Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

wheeeeeeee

One common metric used to investigate the effects of global warming is known as “equilibrium climate sensitivity”, defined as the full amount of global surface warming that will eventually occur in response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentrations compared to pre-industrial times. It’s sometimes referred to as the holy grail of climate science because it helps quantify the specific risks posed to human society as the planet continues to warm.

We know that CO2 concentrations have risen from pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million (ppm) to approximately 410 ppm today, the highest recorded in at least three million years. Without major mitigation efforts, we are likely to reach 560 ppm by around 2060.

When the IPCC’s fifth assessment report was published in 2013, it estimated that such a doubling of CO2 was likely to produce warming within the range of 1.5 to 4.5°C as the Earth reaches a new equilibrium. However, preliminary estimates calculated from the latest global climate models (being used in the current IPCC assessment, due out in 2021) are far higher than with the previous generation of models. Early reports are predicting that a doubling of CO2 may in fact produce between 2.8 and 5.8°C of warming. Incredibly, at least eight of the latest models produced by leading research centres in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and France are showing climate sensitivity of 5°C or warmer.

https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2019/august/1566136800/jo-lle-gergis/terrible-truth-climate-change

That is very bad, but keep in mind that it takes a while (hundreds of years) for the temperature equilibrium to be reached. So if CO2 was 560 ppm in 2060 and the expected equilibrium is 5C increase in temp, that means that over the course of hundreds of years global temps would rise 5 degrees C

Temperatures have been above average across Alaska every day since April 25. None of the nearly 300 weather stations scattered about Alaska have recorded a temperature below freezing since June 28, the longest such streak in at least 100 years.

On Independence Day, the temperature at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport hit 90 degrees for the first time on record. It comes as no surprise that the Last Frontier is just a day away from rounding out not only its warmest July but its warmest month on record.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/07/30/alaskas-summer-heat-has-been-basically-off-charts

i imagine it would not be hard to find footage/quotes of senator ted stevens pooh-poohing climate change, observing hilariously that just yesterday there were 10 inches of snow in his hometown, etc.?

also

Dunleavy has proposed eliminating all state funding for research based at UAF (which includes climate change): "I hope the regents accept this offer." #akleg

— Matt Acuña Buxton (@mattbuxton) July 30, 2019

just read an article arguing we could reforest the entire planet for roughly 2/3rds the cost of Trump's tax cut, which in turn could suck enough CO2 out of the air to send us back to the 1920s

ah the gilded age, jazz, spanish flu

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/29/ethiopia-plants-250m-trees-in-a-day-to-help-tackle-climate-crisis

This seems promising. A direct atmosphere capture process cost analysis that runs $232/t. A universal carbon tax of that much ($2.06/US gallon gasoline) could fund a carbon neutral economy. Caveat: this is three times the highest carbon taxes, worldwide.

Keith et al, 2018. A Process for Capturing CO2 from the Atmosphere. Joule, 2(8), pp.1573-1594.

spare a thought for blackrock investors during this difficult time

BlackRock, the world’s biggest investor, has lost an estimated $90bn over the last decade by ignoring the serious financial risk of investing in fossil fuel companies, according to economists.

A report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) has found that BlackRock has eroded the value of the $6.5tn fund by betting on oil companies that were falling in value and by missing out on growth in clean energy investments.

The report found that BlackRock’s multi-billion dollar investments in the world’s largest oil companies – including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP – were responsible for the bulk of its losses.

The fund was also stung by the collapse of big US fossil fuel companies, including General Electric, and the coal mining company Peabody.

womp womp

in related news

Switching just some of the huge subsidies supporting fossil fuels to renewables would unleash a runaway clean energy revolution, according to a new report, significantly cutting the carbon emissions that are driving the climate crisis.

Coal, oil and gas get more than $370bn (£305bn) a year in support, compared with $100bn for renewables, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) report found. Just 10-30% of the fossil fuel subsidies would pay for a global transition to clean energy, the IISD said.

Ending fossil fuel subsidies has long been seen as vital to tackling the climate emergency, with the G20 nations pledging in 2009 to phase them out, but progress has been limited. In May, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, attacked subsidies, saying: “What we are doing is using taxpayers’ money – which means our money – to boost hurricanes, to spread droughts, to melt glaciers, to bleach corals. In one word: to destroy the world.”

