SeekerBlog

…Therefore we have to consider adaptation to climate change, not instead of, but parallel to mitigation of climate change.

Hans von Storch is brave enough to discuss “that which must not be discussed”:

This is chapter 6 (without footnotes) of my article On Adaptation a Secondary Concern? published in 2009 in The European Physical Journal – Special Topics, 176: 13-20 DOI 10.1140/epjst/e2009-01145-0. The manuscript was originally presented at the W.E. Heraeus Seminar: A Physics Perspective on Energy Supply and Climate Change – Prediction, Mitigation and Adaptation, 26-29 May 2008, in the Physikzentrum Bad Honnef.

In a rational world, the state of which is known or can be reliably predicted, allowing optimal planning, the right path to go would be to assess the costs of all possible options of how to deal with the future climate change. One extreme option is not to act at all; then society will develop in an unchecked manner with emission increasing freely. Such a development will be associated with costs, in terms of money, life and morale. Another extreme is to reduce emissions; also this option is associated with costs – mostly in terms of money but also in terms of life and morale. The best decision in this rational ”cost-benefit” framework would be that mix of actions that goes with least costs. The problem is that the costs are unknown; everybody determines the costs differently; the knowledge about climate sensitivity, vulnerability and counter measures is not only fragile but also unavoidably loaded with cultural or even ideological presumptions.

But nevertheless – we have to take a decision. How much effort should be directed toward reducing emissions, and how much toward adaptation? The public debate in Germany and Scandinavia favours the „protection of climate“, i.e., mitigation, reduction of emissions. Al Gore declared “we have to be careful not to siphon off political will from job one, prevention, and dissipate it with adaptation”. This decision has the advantage that it seems to be morally superior – everybody feels the obligation to protect the Creation. Another advantage is that specific questions about the implications on regional and local scales can be qualified as secondary. The response strategy is obvious: reduction of emissions as much as possible. However: anthropogenic climate change is ongoing now; it can not be stopped; all what we can do is to limit climate change. The foreseeable future will hardly see any reduction of global emissions – but merely reductions of global emission growth. If we continue with business-as-usual and if no deus-ex-machina technological fit surprisingly emerges, we may well end up with a tripling or maybe even quadrupling of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at the end of the current century. Such levels will have severe implications. Making serious attempts to reduce emissions, we may be able to limit the increase in the greenhouse gas concentrations to a doubling of pre-industrial levels. “Doubling” is to be considered an achievement; a successful limitation. But also a doubling will have serious implications.

(…) The disastrous 1953 storm surge in the Netherlands, is a good example of this sort of “normal” threats – and it is just 50 years ago. The more recent events of various river floodings in Germany (Elbe, Odra and Rhine), the disaster brought out by tropical storms at New Orleans in 2005 and to Myanmar’s coastal regions in 2008 are also in the range of normal, but rare hazards. In theses cases, society turned out to be badly prepared.

A closer inspection of these climate impacts reveals that in all cases climate plays a certain role – but that social, technological and economic factors play an equally if not more important role. (…)

[From Hans von Storch: Adaptation and Mitigation]

Hans explains succinctly why adaptation must be included in the assessment of priorities. I think that adaption will often satisfy Roger Pielke Jr’s criteria for a “no regrets policy”.