Climate “catastrophe” of 6C dead ahead: IEA

“The world is perfectly on track for a six-degree Celsius increase in temperature. Everybody, even the schoolchildren, knows this is a catastrophe for all of us.”

That is the brutally blunt message about where we are currently headed by 2100, according to the world’s most authoritative source on energy markets -- the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook report.

We are already experiencing a dramatic increase in extreme weather with just 0.8 C warming so far. The nations of the world have agreed never to hit 2 C, because it is too dangerous. Hitting 6 C is just unimaginable. Put simply, if we keep expanding fossil fuel infrastructure, we will quickly lose control of a rapidly destabilizing climate system.

This isn’t news to the people who have been paying close attention to our unfolding climate disaster. For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) calculated two years ago that humanity’s current actions were shoving us towards 5.5 C by 2100. They called for “rapid and massive” action to avoid this and warned that “there’s no way the world can or should take these risks.”

That was before the newest data came out showing global emissions soaring at an all-time record rate of 6 per cent last year.

It gets worse. Both MIT and IEA say their estimates don’t take into account the warming potential of carbon emissions from melting permafrost. Joe Romm at Climate Progress calls it “permamelt” and points out that “no climate model currently incorporates the amplifying feedback from methane released by defrosting tundra.” The most recent research published by NOAA, the National Snow and Ice Data Center and an analysis of work by 41 international researchers in Nature journal say that new permafrost research shows methane releases will likely be massive between now and 2100. On our current fossil fuel trajectory, they estimate permamelt releasing 380 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent by 2100. That is more than all historical fossil fuel emissions from the world’s biggest climate polluter – the United States. It is more than all deforestation by humans. It means a turbo-boost in temperatures beyond what has been calculated by MIT and IEA. And because much of it is methane, the warming will happen much more quickly than from just CO2.

The not completely horrible news is that we can prevent two-thirds of these permamelt emissions if we rapidly shift to a low-carbon economy. Just as MIT, and now IEA, say is absolutely required right now. We are still in some control … but only barely. Now is not the time to stick our head in any kind of sand.

Of course we all know the ethical, moral way our Harper Government has chosen to respond to this crisis:

• abandon Canada’s Kyoto commitment to cut emissions
• abandon Harper’s first commitment to cut emissions by less
• abandon Harper second “Copenhagen Accord” commitment to cut emission by even less
• put nothing in place to halt explosive growth of climate pollution from tar sands
• cut climate budgets, muzzle and fire climate scientists
• undermine international efforts to stop global warming
• put the full weight of Canada behind efforts to sell the two biggest climate polluters, the U.S. and China, as much extra-climate-damaging oil as possible

It is pedal-to-the-metal reckless endangerment of our kids' future.