Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June’s UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: “We can go into extra time but we can’t afford a replay.”

At the deal’s heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world’s biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of “exported emissions” so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than “old Europe”, must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”.

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.

This editorial will be published tomorrow by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like the Guardian most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page.

A new publication in the journal ‘Global Climate Change’ detailing the decline of marine organisms in the Galapagos Archipelago following human exploitation and climate change (El Niño, grazers and fisheries interact to greatly elevate extinction risk for Galapagos marine species) makes for somber reading.

A series of events, including the 1982 El Nino, overfishing and the appearance of urchins that destroy coral, has altered the islands’ marine ecosystems. At least 45 Galapagos species have now disappeared or are facing extinction. That suggests future climate change driven by human activity will have an major impact on the islands’ wildlife.

The report.. found that the islands have yet to recover from the intense El Nino climate event of 1982 to 1982, which triggered abnormal weather conditions. That event destroyed coral reefs in the archipelago, many of which had persisted for at least 400 years. However, overfishing significantly weakened the marine ecosystem’s ability to recover from the devastation caused by the El Nino. In particular, fishermen removed so many large predatory fishes and lobsters from the islands’ seas, that huge numbers of sea urchins were able to colonise the area. They then overgrazed the coral, damaging it further and preventing it re-establishing.

As a result, 45 species are now globally threatened. All live on the Galapagos, and most are found nowhere else. (Read more over at BBC News)

Several species from the archipelago are listed as ‘probably extinct’ (including the black spotted damselfish and the 24 rayed sunstar), and other threatened species include the Galapagos sea lion, marine iguana, Galapagos penguin and pink cup coral.

Interestingly though, it’s not only the the ‘charismatic’ species  are suffering:

Above are two photographs from the Charles Darwin Research Station – on the left from 1974, and the right taken again in 2003. Back in the 1970’s, the rocks were covered by a dominant brown algal species (Bifurcaria galapagensis), which as the name suggests is an endemic species that thrived in the intertidal regions (upto 6m depth). According to researchers at the institute, a mass mortality and dieback occured between January and March 1983, leaving the barren exposed rock that you see in the photograph on the right. This species is now assumed to be extinct since the mid-1980’s, as extensive searches across the entire Galapagos archipelago have revealed nothing.

“The Galapagos, the Rosetta Stone of evolution, is now teaching us about the far-reaching impacts of climate change on ocean ecosystems,” says report co-author Professor Les Kaufmann from Boston University, US.

“Nowhere on Earth are the combined impacts of climate change and overfishing more clearly defined than in the Galapagos Islands,” says co-author Sylvia Earle of the US National Geographic Society.

“Decades of data link recent fishing pressures to disruption of the islands’ fine-tuned systems, making them more vulnerable to natural, and anthropogenic changes in climate.” (Read More)

CSIRO recently release a new report on marine climate change impacts in Australia.  It can be viewed or downloaded here.  The summary is below.

What is happening?

Ocean temperatures around Australia have warmed 0.7°C since 1910-1929, with south-west and south-eastern waters warming fastest (HIGH confidence)

Carbon dioxide dissolving in the oceans has lowered pH by 0.1 units since 1750, representing a 30% increase in hydrogen ion (acid) concentration (HIGH confidence)

Global sea levels have risen by 20 cm over 1870-2004 (HIGH confidence)

Little evidence of change in wave heights due to climate  change (LOW-MEDIUM confidence); Strong interannual wave directional variability associated with ENSO on eastern coast (MEDIUM-HIGH confidence)

Southward flow has strengthened so warmer, saltier water is now found 350 km further south compared to 60 years ago (HIGH confidence)

Little evidence of change in ENSO variability due to global warming (LOW-MEDIUM confidence)

Southward flow has slightly weakened since the 1970s (MEDIUM confidence)

Expansion of mangroves into salt marsh habitat in south-east Australia and into freshwater wetlands in northern Australia driven by sea-level rise and soil subsidence associated with reduced rainfall (MEDIUM confidence)

