Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

I think we have to accept that a certain minority in all developed countries are hostile to immigration. And also that a 3+ °C hotter world means the refugee crisis in Europe will be orders of magnitude worse than it would otherwise be, with huge impacts in America as well. Simply following through projections for heat waves, droughts, shorter monsoons and growing seasons, expand range of insect pests, weeds, and plant diseases, etc. means hundreds of millions at risk of starvation, especially in subsaharan Africa, the Mideast, the Indian subcontinent, and central America.

Personally I see the future scenario depicted in Gwynne Dyer's Climate Wars fairly inevitable: many of the world's poor outbid for food requirements, dozens of collapsed states, fortified Southern borders, anti-immigrant naval activity in the Mediterranean and perhaps English channel, and constant sorties to deposit sulfates in the stratosphere to delay still worse effects. What changed in 2016 is I now fear this scenario won't be accompanied by awareness and collaboration, but by demagoguery and perhaps fascism.

Its an awful future, and one that is meaningful to someone in Kansas in a way that some Miami Beach millionaires trudging through seawater isn't.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/us/politics/scott-pruitt-epa-trump.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

i'm sure pruitt was al gore's top recommendation for the position

At this point I'd settle for Michael Brown-level incompetents heading the cabinet and other Federal agencies rather than these people who maliciously detest the missions of the departments they'll be heading.

don't worry I'm sure plenty of Trump's cabinet is totally incompetent

they'll be competent enough to deliberately cause shitloads of problems

who would you rather have as your boss - ben carson, who is a gigantic fucking idiot and admits that he knows nothing about HUD and isn't qualified to run the organization, or scott pruitt, who is an extremely competent evil man? it's a tossup. pruitt must be making the private giddy giggle face to himself in the bathroom mirror this afternoon. imagine spending 5 years crafting an elaborate plan to break into a building and set it on fire, and then out of the blue a farting fuckface makes you the owner of the building and gives you a bunch of tnt

seriously, fuck this

I'M REALLY ANGRY ABOUT THIS!!!!

I'm trying to stay angry but now can't stop laughing over "a farting fuckface."

This might seem like small potatoes, but are we looking at extremely higher coffee prices?

Not sure what you're referring to JS. Coffee plants, of course, will one day be raised by Davids and Sarahs toiling in the North Cascades, but I haven't seen anything besides the [upscale Starbucks](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/07/starbucks-courts-millennials-with-10-coffee-at-new-reserve-bars.html) news that would imply an immanent hike in coffee prices. Coffee futures have fallen from 1.80/lb down to ~1.40/lb recently, though longer dated futures remain around 1.58/lb.

Something I caught the end of on a vice news program, so I googled coffee and climate change and found this http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/impacts/impacts-of-climate-on-coffee.html#.WEis_WUWyHo

http://gothamist.com/2016/12/08/sea_levels_surrounding_nyc_could_ri.php

rip lga

It's best if LGA returns to the sea anyway.

tru

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/11/30/the-ground-beneath-our-feet-is-poised-to-make-global-warming-much-worse-scientists-find/

rip

fwiw the "hordes approaching our shores" argument isn't just shitty and appalling - it doesn't work on the people it's supposed to work on. nixon-era environmental politics (establishment and countercultural, tho generally not left-socialist and third-world-solidarity) were saturated with this stuff since at least the population bomb, and while it certainly helps stoke white anxieties it's not clear that it does anything to help the planet. mostly it gave strength to corporate-friendly developmentalist/neocolonialist schemes: gotta intervene and "manage" these other places. also tends to give rise to "well hopefully there'll be a plague or a famine or something" thinking, similarly vicious and inhuman in its acceptance of mass suffering and death.

the 'hordes approaching our shores' argument will/has give(n) rise to 'build a wall and shoot the hordes' long before it reaches anything about mitigating climate change

i know this is out of character for this thread, but wanna read something really depressing!!??!?!

read the reviews:

http://greatnonprofits.org/org/heartland-institute

(for those unfamiliar with heartland institute:

https://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/15/leak-exposes-heartland-institute-climate
https://www.listoftheworldfuckingpeopleintheentireworld.net/no1heartlandinstitute)

wow, i'm surprised that www.listoftheworldfuckingpeopleintheentireworld.net is still available

Scientists are frantically copying U.S. climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump

makes it sound like he has an EMP bomb that will wipe out all computer data worldwide.

if it gets scientists to start backing up their data that's good. they probably should've been doing that anyways.

