Hazards in the Greenhouse: why is global warming so intractable?

Authors: *Dr Robin Russell-Jones MA FRCP FRCPath (Hon) FRSA

Corresponding author: Dr Robin Russell-JonesAffiliation: *Help Rescue the Planet (hrtp.co.uk)

Word Count: 10,137

Figure 1. Permission already provided by James Hansen.

Figure 2. No permission required; Adapted from Fergus et al (Commons) Ref 127.

Figure 3. Permission required from AAAS (Science publication)

Democracy depends upon the ability of individuals to make their voices heard above the clamour of vested interests.

Robin Russell-Jones to Harold Evans, former editor of the Times newspaper, following the UK Government’s decision to introduce lead-free petrol; April 1983.

Hazards to Health in the Greenhouse.pdf

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Introduction

The nineteen eighties were marked by a number of public health and environmental concerns which were resolved with varying degrees of difficulty. By contrast, global warming, where concern started in the late eighties, has proven intractable. This analysis assesses the differences between then and now, and examines the consequences of failure to control global warming.

Author’s NoteThis essay can be considered as the third part of two companion pieces: Net zero: Flaws in the Science of the Paris Agreement. Wigley TML & Russell-Jones R (1). AND Hiatus in the Greenhouse: Has the IPCC Helped or Hindered? Russell-Jones R & Wigley TML (2). Both Under Review with the editor of Oxford Open Climate Change

The Eighties

Before addressing the question of climate change and net-zero, we need to consider other situations where public advocacy has led to health and/or environmental benefits. In 1989, the author (RRJ) wrote an unsigned editorial for the Lancet titled Health in the Greenhouse (3). It concentrated on chlorofluourocarbons (CFC’s), because not only are they powerful ozone depleters, they are also powerful greenhouse gases (GHGs). CFC substitutes, both HCFCs and HFCs, are also GHGs though, for the most part, less powerful than CFCs. However, if their growth was uncontrolled, then they could be making a significant contribution to global warming by 2030. The concern was that one environmental problem would be replaced with another.

These fears were well founded. In 2013, the Centre for International Climate Research in Oslo estimated that the forcing from halocarbons was 18% of that due to CO2 alone (4). However, the chemical industry was loathe to part with these substitute chemicals, and developing nations were resistant to any constraints on the development of fridges, air conditioning, and other halocarbon applications. Even though HCFCs were incorporated into the Montreal Protocol, nothing much happened until 2013 when Presidents Obama and Xi finally signed a treaty to phase out HCFC’s, 24 years after the Lancet editorial clearly identified the dangers, and the same year that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finally conceded that global warming was man-made (Actually the IPCC said 95% likely in their 2013 Working Party 1 report (AR5) (See also 1 & 2). In 2016 the Kigali amendment to the Montreal Protocol was agreed, limiting the use of HFC’s and aiming towards a phase-out from 2020. There are derogations for countries with unusually high temperatures, which may soon be all of us.

It is interesting to compare CFC substitutes with the addition of lead to petrol. This had been banned first in Japan and later in the US, mainly to allow the use of catalytic convertors to mitigate photochemical smog. There were concerns about its health effects, but no consensus (5). In the UK the DHSS Working Party, (chaired by Professor Lawther) produced a report in 1980 titled Lead and Health, which only called for a reduction in the lead content of petrol (from 0.4 to 0.15 g/Litre), but was countered by a report, Lead or Health, published by the Conservation Society, and authored by two organic chemists: Prof Derek Bryce-Smith from Reading University, and Dr Robert Stephens from the University of Birmingham; which called for the elimination of lead from petrol. It was against this background that the Campaign for Lead Free Air (CLEAR) was launched in 1981, funded by a wealthy philanthropist, Godfrey Bradman and ably led by Des Wilson, a veteran campaigner who had founded Shelter in the sixties. Because the author (RRJ) had written about the dangers to health of lead in petrol, and had criticised the Lawther Committee through the correspondence columns and op-ed pieces in the Times (6-9), he was recruited as CLEAR’s unpaid medical and scientific advisor. A fierce debate ensued, not only in the UK Press, but in the correspondence columns of the Lancet and the British Medical Journal (BMJ), both of whom penned unhelpful editorials (10-12). RRJ countered with articles and editorials published by World Medicine (14-21) and in letters to the BMJ, Lancet and elsewhere (23-36). In May 1982, CLEAR organised an international conference, sponsored by PURA foods, at RIBA, The Royal Institute of British Architects, which brought together many of the world’s leading experts on the sources and effects of low- level lead exposure, including Clair Patterson from Caltech, who had successfully and accurately dated the age of the Earth in 1955 using a uranium/ lead clock methodology (37), Ellen Silbergeld, Head of toxicology at the US Environmental Defence Fund, and Herb Needleman from Harvard University, and author of the seminal study published in 1979 in the New England Journal of Medicine, demonstrating dose-dependent relationships between the lead burden of children, as measured by the lead content of shed milk teeth, and a host of outcomes including IQ, distractability, impulsiveness, easily frustrated, day-dreaming, disorganised, hyperactive, dependent, not persistent, and other aspects of classroom behaviour (38).

