Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

the second section of a series of three reports that will make up the IPCC's 5th Assessment Report is out, and good news, we're in the clear! oh wait,

Panel’s Warning on Climate Risk: Worst Is Yet to Come

even if you think you've heard this stuff before, please take the time to at least read an article or two about it, or wade into the summary for policymakers (linked above).

a key point that was mentioned by the NYT but will probably be left out of the vast majority of media coverage: this is a watered down report, by design. the language in the executive summary reports is combed over by politicos from every UN country, and especially the US, and every sentence that's in there must be agreed to by EVERYONE. including the U.S., assholes of the world. that requirement leads to things like this:

The poorest people in the world, who have had virtually nothing to do with causing global warming, will be high on the list of victims as climatic disruptions intensify, the report said. It cited a World Bank estimate that poor countries need as much as $100 billion a year to try to offset the effects of climate change; they are now getting, at best, a few billion dollars a year in such aid from rich countries.

The $100 billion figure, though included in the 2,500-page main report, was removed from a 48-page executive summary to be read by the world’s top political leaders. It was among the most significant changes made as the summary underwent final review during an editing session of several days in Yokohama.

The edit came after several rich countries, including the United States, raised questions about the language, according to several people who were in the room at the time but did not wish to be identified because the negotiations were private. The language is contentious because poor countries are expected to renew their demand for aid this September in New York at a summit meeting of world leaders, who will attempt to make headway on a new treaty to limit greenhouse gases.

Yikes all around. I'm buying a boat. A big boat.

Drown us all

The objections to the $100B figure came from policy/governmental figures as opposed to scientists, I assume?

yeah, i mean i wasn't in the room obviously but it's the politicos who censor it at the end. the $100 billion figure still made it into the overall report (the 2,500-page main report that no one actually reads).

so how much is the sea gonna rise in the next 40 years, Karl? trying to plan ahead here...

http://www.cityofboston.gov/Images_Documents/Projected%20sea%20level%20rise%20by%20year%20440_tcm3-27687.jpg

Maybe 20 cm.

One reason I dislike An Inconvenient Truth as an introduction to climate impacts: sea level rises are among the least of our problems in a warming world. Want to know how bad things get in our lifetimes, look at rainfall, especially persistent droughts over grain belts.

when i spoke about this with my denier relations, i just started right off with "forget about warming- how do you feel about famines? because that, and the resulting conflicts over food resources, are what scare me first off." i got some "why u scaremonger," but it def got more attention than the idea of hot summers.

persistent droughts over grain belts

I comfort myself with the thought that the Ogallala aquifer is infinite in extent and no possible ill could come of our tapping it infinitely. Then I suck my thumb for that extra bit of comfort.

of course, the primary dude being interviewed about this right now on totebag central? toll, the one guy of 300 who pulled his name off because of the doomy nature of the report. "it'll be divisive!"

yeah was p pissed by that

I just went to the grocery store and a single organic lime was $8.59. that's basically our future, except instead of limes insert "basic foodstuffs."

the nonorganic limes were $0.75 FWIW. that's still pretty expensive.

Almost googled "totebag central" before I realized you were referring to NPR. :\

XL pipeline will solve all our problems

The case for the methane producing Methanosarcina that flourished from the mass quantities of nickel released from the Siberian traps, being the prime cause of the Permian extinction event.
http://phys.org/news/2014-03-methane-producing-microbes-responsible-largest-mass.html

I just went to the grocery store and a single organic lime was $8.59. that's basically our future, except instead of limes insert "basic foodstuffs."

― espring (amateurist), Monday, March 31, 2014 8:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whoa that's crazy, where was this?

wow that is fascinating xp

OK, so as long as I make sure to never move anywhere less than 10 feet above sea level, my real worry will be famine and $8 organic limes, got it.

