Safe Climate Restoration Think Tank Describes the Existential Risk to Civilization as Early as 2050

June 5, 2019 – On the day before the 75th anniversary of D-Day when the world held its breath as an alliance of nations came ashore on the beaches of Normandy to end the occupation of Europe by Nazi Germany, an Australian think tank has published two disturbing reports that suggest we face a similar day of existential reckoning in the not-too-distant future.

Two reports, the first entitled, “Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach,” and the second, “What Lies Beneath: The Understatement of Existential Climate Risk” have been produced by Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration Australia, an independent think tank focused on climate change policy.

Blue Carbon

Breakthrough describes their particular expertise as in the reinstating of natural climate systems and processes to mitigate the conditions being observed linked to atmospheric heating, sea level rise, and ocean acidification. They are champions of “blue carbon,” the restoration of coastal ecosystems, representing 0.2% of the oceans, consisting of seagrass, tidal marshes, and mangroves, and storing 50% of the sequestered carbon found in marine sediments.

Blue carbon projects, the think tank argues, are 10 times more effective per hectare as natural carbon sinks than current terrestrial ones including afforestation, and grasslands. They are also two times more effective than current soil sequestration and biomass projects. At the same time, however, they are under siege globally with 67% of mangroves, 35% of tidal marshes, and 29% of seagrasses lost to shoreline development, sea level rise, and coastal erosion.

Blue carbon as a climate change strategy brings with it additional benefits. It’s not just the sequestering of carbon that makes these areas of the planet vital to its health, but also it is their ability to reduce coastal flooding, erosion, and the damage storm surges can cause.

Breakthrough Reports

The think tank has been going about analyzing the security risk climate change poses, and in both of these reports describes a 2050 scenario that is disturbing. Breakthrough researchers draw on much of their data and information from IPCC sources and that of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), which despite the anti-climate science position of American leadership, are firmly supportive of the science.

Today’s DoD defines climate change as both a security and existential risk because of the “shocks and stressors to vulnerable nations and communities” around the world. In a Pentagon 2015 report, before the current administration was elected, it concluded that “global climate change will have wide-ranging implications for U.S. national security interests over the foreseeable future because it will aggravate existing problems — such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions — that threaten domestic stability in a number of countries.” And although these conclusions have largely been ignored by the current President and his cronies, changing climate is already visibly impacting the military at the Norfolk-Hampton Roads Atlantic Ocean naval base which currently is feeling and dealing with the threat of rising sea levels.

One of the Breakthrough reports contains a foreword written by Admiral Chris Barrie, Honorary Professor,  Strategic & Defence Studies Centre, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University, Canberra. Admiral Barrie, now retired from the Australian Defence Force was its chief from 1998 to 2002 and is currently a member of the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change. It seems that Barrie and other military leaders such as those in the Pentagon understand the existential threat which is more than can be said for those who give the military their marching orders in both Australia and the United States.

But let’s get back to the Breakthrough report. In it, the authors state that there is global science agreement on warming of 4 Celsius (7.2 Fahrenheit) degrees, describing this as being incompatible with our world as we know it, for both humanity and the majority of ecosystems. It further brings in information from a World Bank report on the same subject that describes such conditions as being “beyond adaptation.”

The two reports project a current path for our planet to see a rise of 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) mean temperature by 2100, not including “long-term carbon-cycle feedbacks” which are feedbacks related to the interaction between temperature change, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and how carbon is exchanged in nature.

For example, trees form natural carbon sinks converting carbon into wood. Cut a tree down and burn it and it becomes net emitter. When natural carbon sinks begin emitting carbon, for example, permafrost melt which releases methane into the atmosphere, we get a positive carbon-cycle feedback. Or when the oceans become saturated with carbon from the atmosphere, the capacity to continue absorbing it diminishes, meaning carbon is no longer being removed but rather is staying in the air and building up at a faster rate.

Positive carbon-cycle feedbacks like these accelerate atmospheric warming and put us on a path not of a 3 Celsius rise, but more likely a 5 Celsius (8 Fahrenheit) mean temperature increase by century’s end creating what scientists refer to as a “hothouse scenario.”

What does the 2050 “Hothouse Scenario” Look Like?

In one word, “frightening.” A breakdown of the decades leading up to 2050 unrolls as follows.