Photo 1.

Caption (Photo 1). The Old Cottage, Wexham Str, Stoke Poges, May 1982.Left to Right. RRJs late wife Annie with two children, Joy and Christopher.Des Wilson, The author (RRJ), Ellen Silbergeld, Clair Patterson (+ Shoo Ling), Herb Needleman. This is the only time that Patterson and Needleman met; and this is the only photo that records the event.

Significantly Professor Michael Rutter, an expert on child development, and key member of the Lawther Committee, came to the view that lead did indeed affect children’s behaviour and IQ at levels that were considered normal. As a result the BMJ shifted its position somewhat (12), leading to further correspondence between PSI Barry, Chief medical officer at Associated Octel the manufacturer of lead additives, and Des Wilson the chair of CLEAR (40,41); but the Lancet remained sceptical, and hostile towards the CLEAR campaign (13). So further correspondence ensued between the Director General of the UK Petroleum Industry Association Ltd, D R Harvey, and the author RRJ (41-43). The lead industry even persuaded Claire Ernhart from the US to contribute, even though she had not attended the symposium (44). Predictably, the correspondence then became international with contributions from Philip Grandjean (Denmark), Gerhart Winneke (Germany), Peter Elwood (Medical research Council Epidemiology Unit in Wales), Herb Needleman (US), and finally the Standard Oil Company from Indiana, indicating that the lead additive industry was becoming increasingly concerned about losing the argument (45-49). The best one can say about the Lancet, is that they did at least publish the correspondence. Other lead-in-petrol supporters tried to undermine CLEAR’s

position with more substantive articles, but CLEAR responded to these also (50.51). Interestingly the latter response was largely based on Chapter 8 from Lead versus Health (52): The contribution of lead in petrol to human lead intake by RRJ and Robert Stephens, but Bob Stephens declined to co-author the letter to Atmospheric Environment as he “didn’t want to get into a spat with a colleague”, the colleague being A C Chamberlain. It was the first occasion that the author, RRJ, came to appreciate the difficulty for scientists who have to choose between upsetting colleagues and telling the truth. This is not a consideration that has ever inhibited RRJ, who then authored a major article in the Times Educational Supplement titled Clearing the Mind (53)

The symposium had been chaired by Professor Rutter, so both he and RRJ went on to publish the conference proceedings (52), which were also submitted to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, chaired by Sir Richard Southwood, whose Ninth report, Lead in the Environment was published in April 1983 (54). This persuaded the Lancet to finally shift its position (55). So did the UK government. Within half an hour of the Ninth report being released, Tom King, Secretary of State under Margaret Thatcher at the Department for the Environment, stood up in the House of Commons and accepted all the findings, including the recommendation to introduce lead-free petrol. Interestingly the Royal Commission were still awaiting a response from the Government to their Eighth Report, released 2 years previously on Oil pollution of the sea (56). It is beyond question that the Environment Commission, established by Royal warrant in 1970, and genuinely independent of Government, did an excellent job in identifying key areas that required government action. It is therefore unsurprising that the Tory administration, under David Cameron, closed the commission down in April 2011, exactly 18 years after HMG had been seriously embarrassed by having to change tack over lead in petrol. Following the Ninth report, the Government opened negotiations with the EU for the introduction of unleaded petrol.

The author, RRJ, became Chair of CLEAR in 1984, and campaigned successfully on the introduction of catalytic convertors. He argued strongly against the promotion of diesel as an alternative fuel to leaded petrol on grounds of carcinogenicity, something that wasn’t accepted by the IARC until 2012 (57). RRJ knew the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Cabinet, Sir John Fairclough, and was able to feed key documents directly into Cabinet meetings. This proved crucial when persuading the Cabinet to adopt two-way catalytic convertors, something that was strongly opposed by the Society of Motor manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).

RRJ also chaired the Pollution Advisory Committee at Friends of the Earth from 1984-89, which coincided with Jonathon Porritt’s term as Director and Des Wilson’s term as Chair. This led to successful campaigns on acid rain (58-61), orchestrated by Chris Rose, and the tightening of radiation standards both nationally and internationally, orchestrated by Stewart Boyle. The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear facility in Ukraine on April 26th, 1986 spelt the beginning of the end for the Communist regime, but also focussed attention on the safety of nuclear reactors world-wide (62-68). In addition, Douglas Black produced a report in 1984 on the incidence of cancer in West Cumbria: in other words: cases of child lymphoma/leukemia around the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing facility (69).