The new analysis shows how redirecting some of the fossil fuel subsidies could decisively tip the balance in favour of green energy, making it the cheapest electricity available and instigating a rapid global rollout.

“Almost everywhere, renewables are so close to being competitive that [a 10-30% subsidy swap] tips the balance, and turns them from a technology that is slowly growing to one that is instantly the most viable and can replace really large amounts of generation,” said Richard Bridle of the IISD. “It goes from being marginal to an absolute no-brainer.”

Most experts define fossil fuel subsidies as financial or tax support for those buying fuel or the companies producing it. The IMF also includes the cost of the damage fossil fuel burning causes to climate and health, leading to an estimate of $5.2tn of fossil fuel subsidies in 2017, or $10m a minute. Ending the subsidies would cut global emissions by about a quarter, the IMF estimates, and halve the number of early deaths from fossil fuel air pollution.

Multi vortex tornadoes. In Luxembourg.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaV_Kfk-0c0

just read an article arguing we could reforest the entire planet for roughly 2/3rds the cost of Trump's tax cut

If you only figure the cost as including the seedlings and the labor involved to plant the trees, this could be correct. However, wherever a tree grows it takes a certain amount of land out of agricultural use. The shade limits what can be grown under it and the roots interfere with tillage of the soil in general, but especially with mechanized tillage.

which in turn could suck enough CO2 out of the air to send us back to the 1920s

This apparently refers only to the CO2 levels of the 1920s not the agricultural acreage of the 1920s, when a very large amount of the CO2 now liberated in the atmosphere was sequestered underground in the form of oil, natural gas and coal, rather than in the form of forests, which stand above ground. So, if we were to follow this plan, it would drastically reduce the agricultural capacity of the planet. That could have consequences as disruptive and chaotic as the agricultural devastation caused by unchecked climate change.

impressive how a teenage girl taking a cargo ship makes people lose their fucking minds

sail boat? bc she awesome and those people are lunatics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT8NemS6FmQ

Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as glacier. In the next 200 years, all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and know what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.

August 2019

415ppm CO2

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49345912

Scientists warn that losing another fifth of Brazil’s Amazon will trigger the feedback loop known as dieback, in which the forest begins to dry out and burn in a cascading system collapse, beyond the reach of any subsequent human intervention or regret. https://t.co/oQquBYsM3Z

— The Intercept (@theintercept) August 21, 2019

don't worry, though:

This is horrifying but perhaps it will prove that carbon dioxide is not warming the planet.

— Alaine (@LoyolaTrue) August 21, 2019

bolsonaro is one of the most necessary assassination targets in human history

that terminal cancer he’s supposed to be hiding needs to up its fucking game tbrr

are there compelling short-term economic benefits to destroying the amazon or is it more bolsonaro saying 'fuck you' to the world?

i can't even tell with these people anymore

Well he’s massively corrupt so I’m sure he’s counting on big kickbacks from developers. He also hates the indigenous tribes that are living there and is happy to see them murdered.

Really should have gotten that worldwide eco-socialist militia organized a decade ago.

are there compelling short-term economic benefits

For the small scale ranchers, yes. The new grassland is fertile for a few years before the remaining nutrients are lost and they have to raze some more forest.

https://66.media.tumblr.com/57c59dc6f3b1575acb8e9f1d90254a06/tumblr_inline_pqdcblar7K1srge0i_540.jpg

That first image was after burning deforestation, the latter appears to be after ranching was abandoned and there was some recovery.

details on that: https://aleteia.org/2019/05/01/brazilian-couple-replants-forest-with-over-4-million-trees/

Killing Bolsanaro wouldn't solve anything. Deforestation has been the case way before him, it was just at lower levels.

Killing Bolsanaro wouldn't solve anything.

Oh, it would solve a few things, but not the deforestation of the Amazon Basin.

Killing Bolsanaro wouldn't solve anything.

macron and merkel want G7 talks on the rainforest fires.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/23/amazon-rainforest-fires-macron-calls-for-international-crisis-to-lead-g7-discussions

bolsonaro is accusing them of colonialist interventionism.

gee, i wonder whose side trump is going to take

Guardian from 2017: The Amazon effect: how deforestation is starving São Paulo of water

The big immediate losers from further deforestation will be Brazilians. On r/collapse, a Brazilian called for an embargo. I guess I can add it to my long BDS list.

