Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

xp: Don't know why the power point presentation didn't link, so here's another try.

Even on low output old wells, $250 is a drop in the bucket. On modern fracking sites, where 2-16 horizontal wells are drilled from the same pad, its less than the cost of a single technician visit. Presumably reuseable as old non-productive wells are capped.

https://i.imgur.com/0568GBG.png

f Rod Barclay or other firefighters get the call that a house is ablaze in the north-western NSW town of Warren, chances are they won't bother to put it out.

"Our priority is to save lives first, save water second," Barclay says on Thursday outside Warren's two-tanker fire station.

Should one of the town's typical three-bedroom weatherboard homes ignite, Fire and Rescue NSW crews will only turn their hoses on the fire if they have to rescue anyone inside. Otherwise it will be sacrificed and water used merely to spray neighbouring homes if flames threaten to spread.

"Warren is the first location in which we're undertaking this new strategy," says Gary Barber, the Dubbo-based Fire & Rescue commander. "We could easily waste a couple of thousand litres on a house that's going to be lost," he says. "That water can certainly be used much better elsewhere in the community."

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/sustainability/we-ll-be-bathing-in-salt-water-at-the-epicentre-of-australia-s-big-drought-20190828-p52lsx.html

the bad and hated franzen essay in the new yorker mentioned a newish book by naomi oreskes (co-author of merchants of doubt, about the half-century long global warming disinformation campaign) and michael oppenheimer (climate policy guru). it's called Discerning Experts, and i'm excited to read it. there's a short bloggins about it at scientific american (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/scientists-have-been-underestimating-the-pace-of-climate-change/), but this seems to sum it up:

In our new book, Discerning Experts, we explored the workings of scientific assessments for policy, with particular attention to their internal dynamics, as we attempted to illuminate how the scientists working in assessments make the judgments they do. Among other things, we wanted to know how scientists respond to the pressures—sometimes subtle, sometimes overt—that arise when they know that their conclusions will be disseminated beyond the research community—in short, when they know that the world is watching. The view that scientific evidence should guide public policy presumes that the evidence is of high quality, and that scientists’ interpretations of it are broadly correct. But, until now, those assumptions have rarely been closely examined.

We found little reason to doubt the results of scientific assessments, overall. We found no evidence of fraud, malfeasance or deliberate deception or manipulation. Nor did we find any reason to doubt that scientific assessments accurately reflect the views of their expert communities. But we did find that scientists tend to underestimate the severity of threats and the rapidity with which they might unfold.

Among the factors that appear to contribute to underestimation is the perceived need for consensus, or what we label univocality: the felt need to speak in a single voice. Many scientists worry that if disagreement is publicly aired, government officials will conflate differences of opinion with ignorance and use this as justification for inaction. Others worry that even if policy makers want to act, they will find it difficult to do so if scientists fail to send an unambiguous message. Therefore, they will actively seek to find their common ground and focus on areas of agreement; in some cases, they will only put forward conclusions on which they can all agree.

How does this lead to underestimation? Consider a case in which most scientists think that the correct answer to a question is in the range 1–10, but some believe that it could be as high as 100. In such a case, everyone will agree that it is at least 1–10, but not everyone will agree that it could be as high as 100. Therefore, the area of agreement is 1–10, and this is reported as the consensus view. Wherever there is a range of possible outcomes that includes a long, high-end tail of probability, the area of overlap will necessarily lie at or near the low end. Error bars can be (and generally are) used to express the range of possible outcomes, but it may be difficult to achieve consensus on the high end of the error estimate.

The push toward agreement may also be driven by a mental model that sees facts as matters about which all reasonable people should be able to agree versus differences of opinion or judgment that are potentially irresolvable. If the conclusions of an assessment report are not univocal, then (it may be thought that) they will be viewed as opinions rather than facts and dismissed not only by hostile critics but even by friendly forces. The drive toward consensus may therefore be an attempt to present the findings of the assessment as matters of fact rather than judgment.

last week the Washington Post ran this really interesting piece based on county-level temperature change data for the Lower 48 over the past 120+ years: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-america/.