Again, a fierce debate ensued, mainly conducted through the correspondence columns of the Lancet, not only about the leukemia clusters around Sellafield and Dounreay (70-84), but also the out-dated cancer risk estimates being used by the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) in the UK, and the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) globally. (85-91). These controversies led to a second conference at the Royal Postgraduate

Medical School in 1986, organised by the author, RRJ, and chaired by Sir Richard Southwood, Chair of the NRPB, with whom RRJ published the conference proceedings (92).

Photo 2.

Caption (Photo 2). The Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, London, Nov 1986.

Left to Right. The author (RRJ), Alice Stewart, Karl Morgan, Ed Radford (Chair BEIR 3 Committee)

.Subsequently the NRPB, again under Sir Richard, tightened their own radiations standards in the UK (93), followed 3 years later by similar changes at the

ICRP (94). Southwood, who later became Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, estimated that the UK, in 25-30 years (2011) would provide one third of its energy needs from nuclear, one third from fossil fuels, and one third from renewables (Personal Communication RRJ 1986). Thirty-six years later, (2022), the UK is some distance from those goals: Fossil fuels making up 40% (Gas 38.5%), Renewables 44.5% (Wind 26.8% Biomass 5.2% Solar 4.4%, Hydro 1.8%) and Nuclear 15.5% (95). Globally the figures are even worse: 80% fossil fuels, 15% renewables and 5% nuclear (96)

A further conference in November 1988 focused on ozone depletion, jointly funded by the Consumers Association, the European Campaign against Cancer, and Friends of the Earth UK. However, because CFC’s and their chemical substitutes were also GHG’s, the conference programme, organised by the author, RRJ, included a session on global warming, chaired by the then editor of Nature, Sir John Maddox, who stated publicly (97; pp 69-70):In many ways the Montreal Protocol is a valuable precedent for the kind of convention that will in due course have to deal with greenhouse gases. Obviously, the problem of global warming has much greater implications economically. Even so, and despite the uncertainties that exist, it is by no means too soon to begin embarking now on the negotiations and the kind of agreements that will be necessary to regulate the greenhouse problem. Of course this may prove quite difficult.

Maddox went on to enunciate a peerless exposition of the precautionary principle in relation to global warming:

Paradoxically the negotiations should begin even before the scientific side of the problem has been resolved. The organiser of the Conference is anxious that I shouldn’t use this occasion as an opportunity to promote the building of nuclear power stations. That is a very interesting question, but it is only part of the equation. Let me just say this: if there is an international agreement, based, for example, on national quotas of allowable carbon dioxide release per year, then every country will be free to respond to this challenge in its own way. We have learnt enough about energy consumption in the past 15 years, to know that there is not one recipe that holds for all time in any country, and indeed that countries differ enormously in the extent to which they rely on fuel efficiency, on nuclear power, or on renewable energy. Indeed, it may even be possible to meet quota requirements by scrubbing carbon dioxide from the gases in power stations. The method used is not the most important thing. It sems to me that the greenhouse problem, and the possibility that this will lead to the melting of the two surviving icecaps, is sufficiently serious to deal with as a single problem, and not complicate it with debates as to how individual countries meet their obligations under any internationally agreed quota system.

Professor Tom Wigley, who at the time was Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia stated publicly:Future global warming is virtually certain and likely to be substantial (97 pp 86).This was only a few months after James Hansen had warned the US Congress about the reality of global warming in June 1988. Wigley predicted a temperature rise of 1.5C by 2030, which in retrospect seems remarkably prescient, certainly more prescient than Hansen’s testimony before Congress (97 pp 94). RRJ and Wigley published the conference proceedings (97) with contributions from NASA’s Bob Watson, who went on to become Chair of the IPCC, and the late Joe Farman, discoverer of the ozone hole over Antarctica.

Photo 3.

The Royal Institute of British Architects, London, Nov 1988. Left to right. Bob Watson, The author (RRJ), Joe Farman.

Then, in April 1989, RRJ authored the unsigned editorial Health in the Greenhouse, which focused on the dangers of CFC substitutes (3). This editorial was the first time that any medical journal had addressed the issue of global warming. It ended with a warning about combatting climate change: The expense may be considerable, but the costs of doing nothing are incalculable (3). Thirty-five years later, the editorial was the subject of a Lancet essay by D S Jones, Professor of Science History from Harvard University, titled Still Seeking Health in the Greenhouse (98).

However, resolving to take action is not the same as putting measures into effect. With lead-free petrol, announcing the move to unleaded petrol proved simpler than its introduction, and progress was slow, particularly in the UK where Nigel Lawson, an avowed free-marketeer, was Chancellor. RRJ sat on the Government’s Working Party on Lead in Petrol (WOPLIP), and it took five years before the Treasury conceded that a tax-break in favour of unleaded was needed (99-101). Seven years later blood lead levels in British schoolchildren had fallen by almost 80% (102), mirroring the experience in the US two decades earlier (54 pp 33-58, 103). It would not be the last time that Lawson would place his free-market principles ahead of the well-being of future generations. Notably when he launched his notorious think-tank, The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which is best viewed as a pre-emptive strike against the Copenhagen summit (COP 15) of November 2009. Lawson publicised the e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, something that he must have known about in advance, though he never admitted how he obtained these e-mails. In any event the resulting scandal, commonly known as ClimateGate, resulted in no less than 5 public enquiries, none of which found any evidence of scientific misconduct (104). However, this did not prevent Lawson from castigating the scientists involved for lack of transparency, which is deeply hypocritical, considering that Lawson always refused to say how his “Foundation” was funded.

