Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

Thanks so much for posting this.

feels weird to call a massively depressing piece 'good' as such, but this is def worth a read

“When I was younger,” Paffard tells us, “I would walk through the City of London and look at people living their everyday lives and think, ‘We’re all just continuing as though everything is normal, as though the world isn’t about to end.’ And that used to freak me out and make me angry. But now it just makes me sad . . . it’s the moments where you let yourself think about it when you get overwhelmed by it.”

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/tropical-depressions-kriss-ohagan

http://anthropoceneepoch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/HABITUS-9-medium-1024x682-1000x666.jpg

scott pruitt, EPA director

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scott-pruitt-climate-change-insensitive-floridians

Did I say already that we ought to be able to bait Trump into doing something about climate change? Like, he's too scared of fixing it so he's hiding his head in the sand and ignoring it.

T and most of the current R party are a lost cause. The goal is to support international efforts, and domestic green energy til 2021, really. I hope that remaining Paris signatories will evolve to a treaty with trade sanction teeth, to punish back-sliders and free-riders. Let America become a pariah nation for a while, and the stock markets plummet every time R's are elected, until we get with the program.

It's not like any politico has really realized the gravity of the problem yet. Gore's still talking about coastal real estate, when the trajectory is towards a world with a human carrying capacity of 2-3 billion, or less.

By the way, for those who enjoyed perusing those geoengineering articles, you're welcome to look at the broader collection on climate change issues or the whole neomalthusian morass. I haven't been fun at parties for a while.

Thanks sanpaku, I always appreciate your commentary and contributions.

I am going to put these all in iBooks and skim them sometime when I am drunk on an airplane and there's no good movies I haven't seen already.

Next to we hear about someone trying to open the exit door midflight we'll know it was you

Nah, got a kid now.

Sanpaku, many thanks for the pile of articles.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/09/10/police_urge_floridians_not_to_fire_their_guns_at_hurricane_irma.html

according to a FOAF on FB people do that all the time, part of the appeal is that the wind noise masks the sound of gunfire

this is predictably nuts

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/14/16290934/india-air-conditioner-cooler-design-climate-change-cept-symphony

By the end of the century, almost half the people on Earth will face deadly heat and humidity for more than 20 days a year, according to a study by Camilo Mora, a researcher at the University of Hawaii. And that’s the best-case scenario, with drastic reductions in carbon emissions. If emissions continue on their current trajectory, three-quarters of humanity will face deadly heat. Regions in the Persian Gulf, Bangladesh, and northeast India may become so hot and humid that, in the words of another recent study, they pass the “upper limit on human survivability,” deadly to anyone who ventures outside for more than a few hours. “Our choices now are between bad and terrible,” Mora said.

General, a joint venture between Japan’s Fujitsu and the Emirati company ETA, is selling a “hyper tropical” line meant for temperatures up to 125 degrees, which it unveiled with a Bollywood performance.

ACs India alone is expected to install by 2030 will be the equivalent of adding several new midsize countries to the global grid. With air conditioners already accounting for up to 60 percent of the summertime electricity use in cities like New Delhi, simply meeting the demand — and meeting it without burning huge amounts of fossil fuels — will be a challenge.

http://d279m997dpfwgl.cloudfront.net/wp/2016/06/0602_air-conditioners-1000x664.jpg

The Chinese approach would make any architect ill:

https://www.chinasmack.com/wp-content/uploads/chinasmack/2011/08/fuzhou-china-air-conditioner-wall-03.jpg

Of course room-sized air conditioners are of neccessity less energy efficient than building-sized ones, and making each resident responsible for their own heating/cooling eliminates incentives for efficient building design and insulation in construction.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/2017/a-pacific-flip-triggers-the-end-of-the-recent-slowdown

counterpoint

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vb7mqa/phoenix-will-be-almost-unlivable-by-2050-thanks-to-climate-change

OK, we don't get hurricanes, but it's the end of September, it's fall, leaves are changing and dropping off, and ... it's 95 fucking degrees. Average Sept. temp is 72.