Maybe there's a competition right now to be the world's most deliciously murderable man.

Omg I just asked a white man at a bar what he thought of jack antonoff and he said “Actually I’m voting for Bernie”

— Vrinda Jagota (@vrindajagota) August 24, 2019

(commune mag editor)

lol er sorry, that should have been

I read Bernie's GND platform. Some thoughts:

— Jasper Bernes (@outsidadgitator) August 24, 2019

Any process of proletarian self-organization will involve the formation of new class fractions organized around fundamental points of shared interest and solidarity. It will also involve divisions and rifts within the proletariat...

When does jasper project this proletarian self-organization will happen? Because climate change isn't going to bide its time so the proletariat can figure out how to get organized and make a more class-struggle-based set of demands.

I do not think proletarians should be accepting the terms under which they are convoked and organized by the state.

— Jasper Bernes (@outsidadgitator) August 24, 2019

If there's one thing I expect from a US politician running for president, it's to not offer dictates on change as defined and implemented by the state.

meanwhile...

The Democratic Party's centrist caucus -- which has openly criticized the Green New Deal for being unrealistic and unaffordable --is now tweeting out proposals "for an iceberg-making submarine that could produce 82-foot-wide, 16-foot-thick chunks of ice" to combat climate change. pic.twitter.com/BEbKOiZQU3

— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) August 24, 2019

lol i just posted that on the 2020 dem primary thread

truly extraordinary stuff

Wtf

that is satire right?

the idea may be bad, but that looks like a really cool board game. they need to rethink the vision

Can we have just a moment to applaud Danish MP Ida Auken?

Mr President - Greenland is not for sale. But Denmark has a much better deal for you! Watch this. #dkgreen #dkpol pic.twitter.com/mlRwAVzVFg

— Ida Auken (@IdaAuken) August 20, 2019

"Grab... your pen" had me laughing out loud.

The climate debate thing seems like a classic case of activism-ism — making up a controversy for the sake of having something to organize around.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 24, 2019

People keep telling me this guy is supposed to be smart?

he is such a clueless dipshit

I wouldn’t say he’s dumb but he’s definitely someone who views politics through the myopic filter of duopolistic competition for government institutions, so it would never occur to him that it might be a good idea to pressure the people closer to your side more than the people on the other side

you can put side in scare quotes

i'm trying to guess at what sense he argues that this controversy is "made up."

Deforestation has been the case way before him, it was just at lower levels.

thanks to Trump's trade wars, China is now leaning more heavily on Brazil for both beef and soy.

Presumably Yglesias/Perez/DNC think the debate will be over whether CC is real.

The reality is its going to take a huge amount of debate, effort and public buy-in to determine which policies should be used to respond. Hiding that debate in DC conference rooms won't help with the buy-in.

my guess is that the the DNC fears that a debate on climate change would get too "real", and talk too much about solutions and what those solutions might entail. climate change works as a campaign issue for democrats when things are fuzzy and vague. people want to hear about "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." not everyone likes to hear about how serious the problem is and how it will almost certainly get worse and worse for the rest of our lives, even as try harder and harder to do something about it.

a climate debate would be an hour + of bernie talking about a $16 trillion plan and how it requires a revolution - "a political revolution" - to accomplish, warren talking about her Green Apollo Plan, Green Marshall Plan, and Green Industrial Mobilization Plan. there would be questions about whether or not they support the Green New Deal, which, now that the AOC plan has been joined by sanders' plan of the same name, is about as messy a thing to define as "medicare for all". none of this is what the DNC wants.

this is speculation within speculation, but i think the more centrist leaning democrats would look like fools during this debate (again, not what the DNC wants). their environmental plans sound like bold proposals from 15 years ago. they're just not enough, too little, too late. on stage, they'd have to choose between acknowledging the vast scale of the problem (and the solutions) vs talking vaguely about how big of a problem it is but holding back from supporting the kinds of enormous bold policies that would actually help to counteract it.

tl;dr the DNC didn't like how the democratic field was pulled toward supporting medicare for all. now, they're trying to avoid letting the field get pulled toward vocally supporting gigantic environmental spending plans.