scientists have begun a feverish attempt to copy reams of government data onto independent servers in hopes of safeguarding it from any political interference

the issue isn't that they haven't been backing up their data - it's that if the government decides to shitcan climate research it's not unreasonable to worry they might wipe the data and backups from government servers too

the legislative roadmap to destruction

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/16/if-you-want-to-see-how-donald-trump-will-destroy-the-environment-read-this-legislative-roadmap/

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C0IfPlxWIAAvte4.jpg:small

put your green hopes in... Mad Dog.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/james-mattis-climate-change-trump-defense-232833

just confirms what I've suspected all these years, frame climate change as a defense issue and suddenly our government will start caring

The govt has cared about climate change as a defense issue for a long time - the DoD was producing huge reports on what it means for security since the GWB administration.

The republican side of the legislative branch of our govt doesn't care about that, though.

A questionnaire from President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team asked State Department employees to report how much money the agency had paid to international environmental organizations, the Washington Post reported Monday.

According to anonymous sources within the State Department, employees in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs were given a questionnaire last week which asked in part: “How much does the Department of State contribute annually to international environmental organizations in which the department participates?”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-transition-asks-state-department-international-environmental-spending

Despite despair being an instantly recognizable, and not obviously mad, response to the climate crisis, very little has been written on this. Notable exceptions are: Nolt 2010; Williston 2012; Fiala 2010.

following up on sanpaku's references i found this one to be fruitful; durrr that looking for the opposite of despair would be a good idea. this traces back to papers by michael p. nelson (2010) and allen thompson (2010), also on radical hope, which borrows from jonathan lear's work on the cultural devastation of the crow nation.

Climate Change and Radical Hope
Author(s): Byron Williston
Source:
Ethics and the Environment,
Vol. 17, No. 2, Special Issue on Climate Change (Fall
2012), pp. 165-186
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/ethicsenviro.17.2.165

i thought this was a really good piece. sorry for long excerpt but the whole thing is worth reading.

Trump, Putin and the Pipelines to Nowhere
You can’t understand what Trump’s doing to America without understanding the “Carbon Bubble”

...Here’s the blunt reality: the pressure to cut emissions and respond to a changing climate are going to alter what we do and don’t see as valuable. Climate action will trigger an enormous shift in the way we value things.
If we can’t burn oil, it’s not worth very much. If we can’t defend coastal real estate from rising seas (or even insure it, for that matter), it’s not worth very much. If the industrial process a company owns exposes them to future climate litigation, it’s not worth very much. The value of those assets is going to plummet, inevitably… and likely, soon.

...For high-carbon industries to continue to be attractive investments, then, they must spin a tale of future growth. They must make potential investors believe that even if there is a Carbon Bubble, it is decades away from popping — that their high profits today will continue for the foreseeable future, so their stock is worth buying.
How would you maintain this confidence?

You’d dispute climate science — making scientists’ predictions seem less certain in the public mind— and work to gut the capacity of scientists to continue their work (by, for instance, defunding NASA’s Earth Sciences program).

You’d attack global climate agreements, making them look unstable and weak, and thus unlikely to impact your businesses.

You’d attack low-carbon competitors politically, attempting to portray the evidence that they can replace high-carbon industries as fraudulent (or at least overly idealistic).

You’d use every leverage point to slow low-carbon industrial progress — for example, by continuing massive subsidies to oil and gas companies, while attacking programs to develop new energy sources.

You’d support putting a price on carbon, since this makes you look moderate and engaged, but you’d make sure that the definition of a “reasonable” price on carbon was so low and took so long to implement that it was no real threat to your business, and at worst would replace the dirtiest fossil fuels with others (switching for example from coal to gas).

You would ally with extremists and other sources of anti-democratic power, in order to be able to fight democratic efforts to cut emissions through the application of threats, instability and violence.

Most of all, you’d invest as heavily as possible in new infrastructure and supply. For oil and gas companies, this means new exploration and new pipelines. Why would you do this, if you know you may have to abandon these assets before they’ve paid off? Two reasons: First, it sends a signal of confidence to markets that you expect to continue to grow in the future. Second, it’s politically harder to force companies to abandon expensive investments than it is to prevent those systems from being built in the first place — the mere existence of a pipeline becomes an argument for continuing to use it. This, too, bolsters investor confidence. (Note that whether these assets are eventually abandoned or not is of little concern to current investors looking to delay devaluations).