fake news. you're just jealous of koch success

http://billmoyers.com/story/a-must-read-jane-mayers-dark-money-uncovers-the-hidden-history-of-billionaires/

https://hpluspedia.org/images/9/94/Hpexrisk.png

I don't know where else to put this, but i feel like a Trump deal that has the potential to cripple solar energy development and cost us 88 THOUSAND jobs ought to be bigger news

https://www.abqjournal.com/1070045/trade-dispute-could-turn-solar-boom-into-a-bust-excerpt-hundreds-of-local-jobs-and-tens-of-thousands-nationally-are-at-stake.html

our president is a supervillain straight out of a comic book, lex luthor with hair plugs

xp hi dere welcome to my industry, yes this sucks but what has happened so far is that the ITC (International Trade Commission) has voted 4-0 to consider damages, but those "damages" could take the form of price floors, tariffs, or nothing at all.

worst case scenario is that prices in the US become the highest in the world, which in practice means reverting to 2015 pricing, lol. In another couple of years it should be right back to where it is now.

further irony is that the "remediation" period only lasts four years, which is not really enough time for any interested parties to build cell factories in the US if pricing is just gonna go back to normal at the end of the 4-year period (and there is anotehr wild card, that it could be extended for another 4 years, but nobody would know in advance if that will happen).

see also:

SOLAR POWER

and a more detailed article:

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solar-trade-case-advances-as-itc-finds-injury

Does anyone have a recommendation for reading up on the various geo-engineering options?

― El Tomboto, Sunday, September 3, 2017 7:54 AM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's a good, terrifying, and obviously very skeptical, chapter regarding geo-engineering in the naomi klein climate book

the biggest geo-engineering experiment took place in b.c. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering

thx sleeve

sorry, Alfred

https://gizmodo.com/this-is-how-south-florida-ends-1783803198

record high october temps set across the US, unprecedented late-season heatwaves, 7+ consecutive days of record setting 92F+ temperatures here in chicago. it's a perfect time to announce plans to repeal of the Clean Power Plan. i guess it hasn't been posted here because there's not much to say about it. i have no idea how our ancestors will make any sense of the time we live in. it is an awful feeling to be living in an age with unprecedented access to information and have to witness our political representation act in this way. it's not ignorance, it's not stupidity - they're actively making decisions to enrich themselves with the knowledge that their actions are killing people and will kill many more.

it's not ignorance, it's not stupidity -

it's corruption in its purest form

https://gizmodo.com/hurricane-nate-sets-record-for-most-consecutive-atlanti-1819264248

Napa valley on fire, “among worst in state’s history”

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-napa-fires-20171009-story.html

When I lived near the Bay Area it was basically never not damp or foggy. The idea that wine country would get dry enough to go full tinderbox is dissonant.

There's always been plenty of dry areas here even just a little inland from the coast, but no lie this is something else.

yeah spent a very tense evening last night with a close friend whose whole family is out there, some evacuated, some waiting and seeing. fucking terrifying.

Entire Bay Area can smell smoke, and it's been getting worse every day.

in Oregon, back in August, we had to buy 100% particulate filter masks, like full on respirators, just to be able to go outside. this lasted for days.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), widely seen as the Senate’s most active advocate on climate change, says he is in routine communication with “six to 10” Senate Republicans who, he says, privately support his carbon tax bill but are unwilling to publicly back it. Only one Senate Republican, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, is willing to publicly support that idea.

In an interview with Vox, Whitehouse talked excitedly about the former Republican officeholders and George W. Bush officials who have formally voiced their support as well.

....

Sheldon Whitehouse: ...On the climate side, we have a very different situation. We have a party with a considerable number of elected [officials] who are not only willing but eager to do a bill of some kind on climate change. They have signaled — through [Hank] Paulson, [George Bush’s Treasury secretary]; [former GOP Secretary of State James] Baker; [conservative economist Arthur] Laffer; the American Enterprise Institute; a whole variety of entities — that the way they want to do that is with a price on carbon. That’s the conservative way to do it.

I’m happy with a carbon fee. I don’t think that’s a bad idea. So there’s not, like, some idea on the horizon that we’re far from but want to try to guide toward. We have an immediate virtual yes from the Republicans about this; we have an immediate problem that we have to solve sooner than later.