Their map shows that a little slice of SW Virginia, East KY, East TN and West Virginia is one of the exceptions to the heating-up rule that has smothered most of the rest of the country. In fact, it’s the northern-most concentrated band of cooling in the U.S. Among other counties Wise, Lee, Letcher and Harlan all got cooler between 1895 and 2018. Do any of you know why that is???

i don't know the specifics but i'd imagine it's related to the terrain?

i don't think that's knowable at this point

apparently ~gaia~ is suggesting i move back to pittsburgh tho

that's like a corner of the Appalachian plateaus that borders the Ridge-and-Valley province

It's a golden age for comic PSAs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lPpUj9Sx9k

climate strike seemed pretty massive today at least in nyc

Thoughts on Greta Thunberg's tour of the US? I feel like today's screenshot of her at the UN looking furious and crying is not helping.

I hope it inspires homegrown youth to be the face of activism.

Anyone under 50 should be furious, and elderly deniers should feel our wrath.

Making a teenager carry the weight of speaking for the future of the planet seems like an undue burden for her to carry. She's doing as well as anyone else her age could do.

yeah, she's not the problem by any stretch

I thought that speech was on fire.

Since the 'politely ask for moderate progress in reducing emissions' tactic has been a complete failure she/we may as well go for broke now. I get the feeling the next 2-3 decades are going to be like watching the walls crumbling in on a condemned building in environmental terms, and you wonder when those responsible are going to realise how much wealth they ultimately stand to lose. That, if nothing else, will bring it home.

I also don't care if people shed tears while angry. xpost

And yes her speech was A++, as always.

Thoughts on Greta Thunberg's tour of the US? I feel like today's screenshot of her at the UN looking furious and crying is not helping.

― akm, Monday, September 23, 2019 10:41 AM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

what is helping

message board post

This was the line that just completely sums it all up.

We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.

yup

"growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell" - Edward Abbey

and yet, you can't be taken seriously in public life unless you subscribe to the idea of endless economic growth

all this endless economic growth is leveraged on the cryogenically frozen bodies of corrupt men.

I feel like economic growth might be misunderstood here but I agree with her sentiment.

what do you mean?

Like for example, I don’t think raising literacy rates around the world is hurting the environment.

...

1) I think its past time time for this thread to retired. Maybe to be replaced by two threads "Climate crisis: the politics" and "Climate crisis: the science".

2)

Greta Thunberg @GretaThunberg · 22h
I have moved on from this climate thing... From now on I will be doing death metal only!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLxpgRqxtEA

Idiot: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/06/teacher-leave-sniper-rifle-comment-greta-thunberg/3893160002/

Rising seas could affect three times more people by 2050 than previously thought, according to new research, threatening to all but erase some of the world’s great coastal cities.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater.html

Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and to “tell it like it is.” On the basis of this obligation and the graphical indicators presented below, we declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.

https://i.imgur.com/F9lXomN.jpg

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biz088/5610806

You know, more than before I’ve been struggling with this.

And... we can all have different views and we all process stuff in our own way and part of the shock is even talking about this forces the conversation to accept your premise. That being at turns, alienating, confusing and isolating.

So if you’re not there yet, or never will be, just take it as a thought exercise...

Likelihood of Extinction is within 2 standard deviations.

...

I don’t even know what act accordingly looks like.

https://i.imgur.com/sBpv6dJ.png

i think during the 2020s we should make it a goal to get the correct answer % up into the 20-30 range. then, by the time that number gets up to 50% or higher, we can go back to the 1980s and do something about climate change in time

What do people think about this?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/11/25/why-everything-they-say-about-climate-change-is-wrong

the very first thing i think is

forbes.com

I've been arguing online with people that think we're going into a Venus runaway warming for 15 years. There's definitely a segment of climate action proponents that leapfrog past the predictions of modelers, or don't choose their words with the care required. When the world doesn't end in 2030, some will think the whole enterprise was a hoax.

