Climate: 7 Questions on 2 Degrees by John D. Sutter, CNN

CNN columnist John D. Sutter is spending the rest of the year reporting on a tiny number --2 degrees -- that may have a huge impact on the future of the planet. He'd like your help. Subscribe to the "2 degrees" newsletter or follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can shape his coverage.
 

(CNN) We're 2 degrees from a different world. Humans never have lived on a planet that's 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) warmer than it was before we started burning fossil fuels in the late 1800s, and climate experts say we risk fundamentally changing life on this planet if we do cross that 2-degree mark.
 

"This is gambling with the planet," said Gernot Wagner, the lead senior economist at the Environmental Defense Fund and co-author of the book "Climate Shock." Think super droughts, rising seas and mass extinctions.
 

Yet for all of its importance, I don't think the 2-degree threshold is as famous as it should be. I've heard it referred to as the "north star" for climate negotiations. Meaning: This one little number carries huge importance as a way to focus the world's attention.
 

It's so significant that it's going to be the subject of my reporting for the rest of the year. I'm calling that effort "2 degrees," and I need your help to make it work.

Until 5 p.m. ET Monday, you can vote on the first story I'll report for the series.
 

Vote using the Facebook poll below (or go here if you don't see it.)

 

All of those story ideas came from you, by the way. They focus on what a 2-degree world might look like.

 

CNN kicked off this effort with a Facebook chat last week. We asked for your questions about climate change and about the 2-degree threshold, specifically.

I don't have all the answers right now. We'll continue to explore the importance of this number together. But below you'll find quick responses to seven basic questions about this crucial number. Many of them come straight from you, the readers. And I tossed in a couple of my own.
 

If you'd like to follow this project as it evolves, I'd encourage you to sign up for the "2 degrees" newsletter. And feel free to ask more questions in the comments section below. They'll shape the way I spend the rest of the year reporting on this super-critical number.
 

1. Where did the idea for 2 degrees come from?

One guy, it turns out. William Nordhaus, an economist at Yale.

Nordhaus, 73, proposed the 2-degree threshold in a 1977 (1977!) paper titled "Economic Growth and Climate: The Carbon Dioxide Problem."

The estimate was "crude, but it was a reasonable first start," he told me.

"If there were global temperatures more than 2 or 3 degrees above the current average temperature, this would take the climate outside of the range of observations which have been made over the last several hundred thousand years," he wrote in "The Climate Casino."

A growing body of research now supports the idea.
 

2. How did 2 degrees become the international standard?

Science has continued to raise red flags about 2 degrees of warming. And that work has led policy experts to conclude that a 2-degree world is something none of us should want.

"You need a judgment call for these things," said Carlo Jaeger, chair of the Global Climate Forum, who has written on the history of 2 degrees Celsius. "And this 2-degree thing was a judgment call that happened at the interface of science and policy."

Germany was first to push 2 degrees as an policy goal, Jaeger told me. That happened in the 1990s. Later came the European Commission, the G8, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and, most significantly, the Copenhagen Accord, which was signed by more than 100 nations who agreed 2 degrees would be too much. The United States was among the signatories.
 

3. What would the world look like at 2 degrees?

I'm going to spend the month of May exploring this question, so look for more on this. But here are some striking facts about what scientists expect a post-2-degree world to look like. These are pulled from reports by the National Research Council, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the World Bank.

• Wildfires in the United States are expected to increase 400% to 800% in size.
• Hurricanes are expected to become 2% to 8% more intense.
• A range of species will be at risk for extinction, particularly amphibians. The IPCC estimates 20% to 30% of animals and plants species will be at "increasingly high risk of extinction" at or near the 2-degree mark.
• The Arctic is expected keep melting, losing 30% of its annual average sea ice.
• Certain crop yields in the United States, India and Africa are expected to decrease 10% to 30%.
• The availability of freshwater is expected to decline by 20%.

So ... not good.

And numbers don't convey the emotional toll.

"I'm from New Mexico," said Nordhaus, the economist who proposed the 2-degree threshold. "I love it there, and I know it's going to be a completely different climate. The trout fishing probably won't be as good. The hiking won't be as good. These forests may look completely different, or burn down. I love to ski. It's one of my things I love most. And that's obviously affected by warming. I love the ocean, and the New England coastline, and it's in peril. That's just for starters."
 

