than 100 per cent, and that’s of course because humans produce rather a lot of aerosols, which cool the planet, masking some of the warming that would otherwise have occurred through the emission of greenhouse gases. But the major driver of the change in climate are the emissions of greenhouse gases - methane, nitrous oxide, CFC’s - which are still emitted to some degree. This burning of stuff containing carbon in an atmosphere rich in oxygen, gives you CO2
and that’s basically the main driver behind climate change.
Q: A lot of your work is based on regional and global climate modelling at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. Can you give a bit of the history behind the ARC Centre, what this modelling consists of, and how it helps provide an accurate picture of future climate change?
A: The ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science was established in 2011, we are funded by the Australian Research Council, which is analogous for the National Environmental Research Council (NERC) in the UK. We are quite large by Australian standards and quite small by US or European standards. We are the premier group of climate scientists working in the university sector in Australia, and we collaborate with the major research groups in Australia, but we also collaborate with some other groups from around the world ranging from NASA to the Met Office to groups in France and Germany. We are very connected to analogous groups around the world as you would expect given one of our primary objectives is improving climate models.
We don’t actually build climate models any more. Climate models are more than a million lines of computer code and take decades to develop with hundreds of people. They are phenomenally complex pieces of software. What we do is pick the pieces – for instance, how clouds are represented or how the oceans are represented and we collaborate and work with groups around the world to improve these models, develop new theories, new ways to solve the mathematics and the physics of those systems, and look at computer developments taking place around the world.
Q: Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, recently stated that achieving the COP agreement will require the deployment of Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) technologies to suck carbon out of the atmosphere. However, the UK government cancelled its £1bn competition for CCS technology just six months before it was due to be awarded. In your opinion, are CCS technologies the way forward?
A: The most important thing to understand, as it relates to climate change, is that there is no silver bullet. Anyone who ever says “Ah, well I’ve got the solution” is a snake-oil salesman – there is no single silver bullet. Most issues around carbon capture and storage suggest that the capability to roll out something of sufficient scale to make much of a difference is way beyond anything that is currently envisaged. There is no doubt whatsoever that in certain locations, certain places, you can pump carbon dioxide down deep into the geology and expect it to stay there, but the number of places where
that will work well, and in a way that will be cost effective, are quite few and far between.
There are some experimental plants that exist and that work well, but as far as I know no one has really comprehended how to scale that up. You currently have a species that is emitting 10 billion tonnes of CO2
per year. Now, it’s hard to imagine what 10 billion tonnes is, but 1 billion tonnes is very approximately a cubic kilometre of coal being vapourised annually. When you start to imagine what a cubic kilometre of coal looks like, and you know that you’ve got lots of them, and
you begin to think about how you could somehow capture that CO2 and somehow pump it deep under the earth and leave it there for a millennia, you begin to get a sense of the scale of the problem.
So, carbon capture and storage does need to be encouraged, does need to be examined, and does need to be looked at as part of the solution, but I’m very wary when people start thinking of it as a proven technology, a technology that can be rolled out, or a technology that’s beyond the experimental stage.
Q: So are there any technologies that are ready to roll out or have been proven to work? If CCS is a possibility, but not the likely hero, do you think there are one or two other things that could be used?
A: That’s the wrong way to think about it in my view. The right way to think about it is that everything we do that emits CO2
or methane
or nitrous oxide needs to be examined, whether that would be more efficient vehicles or more efficient heating, better insulation etc. You need to have a whole of system approach towards using energy much more effectively, investing very substantially, as has happened, with renewables, and putting a price on emissions of greenhouse gases, because there is a cost to emitting CO2
into the atmosphere
which is not usually taken into account. Under those circumstances, looking at renewables integrated with existing technologies, baseloads sourced from gas and maybe nuclear in some regions, will create a much broader and much better implemented and integrated renewables sector. If you go those ways quite aggressively we might have a shot at limiting the rise to 2 degrees.
Q: Do you think it is too late to reverse what we have done to the climate, and has the COP21 agreement taken too long in the making to cause positive change? There are a lot of people who have been saying that this agreement should have been made 10 years ago. Looking towards the future, are things a bit bleak?
A: The science was clear in 1990, and in 1990 the scientists were saying that we needed to deeply cut CO2
emissions. I’ll have to
check the data but I think we were emitting about 2 billion tonnes a year back then. Had we cut from 2 billion, and not expanded to 10 billion, and we had cut in 1990 from 2 billion, not increased over the next 25 years to 10 billion, we would be in much less of a hole. As it is, though, the problem is much harder and therefore more exciting to look at how we might solve it.
My personal view is that it’s too late to avoid to 2 degrees. However, that isn’t a negative statement, and that isn’t me saying throw up
your hands and run away screaming. If you can’t avoid 2 degrees, then aim for 2.5. And if you can’t avoid 2.5 then work really really hard to avoid 3. The COP Agreement, in Paris, does set us on a trajectory which turns around the accelerating rate of emissions in a very solid way. This is the first step, the equivalent of the Wright brother’s aeroplane flight. I’m not at all sure that the Wright brothers ever imagined 747’s when they built their aeroplane. Similarly, the people negotiating the agreement in Paris probably can’t comprehend the scale of negotiation and technological advances that are going to have to take place to avoid 2.5 or 3 degrees of warming. But they are the equivalent of the Wright brothers if you like – they have started a process and I hope it’s like dominos. That the first domino and the second domino have now been knocked over by COP, and it’s going to move through processes and become unstoppable in terms of technological and engineering innovations which will, in the end, avoid global temperature rises such as 3 degrees which really are untenable and unacceptable.
Q: It’s really easy for a single person, an individual, to look at the state of the climate, to look in the direction we are heading with warming, and to think “It’s too late – what can I do, I am only one person?” For people such as our readers, what advice can you give about how to limit their impact on the climate?
A: My usual answer for that is to get familiar enough with the science and your carbon footprint to be able to do something about your carbon footprint, and to personally commit to reducing the emissions you’re responsible for. Also, to actively communicate with the decision makers, with the policy makers in your workplace, to the company board, to anyone who’ll listen. Those companies who are in denial about climate change are going to be less understanding, so you’ve got to figure out how you’ll be one of the leaders. You’ll need to take advantage of climate change for your business, and not be one of those who is hammered by what happens because you’re being passive.
Now your readers are much more educated and informed than normal, so for them I’d simply say to review what they’re personally doing, both in a carbon footprint sense, and in how you’re communicating with others on climate change in your workplace and social circle, to make sure you minimise your vulnerability and maximise your resilience to climate change over the next one to ten years. I’m not at all clear how an individual affects large scale political decision making but we all know of people who have managed to do so. If one of your readers thinks they have a way to influence the decision making process then I would hope they are already doing it.
Professor Andrew Pitman
Contact Details Professor Andrew Pitman, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science • Mathews Building University of New South Wales SYDNEY 2052 Australia Tel: (02) 9385 9766 • Email:
a.pitman@unsw.edu.au • Researcher ID: A-7353-2011 • ORCID:
orcid.org/0000-0003-0604-3274
www.envirotech-online.com IET January / February 2016
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64