COP26 in Glasgow has four core areas of discussion: securing net zero; adaptation; mobilising finance; “work together”. The second — adaptation –is perhaps the most concrete, but also the least discussed.
According to the official program, discussions of adaptation will revolve around working together to enable and encourage countries affected by climate change to:
- protect and restore ecosystems
- build defences, warning systems and resilient infrastructure and agriculture to avoid loss of homes, livelihoods and even lives.
The first point to note about this is that adaptation is important even when we take aggressive action to reduce emissions. In the language of economics, emissions reduction and adaptation are complements not substitutes — doing more of one makes it easier to do more of the other. It’s going to be a lot easier to successfully build resilient infrastructure and agriculture if climate change is less bad than predicted. And there will be more bang for the buck in working towards net zero if we can adapt more effectively to the effect of climate change from which we can’t escape.
The second point is that it’s useful to distinguish between “adaptation” and “mitigation”. No lesser a scientific authority than NASA observed that adaptation can best be described as:
Adapting to life in a changing climate. [This] involves adjusting to actual or expected future climate. The goal is to reduce our vulnerability to the harmful effects of climate change (like sea-level encroachment, more intense extreme weather events or food insecurity).
By contrast, mitigation is reducing climate change itself. As NASA says, this “involves reducing the flow of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, either by reducing sources of these gases (for example, the burning of fossil fuels for electricity, heat or transport) or enhancing the “sinks” that accumulate and store these gases (such as the oceans, forests and soil)”.
Part of the goal of mitigation is to stabilise accumulated greenhouse-gas levels so that natural adaptation can take place — or at least be less severely impacted.
Now these are conceptually different things. But distinguishing between them also points to things that countries like Australia should do differently. Parts of the country are clearly affected by changing weather patterns. Bushfires wrought havoc just before COVID-19 hit. Droughts have been devastating — and increasingly so. The Great Barrier Reef is under grave threat. Whatever the cause, we can and must do more to reduce the effects of climate change.
When it comes to mitigation — stablising greenhouse-gas levels — Australia has a relatively little known but important scientific advantage.
The world’s oceans hold 25 times more carbon than the atmosphere, and all living plants and animals combined. Oceans used to hold even more carbon. This raises the intriguing possibility of using technology to boost oceans’ capacity to reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere.
If we want to get to net zero emissions then having significant negative emissions technologies (NETs) is crucial. Here’s where Australia’s comparative advantage comes in. We are the main gateway to the Southern Ocean, which is the global marine environment with the greatest potential for carbon capture. And a group of Australian and international researchers at the Centre of Innovation for Recovery of Climate Change, Australia (CIRCA) is leading a long-run initiative to develop and deploy these technologies. (Disclosure: I am a member of CIRCA.)
The idea behind ocean NETs is to manipulate algal production rates, use inorganic ocean chemistry, and develop “sea-water splitting” to release hydrogen as a fuel and capture carbon dioxide. The basic science of this is well understood, but research on how to scale and deploy these technologies responsibly is crucial.
Australia is at the global frontier of this work.
Then there’s taking advantage of any potential upsides of a warmer climate, like longer growing seasons and increased crop yields. That’s not to say (as certain conservative, climate denialist former prime ministers of Australia have) that these potential benefits outweigh the costs of climate change. Just that we should take what we can get from climate change — in part to help defray the cost of dealing with the downsides.
Australia has a lot of work to do — and, frankly, diplomatic ground to make up — when it comes to climate change. But it’s worth remembering that although we might not be under the kind of threat that countries like Tuvalu or Bangladesh are from rising sea levels, we have already experienced the devastating effects of climate change.
We can and must adapt. And we are also well positioned — both geographically and scientifically — to lead efforts in mitigating these effects.
Don’t be seduced by any suggestion that each of us only has to do a teeny-weeny little bit. Listen to your common sense – if everyone in the entire country makes a teeny-weeny little reduction, then the entire country can only achieve a teeny-weenie little reduction. We might appear virtuous to each other, but the kiddies will certainly condemn us for our failure to achieve total decarbonisation.
When someone tries to sell you a “negative emissions” scheme, assume firstly that it is fraudulent. That is, someone is trying to wheedle money out of us and sell us empty virtue in return. If you have time to waste, you could check out the facts. In this case, you can easily check whether the Southern Ocean actually is the world’s greatest sink for carbon capture. See for example, “The Deep Ocean’s Carbon Exhaust” by Chen et al. You, dear reader are being milked because you want to shed your guilt and appear virtuous. Instead we must act to eradicate fossil fuels.
With due respect Mr C, in this case any scepticism is not well-founded.
That said, you are absolutely correct that we must eradicate fossil fuels. This work will still be needed long after we’ve eradicated fossil fuels because we’ve also got the legacy challenge of getting atmospheric CO2 back down to less than 350 ppm, which is the safe upper limit of atmospheric CO2 concentration that the world’s ecosysatems, sea levels and civilisation can handle.
The longer we wait to get atmospheric CO2 back down, the more coastal cities are lost to rising sea levels in the next few centuries.
