, when I am seeing temperatures almost 40 degrees F above normal near Boston).

This is part of a year-round disruption of once-normal Arctic wind patterns leading to “acceleration” of “slowing down of ocean currents, … weather extremes like droughts, wildfires, floods, and superstorms …  [and] faster melting of the land-based Greenland ice sheet, which in turn drives the speed up in sea level rise that scientists reported last week.” 

Nor should we be complacent about Antarctic ice melting.  As noted, Antarctic land ice melt is the key to huge world sea level rise, and melting of Antarctic sea ice that plugs the glaciers conveying land ice to the sea for melting is therefore a prerequisite for huge world sea level rise.  The fact that global (Arctic plus Antarctic) sea ice has reached a record low in the last few weeks indicates that Antarctic sea ice is also at a low point, and last year’s Antarctic sea ice data backs that up.

Solar Vs. Fossil: One Step Forward, Two Half-Steps Back

There is no doubt in my mind that the major encouraging news of the past year has been the driving down of the cost of solar-power generation and installation, to a point well below that of oil, natural gas, and coal.  Moreover, increasingly, despite the lack of adequate solar-battery technology to guarantee no-blackout solar plus wind, the increased production of solar batteries and their lowered cost does make regional almost-no-blackout solar-plus-wind cost-effective for the majority of power in most world regions.  These technological improvements should continue unabated in 2018, and they are now empowered by NGOs, some governments, and entrepreneurs to a surprising extent.

However, a new UN publication assesses the emissions pledges of governments at or since the 2016 Paris conference, and finds that 2030 fossil-fuel emissions will be up in 2030 compared with 1990 if these pledges are fulfilled, while 2050 fossil-fuel emissions will be up in 2050 compared with 2030.   Combined with projected rising population until about 2050 that leads to rising non-fossil-fuel emissions (e.g., cows with methane, deforestation), this pattern of pledges may lock countries more firmly into efforts that are inadequate for a 2 degrees Centigrade goal.  Therefore, like Alice Through the Looking-Glass, we are failing to run fast enough to stay where we are, and have effectively taken a half-step back.

Another half-step, I believe, comes from the extensive efforts of the Trump administration to undo Obama-era (and previous) regulations, incentives, enforcement, and measurement related to climate change.  Over the past year, for example, enforcement actions have apparently gone down 44 %, solar incentives are rapidly moving from positive to negative, regulations on things like LED lightbulbs and Energy Star labelling are undercut, and satellites key to measurement of things like Arctic sea ice are under threat or under repair from underfunding, while communication of the data suffers from extreme removal of climate change considerations.  No wonder the US appears to have seen a rise in emissions in 2017 compared to a decline in the previous two years.  And this Trump-administration effort continues to grow in scope in 2018.

Conclusion:  That Was the Year That Wasn’t

Way back when (1962-1963), a TV show took a satirical look at the news of the week with the title, “That Was the Week That Was.”  It seems to me, taking a cynical look at 2017 and our efforts to deal with climate change, that that was the Year That Wasn’t – wasn’t in net terms a real break from the “business as usual” of 2010 and before – while at least 2016 saw a major shift in reporting on climate change, some people’s and governments’ attitudes, and at least somewhat of a shift in emissions themselves. 

Will 2018 be another Year That Wasn’t?  Too early to tell.  But we couldn’t afford 2017.  And, to a greater extent, we can’t afford another year like it.