In 2002, UNEP, the United Nations Environmental Programme, launched an initiative to eliminate leaded petrol world-wide, but this was not finally achieved until 2021, approximately 40 years after a consensus was reached on the adverse health effects of this potent neurotoxin. In 2011 the UN stated: “Ridding the world of leaded petrol has resulted in 2.4 trillion dollars in annual benefits, higher average intelligence, and 58 million fewer crimes” (105). CFC substitutes will also take around 40 years before global phase-out is achieved. The results are not trivial. Correspondence published in the Financial Times between the author and Marco Gonzales-Salazar, former UN Executive Director of the Ozone Protection Treaties, concluded that banning CFCs and their substitutes had avoided 1.7C of global warming (106, 107). When the direct effects of increased UV flux on terrestrial ecosystems is factored in, then there is an additional 0.8C of warming avoided, giving a total of 2.5C (108). This is a remarkable outcome, and grounds for optimism for the UN process, were it not for the fact that there has been a recent rise in the atmospheric concentrations of some trace gases, including CFCs (109)

Differences between then and now.

There are several factors that account for the success of environmental campaigns in the eighties compared with the present day. First the issues were not regarded as a left-right debate. CLEAR received trenchant support from the Times under Harold Evans, editor from 1981-82, before being dismissed by Rupert Murdoch; and Geoffrey Lean, environment correspondent at the Observer. Other journalists such as Anthony Tucker at the Guardian, and Fred Pearce at the New Scientist also played important roles. The Guardian itself published virtually any article offered by RRJ (36, 57, 60, 70, 110), as did the Times (7, 9, 52, 73, 101). Nowadays it is almost impossible to get a letter published on global warming in either newspaper, let alone an article, and when they are published, they are either heavily truncated and placed last in the column (eg Guardian, May 16 2024: Don’t despair. Be part of the climate tipping point), or they are altered deliberately to lessen the impact (eg. Sunday Times March 13, 2024: Buying stuff is a dangerous habit, in which the final sentence was altered from Consumption -related emissions are 40% bigger, to much bigger, without my knowledge or approval). It is hard to know why scientifically- illiterate letters’ editors feel that they have the prerogative to alter letters without consulting the author, as it is the author’s credibility and reputation that is on the line, not theirs. Journalists nowadays seem more interested in opinions than hard scientific facts. They seem to have forgotten C S Lewis’ famous aphorism: Opinions are cheap; facts are sacred. Or better still: One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts.

The same considerations apply to the BBC who, under the dead hand of modern management, exemplified by John Birt, has transformed from a benevolent old Auntie, into a toothless old crone sitting in the corner with her knitting needles, resembling nothing more than a trichoteur who watched spell-bound as the guillotine despatched members of the French aristocracy. We now have a new age of puritanism; we don’t actually decapitate people literally; but cancel culture and PC paranoia achieves the same result for outspoken academics, and authors such as J K Rowling who have the courage to hold a view different from the BBC mainstream. Back in the eighties, when the environmental movement was making waves, the BBC was a very different beast, as its guiding principles were to tell the truth, rather than to avoid complaints. In those days, even the Mail and the Evening Standard supported the CLEAR campaign (111). In addition, both the Readers Digest and Doctor magazine ran articles on why RRJ had moved his young family out of London (112, 113). These two publications in the autumn of 1982, should be regarded as an inflection point in the lead campaign, as afterwards, vested interests, (ie the opponents of lead-free petrol), gave up the fight, and it was possible to thanks Harold Evans for his support (See opening quotation) though by that time he had been despatched to pastures new by the monstrous Murdoch.

A second factor in the success of 1980 campaigns, is that the issues chosen were manageable from a technological point of view. There is no compelling reason to add lead to petrol. It was simply a convenient means to boost octane numbers. Third the presence of a Prime Minister with a degree in chemistry from Oxford University, Margaret Thatcher, meant that she understood exactly the scientific arguments that were being presented. In 1989, with UN support, she herself hosted an international conference in London on ozone depletion, and was fully engaged with concerns about global warming. Had she survived politically into the early 90’s, when Al Gore became US Vice-President, it is quite possible that they could have corralled world leaders into effective action on climate (114 p103). By contrast the recent (Tory) UK Cabinet contains nobody with a science degree, not even the Secretary of State at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), Claire Countinho, who appears to be in thrall to the fossil fuel industry, and completely flummoxed by the decision in favour of the Swiss grannies at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg (115). This is a Council of Europe Court, and it is often forgotten that the Council of Europe predates the EU, and consists of 46 nation states, not 27, including Russia and the UK. The ECHR judgement means that every country in the Council of Europe is now bound to implement the Paris Agreement: otherwise, Ministers will find themselves

back in court, as discussed by RRJ with Gary McKeone, Programme Director at St George’s House Windsor Castle on April 25 (116). The ECHR judgement means that the world is very close to the inflection point for global warming.