4. What happens at 2.1 degrees?

No one knows, exactly. Think of 2 degrees like a sort of speed limit -- or a zone of increased risk. Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech, told me that burning fossil fuels is like smoking. How many cigarettes give you cancer? No one knows, exactly. But the more you smoke, the more you up your risk. And 2 degrees, policy experts agree, is certainly risky territory.

Plus, everyone hates a fraction.

Targeting 1 degree of warming is "ridiculous because you can't do it," said Nordhaus, the economist. "Three sounds too high. And you can't have a fraction because it's too complicated.

"So two is kind of an obvious number."
 

5. How much has the climate warmed already?

The climate already has warmed 0.85 degrees since the Industrial Revolution. And we reasonably can expect to reach 1.5 degrees simply based on the pollution we're already putting into the atmosphere, even with "very ambitious mitigation action" to reduce carbon emissions, according to a 2014 report from the World Bank. Some of that warming is "locked-in to the Earth's atmospheric system," that organization says. The impacts of climate change already are being felt.
 

6. Is it possible to stay below 2 degrees?

Yes, but it won't be easy.

"If you want to stay below 2 degrees, you have to reduce emissions at an amazing speed -- to an incredible degree," said Jaeger from the Global Climate Forum.

Here's the best guess for what that "amazing speed" might need to look like: Cutting greenhouse gas emissions by some 80% to 90% by 2050, said Jennifer Morgan, global director of the climate program at the World Resources Institute. "It depends on how much risk you want to accept," she said. Some activists, including those from 350.org and Avaaz, which together organized the largest climate change rally in history last year in New York, want to accept less risk than that.

"Our position is 100% clean energy," said David Sievers, a senior campaigner for Avaaz.
 

7. What happens if we don't take action?

If we continue burning fossil fuels at the current rate, we could hit 2 degrees of warming before midcentury. Scarier still, we could hit 3 to 5 degrees of warming by 2100.

Some writers have called for the world to abandon the 2-degree target, saying it's too ambitious, or even naive. But we need a yardstick to measure progress -- and we need that "north star" to help us set goals that actually would be weighty enough to make a dent in this problem.

If you think 2 degrees sounds bad, 5 degrees is far, far worse.

The IPCC expects a 5-degree world to be characterized by "major extinctions around the globe" and a "reconfiguration of coastlines worldwide." Just beyond that, at 6 degrees, we're looking a "catastro-f***" that would be almost "infinitely costly," said Wagner, the Environmental Defense Fund economist. "It's akin to killing the planet, basically. Or society on the planet."
 

This much should be clear: Something has to change.

If we shoot for 2 degrees and end up at 3, that's still better (or less awful) than 5 or 6. What's important is that we maintain a sense of urgency, and keep sight of the goal.

 

Earth Song, Michael Jackson

 The Telephone Number, a miniscript w/ polls to vote for favorite to star in role:
 @ http://whoseroleisitanyway.blogspot.com

 

New "Live Earth" Concert For Climate Change Action on 7 continents in June



Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize-winner, Al Gore; Pop superstar, Pharrell Williams; & Producer, Kevin Wall

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — Pharrell Williams says he'll have all of humanity singing together at a worldwide concert June 18 to fight global warming.

The pop superstar is teaming with Nobel Peace Prize-winner Al Gore to produce a "Live Earth" concert on seven continents to build support for a U.N. climate pact in Paris among more than 190 nations in December.

On a stage Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos with producer Kevin Wall, Williams said "we literally are going to have humanity harmonize all at once" in support of a binding international accord to limit heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.

He said the purpose is "to have a billion voices with one message - to demand climate action now" from governments rather than to continue the world's reliance on fossil fuels.

 

An estimated 7,000 people jam a quadrangle at the Independence Mall in Philadelphia during Earth Week activities celebrating the eve of Earth Day, April 22, 1970.  

 

The video above, produced by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center between September 2006 and April 2007, shows the paths of air pollution particles (called aerosols) traveling across the globe and, scientists believe, strengthening storms and cyclones.



Don't Go Near the Water, Johnny Cash


Earth Song, Michael Jackson

"World falling behind on climate change," U.N. panel says by Ed Adamczyk

Massive coal-fired power stations surround Yinchuan, the capital of China's northwestern Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region on September 26, 2013. China is the world's biggest carbon emitter ahead of the U.S. 

A United Nations panel in Berlin warned worldwide attempts to reduce the effects of climate change are falling short.

