NOBEL LAUREATES BEIJING FORUM 2007

The climate-energy nexus: The transition from vicious circle to virtuous circle
Forum on Energy and Environment Strategy, Beijing, 11 September 2007

Professor Kurt Lambeck
President, Australian Academy of Science

Preamble

I am very appreciative of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Peoples' Government of Beijing Municipality for the invitation to participate in the Beijing Forum. I am a scientist, most at home with scientific data and processes dealing with the workings of the Earth system, and less comfortable about talking beyond my area of expertise. To be doing just that in the Great Hall of the People is daunting indeed.

Introduction

I start with some basic assumptions with which I think most of us here today will concur:

• Climate is changing and it will continue to do so. The consequences of this for the future are such as to require a major rethinking of how we establish a sustainable planet.

• Compared to natural causes of climate change, greenhouse emission from industrial development is now the dominant contributor.

• It is wholly natural and legitimate for developing countries to aspire to attain economic and industrial levels enjoyed by the developed countries. But for reasons of global and their own sustainability they cannot afford to make the mistakes that the developed world has made in the past. The developed world has a responsibility here to prevent this from happening.

• With the present economic system of the developed world - and I am not going to meddle in economics - the concept of continuing economic growth is central. This growth is driven by a few essentials that reduce to energy, water and healthy people.

Each of these assumptions can be debated at length. But if I adopt them as a starting point then the issue facing the planet is: how do we achieve the economic growth required for the developing world to catch up with the developed world without destroying the planet in the process?

Specifically, in the context of today's Beijing Forum, will the rate of growth in China's energy demand be so intense that the additional emissions cancel any gains that the rest of the world makes in reducing their own emissions.

As Professor Lu Yongxiang, President of CAS, has said on a different occasion: 'If China is to reach the same living standards as Australia, using the same technologies, then we need a second planet.' And that doesn't take into consideration the rest of the developing world!

The core of economic growth of both our countries is energy: for China it is the energy required to drive your industrial growth and the raising of living standards of your population; for Australia it is the export of energy and minerals to maintain our economy.

But it is this energy that can brings its own problems:

• With current practice industrial activity leads to greenhouse gas emission and climate change with global consequences. Energy drives the industries that contribute to environmental contamination of local and regional dimension.

• Climate change creates further problems. Most notably for both countries is that of water: either not enough clean water or too much. Either way, solutions lead to increased energy demand.

• The health of a population is deleteriously affected by the changing patterns of climate and by environmental pollution. Patterns of existing disease change as the vectors acquire new breeding grounds, and new disease is introduced.

• Population growth is affected. This is usually the elephant in the room - or a herd of elephants - and I don't intend to disturb it here, other than comment that population growth is traditionally greatest when economic and social conditions are poorest.

• This places renewed pressure on energy and the vicious cycle spirals on at increasing rates until the whole system collapses.

This is the doomsday scenario promulgated by various pressure groups who unrealistically demand an immediate cessation of all greenhouse gas emissions.

The vicious circle

But it is hardly a politically or economically acceptable solution as has been pointed out by both China and Australia: turning off the energy switch is not an option.

China cannot be expected to give up its legitimate aspirations for economic growth and its attendant social benefits. Nor will any Australian government distort the country's economy for small global benefits that will be very quickly absorbed by growth in greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere. This is the core of Australia's reticence about signing the Kyoto protocol.

It is not realistic to expect either nation to give up its aspirations unless it is part of a truly global initiative that will not differentially disadvantage any nation or group of nations.

A truly global solution is essential although regional solutions are useful stepping stones! This point was made by President Hu Jintao last week in Sydney when he warned that APEC or other regional grouping must not undermine the UN efforts to tackle climate change on a truly global scale.

The important question is whether the vicious circle is inevitable. Whether there is a more optimistic and realistic alternative to such a dismal scenario? Whether it is inevitable that industrial development and economic growth will lead to a degradation of climate and the environment and to an ultimate collapse of the economic basis for the planet? Can greenhouse gas emissions be reduced without destroying the economic base of our countries in a way that also allows us to meet our national aspirations? Can the vicious become the virtuous in which:

• energy availability results in economic growth and in an equitable distribution of wealth
• energy production leaves no significant human footprint on global climate and environment
• there is improved water quality and distribution
• there are improved living standards and health of the population together with population stabilisation.