Just read this wrt limes:

http://www.alcademics.com/2014/03/out-of-the-limelight-lime-shortage-margarita-markups-and-lemon-garnishes.html
http://www.alcademics.com/2014/03/additional-lime-shortage-intel-from-julio-bermejo-of-tommys-.html

I was about to buy the kindle edition of Dale Jamieson's Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed -- and What It Means for Our Future until I saw the £13.49 price for a bloody mobi file, CR review of it here.
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/currente/jamieson.htm

This story loses me from the start thanks to the ceremony or whatever it is.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/magazine/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-and-he-feels-fine.html

tl;ee (earth ended)

Short version; This is what Swampy would have become if he had moved to the suburbs and got a job.

it's an interesting article in lots of ways but there's a painful cognitive dissonance here- it's really about our changing climate and the fate of the Earth and framing it so insistently as a biographical essay about one person and his lifestory (his dad, his oxford years, his journo past, etc.) kind of ignores the real scale at which we all ought to be thinking if we're paying attention. (maybe the author gets this dissonance and it's a Trojan Horse thing, like "hey look at this funny guy, oh and while you're at it, think about this . . . " bait-n-switch. In any case it's weirder still that it never mentions all the other conversations that are happening around these same issues (i can't be exhaustive but off the top of my head: there's Timothy Morton and the entire "dark ecology" conversation taking place in the wake of his book "Hyperobjects, or Philosophy After the End of the World" ["we are always wrong with respect to global warming", it is simply Too Big for any tiny solution to work to reverse things, driving a Prius is not enough, etc.], and there's the Stephen Emmott book "Ten Billion" which discusses in absolutely fucking chilling detail the inter-link of overpopulation and climate change and coming global famines, and there's the David Benatar book "Better Never to Have Been" which is making an argument for why we should encourage a slow but steady rampdown of human population as we all head towards extinction, and there's Ray Brassier arguments about the meaning of extinction in "Nihil Unbound", and there's Larry Buell on "planetary feeling", and . . . so on and so on and so on). These ideas are definitely not original to one dude in a field, or 200 people in a field, that we can shrug off, and so the importance of these issues ought to go beyond liking or dis-liking this one guy, his zine, his festival, etc. The issue is not this one guy. It's all of us. There's a crisis. The crisis is that lots and lots and lots of human beings are going to starve to death because our industrial and economic practices have already altered this planet's ecosystem irreparably, and/or they will drown as seas rise, and/or they will choke to death on methane as Siberian permafrost releases trapped methane (pick your scenario). There's very little evidence that a technological solution is going to emerge in time to stop that crisis from coming, still less evidence that short-term election driven political cycles will permit the risky re-jiggering of economics which it would take in order to actually do something about this. Doomy feelings of despair aka "depressive realism" are legitimate and justified. We can still talk about the utility of hope as a motivating tool to get people to legislate one way or another in order to manage our slide towards these coming conditions. But that might also contribute to false attitudes of being in control over a situation that we are responsible for but no longer really in control of, if indeed we ever were.

there's the David Benatar book "Better Never to Have Been" which is making an argument for why we should encourage a slow but steady rampdown of human population as we all head towards extinction

I don't think I've thought about it in anything so extreme of a way but this is essentially been a bit of an operating principle of mine for something like twenty years now. Unconscious perhaps but my own great eco-scare period was spring 1992. That feeling never quite left, and I think I've been going "I...probably don't want a kid" ever since.

Doomy feelings of despair aka "depressive realism" are legitimate and justified. We can still talk about the utility of hope as a motivating tool to get people to legislate one way or another in order to manage our slide towards these coming conditions. But that might also contribute to false attitudes of being in control over a situation that we are responsible for but no longer really in control of, if indeed we ever were.

I'll be interested to see what the final episode of the new Cosmos has to say. I remember that in the original it was the big "You know, we really could be this fucked" conclusion, which I thought was remarkably clear eyed of Sagan. Will Tyson go similarly?