UNITED NATIONS, April 14 (UPI) -- A report by a United Nations panel in Berlin said governments have not done enough to avert climate change, blaming the slowness of political leaders to address the issue.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in the report released Sunday said greenhouse gases across the earth are increasing faster than ever, and although it remains technologically possible to keep planetary warming tolerably low, it will require and intensive push in the next 15 years to bring greenhouse emissions under control. The report said the emissions problem has caused atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to rise almost twice as fast, in the 21st century, as it did in the last decades of the 20th, reflecting an increase in coal-fired power plants in developing countries, most notably China.

It added advanced countries are making progress, but only slowly, in cutting their emissions levels. “We cannot afford to lose another decade,” said Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chairman of the committee which produced the report and a German economist. “If we lose another decade it becomes extremely costly to achieve climate stabilization.” 

The report noted that action is becoming more affordable. Solar and wind power costs are dropping dramatically, and tougher efficiency standards for buildings and cars are having a positive and measurable impact. Since the last time the intergovernmental panel issued a report, in 2007, many more governments have adopted climate plans, it said. 

The report is likely to increase pressure to secure a new global climate treaty to take effect in 2020.

Prophecy Song, Joanne Shenandoah

Based upon James Balog's time-lapse photos depicting erosion and disappearance of enormous, ancient glaciers, CHASING ICE is knowledge for every skeptic on climate change

I'm reflecting upon just several of the storms this past year alone: Hurricane Sandy, the likes of which New Jersey has ever seen; tornado after tornado in Oklahoma and throughout the United States; and currently hundreds unaccounted for and thousands displaced due to flash floods throughout Colorado. Has this become the new normal? If we tend to the planet, what is the worst that can happen?

Synopsis

Acclaimed geomorphologist and environmental photographer James Balog heads to the Arctic in order to capture images that will help to convey the effects of global warming.

Balog was initially skeptical about climate change when the issue entered scientific discussion, but after his first trip north, he becomes convinced of the impact that humans have on the planet and becomes committed to bringing the story to the public.

Within months of the first trip to Iceland, Balog initiates The Extreme Ice Survey - an expedition to collect data on the seasonal changes of glaciers. Balog and his team deploy cameras that utilize time-lapse photography across various places in the Arctic to capture a multi-year record of the world’s glaciers.  Despite camera malfunctions and Balog's knee surgery, Balog and his team are able to collect time-lapse photos that depict the drastic erosion and disappearance of enormous, ancient glaciers.




"Climate sticker shock: Arctic thaw could cost $60 trillion and 'could be the canary in the coal mine..."





(CNN) -- Scientists look at a warming Arctic and see a shift from white to green, as tundra gives way to new plant life. Governments and corporations are also seeing green, as receding ice cover opens new shipping routes and opportunities to get at long-hidden natural resources. But the downside of those opportunities is the risk that the current pace of climate change could be sped up dramatically by the release of long-trapped methane gas in the region's permafrost -- a risk to which a new study has attached an eye-popping price tag of $60 trillion in the next several decades, on top of previous estimates.

That's trillion, with a "T," a figure rivaling the entire globe's economic output in 2012. And it's a tab that's far more likely to be paid by people living in the latitudes far below the Arctic Circle, said Gail Whiteman, a researcher at Erasmus University in the Netherlands. The developing nations of Asia and Africa face more risk of bigger storms, worse flooding and more intense droughts, she said. "It will have gains for some countries," Whiteman told CNN. "But as we can see, if 80% of the impacts are going to be borne by developing regions, they're not getting any of the benefits."

Scientists have long worried that thawing the permafrost soil of the high northern latitudes could release large quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. U.S. and Russian scientists who study the region say methane has already started bubbling up from the floor of the East Siberian Sea -- a region believed to hold to 50 billion tons of the gas. "Everybody should be trying to pay attention to the shifts that are happening in the Arctic, and not just leave that up to the Arctic countries and not just to some crazy researchers that are in that beautiful white space," Whiteman said. "We all need to pay attention to what's happening, because the Arctic is the canary in the coal mine."