Accepting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) view that there is a very high probability that climate change is largely driven by increases in greenhouse gas emissions over the past century, and that the consequences of past actions are here to stay for some time indeed, how can the vicious circle be transformed into a virtuous circle?

What can be realistically done on time scales that will avoid a catastrophic outcome?

Elements of the vicious circle

Climate Change

Natural climate change occurs and has occurred throughout the life of the planet and, as the planet has cycled into and out of ice ages, man has had to combat the patterns of climate from the beginning. The associated sea level changes and coastal inundation attest to this with the wealth of flood legends from ancient civilisations. I do not know whether there are flood legends in China but I would not be surprised if there were because at a distant time in your history dramatic flooding events of the shallow seas would have occurred.

What has changed is that:

• The natural rhythms are being modified by man-induced processes so as to accelerate change and this raises the question whether the anthropogenic effects are overriding the natural checks and balances of the Earth system.

• Populations have increased to a degree that we cannot move to higher grounds and we have become prisoners of our geographical and political boundaries. Also we are captives of our own success in building physical infrastructure that is largely based on the assumption that the forces of nature are static.

Planning for the future will require abandoning some of our long-held practices!

That the recent record of change is distinctly different from the past is not only very convincingly seen in the atmospheric CO₂ record, but also in the surface temperature record and is becoming apparent in the observations of sea level change as well.

In the IPCC report, projections for the future are based on scenarios that make different assumptions about industrial development and associated greenhouse gas emissions. They are, therefore, not so much predictions as symptomatic of what the future may hold in store, under different economic models. They are indicative of the magnitude of the potential problem faced even if CO₂ emissions are maintained near present. (Scenario A2, little change from current practice: scenario B1, a convergent world with little population growth peaking in mid-century and introduction of clean energy.)

What are acceptable levels of CO₂ remains uncertain and will be geographically variable. But what is significant is that all scenarios and all computer models indicate substantial increases in global temperature, even if greenhouse gas emissions are stabilised now.

It is important to emphasise that most predictions are of global averages. An annual sea-level rise of 1.5 mm a year may not appear large when superimposed on the spectrum of natural fluctuations of waves and storm surges. Or, an increase in temperature of 0.02° a year may not appear significant when superimposed on the seasonal extremes of Beijing. But this would miss two important consequences. One is that small incremental changes over time drive up the frequency of extreme events such that certain critical thresholds are exceeded more often.

The other and more important effect arises from the innate instability of the climate system with its many physical, chemical and biological feedbacks. This is the 'butterfly effect' of Lorenz where small variations in the initial conditions of a non-linear dynamic system produce large variations in the long-term behaviour of the system. Butterflies from many regions have been blamed for atmospheric chaos, including Chinese butterflies that cause blizzards in Chicago and Amazonian butterflies that cause thunderstorms in Australia!

The Earth system, with its many complex interactions, is intrinsically indeterminate and small changes in initial conditions in the climate model can lead to quite different results. But because of computational limitations the solutions are often assumed to be deterministic and the results must be treated with some caution.

This has been well demonstrated recently on regional scales. Regional scales predictions are important for establishing the response to change but at present they are particularly uncertain, other than being indicative that change will occur. It becomes a planner's nightmare. This is also an administrator's nightmare, seeking efficiency in their organisations. It has led in Australia, for example, to a merging of previously independent efforts to focus instead on a single deterministic climate forecast model. In this case diversity is actually a positive and I see considerable scope here for collaborative work between Australian and Chinese modellers. This point was also made at a state dinner that I attended last week for President Hu where our Head of State identified joint climate studies as a matter of some importance.

Water

Water is expected be one of the principal casualties of climate change in both Australia and China, with a redistribution of rainfall and with changing patterns of intensity. The planet's landscape has been largely in balance with the forces of nature, with drainage systems, vegetation and fauna evolving in response to any slow changes in climate patterns. But with the compounding effects of changing land use this balance is altered with potentially significant unintended consequences.

The water issue illustrates one of the major problems that we are faced with in responding to climate change:

• we strongly suspect that change is occurring
• we strongly suspect that the change will be detrimental and will require remedial action and a societal response
• we do not have a data-base on which to make firm recommendations for actions that in themselves will be costly
• yet the future cost of inaction now may be much greater.