So trajectory points on the horizon aren’t part of our battle in climate. Finding a way to have Republicans see safe passage to the fossil fuel industry’s threats and bullying and political weaponry is the test there. And that’s a question of putting the heat under them with the facts of what’s happening in their own states and across the world; pressing on them with NDAA amendments in the House and Senate; pushing on the American corporate community, the good guys, to do a good job actually showing up; and trying to shame the fossil fuel industry and their huge array of smelly, scandalous front groups that they maintain.

There’s almost no correlation between the two sets of problems. I see no overlay other than the fact that we’re all Americans, it’s about the American polity, and this is government. Other than that, the similarities totally end.

Jeff Stein
I was hoping you could expound more on your suggestion that there are Republican idea men and conservative officials who, if I’m hearing you correctly, you think have enough sway to get Republicans to a yes —

Sheldon Whitehouse
Not quite yet. But there are enough to prove the proposition that there is a yes to get to on the other side of the kill zone that the fossil fuel industry has set up.

Jeff Stein
You don’t see this as a “Lucy pulling the football from Charlie Brown” situation?

Sheldon Whitehouse
No.

Jeff Stein
What gives you faith Republicans are going to move on this issue? Only one, Lindsey Graham, has co-sponsored your carbon bill, and the Republican president denies the reality that it even exists.

Sheldon Whitehouse
Because it’s so widespread ... from people who are Republicans but who are not currently Republican officeholders. That’s a very bright signal of where the party wants to be and where they want to go, and it’s all virtually the same place — a border-adjusted, revenue-neutral price on carbon. That’s what they all virtually are saying.

Then you have the people in the corral — with Exxon and the US Chamber and API and Americans for Progress and the whole rest of the ghouls — that say, “If you dare touch this issue we’ll punish you politically.”

Another way I describe it is that the problem is that talking to Republicans about climate change is like talking to prisoners about escape. Once you find safe passage for them through the fence, through the kill zone around the fence, then the getaway car on the other side is one we all agree on. There are truly six to 10 Republican senators who I talk to about this stuff and are waiting for their moment and are quite candid about what the problem is, and it’s the politics of political threat from the agents of the fossil fuel industry — mostly the Koch brothers, but also the US Chamber [of Commerce].

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/16/16394818/sheldon-whitehouse-congress-climate

there's a lot more. this seems very much like a "Lucy pulling the football from Charlie Brown” situation, but what do i know

i thought carbon credits were bullshit

this isn't a conversation about carbon credits, it's about a carbon tax - putting a price on carbon.

otm

this was one of the rare non-terrifying things I've read on this issue lately:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/16/texas-town-georgetown-energy-green

i'm guessing that otm wasn't for me, haha, so just to clarify:

carbon credits are based on a marketplace of GHGs allowances. say we each have allowances to emit 10 tons of GHGs. i suck, so i determine that i need to emit 15 tons of GHGs. you, on the other hand, make some modifications to your factory and can get by with only emitting 5 tons. i need an extra 5 credits, you have an extra 5, so i pay you for your credits. the idea is that this will create a marketplace which will incentivize lower emissions since many entities would rather be under the cap so that they can generate additional revenue by trading away their credits to higher emitters. anyway, that's an originally a republican idea from the 1980s (to deal with sulfur dioxide emissions), and it has its fair share of problems, not least of which is international monitoring and enforcement.

a carbon tax is different. it places a price on carbon upfront which is levied on the industrial generators of GHG emissions. this increase in cost, of course, would inevitably be passed on to consumers, so there are a number of ways of how to address that. one popular idea is "fee-and-dividend": all of the fees collected from the carbon tax would be distributed evenly to all households in the form of a rebate check. this would create a progressive system in which lower-income households would end up coming out ahead (ie, the rebate check that they'd receive would be more than the increase in electricity costs that would arise as a result of the carbon tax), while driving overall emissions down as all industries would have an incentive to lower ghg emissions.

or actually, just google carbon credit vs carbon tax because i fucking hate the way i try to explain things and i confuse even myself

lol no actually it was for you :)

ty Karl :)

A carbon tax prices externalites, and encourage all the ways that emissions may be reduced, from household to utility scale, from conservation to low-carbon energy.

Carbon credits are fees paid by utilities to Wall St so they can conduct business as usual while some rainforest is cut down in a different order.

later

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809

yup, at least I'll die of cholera or something before I starve to death a decade from now