A southern range extension of 300 km into Moreton Bay, Qld, of the tropical seagrass Halophila minor consistent with a warming and a strengthening East Australian Current (LOW confidence)

Loss of algal habitat off eastern Tasmania associated with a southward range expansion of a sea urchin assisted by the strengthening of the East Australian Current and warmer temperatures (HIGH confidence)

Expansion of sub-tropical species, including harmful species, into south-eastern waters is driven by warming and a strengthening of the East Australian Current (MEDIUM confidence)

Although there are no long-term data in Australia, species elsewhere are shifting distributions polewards (LOW confidence)

Sea surface warming has led to extensive coral bleaching events and declines in coral condition on the Great Barrier Reef and on north-western reefs (HIGH confidence). Ocean acidification and increased thermal stress are the likely causes of a >10% reduction in the growth rates of massive Porites corals on the Great Barrier Reef (MEDIUM confidence)

Numbers of tropical species at sub-tropical and temperate latitudes are increasing as temperatures warm indicating that some species are shifting their ranges southward (LOW confidence)

Southward range expansions in south-eastern waters are linked to warming temperatures and a strengthening of the East Australian Current; estuarine fish abundances are linked to annual fluctuations in freshwater discharge (rainfall), which is declining (MEDIUM confidence)

Replacement of small cool-temperate species in southern waters by sub-tropical and tropical species driven by warmer temperatures (LOW confidence)

Warmer sand temperatures, from increased air temperature, has increased mortality of sea turtle eggs and hatchlings at the Mon Repos rookery in south-east Qld (HIGH confidence)

Little penguins are altering their breeding time in response to warmer temperatures, and chick growth of tropical and sub-tropical seabirds has slowed in response to less food availability as temperatures warm (LOW confidence)

What is likely to happen in this century?

Australian ocean temperatures will be 1°C warmer by 2030 and 2.5°C warmer by 2100 (HIGH confidence), with the greatest warming in south-eastern waters (HIGH confidence)

Ocean pH will decrease by a further 0.2-0.3 units by 2100 (MEDIUM confidence)

Global sea levels will continue to rise 5-15 cm by 2030 and 18-82 cm by 2100 (MEDIUM confidence)

No significant change in surface waves along Australia’s eastern coast (LOW confidence); Increasing storm wave frequency, and increasing southerly wave direction, along Australia’s southern and western coasts (LOW confidence)

Likely to strengthen by a further 20% by 2100 (MEDIUM confidence)

A background “El Niño-like” pattern is projected this century (MEDIUM confidence), with no change in ENSO event amplitude or frequency (LOW confidence)

Weakening will continue over the coming century (LOW confidence)

Mangrove areas are likely to expand further landward, driven by sea-level rise and soil subsidence due to reduced rainfall (MEDIUM confidence)

Declines in seagrass abundance and extent due to sea-level rise, increased storminess and warmer temperatures (MEDIUM confidence)

Range shifts and local extinctions of cool-temperate species will occur along Australia’s temperate coastline (MEDIUM confidence)

Increased episodes of harmful algal blooms in south-eastern waters in response to extreme rainfall events and warming temperatures (LOW confidence)

Changes in community structure resulting from modified productivity regimes, as well as range extensions with warming, such as the potential for venomous jellyfish to extend southward, particularly on the east coast (LOW confidence)

Frequency and severity of mass coral-bleaching events will increase as temperatures warm, leading to declines in coral reef health (HIGH confidence). Ocean acidification will reduce coral growth rates making reefs more susceptible to erosion and disturbance from storms (HIGH confidence)

Loss of diversity and widespread changes in the composition of coral reef fish communities following degradation of coral reefs (HIGH confidence)

Breeding populations of tropical species establish in southern waters; reduction in the abundance of estuarine species as rainfall, therefore riverflow, is reduced (MEDIUM confidence)