It is debatable how much of the successes by environmental groups during the eighties are attributable to well-organised campaigns, or fearless campaigners, and how much to Margaret Thatcher as PM. She once said to Lord Palumbo;”You must realise that I was a scientist before I became a politician” (Personal Communication RRJ). In reality both factors must have been important, as neither alone is sufficient. Where a campaign operates on a scientific basis, then democracy works as follows:

Scientist seek the truth.Journalists should report the truth, without fear or favour. They should not patronise their readership or the wider public by withholding important information in case it makes the public anxious, something that the BBC does repeatedly.Politicians should respond appropriately in order to protect the health and well-being of this, or better yet, future generations.If no action is forthcoming, then campaigners apply pressure, by creating an environment which makes it easier for politicians to take the right decisions. The CLEAR campaign is remembered as the most effective of all time, as it took only two years to produce a reversal of Government policy. But it wasn’t just through letters in learned journals and newspapers. There was a host of other activities going on: a monthly CLEAR newspaper sent to all 635 MPs. Meetings, press conferences, lectures and so forth. However, politicians may not respond appropriately if they are in thrall to vested interests. If this happens then the only recourse is to replace those politicians at the next general election, as happened recently in the UK. However, winning a scientific argument at national level is never enough. World-wide problems require a concerted effort by the UN, allied with national legislation to effect change. Which brings us back to the problem of global warming.

Prospects for achieving net zero.

We now return to the critical question confronting humanity: is net-zero still a realistic possibility? If the experience of the last 35+ years is anything to go by, then the answer has to be ‘No’. Despite the best efforts of the IPCC and the UN (through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change UNFCCC), annual emissions of GHGs have increased from their 1990 baseline by more than 60% and reached 53.8 Gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in 2022 (117). More CO2 has been emitted since 1990, than in all the years prior, going back to the start of the industrial revolution. By any standards this is an unmitigated disaster. Unlike the Montreal Protocol, the Kyoto Protocol has had no discernible impact on the upward trajectory of GHG emissions; and nor has carbon pricing, either through voluntary carbon credit schemes (VERs), or Government-backed carbon markets (CERs). Although there has been a slight slow-down in the growth of GHG emissions, from 2.6% per year in the first decade of this century, to 1.1% per annum in the second (2010-2019), atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other GHGs such as methane are still rising (118).

The reasons are not hard to find. Population growth drives climate change, and the world’s population has risen by almost 3 billion since the Lancet editorial of April 1989. Decarbonisation is not impossible, but it is an order of magnitude more difficult than lead-free petrol, and the time scales are therefore correspondingly longer. Fossil fuel combustion is deeply embedded into world energy systems and remains the quickest, even though it is not the cheapest method of achieving industrial growth for developing nations. The fossil fuel industry is not required to carry the costs of dumping its waste

products into the atmosphere. Air pollution contributes 30% of the $7 trillion dollars in subsidies received annually by the fossil fuel industry (FFI) (119). Taking their cue from the tobacco industry, fossil fuel interests have lobbied lawmakers and frustrated the enactment of climate mitigation policies. Between 2000 and 2015, fossil fuel companies spent 2 billion dollars lobbying the US Senate (120). Between 1990 and 2020, five major US oil companies spent 3.6 billion dollars just on advertising (121). This expenditure is separate from dark money used to fund libertarian think-tanks, or campaign donations. The FFI has even infiltrated academia as outlined by DeSmog in a scathing critique of academic institutions and their tacky relationship with the fossil fuel interests (How Oil and Gas Companies infiltrate Higher Education to maintain influence; Sept 7, 2024). Firms such as ExxonMobil are now using SLAPP injunctions to prevent shareholders putting forward climate-friendly resolutions (122). The global warming debate has been hijacked by climate change deniers who exploit uncertainties in the science, and formulate ex cathedra statements that are seldom challenged by scientifically illiterate presenters. Denial of global warming has become a ‘cause celebre’ for populist politicians, particularly in the US and Brazil (114 p117-18). The clamour of vested interests has drowned out the voices of truth and reason.