That said, before Thanksgiving I fed my newborn niece Elizabeth for 30 minutes, and will looking at her eyes, I couldn't banish the thought that while I may see +2° C warming, she'll very likely see +3, +4, and if she's long-lived perhaps +5° C. I think I have a clearer idea of what that means than most, as I've been climate aware for 30 years, and studying the primary literature for over the past 15 years. If she lives to 2100, she'll live in a world that, barring crop engineering miracles, produces 60-80% less food. That's a recipe for civil and global conflict, migration crises, and starvation of many in presently developed countries. Elizabeth is going to be very, very angry with us for knowing and doing too little. And most of that carbon remains resident for centuries, enough remains to significantly perturb the climate for up to 10 millennia. 100+ generations of humans will be subject to the constrained global human carrying capacity that a handful of generations created.

Climate change action requires a complex argument, and one centered around timespans that humans didn't evolve to appreciate. Arguing "apocalypse if we don't take (now) impossible actions in the next 11 years" may ultimately harm action. The truth is, we're on a trajectory to a dramatically worse for humans state which will persist for thousands of years, and every act (including personal) to increase emissions makes that end state incrementally worse, and every act to decrease emissions makes it incrementally less bad.

I'm worried that the population (not just the US but the population of the entire world now) only responds to hyperbole and extremes.

Iirc Shellenberger is essentially a nuclear evangelist and attacks every other form of sustainable energy. There was another contrarian article from him recently about how the burning Amazon was being blown out of proportion, which probably had some reasonable points about the coverage but was also ridiculously optimistic.

Climate change action requires a complex argument, centered around timespans that humans didn't evolve to appreciate.

This morning I dreamed I was browbeating several people, so as to force them to think more clearly about climate change and what needed to happen to forestall it, and the best any of them could respond was to say, "I think there should be more accountability", without them ever saying who would be accountable to whom for what. I woke up from the violence of my anger at them.

reasons shellenberger is shitty

1) for some mysterious reason he always finds himself having to explain in his pieces that he does, in fact, care about the environment. he does this in part to establish credibility, but also because if you don't know who he is (or if you're reading a post praising it on watt's up with that) you start to think he must be involved with a foundation funded by the koch brothers.

2) he repeatedly conflates "serious risk and danger" with "apocalyptic", and then conflates "apocalyptic" with "untrue" or "cannot be true"

3) he attacks ideas that he doesn't like in a pedantic way

For example, Australia’s fires are not driving koalas extinct, as Bill McKibben suggested. The main scientific body that tracks the species, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, labels the koala “vulnerable,” which is one level less threatened than “endangered,” two levels less than “critically endangered,” and three less than “extinct” in the wild

4) he disingenuously distorts the remarks of scientists to support his own point of view. for example, this is how he quotes ken caldiera, a guy who has done brilliant work:

Climate scientists are starting to push back against exaggerations by activists, journalists, and other scientists.

“While many species are threatened with extinction,” said Stanford’s Ken Caldeira, “climate change does not threaten human extinction... I would not like to see us motivating people to do the right thing by making them believe something that is false.”

here is what caldiera actually said:

“Some of the science claims made by Extinction Rebellion activists go a bit over the top,” says Caldeira. “Even the name — while many species are threatened with extinction, climate change does not threaten human extinction. This raises the question of the extent to which people are motivated by accurate facts and how much they are motivated by extreme, and very likely false, claims. I would not like to see us motivating people to do the right thing by making them believe something that is false.”

he quotes caldiera as if he were supplying a supporting quote to shellenberger's article. but caldiera was speaking about extinction is the literal, scientific sense - if there is at least one human alive, we aren't extinct. i think there's going to be at least one human that survives climate change, don't you? yes, we all do. so we an all agree that climate change does not threaten extinction. ironically, this is the same kind of pedantic bullshit that he criticizes bill mckibben for not adhering to earlier in the same article!

so...the problem that we should all be focusing on right now is that environmental activist groups should be named things like "Vulnerable population Rebellion" or "Critically Endangered Rebellion" instead of "Extinction Rebellion", just so that we don't exaggerate too much and lose the trust of...people? what?

5) he sure does like to take a non-scientist's nervous words and use them as a stand-in for anyone who speaks of climate change with alarm.

