Greta Thunberg – Heroine or Brat?

Greta Thunberg… what is she? Global heroine fighting to preserve a dying planet? Or an obnoxious little brat? The Nobel prize lends credence to the first view, but her social media coverage demonstrates that many people are inclined to the latter.

I predict that in fifty years, some 17-year-old will be telling Ms. Thunberg’s generation that they made mistakes. And all she’ll be able to say is “well, we did our best with the information we had.” And I think all generations would respond the same way. Identifying a problem and solving it is hard. Blame throwing is much easier.

What we all need to understand is that when you try to change the direction of the world, you are trying to alter the habits and behaviours of 7.7 Billion individuals. The first warnings of climate change impacts were heard about fifty years ago.  I saw Bob MacDonald (Quirks and Quarks) on CBC recently being interviewed about the British Columbia flood disaster. I think he said that his first story about the dangers of global warming was in 1977. I KNOW that he said the first “earth Summit” wasn’t until 1992. It’s not terribly surprising to me to find that in fifty years we weren’t able to turn 7.7 billion people around, especially given that at the start of that period there was little data, just speculation. If you asked a dedicated environmentalist fifty years ago what was their concern with air pollution, the answers would have been acid rain, smog, breathability of the air. “We’re poisoning our cities,” they would say, “and look, we’re even devastating the unspoiled wilderness areas down-wind of Sudbury.” So, the problem has really only been known and acknowledged for 30 years or less. That’s more than a lifetime for Greta Thunberg, but a blink in the history of the world.

So, enough of the blame-throwing. Let’s identify the problem, assemble data, establish a response strategy, and move quickly to address a problem that we are all coming to agree is quickly getting to crisis point.

I’ve spent some time perusing the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report produced by and for the United Nations in 2018. It’s a tough read, so let me summarize it for you…. “Lotsa bad shit gonna happen!!”

As an outcome of the COP panel meetings in Paris (the one where we’re not meeting the Paris Accord targets – recall that one?) the ICPP was asked to produce“a special report in 2018 on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways.” The report seems to have developed into a comparison of predicted futures with a 1.5-degree global temperature increase, vs futures with a 2.0-degree global temperature increase. It doesn’t, in my somewhat cursory first pass reading, seem to deal with what happens if the temperature increase is much greater than 2 degrees. Like what happens if it’s 3.5 degrees?

Maybe they didn’t want to answer that question because the predictions at 1.5 and 2 degrees of heating are bad enough. Here are just a few of the bullets I took from the report:

• The 1.5-degree target is global mean surface temperature (GMST) compared to “pre-industrial levels” which is taken as the average GMST between 1850 and 1900. We’ve already achieved a warming of ~ 0.87 degrees, so we have only 0.63 degrees left to work with.
• We are continuing to load our atmosphere with CO-2 at “current emissions of 42 ± 3 GtCO₂(Gigatons) per year (high confidence).”
• The amount – the total amount- of future emitted CO2 that will keep us below 1.5 degrees of warming is variously estimated to lie between 420 GtCO2 and 770 GtCO2. That means that in the absence of immediate improvement, we’ll be committed to a 1.5 degree warming somewhere between 2028 and 2036. And that means that the commitment to achieve net zero by 2050 is probably too little, too late.
• Some localized impacts in sensitive eco-systems are considered highly likely. The Arctic permafrost layer IS already starting to thaw, and woody shrubs are beginning to grow in places they’ve never grown before. Rather more startling to me was this prediction on coral reefs: “Coral reefs, for example, are projected to decline by a further 70–90% at 1.5°C (high confidence) with larger losses (>99%) at 2ºC (very high confidence).” So, even if we achieve a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees or less, and many believe that to be unachievable, we’re going to lose most of the coral reefs, and if it goes up to 2 degrees, they’re gone…. with very high confidence. Better take that snorkeling vacation now, kids, because you may never get another chance.
• Everything is worse at 2 degrees, but the things that we think are bad now are going to get worse even at 1.5 degrees – storms, flooding, extreme heat, droughts in some areas.
• Some other impacts are felt to be highly destabilising and potentially irreversible such as: Marine ice sheet instability in Antarctica and/or irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet could result in multi-metre rise in sea level over hundreds to thousands of years. These instabilities could be triggered at around 1.5°C to 2°C of global warming (medium confidence). While this prediction has only medium confidence, the predicted outcome is particularly scary.

