Submission to the House Standing Committee
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Submission to the House Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy regarding the Climate Change (National Framework for Adaptation and Mitigation Bill) 2020 and the related Climate Change (National Framework for Adaptation and Mitigation) Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2020. I support these bills for a number of reasons: • I am a retired chemical engineer, with appropriate scientific training to understand the science of climate change, to appreciate the expertise of leading climate scientists and to acknowledge the existential climate crisis that is already happening across the globe. • I can see the indisputable evidence of exponential temperature increases and damage from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions • I am concerned for vulnerable communities who will suffer disproportionally from climate change, as well as future generations of Australians. • I have children and grandchildren, whom I wish to protect from catastrophic environmental damage attributable to the activities and lifestyles of my generation of baby boomers, as well as the widespread use of fossil fuels by earlier generations. • There is a clear and urgent need for strong action, to avoid the possibility of irreversible climate change, and so far there have been weak and uncoordinated Federal Government policies for adaptation and mitigation. There are a number of points I would like to address: 1. The science is clear. Some of the earliest scientific studies of what is now known as global warming dates back to a classical experiment by amateur scientist Eunice Newton Foote in 1856. Using glass cylinders, each encasing a mercury thermometer, Foote found that the heating effect of the Sun was greater in moist air than dry air, and that it was highest of all in a cylinder containing carbon dioxide. 1 Her findings did not include the fact that water vapor and greenhouse gases raise Earth’s temperature not by absorbing incoming sunlight, but by absorbing heat radiated by the surface. They nevertheless her experiments appear to have led Foote to a remarkable insight about carbon dioxide and Earth’s past climate. Her work was presented to a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, by a male colleague reading the paper on her behalf. Other pioneering scientists advanced the understanding of the greenhouse gas effects in the 19th century, such as John Tyndall, Svante Arrhenius and Thomas Chamberlin, and numerous other researchers have studied the changing climate and designed models for forecasting. Between 1965 and 1995, the number of articles published per year in atmospheric science journals tripled. 2 Other chemicals have been identified as greenhouse gases and the list frequently quoted includes carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapour and fluorinated gases The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 and, in 1998, as part of the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, and 186 participating countries were called on to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change come to the conclusion that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.3 Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled scientists to see the big picture about our planet and its climate on a global scale. Ice cores from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show the Earth’s climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Ancient evidence has also been found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming. Carbon dioxide from human activity is increasing more than 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last Ice Age.4 1 ‘Happy 200th birthday to Eunice Foote, hidden climate science pioneer’ Amara Huddleston, NOAA Climate.gov July 17, 2019 2 Historical Overview of Climate Change Science Coordinating Lead Authors: Hervé Le Treut (France), Richard Somerville (USA), 2018 3 https://climate.nasa.gov/nasa_science/history/ 4 Vostok ice core data; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record Gaffney, O.; Steffen, W. (2017). "The Anthropocene equation," The Anthropocene Review (Volume 4, Issue 1, April 2017), 53-61. 2 The evidence is strong The Earth's climate has changed throughout history. In the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.5 The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is extremely likely (greater than 95% probability) to be the result of human activity since the mid-20th century and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented over millennia.6 Global Temperature Rise The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 1.14 degrees Celsius since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere.7 Most of the warming occurred in the past 40 years, with the six warmest years on record taking place since 2014. 8 Warming Ocean The ocean has absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 100 meters of ocean showing warming of more than 0.33 degrees Celsius since 1969.9 Shrinking Ice Sheets. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost an average of 279 billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and 2019, while Antarctica lost about 148 billion tons of ice per year.10 Glacial Retreat. Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska, and Africa.11 5 https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ 6 IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Summary for Policymakers B.D. Santer et.al., “A search for human influences on the thermal structure of the atmosphere,” Nature vol 382, 4 July 1996, 39-46 Gabriele C. Hegerl, “Detecting Greenhouse-Gas-Induced Climate Change with an Optimal Fingerprint Method,” Journal of Climate, v. 9, October 1996, 2281-2306 V. Ramaswamy et.al., “Anthropogenic and Natural Influences in the Evolution of Lower Stratospheric Cooling,” Science 311 (24 February 2006), 1138-1141 B.D. Santer et.al., “Contributions of Anthropogenic and Natural Forcing to Recent Tropopause Height Changes,” Science vol. 301 (25 July 2003), 479-483. 7 https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/indicators.php https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/ http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp 8 https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20170118/ 9 https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/index3.html Heat stored in the Earth system: where does the energy go? Earth System Science Data (Volume 12, Issue 3, 07 September 2020), 2013-2041. 10 Continuity of ice sheet mass loss in Greenland and Antarctica from the GRACE and GRACE Follow‐On missions. Geophysical Research Letters (Volume 47, Issue 8, 28 April 2020, e2020GL087291. 11 National Snow and Ice Data Center Decreased Snow Cover. Satellite observations reveal that the amount of spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has decreased over the past five decades and the snow is melting earlier.12 Sea Level Rise. Global sea level rose about 8 inches (20 centimeters) in the last century. The rate in the last two decades is nearly double that of the last century and accelerating slightly every year.13 Declining Arctic Sea Ice. Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades.14 Extreme Weather Events. These contribute to shifts in the distribution of plant and animal species, decreases in crop yields and more frequent wildfires, severe tropical cyclones and flooding. Ocean Acidification. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by about 30%.15 This increase is the result of humans emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and hence more being absorbed into the ocean. The ocean has absorbed between 20% and 30% of total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in recent decades (7.2 to 10.8 billion metric tons per year).16 Feedback loops.17 Self-amplifying mechanisms, for instance • the melting snow and ice which reduces the reflectivity of solar radiation at the surface, • drying of soil leading to less evaporative cooling in the interior of continents and • thawing of the Northern Hemisphere tundra region, releasing methane to the atmosphere which, in turn, leads to further global warming. World Glacier Monitoring Service 12 National Snow and Ice Data Center Robinson, D. A., D. K. Hall, and T. L. Mote. 2014. MEaSUREs Northern Hemisphere Terrestrial Snow Cover Extent Daily 25km EASE-Grid 2.0, Version 1. [Indicate subset used]. Boulder, Colorado USA. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. doi: https://doi.org/10.5067/MEASURES/CRYOSPHERE/nsidc-0530.001. [Accessed 9/21/18]. http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/snow_extent.html Rutgers University Global Snow Lab, Data History Accessed September 21, 2018. 13 R. S. Nerem, B. D. Beckley, J. T. Fasullo, B. D. Hamlington, D. Masters and G. T. Mitchum. "Climate-change–driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era." PNAS, 2018 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1717312115 14 https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/sea_ice.html Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS, Zhang and Rothrock, 2003) http://psc.apl.washington.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/ http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/projections-of-an-ice-diminished-arctic-ocean/ 15 http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F 16 C.