Using a British computer model, Whiteman and two scientists at Britain's Cambridge University estimated what would happen if the store of methane currently locked into the East Siberian Arctic Shelf were released over a 10-year period, without any other reductions in carbon emissions. The results, published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature, indicated that global average temperatures could hit 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels by 2035 -- 15 years earlier than currently predicted. Even if other emissions were limited, the 2-degree mark would still be reached by about 2040, they wrote. The same model had previously computed the costs of climate change at $400 trillion by 2200. Adding a decade-long rush of methane to the atmosphere would boost that by $60 trillion, mostly between 2050 and 2075, said Chris Hope, a modeling expert at Cambridge's Judge Business School. Even a slower release, dampened by other cuts in emissions, could cost $37 trillion -- a figure that dwarfs the $100 billion that Lloyds of London estimates will be invested in the Arctic over the next decade.

The model includes the estimated effects of human health impacts and sea-level rise. Richer countries are better able to adapt to those changing conditions, but developing countries "will suffer most of the extra impact," Hope said. And while the brunt of the damage will be inflicted closer to the Equator, Northern Hemisphere nations aren't likely to escape unscathed. "Mid-latitude economies such as those in Europe and the United States could be threatened, for example, by a suggested link between sea-ice retreat and the strength and position of the jet stream, bringing extreme winter and spring weather," the paper states. Cambridge ocean physicist Peter Wadhams said receding sea ice cover in the Arctic has allowed summer temperatures in the East Siberian Sea to rise several degrees above freezing. "Up to now, you've had offshore permafrost, which is a relic of the last ice age. And that's only been kept in place by the fact that the water is roundabout the freezing point," Wadhams said. But as the water over it warms, that permafrost has been thawing --"and what's been released from it have been huge plumes of methane gas."

How much methane is being released is still under study, Wadhams said. But atmospheric methane levels rose about 1% last year, and "We think that the source is primarily this offshore methane plume from the Siberian sea," he said. While the idea of long-term, human-generated climate change is a controversial notion politically, it's accepted as fact by most researchers. Global average temperatures are up about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degrees Celsius) since the 1880s, according to NASA. The concentration of heat-trapping carbon dioxide hit a concentration unseen since prehistoric times at the benchmark Mauna Loa observatory in May, and scientists reported in November that the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica were losing mass at an accelerating rate.

Researchers can't pin any particular storm on climate change, but say the warming of the air and oceans "loads the dice" in favor of more extreme weather. Whiteman said she hopes putting a price tag on one facet of the issue will spur debate and new action. The authors urged the World Economic Forum to support development of new economic models and press world leaders "to consider the economic time bomb beyond short-term gains from shipping and extraction." "We need to get our act together globally, and if we can't do it globally, we need to do it more regionally," she said. And she said there may be opportunities for business, such as finding ways to capture the methane -- it's natural gas, after all. "The story is not doom and gloom," she said. "We're hoping that we can use this to kick-start some innovative discussions."

Don't Feed the (polar) Bears by John D. Sutter

Editor's note: John D. Sutter is a columnist for CNN Opinion. He heads the section's Change the List
project, which focuses on human rights and social justice. E-mail him at CTL@CNN.com or follow him on Twitter (@jdsutter), Facebook or Google+.

(CNN) -- Here's a seriously depressing question: If a polar bear no longer has ice to stand on and must have his "bear kibble" (that's a real term; more on it soon) airlifted to the Arctic by helicopter, is he still a polar bear? Or is he some sort of zoo-like experiment -- a sad but perhaps unavoidable consequence of an era of melting ice and warming climates?

I posed a less-wordy version of that question to Andrew Derocher, a biologist and polar bear expert at the University of Alberta. He recently published a paper outlining several emergency actions that likely will have to be taken soon to save the Arctic bears.

Among Derocher's scenarios is using helicopters to airdrop food on polar bears as their icy habitat continues to melt -- at a cost of $32,000 per day for the "most accessible" bears. (The hope is that such interventions would last days per year, not months). "It's a lot better to have some animals in the wild even if they are being supplemented in their food. If we were basically the sole food source for these animals, then we're going to have some very serious issues. Then it won't really be a polar bear anymore," Derocher said on the phone. "It will be a semi-wild, semi-captive, free-ranging carnivore. And it probably wouldn't do that well even if the ice started to come back" since the bear would become so dependent on the airlifted food that he may forget how to hunt. (Sigh). It's really come to this.

