SEMINAR: Climate change: The realities, the challenges and the opportunities

Long before humans came to this earth, its climate cycled from ice ages to warm periods with a regularity of about 100,000 years. Indeed, it may be argued that it was this cycling that formed not only our DNA, but also moulded our cultural norms. A scale model, based on the great ocean conveyer idea, allows a quantitative look at the role of CO2 in interglacial cycling. With this understanding it becomes possible to make predictions of the end state under the 'business as usual' scenario and at the same time design quantitative measures for the amelioration of the most severe impacts. Technology may be seen to have developed in direct response to lowering our local risk against nature's imposed constraints, we now have an opportunity to lower our global risk. In the last 50 or so years, humans have interfered with the natural climate feedback mechanisms to such an extent that the climate cycle has been sent off into a new rhythm, with different seasonal variations both geographically and temporally. Rainfall patterns have shifted and the severity of events is changing; the exact new end state is still unknown, but the above model shows that that the current climate change is now no longer directly forced by anthropogenic emissions, is amenable to solution, but will require huge engineering, agricultural and social initiatives to bring under control. As we get ready for the changing rainfall patterns, the rising sea levels, the shifting disease patterns and the accelerated human migration, new infrastructure, more efficient food production, new water storages, new energy sources, whole new cities and massive clean up and restoration projects will need to be designed and implemented. In brief we will need to re-engineer almost the complete earth! In doing this we should not repeat the two major mistakes engineers have made in the past; we should clean up behind us as we move infrastructure and restore new ecosystems compatible with the new climate and second, we should remember the interconnectivity between carbon, water and people; we must learn to build multi-objective infrastructure where we accommodate people in a healthy environment, where we generate energy, harness bulk water and sequester carbon all in a biodiverse environment; in brief we need to learn how to mimic nature! I will illustrate this with three examples. First, how a green environment can lead to better human health and also sequester an enormous amount of carbon. Second, how lakes may be used to provide bulk water, sequester almost one quarter of the anthropogenic global carbon flux, provide enhanced fish yields and safeguard biodiversity. Third, I will use the proposed Severn Barrage as an example where such engineering ventures maybe used to stimulate the economy, generate a substantial amount of power, enhance the estuarine biodiversity, annually sequester up to possible 20% of UK's anthropogenic carbon flux into the atmosphere and provide much better recreational accessibility. The greatest challenge we face is to focus on the opportunities offered by rapidly changing environment and return to a village life, albeit now a global village, the environment from which our DNA originated. If properly managed we could grow out of our juvenile, irresponsible behaviour from the 20th Century and emerge from the next 100 years a more responsible species and an earth where we can control our global risk, the climate. Our fate is in our own hands, only wealth inequity stands in the way.

*ALL WELCOME*