Increased occurrence of tropical species in southern waters (MEDIUM confidence)

Declines of reef-associated sea snakes as temperatures warm and coral reefs degrade (LOW confidence); some tropical sea turtle nesting beaches will produce 100% females (MEDIUM confidence)

Warmer temperatures and an El Niño-like future climate are expected to reduce food availability for breeding seabirds leading to a reduction in breeding success (MEDIUM confidence)

Over the past few weeks, the debate in climate change has reached new levels of ridicule – such as this comment by Senator Nick Minchin:

”For the extreme left it provides the opportunity to do what they’ve always wanted to do – to sort of de-industrialise the Western world,” he said. ”The collapse of communism was a disaster for the left and really they embraced environmentalism as their new religion. For years the left internationally have been very successful in exploiting people’s innate fears about global warming and climate change.” (Read More)

In which case, as part of the IPCC review process, I must too be part of this ongoing conspiracy to fill the void left by communism! Is the IPCC really at the heart of a massive conspiracy theory?

A letter writer to a newspaper recently pleaded for guidance on how to get the facts about whether there is human-induced global warming. But the writer added emphatically that he did not want to read reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) because he wanted independent and reliable information.

Now, it could just be me, but I would have thought that the world’s most comprehensive assessment and review of climate science by thousands of international experts should probably be the first port of call when searching for facts.

So is the IPCC really that kooky? Have thousands of participating scientists from around the world who’ve contributed to four IPCC reports since 1990 duped the world with hidden agendas and manipulated science? Have they all got it wrong? (Read more)

It’s interesting to see how this meme has developed in recent times, and probably highlights the fact that climate change is now more about effective communication and politics as opposed to ‘proving’ science.

In the run up to Copenhagen even supermodels are jumping into the fray.   There is a new viral video (700,000 views in just over 10 days) in which some supermodels “strip for climate change” on behalf of Bill McKibben‘s new outfit 350.org.  How exactly this video will assist in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions or in getting us back to 350 ppm is not entirely clear.  (but I suppose the same could be said about our blog)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdz555JBIwY&w=560&h=340]

Ove and Charlie Veron discussed the importance of getting back to 350 ppm here;  The coral reef crisis: The critical importance of <350 ppm CO2

The utility and some of the nuances of the 350 concept, e.g., how soon do we need to get back there,  have become a bit controversial within certain AGW circles.  Witness this dust up among AGW blogosphere titans Bill McKibben, Andrew Revkin and Gavin  Schmidt (click on the comments and read comments #3-5).  Also see this view of the idea and campaign by Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert, a University of Chicago climate scientist (and fearless debunker of the rubbish about climate change being peddled by Steve Levitt):

Hansen’s specific reasoning behind 350 was based largely on an estimate of the CO2 level when Antarctic glaciation started, plus a bit of margin of safety thrown in. There is a lot of uncertainty regarding that CO2 level, but it is certainly an interesting line of thinking. One needs to recognize,though, that this specific argument for 350 involves relatively slow climate responses. It is unlikely that Antarctica would deglaciate if we exceeded 350 for just a decade or two. So, you have a bit of wiggle room on the overshoot, so long as the CO2 doesn’t stay above 350 for several hundred years (the precise duration where you get worried being contingent on aspects of the response time of ice sheets that are still poorly understood).

Now, the problem is the slow recovery time of atmospheric CO2 after you stop burning fossil fuels. But, what is certain is that if we go to 600 or 700, the CO2 could easily remain over 350 for a thousand years, which gives a long time for bad stuff to happen. So, the “350” goal may still be attainable if it is interpreted as meaning we have to keep the CO2 300 years out (say) from exceeding this value. – Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert via a comment on Dot Earth

Update (15/11/09); a reader emailed to ask how the “dust up” mentioned above could be found.  It can be seen in the DotEarth story on the 350 movement (note the mildly critical comments by Gavin Schmidt, Andrew Revkin (the author), and Ray Pierrehumbert (above) and in articles on the 350 idea on why how we get back to 350 matters and on the Hansen paper much of this movement is based on on the Real Climate web site, and in the comments section of one of these articles.  To make it really easy, ill paste some of the comments below:

I’d hoped to retain that great final line, but in the eternal space crunch, it got dropped.