Here’s the kicker: If you were going to put in place a presidential administration that was dedicated to taking these actions, it would look exactly like what we have now: a cabinet and chief advisors in which nearly every member is a climate denialist with ties to the Carbon Lobby.

Trump wants ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to be his Secretary of State. You might remember that Exxon has been a main driver of climate denialism, as well as being one the largest polluters in history. Tillerson also has close ties with Vladimir Putin.
Not long ago, Tillerson was quoted as saying “The world is going to have to continue using fossil fuels, whether they like it or not.” Think that one over. This is the man who would be America’s face to the world.

Trump has also put forward a host of other appointees who are overt climate denialists and generally also have financial ties to industries threatened by the Carbon Bubble. These include Rick Perry, Trump’s choice for Secretary of Energy and a close ally of Big Oil; Scott Pruitt (EPA Administrator — a virulent climate denialist); Nikki Haley (U.N. Ambassador, also known for suppressing climate science as Governor); Steve Bannon (Chief Strategist, and just generally gross); Ryan Zinke (Secretary of Interior — who strongly supports more oil and gas exploration on public lands): Jeff Sessions (Attorney General and climate regulation opponent); Elaine Chao (Secretary of Transportation, who will be tasked with getting a huge fossil fuel infrastructure plan through Congress, working with her husband, Mitch McConnell); James Mattis (Secretary of Defense, who is not a denialist but does have oil industry ties); Michael Flynn (National Security Advisor — and former oil industry lobbyist); Larry Kudlow (Council of Economic Advisors — a climate denialist and frequent defender of the Koch brothers); Wilbur Ross (Commerce Secretary — holds “hundreds of millions of dollars” in oil and gas investments); even Betsy DeVos (Education Secretary) is sister to Blackwater founder Erik Prince, who is investing heavily in African oil and gas fields, “places where he thinks his expertise in providing logistics and security can give him a competitive edge.”

This is a cabinet custom-built to protect carbon industry investors… especially, perhaps, one.

chris hayes' metaphor in the nation a few years ago that a serious response to climate change would entail a destruction of capital comparable to the one represented by the abolition of slavery continues to be a helpful way for me to think about this stuff and who will be willing to do what re: it, inexact as the analogy may obviously be in key ways

has anyone read this? it's a bit long but really flush with detail, if repetitive:

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/21060-green-capitalism-the-god-that-failed

i think this is what pushed me to give up on capitalism entirely

A serious response is not going to happen without global trade accord with teeth: products that don't price-in greenhouse externalities will be tariffed to approximate these. Which I don't think will happen till we've baked in 3° C. 3° C probably entails 6-8° C from positive feedbacks. Humanity will survive (in pockets), but technological civilization is more doubtful. And good luck advancing past the Renaissance without a fossil fuel bootstrap. This isn't an inconvenient truth, this isn't widespread suffering, this is the end of hopes for humanity to expand and understand the universe. Its our Great Filter, as I suspect its been on other worlds.

Also, I need to get into analog synths and name my project "Great Filter", which to my surprise hasn't been taken yet.

a destruction of capital comparable to the one represented by the abolition of slavery

was the idea supposed to be in part (a) that this was a sea change in who it was that effectively POSSESSED capital, and (b) it was also covered over/obscured by concurrent industrialization?

if the article i linked to is anything to go by, the ecologically responsible price for ghg should necessarily contract the size of the economy thus making any progress towards ghg reduction fruitless in a political system which privileges economic growth (which is not limited to capitalism, though it is inherent in capitalism)

xp

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/all-references-to-climate-change-have-been-deleted-from-the-white-house-website

see you in hell, y'all!!!

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/07/science/earth/antarctic-crack.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

oh cool, a hellmouth

Oklahoma hits 100° in the dead of winter

This is awesome; also, terrifying.

http://en.newsner.com/man-points-camera-at-ice-then-captures-the-unimaginable-on-film/about/nature

@EricHolthaus
Temperatures up to 40 degF (22 degC) above normal today across the East.
The warmest February day for 100+ years (since records begin).

https://twitter.com/EricHolthaus/status/835197141366657024

Currently 74 in Cleveland. Hottest Feb. 24 on record for both Cleveland and Akron.

@NWSChicago
Chicago's about to do something its never done in 146 years of record keeping: go the entire months of Jan & Feb with no snow on the ground.

february tornado warning in iowa

For the first time ever, no measurable snow in Chicago this January and February.

Officially. 50s today, but might snow tomorrow!