Yeah, to be honest, the last few books on the subject that I've read have rattled me to the point that I'm genuinely sad for my friends who are parents, because their children are going to inherit a situation that they did not create but which they're going to have to resolve if humanity's going to survive. I'll probably be dead by 2050, but my friend's children will be seeing what happens when our endlessly spiking human population growth, water-use, and energy needs slam into basic limitations on global resources. Perhaps the scariest moment in the Emmott book --which is this:

http://www.amazon.com/Ten-Billion-Vintage-Stephen-Emmott/dp/0345806476/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397065896&sr=1-1&keywords=ten+billion+by+stephen+emmott

---occurs when he notices that lately a new demographic has started anxiously attending climate change conferences: the military. What is happening is that the writing is on the wall and now people have realized that climate change and scarcity are going to lead to massive refugee populations. Borders are going to be contested as equatorial zones become gradually less and less habitable. The militarization of climate change is likely and a new geopolitics will result (as tundra melts, Russia becomes more of a global grain belt than ever and gets more powerful as a result in these scenarios). The capitalist extraction machine fucked up the world's climate on behalf of a small crew of developed nations. The rest of the world has a rising population and an ever rising desire to live like the completely unsustainable West (look at the rising numbers of cars on this planet- if the cars-to-people ratio that is "normal" for the USA shows up in India and China then you can bet that our climate change situation is going to get much, much worse).

Yeah, it's amazing how the media rarely reports on the insurance industry and pentagon's intense interest in climate change.

Rather. At some point the penny will drop among the more willfully blind.

"ExxonMobil did not grant a request for comment." Indeed.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/investors-will-oil-coal-companies-will-thrive-in-warming-world-16653

The military has been paying attention to climate change for years...

Rather. At some point the penny will drop among the more willfully blind.

I've seen conservatives:
- dismiss funding for the Navy research into algal biofuels as more earmark nonsense, and
- point to Warren Buffet's recent remarks saying that he didn't notice any climate disruption to rebuff the insurance industry taking CC into account

... so I'm more than happy to try to live to see the cataclysm so I can get the last laugh not sure that penny will ever drop for some people.

Some ppl's identity and self-esteem are so invested in a certain narative that they'd deny the law of gravity before they'd actually engage w/reality.

Some ppl's humanity's identity and self-esteem are so invested in a certain narative that they'd deny the law of gravity before they'd actually engage w/reality.

in fact this is humanity's defining achievement.

sadly I think we've lost the ability to identify as a species- nationalism and racism have become so ingrained that it's very tricky to get people to see things as "species wide problems". Worse, given the drastic inequities with respect to which nations caused this problem and which nations will need help to deal with its consequences first, there's a structural asymmetry in place that actively militates against such thinking from both directions. And the instinct to disavow responsibility or locate it elsewhere is strong, since the problem is so intractable that it would be great if it was someone else's job to fix. Also: the political process is mostly framed around nation states- but when the issue is "global capitalism is going to keep going for short-term profits, nobody's going to sacrifice today's profits for the interests of virtual children 100 years from now, and this involves technologies and industries that are already globally extended", there's no way to vote within a single state against a process that has already moved way beyond single states. So our own ideas about what political agency even is in the first place are seemingly irrevocably tied to the very formations that constrain and divide us and tend to work to damp down the capacity to address a systemic, planetary problem. I sometimes think it would be easier if the problem was, say, a Martian invasion- then you'd see humans banding together qua "the human" as a meaningful category. But alas, no Martians.

I do think that there are limits to political gridlock on the level of nation-states and that eventually some movement towards mitigation will take place, but I also think that that point is located pretty far into the positive feedback loops we're fueling now. Also, nationalism/racist tribalism isn't a contemporary phenomenon, and as a species, we've never really had an instinctive ability to empathize with each other on a species-wide scale; a notion of global humanity is the contemporary phenomenon, rather.

Re: the Paul Kingsnorth profile, John Grey's review/critique of Uncivilization is worth a read. Abandoning civilization en masse isn't much of an option. Plus the epigraph chosen, as with some of Jeffer's other poems, cuts too close to Nazi aesthetics for comfort.

Short version; This is what Swampy would have become if he had moved to the suburbs and got a job.

