Climate change lecture presents alarming facts and urgent solutions
Atmospheric chemist, Dr Dave Lowe: public education and the search for solutions are his personal commitment. Photo: Ina Holst.
Sea level rise - is it too late to stop the tide? How can we engender more interest in climate change in our young people? Why don’t people change their behaviour in the light of all the information and evidence surrounding the climate change debate? Why is there no political will to lead the changes required to reduce CO2 emissions? And what are the latest predictions from climate change research?
These were just some of the questions addressed to a visiting climate change expert by his small, well-informed audience. Sadly, the under-40-year-olds were largely missing from the lecture, suggesting that the big questions that determine our future seem to arouse less personal interest from the younger generation.
Not so for atmospheric chemist Dr Dave Lowe, who makes the education of the public and search for solutions his personal commitment. On a recent Friday night, supported by the Nelson Environment Centre and TDC, Dr Lowe returned to Golden Bay to talk about the science behind climate change and how the lay person can make sense of the complex topic.
The adjunct professor from Victoria University’s Antarctic Centre explained the intricate balance that makes our existence on the planet possible. We depend on a mere 5km-thin atmospheric layer that surrounds the earth, acting as a life-supporting film. The health of this atmospheric film depends largely on the interaction between the ocean, the biosphere and the atmosphere and the natural greenhouse effect.
As sunlight passes through the atmosphere, warming the earth, the planet in turn radiates this energy back towards space. While the sun’s energy passes through our atmosphere, greenhouse gases such as water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide absorb part of the energy, while the remainder escapes into space. Some of the energy becomes trapped and makes the lower part of the atmosphere and our planet warmer and inhabitable. However, in the case of climate change, the natural CO2 generation is compounded by a human-induced CO2 increase, which remains in the atmosphere.
“The natural greenhouse gas effect is essential to life; without it humans would not survive. But humans are now enhancing that natural greenhouse effect through the use of fossil fuels and massive deforestation adding an extra 10 billion tons per year to the natural carbon cycle. Worldwide measurements are consistent with an unprecedented enhanced greenhouse effect,” said Dr Lowe. “Every time we release CO2 we are damaging the atmosphere forever. At the moment, CO2 emissions increase by two to three per cent per year. To limit global warming to two degrees we have to reverse that growth now.”
Dr Lowe was one of the scientists who worked for the International Panel on Climate Change. He said that the panel’s conservative prediction of 59cm of sea-level rise was already outdated. Based on current measurements and evidence from the rate ice caps and glaciers were melting, sea-level rise has been corrected upwards to a predicted 6m rise by 2100. He stated that sea levels would rise by 70 meters if all the polar ice melted.
Solutions proposed by Dr Lowe include an immediate moratorium on all coal-fired plants until technologies exist to capture CO2 from coal efficiently; an increase in the price put on CO2 emissions; and a drastic reduction in the use of fossil fuels in favour of battery-driven vehicles. Energy efficiency is a small achievable step for individual households: stopping draughts from doors and windows, turning the electricity off when possible and using alternative modes of transport and energy generation.
Already, Dr Lowe said, there were a lot of alternatives around, such as small hydro schemes, but in New Zealand, the energy sector was “tangled up in red tape” and biofuels were subject to “greenwashing,” which has been described as hypocritically spinning certain products and policies as environmentally friendly.
How can we make sense of the information on climate change? Dr Lowe advises lay people to carefully evaluate what they are reading, look for the credentials of the writer and check the article has been peer reviewed and validated by other scientists.
In the end, he said, the decisions people were willing to adopt depended on “how much you are prepared to pay now for something you may never see the benefit of but that will be of great value for generations to come.” Politicians, he added, were shying away from climate change as their interest was directed towards short-term survival and winning the next election.
The lecture was held by candlelight, marking Earth Hour between 8.30pm and 9.30pm last Saturday. In March 2009, over 4,000 cities in 88 countries officially “switched off”, making Earth Hour 2009 the world’s largest global climate change initiative. Early reports say that throughout the world, this year’s event drew even more participants from all groups of society (www.sevensidedcube.net).
Ina Holst