Australia is experiencing an exceptionally dry period after some decades of a more plentiful distribution of rain.  The current water storage and distribution infrastructure in the country, as well as the community's expectations, have been largely based on the assumption that the past wetter decades represent the norm and for as long as rainfall remained adequate, little new infrastructure investment was made. Now, however, most of Australia's major cities are subject to water restrictions that are impacting not only on peoples' enjoyment of urban life but also impacting on employment, industrial production and power generation.

But because of an absence of long instrumental records, it remains unresolved as to what is the norm: is it the times of plenty before about 1950 or is it the past two decades?

Are the current dry conditions part of a natural cycle or are they attributable to human action, in this case the anthropogenic aerosols of the brown cloud hanging over Asia.

Climate models do forecast a general drying out of the southern part of the Australian continent, the very region of most of the country's population and agricultural activity. Even if the forecast rates of change are uncertain, when this trend is superimposed on the natural cycles the frequency and intensity of major droughts are likely to increase. This is going to require major rethinking of agricultural and industrial practices and for dealing with a reduction in power generation capacity.

For example, for desalination to meet the predicted shortfall of water for Sydney over the next decade, will require about a six-fold increase in the energy currently used for supplying water to the consumer.

Almost all other parts of the vicious cycle are bedevilled by similar uncertainties and gaps in information.

Action in the absence of complete information?

So what action needs to be taken now to start the transformation from vicious circle to virtuous circle?

Good planning for responding to change does require good information but the time scale for acquiring this information can be long. Yet we cannot accept the option of no action until knowledge is complete: that more has to be invested in research before action can be contemplated. That has never been a viable option in any human response to the unknown. All the IPCC scenarios indicate that the risk of no action at all, of business as usual, is too great to contemplate.

This view is supported in economic terms by the UK Stern Review and by an increasing number of Australian studies which also provide the useful reminder that there may actually be some economic benefits in developing mitigation and adaptation strategies at an early stage.

Much underpinning research certainly needs to be done, needs to be done urgently, and needs to be directed. This includes, as already mentioned,

an improved climate modelling capability, well calibrated against observational data is one imperative. In some cases geological records may provide good indicators of past climate and this will usually provide a basis for understanding processes and for testing climate models. In the case of rainfall, for example, the answer may lie in the chemistry of speleothems, as cave deposits, that record the isotopic and chemical signals of surface rainfall. Understanding the palaeoclimate and historical signals is another area where both countries have very considerable common interest and where joint research can make important contributions.

In the meantime decisions will have to be taken that set in train a process that leads to avoidance of the direst consequences: from the small domestic scale to the large scale of changes in agricultural practice, more efficient use of available power, and infrastructure investment in power generation technologies and in clean water production (and we have already heard a little of what Beijing is doing in this regard).

I will talk later in the week about some of the Australian initiatives being discussed in this direction and I will limit myself here to some general points that may be relevant to the Australia-China link.

The Australia-China link.

Recent actions by the two governments show that there is an awareness that uncontrolled greenhouse gas emission is not in anyone's interests: China and Australia do have common interests in seeing actions implemented that avoid the damaging effects of uncontrolled emissions.

But this is tempered by the recognition that it is a global issue and that any unilateral actions that places them at economic disadvantages relative to other countries are not acceptable to either government. Thus neither government is likely to make hasty decisions and any mitigation and adaptation actions are likely to be taken up only gradually. Certainly the current Australian Government is not showing haste in setting carbon targets and talks only vaguely about 'aspirational targets'.

Possible mitigation and adaptation actions between China and Australia have been explored at some length since 2004 in our joint Academy discussions on energy and sustainability. This has led to a number of joint initiatives that will ultimately contribute to the transformation from the vicious circle to the virtuous circle.

These include the creation of the China-Australia Water Centre and an embryonic collaborative project on clean coal technology that has been developed further during the APEC-associated bilateral China-Australia discussions. Some of the issues being explored jointly include:

• technologies for improved efficiency in energy use
• improvements in efficiency of power generation
• developments in carbon capture and sequestration.

But what has perhaps been more important for the long term is that these links have established a very effective communication, not only between scientists in the two countries but also between scientists, technologists and policy makers. This much-improved communication is providing a strong base for bilateral discussions between us on all energy and climate issues and ensures that the best scientific and technological advice is available.

In the face of some of the statistics about current and future power generation in China, the urgency is there for these issues to be taken beyond the 'exploratory stage' to serious joint collaborative pilot projects. The experience gained over recent years shows that the intellectual capacity and drive to work together is there to ensure success. We, at the Australian Academy of Science, will be continuing to argue strongly for this with our government.