There are political reasons too, not all generated by right-wing libertarians. Prevention of global warming requires the application of the precautionary principle, as enunciated clearly by Sir John Maddox in 1988 (97 pp 70). But this principle is never an easy sell for governments when large interventions are required. Politicians are reluctant to take societal-changing decisions when the benefits will accrue long after they leave office. They are happy to broadcast their commitment to carbon-reduction targets, but conspicuously fail to enact policies that will bring them about. Furthermore, the changes needed to achieve net zero become exponentially larger the longer remedial measures are delayed. Had we started the process of decarbonisation in 1990, then the changes would have been incremental, manageable and non-disruptive. Instead, the recent Tory Government was headed in the wrong direction, having announced a new generation of gas-fired power plants, postponed the phase-out date for diesel and petrol-driven vehicles, granted licenses for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, and given permission for a coalmine in Cumbria. As the UK Climate Change Committee observed in their progress report to Parliament in June 2021 (123):

“It is hard to discern any comprehensive strategy in the climate plans we have seen in the last 12 months. There are gaps and ambiguities...We continue to blunder into high-carbon choices. Planning system and other fundamental structures have not been recast to meet our legal and international climate commitments”.

One often wonders how the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) manages to get everything so hopelessly wrong. In reality, they are lobbied heavily by fossil fuel interests. According to Desmog (May 10 2024) “Ministers in charge of the UK’s climate policies met with fossil fuel companies and lobbyists over 100 times last year, four times as much as they did external climate scientists, campaigners, and charities”. On March 27 RRJ authored a letter in the Financial Times which called into question the value and practicality of carbon capture technologies such as CCS, (Carbon capture and storage) and CDR (Direct Carbon Dioxide Removal) from the atmosphere (124). RRJ asked Joy Morrissey, Conservative MP for Beaconsfield, to forward his letter to the DESNZ. After six weeks Lord Callanan replied with a letter that could have been written by the fossil fuel industry, and failed to address any of the concerns raised by RRJ in his letter.

Meanwhile GB News seems to have been set up to perform a similar function to Fox News in the US, which consistently undermined climate scientists, and awarded undue prominence to climate sceptics and deniers. Thus, appearing on the Neil Oliver Show on 14 April 2024, journalist Jasmine Birtles made a series of bizarre claims about climate action leading to mass deaths. She claimed that a “depopulation agenda” exists that seeks to “remove seven and a half billion people from the world”. Sadly, Ofcom refused to investigate, even though this sort of scare-mongering is against their code of practice (125)

Prospects for humanity

The Lancet editorial of 1989 concluded: “the expense (of combating climate change) may be considerable, but the costs of doing nothing are incalculable” (3). Some individuals, but very few institutions, and certainly not the IPCC, have confronted the existential consequences for society if we fail to control global warming (126). The challenging mega-publication by James Hansen and co-workers, published in May 2023, uses Cenozoic paleoclimate data to infer that atmospheric CO2 concentrations were around 400-450 ppm when Antarctica became ice-free (125). Currently we are at 423 ppm, but the effect of other GHGs means that the current radiative forcing is 4.1 W/m2 (as of 2022) compared with 1750, roughly equivalent to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration. CO2 doubling changes the Earth’s energy balance by 4W/m2. Using a value of 0.75C per W/m2 for Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS), the IPCC estimate a warming of 3C for CO2 doubling, once equilibrium with the oceans has been achieved. However, Hansen examines more recent paleoclimate data, from the last two ice-ages, and derives a value for ECS of 1.2C per W/m2, indicating that CO2 doubling will produce 4.8C of warming (127), an estimate that has created some controversy (128) as IPCC has never changed its value for ECS, (though it does offer a range with temperatures of 1.5-4.5C). Current warming is partially disguised by the thermal inertia of the oceans, and the cooling effect of aerosols, particularly sulphates from the burning of coal and maritime fuels, a situation that Hansen describes as a Faustian bargain (Figure 1). This cooling effect is diminishing now that low-sulphur fuels have been mandated by the International Maritime Organisation (129), and may well account for the higher rate of warming since 2010, though this is controversial as rising levels of atmospheric methane and other GHGs are also important (127).

Fig 1.

Figure 1.

The black line shows actual temperatures from 1850, updated to include 2023 (GMT of 1.48C). The dotted red line shows the temperature trajectory predicted by the IPCC value for ECS of 0.75C per W/m2. The blue area below the dotted red line indicates the amount of negative aerosol forcing accepted by the IPCC. The anomaly during World War 11 is probably an artefact of incomplete ocean data during that period. The red line shows the temperature trajectory predicted by Hansen’s value for ECS of 1.2C per W/m2. The blue area below this line shows a much larger negative forcing by aerosols which can only be explained by the secondary impact of aerosols on cloud formation. The blue area represents a Faustian Bargain, as global warming will accelerate as aerosols diminish.

Fig 1 is courtesy of James Hansen and Makiko Sato and is adapted from Hansen et al 2023 (127).

