Posts
I think climate change is not going to just cost 60 trillion dollars - it is going to cost the earth.
The “Jaw-Dropping” Cost of Climate Change ~ Dorsi Diaz
The “Jaw-Dropping” Cost of Climate Change ~ Dorsi Diaz
17
December, 2013
At
the AGU conference held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco this
week, Professor Peter Wadhams laid out some startling figures on what
the future cost of climate
change is
going to be for society. In his session : “The cost to society of a
methane outbreak from the East Siberian shelf”, Wadhams used graphs
and charts to drive home his message.
Video:
Tons of Methane Gas Might Cost the World $60 Trillion
Lots
of methane gas is trapped under the surface of the East Siberian
Arctic ice shelf. If the billions of tons of gas are released, it
could cost the world an estimated 60 trillion dollars.
Standard
YouTube License
In
short, climate change is going to cost us dearly.
A
brief synopsis by this Examiner so you can understand how and why
climate change will cost us:
Our
world is warming (yes
it is). Most
scientists agree that humans have added/and or caused this (some
people still debate this but regardless of who or what caused it, the
world is warming).
Because
of that warming, the Arctic ice is melting at breakneck speed,
something we have not seen during the history of mankind.
Various
factors have now come into play to affect the jet stream and new
“feedback” processes have now begun, altering weather patterns.
Warmer
temperatures = more extreme weather disasters, failed crops and
economic loss, and worst of all: loss of life (examples:
Super-storm Sandy, Typhoon Yolanda, the record drought in the U.S.).
Factor
in now that beneath that warming Arctic is methane locked in frozen
hydrates under the sea. Methane, also a powerful greenhouse gas, has
the capacity to warm the atmosphere up to 20-100 times faster then
even carbon dioxide (a
large release can also happen abruptly – think “Dinosaur
extinction”).
Now
imagine that that methane is coming out in record amounts in the
Arctic Ocean (East
Siberia) because
of the warming waters (which it is) and you
now have a warming world on steroids…and
a lot of uncertainties. And that, unfortunately, is exactly where we
find ourselves right now in the history of mankind.
OK,
so now that you have the basic 101 on why climate change is already
costing us, we go onto Wadhams’ session.
Professor
Peter Wadhams
We know that the Arctic is warming much faster then any other part of the world.
Professor
Peter Wadhams would know. He is not only the professor of Ocean
Physics, and Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group in the Department
of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics for the University of
Cambridge, but he was also part of the latest working group on the
IPCC report that was released this year (Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change). The professor has also studied in the field for many
years, and been on over 40 polar expeditions.
He
is also the president of the International Association for the
Physical Sciences of the Oceans Commission on Sea Ice and Coordinator
for the International Programme for Antarctic Buoys.
Wadhams
goes on to talk, using charts on the overhead which show the trending
loss of Arctic sea ice, where tons of all that frozen methane lays
locked in frozen hydrates. Field observers in the Arctic believe that
out of a reservoir of some 720 Gt of methane, it is possible that 50
Gt could
be emitted rapidly, within a few years.
Calculated in a paper in Nature what
the impact of such an emission of methane (occurring over 10 years)
would be, they also find an additional
warming of the climate of some 0.6 C by 2040.
We
know that that trend is likely to continue, possibly get even
stronger, so
there’s not any likelihood that most people can see that the summer
sea ice will come back again,
and especially this is true if you consider feeding the effects of
thinning of the ice which we’ve been measuring with submarines over
the years. And then you add in the thinning effect to the retreat
effect and we get a retreat of ice bonding which is more than a
linear retreat, which leads us to this famous “Death Spiral.
Speaking
about the shallow shelves off of Northern Siberia and ice that has
detached from the Siberian coastline, citing Igor Semiletov’s and
Natalia Shakhova’s work on methane, Wadhams said we can see that,
“The surface water temperatures in the summer months in the areas
that have become ice free have shot up. In 2007 we were getting 5
degrees but we’ve seen 7 degrees from satellite imagery.”
Considering
that Professor Wadhams is best known for his work on sea ice and has
physically been on Polar expeditions, the man now has my full
attention. Now that we know where we stand on the state of the
Arctic, we go on to find out just how much all that methane being
released into the atmosphere is going to cost us:
A
jaw dropping 60 TRILLION DOLLARS.
Yes,
you heard that right, 60 TRILLION DOLLARS. And a main point that
Wadhams made was that that number will still be high even if the
changes are slower versus an abrupt release. Either way, society is
going to pay the price.
To
put 60 Trillion dollars in perspective, here is some insight into
what makes a trillion:
How
Big is a Trillion?
In
the U.S., one trillion is written as the number “1″ followed by
12 zeros (1,000,000,000,000). One year of clock time = (60sec/min) x
(60 min/hr) x (24 hr/da) x (365.25 da) = 3.16 x 107 seconds
One
trillion seconds of ordinary clock time = ( 1012 sec)/( 3.16 x 107
sec/yr) = 31,546 years!
Six
trillion seconds equals 189,276 years. Now, as an aside, along with
the nearly six trillion miles in the light-year, you might be
interested to know that there are nearly five trillion dollars in the
current U.S. national debt. Is it any wonder that our politicians in
Washington are concerned?
These
numbers that Wadham pointed out were not new, but in his latest
session he described in detail the cost breakdown over time in his
economic model over a century’s time span (using the Stern Review
PAGE09 model). Because his results have aroused controversy, and to
assist in further discussions of their implications, further analyses
were carried out as follows (from
the session abstract):
1.
We have considered smaller and larger emissions, and have considered
the overall costs for emissions occurring more slowly over a longer
period, and/or beginning at a later date. We
find that costs are approximately proportional to volume of emission,
and are actually increased if the emission date is delayed until
later in the century.
2.
A further field operation is being carried out in the summer of 2013,
and we will carry out, in time for the AGU meeting, a further model
calculation based on the latest opinions of Semiletov and Shakhova
regarding the way in which the East Siberian Sea emission field is
developing.
The
results of that 2013 summer expedition confirmed that not only was
methane being released but it
was twice the amount what they expected to see: ”The
seafloor off the coast of Northern Siberia is releasing more than
twice the amount of methane as previously estimated”, published
in the Nov. 24 edition of the journal Nature
Geoscience.
Also, the research team estimated that, “The
East Siberian Arctic Shelf is venting at least 17 teragrams of the
methane into the atmosphere each year. A
teragram is equal to 1 million tons.“
To
put Professor Wadhams 60 Trillion dollar price tag for climate change
into context, the gross domestic product (GDP) for the entire world
is 70 trillion dollars. Last year it is also estimated that American
taxpayers through the federal government paid $100 billion in 2012
for the cost of climate change - more
than the cost of education or transportation (And
that doesn’t include what state and local governments, insurers, or
private citizens paid.).
And
the cost of disasters related fueled by climate change? For recent
disaster Typhoon Yolanda, risk modeling specialists such as AIR
Worldwide
have forecast the total economic loss at anywhere between $6.5
billion and $15 billion dollars. Over 4,000 died in the Typhoon and
an estimated 4.4 million were displaced in the Philippines. That does
not even include all the other extreme disasters that countries
worldwide are still trying to recover from.
So
our future could cost us 60 Trillion dollars – but more importantly
than money – how many lives is climate change going to cost us?
Sources:
This
is a far better video – Thom Hartmann interviewing Prof. Wadhams - SMR
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.