The vital question, I’m told repeatedly by specialists in the non-science arenas you list (economics, technological change, politics), is what policies have the best shot of producing a peak and decline that limits climate risks as delineated by the science.

And most of those curves are quite similar no matter what end point is chosen, given the change required just to stablize at ANY concentration in a world heading toward 9 billion people seeking decent lives.

A couple of useful additional perspectives that didn’t fit in print were offered by Rajendra Pachauri of the IPCC (who endorsed the 350 campaign):

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/a-global-focus-on-a-hot-number/?permid=169#comment169

“We are dealing with a dynamic system. Hence, what would really be relevant is the trajectory of concentration levels and therefore emission trajectories. The 350 number has some appeal, because it would to some extent determine the peaking period and the rate of decline. Of course 350 by itself provides no solution. It would merely be the end point of a trajectory which theoretically can have infinite alternatives.”

And Mike Hulme, the British climate maven who wrote “Why We Disagree About Climate Change”:

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/a-global-focus-on-a-hot-number/?permid=170#comment170

“I never quite know what targets like 400, 350 or 280 mean…. If we mean stabilise back at 280 by 2200, say, then we can pump a lot of CO2 in the meantime, before some really good carbon scrubbing technologies in the 22nd century come along. Same argument actually for 280 by 2100 if you’re a technology optimist. So really if one wants to deal in long-term numbers then talk either about future C budgets (how many gigatons are you going to allow), or else set the peak concentration and by when. My guess is that for CO2 we will hit 500ppm sometime this century (harder to guess what CO2-equiv will be). On what to aim for – I wouldn’t play politics will long-term numbers: far too easy for them to be hijacked and used for all sorts of dubious reasons and causes. Much better is to focus on near-term goals (2015, 2020) and to break them down into manageable sectors (e.g. aviation, municipalities, aluminium sector, etc.). The rhetoric of global long-term targets raises the illusion that we can govern globally over the long-haul (the illusion of Copenhagen) – and we can’t.”

Many thanks to Gavin for his clarification, and for his work (and everyone else’s at RC) over the years. For whatever reason Andy chose to paint the 350 effort as unlikely in his story, but it was reported the day before we actually showed you could mobilize millions of people in 5200 events in 181 countries in what the press is calling ‘the mose widespread day of political action in the planet’s history,’ all around a scientific data point. I think tht should be heartening to all.

The biggest point the number gets across, i think, is that climate change is not some future threat but a present crisis. If you have a moment, I recommend browsing through the photos we’ve got up at 350.org (a tiny subset of the 21,000 now in our flickr photostream) to get a sense of the people who are waking up to this reality.

thanks to all who participated Saturday

Andy Revkin says:

27 October 2009 at 2:31 PM

Just one last thought here, upon reading Bill’s comment.

There were two things to report on (and my reporting continued through the actual day of action):

1) The amazing coordinated globe-spanning mosaic of actions
2) the basis for the focal point of that action.

On the first, there’s no question an epic effort was carried off with astonishing scope and skill.
On the second, there remain large, substantive and vital questions. As I said in a comment response somewhere on my blog, a keystone question is 350 by when? As Pachauri and others explained, 350 ppm on its own is kind of like judging a car’s mileage by “miles” without the “per hour.”

My story had to examine both the news and the context. We’ve been pilloried in the past for simply reporting what folks are saying without examining the evidence and argument. I’m not drawing ANY comparisons at all, but examples that come to mind are when a president pumps up the WMD threat, or when candidates rattle off jargon like “clean coal.”