Creating an instability, with a feedback loop that makes a disastrous trend irreversible? Multi-meter rise in sea levels? Really? I don’t care if it’s only a medium confidence outcome. We’d better do something about that. Let’s build a boat. Make it 300 cubits, by 50 cubits, by 30 cubits….

How does this all tie into population pressure? Some of it is fairly intuitive. Each person on the planet uses a certain amount of energy. The more people there are, the more energy we use. And since most of the world’s energy is still generated by burning fossil fuels, rising population is committing us to rising global temperature. The IPCC has evidently factored population growth into their predictions because I saw a population prediction for 2050. They’ve factored in eradication of poverty. I confess I haven’t read the detail of that chapter yet. The Executive Summary indicates that there’s a tension between adaptive measures (which try to limit energy use), elimination of poverty (which requires more energy) and climate change outcomes (which exacerbate poverty situations.) Because of course, having more than you have today implies an expenditure of energy, and that implies, in today’s energy mix, the production of more greenhouse gas.

This is one of the troubling dynamics of climate summits like COP26. Rich countries go there with inadequate promises about how they’re going to address climate change, but pressure poorer nations to stop burning coal. Poorer nations reply that they cannot do that. Their populations are impoverished and coal is their only or main source of energy. And their people need and want more consumer goods and that requires energy.

In fact, the climate action plans tabled at COP 26 will not limit warming to 1.5 degrees. In fact, they will not actually achieve a reduction on emissions. The Economist reports “The 17bn-20bn tonnes of greenhouse gases that need to be cut by 2030 correspond to a 45% drop from 2010 levels. Even then, there would be only a 50% chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an un-convened conclave of climate scientists. Yet current ndcs will result in a rise in emissions, not a drop, by 2030. So what that means is that we haven’t really truly accepted on a global basis that climate change is an existential threat.

You will often see activists toting signs saying “Save the Planet”. Don’t worry. The planet will survive. There is a principle – LeChatelier’s Principle – in Chemistry that says that a system in equilibrium will achieve a new equilibrium in response to an applied pressure. Water occupies less volume as a liquid than as a solid at our normal range of living temperatures. So if you press on it hard, even without warming it, it melts. That’s why we can skate, because the pressure of our blades melts some ice and the resulting liquid water acts as a lubricant to allow us to glide gracefully down the ice….or go smashing at high speed into the boards, depending on your skill level.

The parallel is that if human activity is causing an increase in global temperatures, the environment of the world is likely to adjust to a new equilibrium position that stops the increase in temperatures. The reason that temperature increase stops may well be that those troublesome humans have ceased to exist. But don’t worry – the planet will still be here. And some species that thrives at higher temperatures will thank us all.

There’s another aspect of population pressure and climate change. It’s kind of a reverse impact – not how does rising population affect climate change, but how does climate change affect population pressure? The National Academy of Sciences in the US says “for thousands of years, humans have concentrated in a surprisingly narrow subset of Earth’s available climates, characterized by mean annual temperatures around ∼13 °C.”  and “the geographical position of this temperature niche is projected to shift more over the coming 50 y than it has moved since 6000 BP.” In other words, parts of the world are becoming uncomfortably hot and people will either need to find a way to deal with that, or move.

What’s the solution? Is it large-scale neutering? While that would work, it probably goes farther than people are willing to accept. So, we need better choices than that.

The popular choices are renewable energy sources, like wind, solar and tidal power. As a long-time nuclear power industry worker, I have long opposed these sources as expensive, unreliable and not nearly as “green” as advocates suggest. But I withdraw those objections now. Here’s why.