6) oof

What about sea level rise? IPCC estimates sea level could rise two feet (0.6 meters) by 2100. Does that sound apocalyptic or even “unmanageable”?

Consider that one-third of the Netherlands is below sea level, and some areas are seven meters below sea level. You might object that Netherlands is rich while Bangladesh is poor. But the Netherlands adapted to living below sea level 400 years ago. Technology has improved a bit since then.

i could type it out, but do i need to? it would be one thing if he made these kinds of arguments on rare occasions, but they are a central feature of his writing.

7) or this

What about claims of crop failure, famine, and mass death? That’s science fiction, not science. Humans today produce enough food for 10 billion people, or 25% more than we need, and scientific bodies predict increases in that share, not declines.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) forecasts crop yields increasing 30% by 2050. And the poorest parts of the world, like sub-Saharan Africa, are expected to see increases of 80 to 90%.

oh, i didn't hear that we had solved world hunger, nice. but FAO also says 815 million people (10.7% of the world population) is chronically unnourished, so it seems like there might be a bit of a "distribution" problem, right?

Nobody is suggesting climate change won’t negatively impact crop yields. It could. But such declines should be put in perspective. Wheat yields increased 100 to 300% around the world since the 1960s, while a study of 30 models found that yields would decline by 6% for every one degree Celsius increase in temperature.

---

i guess the main reason he's so hatable is that at the end of the day, his main point seems to be that no one should be that worried, coupled with an anecdote about how fear of climate change could be mentally affecting people (especially children). i'm sympathetic to that last point, but i see the main driver of that as ____the world not taking nearly enough action in response to climate change since the late 1980s____, not the blunt warnings about said inaction.

mass death rebellion imo

oops, on 5) i was referring to the Extinction Rebellion spokesperson who seemed to have failed on live broadcast to answer a complicated question with scientific accuracy

oh, and duh, here's the part at the end that, for some reason, longtime liars Watts Up With That have promoted on their website:

(Kerry) Emanuel and Wigley say the extreme rhetoric is making political agreement on climate change harder.

“You’ve got to come up with some kind of middle ground where you do reasonable things to mitigate the risk and try at the same time to lift people out of poverty and make them more resilient,” said Emanuel. “We shouldn’t be forced to choose between lifting people out of poverty and doing something for the climate.”

MIDDLE GROUND WITH CLIMATE DENIERS WHO STILL ARGUE THAT IT IS A HOAX AND SIT THROUGH TALK RADIO INTERVIEW AFTER INTERVIEW 'YESSING' ALONG WITH WHATEVER THE DUMBFUCK HOST SAYS

sorry, left my caps lock on

also the false dichotomy between mitigating climate change and improving living conditions

great takedown KM, thanks for taking the time. the kind of post i love this site for.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-climate-changes-worsens-a-cascade-of-tipping-points-looms

Some of the most alarming science surrounding climate change is the discovery that it may not happen incrementally — as a steadily rising line on a graph — but in a series of lurches as various “tipping points” are passed. And now comes a new concern: These tipping points can form a cascade, with each one triggering others, creating an irreversible shift to a hotter world. A new study suggests that changes to ocean circulation could be the driver of such a cascade.

A group of researchers, led by Tim Lenton at Exeter University, England, first warned in a landmark paper 11 years ago about the risk of climate tipping points. Back then, they thought the dangers would only arise when global warming exceeded 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. But last week, Lenton and six co-authors argued in the journal Nature that the risks are now much more likely and much more imminent. Some tipping points, they said, may already have been breached at the current 1 degree C of warming.

The new warning is much starker than the forecasts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which critics say has until now played down the risks of exceeding climate tipping points, in part because they are difficult to quantify.

The potential tipping points come in three forms: runaway loss of ice sheets that accelerate sea level rise; forests and other natural carbon stores such as permafrost releasing those stores into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2), accelerating warming; and the disabling of the ocean circulation system.

DUH

(not you, KM)

just, whatever you do, let's be clear that this does not threaten the extinction of humanity, because that could worry some people

feelin pretty doomy abt all the runaway effect stuff after reading New York 2140 a couple months back