Except that it is just not possible to “get atmospheric CO2 back down” significantly. All schemes that claim to store carbon emissions fail in the amount (gigatons) and permanence (tens of thousands of years). Worse, any scheme that gets funded by emitting industries will certainly become an excuse to continue to emit. Needless to say the continuing emissions overwhelmingly exceed the capability of the scheme.
As David Arthur points out here, the algae do not endlessly intake CO2, they and their grazers metabolise the organic matter, eventually returning the carbon to the atmosphere. In the cold, vigorous Southern Ocean the carbon would be promptly returned to the atmosphere as CO2. In other parts of the global ocean, some of the organic matter can accumulate temporarily and later return its carbon to the atmosphere as methane.
Actually it is possible to get carbon back down; I did some sums a few years ago, reafforestation of an area of desert approximatley the size of Australia would do the job – and in oceans algae are the base of a food chain … Bingo! grow algae, harvest fish, eat the fish, recover the solids for soil remediation, any carbon that goes to biogas can be converted via the Hazer process (it’s new, you probably haven’t hear of it yet but Woodside are paying attention) into graphite and hydrogen.
In the cold vigorous Southern Ocean the carbon that is fixed goes into the food chain (see above) and ultimately some of it falls out to the abyss as “marine snow” and is eventually subducted back into the mantle. Of course, time scales are relevant here.
As I say, you are absolutely correct that we must eradicate fossil fuels. Nevertheless this carbon drawdown work will still be needed long after we’ve eradicated fossil fuels because we’ve also got the legacy challenge of getting atmospheric CO2 back down to less than 350 ppm, which is the safe upper limit of atmospheric CO2 concentration that the world’s ecosysatems, sea levels and civilisation can handle
I’m with you David.
Interested readers should look at “Project Drawdown” for a comprehensive view of what could be achieved.
In addition to drastically reducing CO2 production asap – long before 2050.
And nothing to do with any CCS nonsense.
That precis is sound.
The time frame is the killer. All sound and proven methods but upscaling would take many more years than we have tp beat the tipping point. We also need to avoid investing taxpayers’ money into polluting industries such as new coal-fired coal power stations..
Have a look in the rear view mirror – that’s the tipping point, far far back in the dark distance.
If all human caused combustion ceased tomorrow it would be 50yrs+ before the CO2 already in the atmosphere, sea & living things began to decrease.
Meanwhile the permafrost is thawing in Siberia & Canada which releases methane, a far more potent ‘greenhouse gas’ – aka atmospheric blanket.
Adaptation is evolution – the time scale is a problem.
It’ll need trees with modified photosynthesis pathways – or lots of kelp (phytoplankton), phytoplankton is already more efficient at photosynthesis than most land plants.
It could not be plainer.
Just like our blood, Thalassa is sanctuary.
…cue H2G2 theme, ‘…and many thought that a bad move.’
Roger, you’re right and you’re wrong. Every little bit does help, and we should be trying to do our teeny weeny bit. Individual responses can move markets if sufficient people can get on board.
But.
All the virtuous action in the world by individuals amounts to less than a handful of beans if the government of the day is doing nothing. Individual action is nice, but we need grid level change. Any personal changes are for nothing if government does nothing.
No need to round up the usual suspects,they tend to congregate in the Hole-in-the-Hill.
Best to fill it with quick setting cement – during a Sitting session, for full value.
There is one way that the humble layman can go the full hog – we can vote for the candidate who promises 100% decarbonisation by date X. If enough members in Parliament are pushing for 100%, then no amount of bribery or cowardice will stop decarbonisation.
We must not be distracted by token “reductions”, such as subsidies on expensive home batteries, or a whole raft of “gunnabe” CCS schemes, including questionable ocean fertilisation. We should be saying, just make decarbonisation happen – and get on with it!
With labor and liberal now the left and right-wing of votes first and the planet running a long way back the solution to our political lack of will is to follow the Indi electorate model and support intelligent independents.Our party system has failed this nation and allowed big business many overseas owned to pillage our assets, land bank our food producing farms and pay little or no taxation Try owning more than 49% of anything in China
Whether it be ‘adaptation’, ‘mitigation’ or both . . .as common sense dictates the primary driver is to ‘ACT’.
It’s no longer a question of ‘we’ or ‘they’. A global response to climate threat an imperative. For everyone. No matter who, when or where? In fact, the primary objective, need overall, is TIME!
Agree 100% .With our two major political parties being the left and rightwing of winning the next election at all cost the only way we will avoid timing out is to follow the Indi electorate model that is proving very successful in putting the planet ahead of the party by electing candidates with passion, intelligence and integrity and the ability to look to the future and ACT
All well and good if this technology is practical and significant in restricting carbon. However, citing Australia in the context of COP26 is laughable when Australia has from the outside no environmental credibility when ‘powers that be’ deny climate science or delay any environmental measures, supported by a materialistic yet financially illiterate population who deem climate as a hip pocket issue?
Encouraging – so long as Southen Ocean algae growth can keep metabolising dissolved CO2 as rapidly as it gets dissolved from the atmosphere.
Is Scummo going or isn’t he?
“Whither ones cares not, Hell or Connaught. Just be Gone!”