When policymakers and governments fail to act aggressively enough in the 2020 to 2030 time period carbon dioxide (CO2) emission levels reach 437 parts per million and warming by 2030 increases by 1.6 Celsius (2.9 Fahrenheit). This puts the world in a scenario not seen in 20 million years ago.

Some mitigation efforts get implemented and by 2030 the Earth’s nations manage to reduce carbon emissions from fossil-fuel burning by 80%. But the latency effect from the CO2 buildup pushes temperatures up by another 0.6 Celsius (1.1 Fahrenheit).

But that doesn’t include any positive carbon-cycle feedback, which likely adds another 0.8 Celsius getting us to the 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) increase by mid-century.

What are those carbon-cycle feedbacks?

They are tipping points impacting Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets and glaciers which begin to melt more at an accelerated rate.

They are tipping points brought on by an ice-free Arctic Ocean every northern summer.

They are widespread permafrost melting in Canada and Siberia and the subsequent release of methane (CH4) a short-term and even more potent greenhouse gas.

Such tipping points may occur well before global atmospheric mean temperatures rise by 1.5 Celsius (2.4 Fahrenheit) with the end result the “hothouse scenario” which could include:

• Megadroughts impacting the Amazon basin and rainforest
• The Jet Stream disrupted
• Equatorial and desert zones on the planet becoming uninhabitable
• Lethal heat conditions across 35% of the continental land mass where 55% of humanity lives with 20 days per year of lethal heat
• Extreme weather events including failed monsoons, wildfires, hurricanes, and more intense thunderstorms wreaking havoc on global infrastructure and agriculture
• Alpine glacier melting in the Andes, Alps, Himalayas, and Rocky Mountains impacting the world’s greatest rivers in profound ways
• Sea level rise, minimally 0.5 meters (1.6 feet) by 2100, but possibly higher because of accelerated positive carbon-cycle feedback loops
• Freshwater availability will decrease sharply
• The river deltas of the Mekong, Ganges, and Nile will be inundated resulting in a 20% decline in global crop yields
• Two billion climate refugees

Today we are only beginning to understand natural planetary climate cycles like the El Nino and La Nina.

But what happens when we end up with a semi-permanent El Nino?

We have seen how in recent years California and the U.S. Southwest was impacted by El Nino cycles. Now imagine if an El Nino just doesn’t happen once every three or four years, but becomes almost a permanent condition of the Pacific Ocean.

The El Nino butterfly effect is blamed for a lot of different weather phenomenon.

In a semi-permanent state, it could cause the drying up of 30% of the Earth’s continental landmass leading to severe desertification in Southern Africa, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Australia, and the U.S. Southwest. And it would cause the coral reef systems where much of the ocean’s biodiversity resides, to collapse.

Is This a Fantasy?

Increasingly less likely a fantasy than a horrible future reality and not one uniquely believed by the researchers at Breakthrough. The scenario as described above isn’t one of their creation but comes from work done by the U.S. national security apparatus who in 2007 filed a report describing a climate change world of 2050 as follows:

“Massive nonlinear events in the global environment give rise to ​massive nonlinear societal events.

In this scenario, nations around the world will be ​overwhelmed by the scale of change and pernicious challenges, such as pandemic disease.

The internal cohesion of nations will be under great stress, including in the United States, both as a result of a dramatic rise in migration and changes in agricultural patterns and water availability.

The flooding of coastal communities around the world, especially in the Netherlands, the United States, South Asia, and China has the potential to challenge regional and even national identities.

Armed conflict between nations over resources, such as the Nile and its tributaries, is likely and nuclear war is possible.

The social consequences range from increased religious fervor to ​outright chaos.

In this scenario, climate change provokes ​a permanent shift in the relationship of humankind to nature.” ​

What is frightening to note, is that some of what is described is already beginning to manifest. The social cohesion of many nations is under stress. We call these failed states. Are refugees from Africa, and Central America the first of millions moving away from an untenable existence brought on by the carbon crisis? Is the rise of Jihadist Islam in Africa correlated directly to climate change? Are we not seeing what lies plainly in front of us?

So on the eve of D-Day when many of the world’s leaders gather to commemorate an event that could have been described as existential, it would be good if they could recognize what lies ahead and act to make sure we never experience the hothouse scenario as depicted in this posting.