About 85% of the world’s energy consumption is from fossil fuels. But we’re much better than that in Canada, right? Well yes, we’re better than the world average in terms of energy mix, although or per capita consumption places us in the top ten. But still, Canada relies on fossil fuels for fully 2/3 of our energy. The discouraging thing is that despite twenty or thirty years of investment and focus on wind, solar and other renewables, they only account for about 3% of the Canadian energy mix. Hydroelectric power and nuclear power generation account for 24% and 6% respectively. So, we need to get rid of 2/3 of our energy mix and we need to do it rather quickly. That means that we need to invest heavily in the nuclear power renaissance, the continued and accelerated exploitation of hydroelectric power, and as much wind and solar as we can create. And if we do all that, it may still be not enough.

Have you ever wondered what they mean when they talk about “net zero emissions”? The assumption behind a discussion of net zero is that we are going to continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but that’s ok because we’re going to develop technologies to remove greenhouse gases from the environment. The problem with that is that there’s no technology that’s proven and scalable that can deal with 42 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, or even any large fraction of that 42 billion tons. So, when nations commit to net zero, but refuse to commit to significant and immediate greenhouse gas production cuts, they are betting on magic. Somehow, we’ll make it happen. But they are unable, at this point, to articulate exactly how they will make it happen. We must not be fooled by such empty rhetoric.

In addition to investing in sources of electrical power that do not require fossil fuels, we need to turn to electricity more often. We can see that EV cars are coming. Think about this. If you drive 30000 Km per year at 10 liters per 100 Km, you burn 3000 liters of gasoline. Those 3000 liters will weigh about 2250 kg, or nearly 5000 lbs. and it will all go into the atmosphere – some as water, but most as greenhouse gases (remember you’re adding oxygen to that 5000 lbs). There are a little over 25million automobiles in Canada, so annual greenhouse gas production is something like 60 million tons from automobiles. In the current energy mix, we could save twenty million tons if all the automobiles were battery powered. But of course, the real story is that if we modify the electricity production mix and eliminate some significant fraction of the fossil fuel generation, then EV cars have even bigger impact.

Automobiles aren’t the only targets for electrification. Battery powered lawnmowers, string trimmers, hedge trimmers – they’re all available. And those small motor appliances are much less efficient than automobiles are. It is estimated that each gas-powered lawnmower will produce 100 lbs of greenhouse gas per season. If your existing equipment is about due for change, go electric. Maybe go electric anyway. Maybe we need to impose an environmental tax on every small gas-powered appliance.

My nephew, who is in the oil business is going to regard me as a traitor. So be it.

Environmentalists are going to fight some of the solutions to fossil fuel consumption. There will still be anti-nuclear forces out there, even though large scale conversion to nuclear is really our best hope. Every hydroelectric project will go through an Environmental Assessment process. Opponents will point to the negative environmental impacts of wireless electrification (all the mining for all those batteries) and wax eloquent about the environmental damage those technologies will bring.

Electrification works if and only if we build a transmission and distribution system to deal with it. That means new and larger transmission corridors. And each one of those will need Environmental Assessments, and they will be all opposed vigorously by the owners of every back yard they threaten. 

However, I really don’t see any other solution. The IPCC report convinces me that we’re running out of time. So, some environmental impacts that were unacceptable yesterday might be acceptable today if the alternative is to lose all the coral reefs, or to see glaciers and permafrost tundra destroyed. Environmentalists may need to train themselves to select the best compromise solution to a number of problems.

I’ve defended how we got where we are today. Climate change awareness took time, and it wasn’t always clear that the predictions made 30, 40, 50 years ago were realistic. We might be forgiven for thinking, at the outset, that it was just more tree-huggers’ hyperbole.

We no longer have that excuse. The more realistic predictions of those early climate change scientists are coming true before our eyes, and in some cases the outcomes are worse than had been predicted. It used to be that California suffered some wildfires. Now there’s a wildfire season, and it affects BC and Northern Ontario too. The real seasons of the year are marked by catastrophe. We go from run-off floods to wildfires, to hurricanes with flooding, to winter blizzards. And they’re all getting worse.

So, the Greta Thunberg thing? That was just a clever hook to get you reading. She’s right. Even when she’s being a brat and annoying us, she’s right, because her mission is to wake us up and make us notice. And she won’t achieve that by being meek.