Live from the UN Summit on Climate Change

Manhattan, NY.

By Lindsay Beyerstein

I'm posting from the UN Summit on Climate Change at UN HQ in New York. I'm wearing one of those special plastic translation earpieces.

World leaders are here to talk face-to-face before the big climate negotiations to be held in Copenhagen in December. President Obama is scheduled to address this morning's opening session.

The meeting is supposed to be an opportunity for all nations, from the richest emitters to the most vulnerable developing nations, to meet on neutral turf to discuss solutions to the climate crisis.

The one-day summit consists of public opening and closing sessions, separated by closed roundtable discussions among nearly 100 heads of state in attendance.

I'll be tweeting the proceedings. Follow me @beyerstein.

Comments

[Kathlyn Stone]

Thanks for the tweets. I added your link on an article we published today on the meeting: "UN meets today to save the Copenhagen climate summit"

[Alon Levy]

The part about developing countries suffering the most is, sadly, true for geographical reasons. The US, Europe, and Japan have few floodplains. In the developed world a 7-meter rise in sea level would mostly hit marginal regions like Stockton and parts of the coast of England; the only exceptions there are Nagoya, the Netherlands, southern Florida, and eastern Tokyo. In the developing world, which has more floodplains, it would flood the largest and richest cities: Mumbai, Shanghai and most of its suburbs, Bangkok, Dhaka plus much of rural Bangladesh, Kolkata, Alexandria, Lagos.

[Bruce the Canuck]

>In the developed world a 7-meter rise in sea level...

A 7-meter sea level rise is unlikely, but if the climate shifted by that much, I doubt we would be overly worried about "developing" countries. There would be no stopping an outright population crash in the current "developing" world - we'd be well into lifeboat ethics ourselves, and lucky to stay "developed" at all.

[Alon Levy]

That's not true - a 7-meter rise in sea level would impact very little territory in the developed world, and even less important territory. New Orleans will be wiped out, but nobody cares anymore - it was already wiped out in 2005, and the government's response was to raze buildings. Miami, Nagoya, and a couple of neighborhoods in London, New York, Silicon Valley, and Tokyo would be more affected, but the developed world doesn't rest on those areas. If the US and EU really didn't care about global warming, New York and London could probably afford to mitigate the local damage.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

The developing world isn't just at risk for rising sea levels. It's also bearing the brunt of weather extremes in terms of droughts, fires, floods, storms, and other climate extremes. It's not necessarily that developing countries are situated in the areas worst-hit by climate change, although that's true in some cases. The further issue is that whatever climate hardships arise, the developing world is least equipped to deal with them.

[Bruce the Canuck]

>That's not true - a 7-meter rise in sea level would impact very little territory in the developed world, and even less important territory...

Errr. Almost every community on the west coast of Canada would be submerged, roughly 2-3 million people. Plus probably most of Puget Sound, and all its farmland.

And as Lindsay notes, a 6-meter sea level rise would be paired with drastic climate shifts. Roughly modern human beings have existed for at least 70,000 years, yet we only stopped being hunter gatherers about 9000 yeas ago. Every wonder why?

It's no coincidence that we developed agriculture as soon as the climate calmed down, and that so many civilizations have collapsed due to relatively minor local climate shifts. We're not a post industrial society - we have a post-industrial economy supported by an industrial economy, in turn supported by an agricultural base. Ergo, if the agricultural base fails, or the network of infrastructure that supports the industrial base becomes too expensive, and it all comes crashing down.

[Alon Levy]

It's also bearing the brunt of weather extremes in terms of droughts, fires, floods, storms, and other climate extremes.

And, just as importantly, glacier retreat in the Himalayas. The Ganges could become seasonal, which would destroy North Indian agriculture.

Roughly modern human beings have existed for at least 70,000 years, yet we only stopped being hunter gatherers about 9000 yeas ago. Every wonder why?

The glaciers retreated.

Errr. Almost every community on the west coast of Canada would be submerged, roughly 2-3 million people. Plus probably most of Puget Sound, and all its farmland.

No, not almost every community - just a few suburbs: Richmond, the port railheads, the Pacific Central Station railyard, and a small part of Surrey. Almost all of Vancouver and most of its suburbs would stay above water. In Seattle and Tacoma, the railyards would be flooded, but that's about it. There are advantages to having mountains that rise at 45 degrees from the sea, and steep rivers without broad valleys.

[Bruce the Canuck]

>The glaciers retreated.

Really? All the way from the equator? There were forests and grasslands during the ice age, just further south. So that wasn't the critical difference.

The climate shifted around a lot more prior to the holocene. For that reason, the holocene is also known as the holocene thermal optimum"; it has had very little change in global temperature or climate.

We developed agriculture and civilizations due to this island of stability, not because it just became warmer. Genetic evidence shows that prior to the holoceneour population level was mostly tiny, with bottlenecks as low as a few thousand people.

>No, not almost every community - just a few suburbs...

Uh, that drowns most of the farmland, transportation, and industrial infrastructure here, and the coastline's natural features would take a couple of hundred years to recover. Probably a similar story elsewhere. River deltas and natural harbours are a major part of any society's development.

Anyways its besides the point, the kind of climate shift that raises the sea level by 7m is both unlikely (hopefully), and the disruption of agriculture would be more serious.

[Alon Levy]

For that reason, the holocene is also known as the holocene thermal optimum

The Wikipedia link you give mentions warming more than stability, giving "Holocene thermal maximum" as an alternative name.

Uh, that drowns most of the farmland, transportation, and industrial infrastructure here

Ports can be moved. The Port of Galveston was moved to Houston after a hurricane. The farmland I'm less sure about, but as far as I can tell most of the flooding would be in exurbs, not farmland; and at any rate, the Pacific Northwest is agriculturally marginal - the Farm Belt and the Central Valley are far more important.

[Bruce the Canuck]

Alon, look at the temperature records yourself. In the last 9k years, the global average temperature has changed by no more than 0.5 deg C. Prior to that, rapid and violent shifts in the global climate were the normal way of things.

A rapid climate shift would be devestating, especially given how we've marginalized and fragmented ecosystems. For example the amount of farmland is much less of an issue than the predictability of rainfall and temperature. It is not at all garunteed that we would even survive as a civilization.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but it seems incredibly naive.

[Alon Levy]

I've looked at the record. You could find periods of 10,000 years with similar temperature stability during the glacial periods - for example, the thermal minimum preceding the current thermal maximum.

The predictability of rainfall and temperature is an issue, but my understanding is that the eastern half of North America won't get drier or less fertile as a result. The parts of the Central Valley that will stay above water will if anything get wetter due to their increased proximity to water. The real problem isn't there, but in the floodplains of the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, and the Yangtze, where glacial melt will make water scarcer and rising sea levels will inundate many tens of millions of people.

[Bruce the Canuck]

> for example, the thermal minimum preceding the current thermal maximum...

As it turns out (after some procrastination-driven reading), there actually is evidence of nascent agriculture during that period. The prior before that though, looks like it was one long slog as an endangered species.