Page 98 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

84 J. BATES

CLIMATIC UNCERTAINTY
As many scientists and commentators have observed, planetary ecosystems
are in a state of crisis. In a 2009 Nature article, Johan Rockström and
colleagues identified the various ways in which human action is stressing
the ecological “carrying capacity” of the planet (Rockström et al. 2009a).
In their paper, the authors quantify a range of “planetary boundaries” in
order to identify a variety of ecological processes and the “associated
thresholds” that could not be crossed without generating “unacceptable
environmental change”. Their analysis identifies that the boundaries for
“climate change, rate of biodiversity loss and interference with the nitrogen
cycle” have already been passed—unacceptable environmental change is
occurring. Further, in the case of “global freshwater use, change in land
use, ocean acidification and interference with the global phosphorous
cycle”, these boundaries are being quickly approached.
Such warnings about the impact of human action on the Earth’s
ecosystems are echoed by many expert commentators, including scientists
involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC assessment reports are a collaborative effort involving thousands
of researchers and governments from around the world. The report is a
systematic review of publications relevant to the scientific, technical and
socio-economic aspects of climate change. The aim is to provide a com-
prehensive view of current knowledge. The most recent report was pub-
lished in 2014, and its conclusions were unambiguous:

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of
the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The
atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have
diminished, and sea level has risen.

Further,
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the
pre-industrial era, driven largely by economic and population growth, and are
now higher than ever. This has led to atmospheric concentrations of carbon
dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide that are unprecedented in at least the last
800,000 years. Their effects, together with those of other anthropogenic
drivers, have been detected throughout the climate system and are extremely
likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the
mid-twentieth century (IPCC 2014).