Derocher's paper, which appeared in the journal Conservation Letters, has been getting lots of attention because it outlines several last-ditch ideas for saving the polar bears, including feeding them bear chow, which, as one commercial website describes it, contains "ground corn, porcine meat meal, fish meal (menhaden), dehulled soybean meal, corn gluten meal, ground soybean hulls, porcine animal fat preserved with BHA, dried beet pulp, soybean oil, taurine, salt" and a bunch of stuff I can't pronounce. It's packaged sort of like cat food. None of those options is easy to stomach -- and not just because of the "porcine meat meal." Derocher knows that. He doesn't want to have to feed the polar bears, much less euthanize them.

After 30 years of researching the Arctic bears, he's just being realistic. As the planet warms, thanks to our gas-guzzling cars and power-producing factories, the polar bear's frozen habitat is disappearing. Arctic sea ice has been declining at a rate of 13% per decade since 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Many scientists expect summer sea ice to disappear in a matter of decades. Polar bears live and hunt from sea ice. If it's gone, they can't catch seals, which tend to stay far from land. And if the bears can't catch seals, they can't survive. There's no other way around it. Unless, maybe, you airdrop some food on them. But even then, something of the bear's essence is lost. "It's ridiculous, human beings feeding polar bears. Polar bears are wild animals," James Eetoolook, vice president of an Inuit group in Canada's Nunavut told The Canadian Press. "They're predators. They're hunters. Let them be." "I wouldn't say I'm 'against' it, just skeptical about how much good it will do to them," one commenter wrote on my Google+ page when I asked about the subject. "I'm afraid that in our haste to do good we might do more harm in the long run."

It's easy to have a whiplash reaction: Don't feed the polar bears. It's very Yogi, as Derocher put it. But such plans, while tragic, may be unavoidable at this point. The fact that such an idea is even up for consideration should be a major wake-up call -- a reminder that climate change is real and happening now. While some of its effects are inevitable (some polar bear habitat absolutely will be lost, Derocher said), there are longer-term solutions that could help save some of the polar-bear-ness of the polar bear. Or at the very least, Derocher said, they're ideas that could save them from extinction.

The solutions are all things you've heard before: cut carbon dioxide emissions, use less power, walk don't drive, live more efficiently. It's not rocket science (or, as one Twitter user recently suggested as a replacement for that phrase, "it's not corporate income-tax law"), but it will take a huge amount of political will in the United States and elsewhere to make substantive changes. That seems to exist. In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama called for action on climate change "for the sake of our children and our future."

Some 35,000 people gathered in Washington last weekend to make similar points. Organizers said it was the largest demonstration of its kind in the United States. Meanwhile, none of the five countries with polar bears -- the United States, Norway, Russia, Canada or Greenland -- has a plan for responding to polar bear emergencies "caused by nutritional stress," the scientists write in the recent paper, which is titled "Rapid ecosystem change and polar bear conservation." When we act and how, may determine how quickly the species disappears.

Current projections don't look good. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey have estimated that two-thirds of polar bears will be gone by 2050. For the Arctic ice melt to make sense, all you have to do is watch this YouTube video, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which shows the puny extent of sea ice in 2012 compared with the historical average. With all that as the backdrop, feeding polar bears doesn't sound so crazy, however sad and potentially irreversible it may be. And such programs do exist for other species, Derocher said, including California condors, black bears in Washington state and brown bears in Eastern Europe. "We're at the point where we're going to be implementing some of these scenarios in some parts of the Arctic," he said, "without doubt. "Bears just aren't as fat as they used to be," he said, which makes them less able to live through low-sea-ice years. "It's very clear when you look at the data and when you just look at the animals. A lot of them just don't have that much gas left in their tank."

I asked Derocher what drives him. He said he's not a sentimental person -- he doesn't get attached to an individual polar bear the way he does to his golden retriever. But when you're in the Arctic and you see how much the bears are struggling, it's hard not to care about them as a group -- to want to do something to preserve their wild power. "I'm still optimistic that humans will decide to deal with greenhouse gases in a realistic fashion," he said. To illustrate why that's important, he pointed me to an online video that shows the death of a young polar bear cub. It's linked here but, as a Mother Jones writer put it, "Be forewarned: this is graphic and ghastly." I wouldn't watch it unless you absolutely feel the need to do so. What's more important is Derocher's reaction. For him, the video echoed his experiences in the Arctic, surveying bears that are struggling because of sea ice melt. "When you watch that," he said, "you have to, I think, be pretty hardhearted to think that maybe humans aren't treading a little too heavily on this planet."