Interestingly Hansen argues that there has already been 0.5 W/m2 of forcing prior to the industrial revolution due to the release of GHGs from deforestation and farming practices over the past 6,500 years, an increase that has been completely disguised by aerosols generated by burning wood for cooking and other human activities. Hence the actual forcing from current GHGs is 4.6 W/m2 compared with the mid Holocene (127). That is equivalent to the forcing that initiated the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 56 million years ago, when global temperatures spiked 5.6C above background, an event that was associated with the North Atlantic Igneous Province and the release of 6-7 million cubic kilometres of magma as an ice-free Greenland separated from Europe (130). The rapidity of the PETM provides an analogy to the present day, but annual CO2 releases were never more than one tenth of current anthropogenic emission rates (131). However, a second temperature spike in the PETM may reflect an amplification feed-back as methane clathrates disassociated in oceans much warmer than today, releasing vast quantities of methane into the atmosphere equivalent to 7000Gt CO2e (132). Temperature changes over the past 540 million years, are shown in Figure 2 (133).

Figure 2

Temperature estimates over the past 540 million years before present (Mybp) compared with the 1960-90 average. The earliest temperatures (orange) are inferred from physical proxies. The PETM spike (green trace) occurred against a high background temperature relating to large carbon releases from volcanic and metamorphic processes as the Indian plate travelled north towards the Eurasian plate at 10cm/year. Temperature estimates for this period rely upon isotopic ratios for oxygen in foraminifera and the saturation index of alkenones obtained from deep ocean sediments. Temperature data for the past 800,000 years relies upon actual measurements of GHGs trapped in bubbles of air in ice- core samples from Antarctica (dark blue trace). The light blue trace represents comparable data for the Northern hemisphere obtained from Greenland ice core samples. K-T is the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary that marked dinosaur extinction 66 Mybp. LGM indicates the Last Glacial Maximum. YD is the Younger Dryas cooling event. The circled red dots represent the projected temperature increase from a “business as usual” scenario at 2050 and 2100 using an ECS of 0.75C per W/m2. Note that the right-hand y-axis is in degrees Fahrenheit. After Fergus G 2015 (133).

Global temperatures over the past 10,000 years have remained stable, and conducive to the development of agriculture, the formation of nation states and population growth. Carbon emissions per capita is also increasing, and the product is global warming. Reversing Einstein, MC2=E where M is multitude, C2 = Carbon per Capita, and E = Extinction of Species, or for those that don’t care about fauna and flora, the End of human civilisation as we have known it (97 p262).

Under IPCC’s worst-case scenario, also known as “Business as Usual” (RCP 8.5), forcing reaches 8.5 W/m2 by 2100, and atmospheric GHGs will exceed 1200 ppm CO2e. Sick building syndrome occurs with CO2 levels > 800 ppm, and levels >1000 ppm are associated with cognitive dysfunction (134). As the Holocene transforms into the Anthropocene, there are undeniable existential threats to human health and the environment.

ECS is calculated on the basis that other influences on global warming, such as non-CO2 GHGs, land area, vegetation and the presence of ice sheets remain fixed. In reality a warming world will increase the emission of other GHGs and cause ice-sheets to disappear. Sea levels will rise eventually by 60+ metres. The additional forcing from the loss of albedo on an ice-free planet will add another 2 W/m2 of forcing to the current figure of 4.6 W/m2, giving a combined value of 6.6, which needs to be increased by another quarter to allow for the long-term release of other GHGs, notably methane from permafrost, peat and wetlands (127). 8.25 W/m2 of forcing will eventually cause a temperature rise of c10C (using an ECS of 1.2), which can be reduced to roughly 8C to allow for the cooling effect of aerosols. Using the IPCC’s ECS of 0.75C per W/m2, the equivalent figures are roughly 6C and 5C respectively. In either event the currently observed warming of 1.3C is but a fraction of what can be expected, even if atmospheric GHGs are held at their present level. These estimates do not include the fact that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other GHGs are still rising as a result of anthropogenic emissions, an increased forcing of 0.5 W/m2 per decade. They do allow for the possibility that an 8C rise in GMT is theoretically avoidable if we manage to reduce the level of GHGs in the

atmosphere. But this means progressively reducing GHG emissions to zero; or to be more precise: finding a balance between GHG emissions and GHG sinks by 2036, and all-species net-zero by 2050 as previously discussed (Russell-Jones R and Wigley TML. Hiatus in the Greenhouse: has the IPCC helped or hindered? Ref 2)Rapid temperature excursions such as the PETM are associated with widespread loss of marine and terrestrial species from the paleontological record and there is little reason to think that humanity will be exempt from these processes. Apart from food production collapsing under extreme weather conditions, large parts of the globe will become uninhabitable. A wet bulb temperature of 35C, sustained for >3 hours, is incompatible with human life, and can occur when a dry temperature of 45C is associated with 50% humidity (135).