― xelab, Thursday, 17 April 2014 20:34 (Yesterday)

yeah fuck the nyt for devoting so much attention to this waste cunt, latterday william morris types are the worst possible avocates for environmental realism

this linked article is more noteworthy

Those who were initially most resistant to the project — residents of Lent, the community that was to be trimmed to make way for the river — started to clap. “The Applause of Lent,” as the local newspaper called it, signaled what Ovink and other Dutch planners had been working toward: the acceptance of climate change as a way of life, and the dawn of a 21st-century approach to living with nature.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/magazine/how-to-think-like-the-dutch-in-a-post-sandy-world.html

This book offers a rousing and inclusive call to arms for anyone who would identify themselves as "English" against the forces of globalisation.We see the signs around us every day: the chain cafes and mobile phone outlets that dominate our high streets; the disappearance of knobbly carrots from our supermarket shelves; and the headlines about yet another traditional industry going to the wall. For the first time, here is a book that makes the connection between these isolated, incremental, local changes and the bigger picture of a nation whose identity is being eroded. As he travels around the country meeting farmers, fishermen, and the inhabitants of Chinatown, Paul Kingsnorth will refract the kind of conversations that are taking place in country pubs and corner shops across the land - while reminding us that these quintessentially English institutions may soon cease to exist.

<<<<<

"yeah fuck the nyt for devoting so much attention to this waste cunt, latterday william morris types are the worst possible avocates for environmental realism"

He reminds me of that hypocritical arsehole from The Age of Stupid, the terrible environmental doc that Postlethwaite sadly got mixed up with before cancer took him. The self absorbed prick with a shitload of kids, a land rover and a farmhouse who seemed convinced that as a wind farm project manager he was smugly beyond criticism. What a vile, delusional cunt.

the retreat into doomy ersatz pre-norman "englishness" is kind of a non-sequitir for me, we might as well say "global warming isn't going to go away, we're all doomed, so i'm going to play-act the wandering tribes of israel." i mean, good on him if that's his thing, but it doesn't seem like a particularly universal or compelling response to environmental calamity.

that said, i recognize my own despair in his and i'm not going to attack him for sort of retreating into himself.

it's not supposed to be a practical response though, half their argument seems to be that there is little of much consequence to be done in the face of impending catastrophe. and i don't think it's necessarily about retreating into some historical englishness either, afaiu it's more of a letting-go of anthropocentrism and using naturistic quasi-mythological cultural practices to do this. it is a bit twattish though.

i didn't write "practical"--I wrote "universal or compelling"

also it just makes me think that this dude can't think of any response that isn't an species of lifestylism, even as he decries lifestylism.

what they do sounds very much bound up with having a strong sense of place, so i guess the specific content isn't intended to be of universal appeal

yeah. but why then is it being covered in the NYT as though he's some kind of seer?

i should repeat my main thought which is that what this guy and his cadre have come up with in response to global catastrophe seems like replacing one fantasy with another. and above all it just seems like a non-sequitir.

it is all a bit survivalist lord summerisle

why is his pessimism so wan and so shit? even disgregarding the assumption that there is no possible instrumental response to life in a drowning world (unproven, largely and the uk given its latitude and means is not going to be among the primary victims) then millenarianism should be a lot more dionysian or compelling than his twee blood and soil dogshit

The state government of Rhineland-Palatinate has published a booklet titled Nature Conservation vs Rightwing Extremism in an effort to assist organic farmers who may encounter rightwing extremists. Gudrun Heinrich of the University of Rostock has published a study, Brown Ecologists, in reference to both the current movement and the Nazi Brownshirts. The politically extreme rightwing environmental magazine Umwelt und Aktiv (Environment and Active), is believed to receive support from Germany's far-right National Democratic party (NPD).[13] Der Spiegel has covered the “organic brown fellowship” (“Braune Bio-Kameradschaft”),[14] and Süddeutsche Zeitung has published an article on and the “infiltration [Unterwanderung] of organic farming by rightwing extremists,[15] noting the lineage to Nazi doctrines of Aryan supremacy and ecological harmony.