As dangerous climate change looms on horizon, humanity must prepare to face a storm like no other – Scotsman comment

Carbon capture and storage may be a vital technology as part of efforts to prevent runaway global warming

Professor Bob Watson is regarded as one of the most eminent climate scientists in the world. So when he says he is “very pessimistic” about the chances of restricting global warming to two degrees Celsius, it is an assessment that must be taken seriously.

While there are fears that governments will react to missed targets by taking an even more lax approach, the reality is that by failing to take the easy way out – cutting emissions to avoid dangerous climate change – we may now need to prepare for the hard way. In addition to continuing to reduce greenhouse gases, the world may have to build greater resilience to a climate that is going to become increasingly hostile.

New flood defences; houses designed to cope with heatwaves; railways and electricity networks that can cope with severe storms… the list goes on and will be expensive. In some cases, too expensive. After three people were killed near Stonehaven in the 2020 derailment of a train which had hit stones washed onto the tracks by heavy rain, a Network Rail report said it would be “simply not practicable” to rebuild thousands of miles of railway earthworks.

In addition to planning for more dangerous weather conditions, governments may also need to accelerate progress on carbon capture and storage (CCS), not necessarily as a means to preserve the fossil fuel trade, but in order to suck carbon from the atmosphere. A biofuel power station fitted with CCS, for example, would result in negative carbon emissions.

Environmentalists’ concerns that the oil industry has used CCS as a smokescreen to delay action on climate change may have some justification. However, if the world is about to enter a struggle to prevent ‘runaway global warming’ – as natural processes amplify human effects – we will need all the help we can get. The Acorn CCS project in Peterhead seems ideally placed and would also help provide new jobs for oil workers as part of the much-vaunted ‘just transition’ towards a net-zero economy.

If Watson is right, humanity is heading into a storm unlike any other. Time to batten down the hatches.