There is one further phenomenon that has hampered progress on climate, and that is the erroneous hypothesis propounded by William Nordhaus and other “neo-classical” economists regarding the societal costs of global warming (136-46). Although Nordhaus, along with Paul Romer, received a Nobel prize for his work in 2018, others have suggested that he should have been locked up, presumably for ecocide (147). Worse, Nordhaus’ delusional thinking has had a knock-on effect on pensions (148), which do not guard against the impact of climate change, and even more damaging his impact on Working Party 3 of the IPCC, which has been producing reports that could have been written by the fossil fuel industry (149). Nordhaus is an economist, not a scientist, and he made the fundamental error of failing to distinguish between weather and climate. Similar errors have been made by journalists and other non-scientific commentators, but Nordhaus took this obvious fallacy to new levels by comparing economic output in different parts of the world, particularly the US, according to the regional average global temperature. Such a comparison is manifestly unsound, as there are so many other variables which need to be taken into account. Yet Nordhaus ploughed on regardless, and came to the extraordinary conclusion that climate change would not affect economic activity very much, as 90% of economic activity in the US takes place indoors or in air-conditioned environments. Nordhaus’ initial assessments even included mining in activities that would not be affected by climate, though he did alter his position in time for AR5, Working party 3 Report of 2014. Until then, he appeared blissfully unaware of the chances of flooding, heat-stroke amongst workers or rising sea-levels. The fact that this baloney went unchallenged for so long is testimony to the remarkable influence of “reputation” over accuracy in the field of economics, which sometimes has difficulty pretending that it is a science. The history of Nordhaus’ Alice-In -Wonderland publications strongly suggests that it is not.Professor Steve Keen has been a lone voice challenging Nordhaus’ fake’ economics for some years, but the warning signs were there (150), and recently others have joined the fray (151). Recently a paper in Nature pointed out that the economic costs of climate change are six times those estimated previously (ie by Nordhaus and his ilk) (151).

Prognosis Planet Earth.

It would seem that our democratic institutions are incapable of preventing climate change. COP events will continue to founder on the need for unanimity. Diplomatic endeavours will be vaunted as progress, but nature may not notice. As I observed shortly after the Paris Agreement:“The atmosphere does not respond to political craft and strategic compromise; it responds only to the laws of physics, which are uncompromising, and potentially lethal for most species on Earth, including our own”. (Guardian Dec 15, 2015).

It may be that world leaders will come to recognise the catastrophic consequences of their witless inactivity as the ravages of global warming become even more obvious. But will this happen in time? There are numerous climate tipping points (CTPs) which will render global warming irreversible, or spell the end of fragile ecosystems such as coral reefs. Amplifying CTPs occur when negative feedbacks, acting to maintain stability, are overwhelmed by positive feedbacks which cause an irreversible change. Such amplifications can be seen with the loss of albedo that results from sea-ice melt; the release of methane from thawing permafrost, or the conversion of rain forests from carbon sinks to carbon emitters (153). Amplification also occurs with the reduced ability of oceans to absorb CO2 as PH falls, but this is a gradual process and not regarded as a CTP (152). Some CTPs are already well advanced. Figure 3 shows which CTPs are expected to occur below a global mean temperature (GMT) increase of 2C, between 2 and 4C, and above 4C.

Fig 3.

Figure 3.

Climate Tipping Points (CTPs) that occur below 2C are shown as light orange circles; 2-4C as orange diamonds, and >4C as red triangles. The cryosphere is coloured blue; the biosphere green, and the ocean/atmosphere orange. From McKay et al 2022 (153).

Loss of albedo and local meteorological conditions result in maximum warming at the Poles. Over the past four decades, the Arctic has been warming by 0.73C per decade, almost four times the global average, threatening the collapse of the Greenland Ice sheet, and early breaches of the Paris Agreement (155, 156). Recent genomic studies indicate that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapsed during the last interglacial period with a GMT similar to today (157). Large influxes of meltwater from the ice-caps will slow the oceanic circulations, notably AMOC, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, (The Gulf stream system), which may turn off within the next 30 years (158). It is also likely that one CTP will trigger the next causing a domino effect as reviewed for COP 28 by Lenton and co-workers (159).

We do not need to predict the date of all such events with certainty because it is now apparent that they will certainly occur if humanity continues on its present course. We do know that several will be locked in by 2050 if temperatures reach 2C, let alone 3-4C by 2100. Knowledge about the science of climate change has advanced exponentially since 1989, but none of it gives much grounds for optimism. It is our ability to protect the natural world that has gone backwards, ever since our Neolithic ancestors first took to farming, husbandry and the creation of civilisations (97).

Acknowlegements.

My thanks to Professor Tom Wigley, Professor Hugh Montgomery and Professor Steve Keen for their helpful comments. I would also like to thank Sarah Pye (artist) and Nawaz Haq (ZESTA) for their feedback in ensuring that the text is comprehensible to a non-specialised audience.Postscript. Earlier versions of this article were rejected by the Lancet, BMJ (short and long versions) The New England Journal of Medicine and Oxford Open Climate Change (twice). No substantive referee comments were offered. The manuscript was rejected for being “too personal”.

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ADDENDUM

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