Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

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.

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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

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.

I thought this has always been a concern?

They have to pretend it is 'new' for it to be covered by the 'news'.

'Always' since the 1970s or so.

Tipping points were the whole rationale behind the 2° C target (which we're going to accelerate past in my lifetime).

The Arctic may have just crossed a key threshold, per @NOAA - permafrost is melting and releasing more than a billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. By @afreedma https://t.co/C5fclAw6gc

— Juliet Eilperin (@eilperin) December 10, 2019

just so everyone knows: i believe this is a brand new problem that has never been mentioned

About 50 mentions on this thread alone. But passing from sink to source is a milestone.

you know, i just would have appreciated a warning on this happening, though. why didn't anyone look into this before? we could have stopped it from happening had we known!

I thought the permafrost thing involved methane clathrates, not carbon?

Clathrates are the seabed natural carbon source. Clathrates require higher pressure for stability.

Permafrost outgasses mostly CO2, some methane.

Ah! Seabed different from permafrost, obviously. Nothing to see here (here being my brain).

I mean, it's all coming out, we're all going to die hellishly

Calthrates are mostly held in oceanic sediment but there are clathrates in sedimentary rocks under permafrost too

https://aceee.org/press/2019/12/trump-administration-defies-2007-0

WASHINGTON (Dec. 20, 2019) – The Trump administration announced today it will block energy-saving standards scheduled to go into effect January 1 for the hundreds of millions of everyday light bulbs sold in the United States every year, which defies a bipartisan 2007 law passed by Congress. The action will increase consumer utility bills and worsen the carbon pollution driving climate change.

In its quest to tie U.S. families and businesses to energy-wasting incandescent bulbs that usually burn out within a year, the Trump Department of Energy (DOE) issued notice that it will publish in the Federal Register a “final determination” saying it does not believe it needs to proceed with bulb energy efficiency improvements envisioned under the law signed by President Bush 12 years ago. The decision could cost U.S. consumers an extra $14 billion on annual energy bills and create the need to generate an additional 30 large (500 MW) power plants’ worth of electricity every year.

“The Trump administration just thumbed its nose at Congress, America’s families and businesses, and the environment,” said Noah Horowitz, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) Center for Energy Efficiency Standards. “This law should have saved U.S. households more than $100 annually, on average, and avoided 38 million additional tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide pollution every year. NRDC will be exploring every option, including legal action, to fight this illegal rollback.”

which was the stronger influence here:

- desire to reverse anything that obama supported, even if it was passed under the bush administration in 2007
- compulsion to take any possible action to make climate change worse
- he doesn't like the color of LED lighting and doesn't know about the more "natural" tinted options

We'll still have coal rollers and zealots for incandescent lighting at 3 and 4 °C.

It's the necessity of doggedly maintaining the pretense that climate change is a hoax and non-existent, and taking every measure consistent with that view. It is imperative for Trump to project his complete confidence that wasting energy is of no consequence and consumers should never be asked to limit their choices in any way.

If it were in Trump's power to bring back leaded gasoline, he would try it.

the necessity of doggedly maintaining the pretense that climate change is a hoax

Conservative acquaintance of mine posted today that we're being 'alarmist' about the fires in Australia, and offered as proof some bullshit from "cfact.org," which five seconds of googling will tell you is climate change denial funded by Koch Industries.

So there is a huge fear that they're being forced into a green new deal by people who might profit from it, but no concern that these blogs promoting 'a free-market approach to environmental issues' are oil company propaganda.

It's like: who should I believe about smoking, RJ Reynolds Corp. or the American Medical Association? Well, the AMA is probably just trying to sell me Nicorette gum, so I'll just stick to my two pack a day habit, thanks.

It's like: who should I believe about smoking, RJ Reynolds Corp. or the American Medical Association?

i'm a slow motion skipping record in this thread, but there is a really strong connection between the disinformation campaigns waged by tobacco and energy industries - similar tactics, and many of the very same people doing it. that was true at the very beginning, and even to this day: https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/02/19/how-tobacco-and-fossil-fuel-companies-fund-disinformation-campaigns-around-world

on the weekends, some of them also dispute that concussions are an actual problem in american football

sorry to divert to a david berman thing but i always imagine (speculatively) his father to have held some sort of role in all that shit.

[10 seconds of googling later]

yep

Richard B. Berman (born 1942) is an American lawyer, public relations executive, and former lobbyist.[1] Through his public affairs firm, Berman and Company, he runs several industry-funded non-profit organizations such as the Center for Consumer Freedom,[2] the Center for Union Facts, and the Employment Policies Institute.[3] His organizations have run numerous media campaigns concerning obesity, soda taxation, smoking, cruelty to animals, mad cow disease, taxes, the national debt, drinking and driving, as well as the minimum wage. Through the courts and media campaigns, his company challenges regulations from consumer, safety and environmental groups.[4][5][6][7]

maybe that wasn't speculation, maybe that was just me forgetting that i used to knew that. anyway. it's bizarre that people fall for this bullshit, not in one particular info campaign but across so many different topics and generations of fools (and selfish bastards)! and that in the background there's these dipshits running the show in half empty best western conference rooms near every international airport. and yet they've already wildly succeeded! in order for oil companies to keep running iran for another 25 years, the CIA and MI6 had to instigate a coup and install a puppet. in order for oil companies to protect their industry from climate change regulation for 32 years (since 1988/hansen), all they had to do was shave off a cut of their profits to fund a disinformation industry, the discredited "research" and the distribution network (bullshit "journals" and scientific publications, conferences, think tanks, foundations) to give the whole thing a stage flat neighborhood feel convincing enough to pass on conservative television and radio (it helps to work with other actors). and again - examine any of this close up and you just keep running into the dumbest things possible, and yet no one knows what to do about it, and it keeps working

i mean, just imagine working on a hyper-conservative bloodsucking campaign to protect the alcohol's right to advertise to minors. then you name your organization "Center for Union Facts", because it doesn't even matter, does it. then some dude's out there listening to the radio and hears an ad by a serious sounding actor who says that you have to vote no on Prop 14 because it's going to destroy jobs in the biggest industry in the tri-state area, "paid for by the Center for Union Facts". doot doot doot, 2 months later in the voting booth, "hmm prop 14 is bad for jobs, right? a union said that i think", doot doot doot

bbbut the website is called CFact! It's got facts right in the name, don't you SEE?

They're National SOCIALISTS so Commies are Nazis do you see!!?

Bother me tomorrow, today I'll buy no sorrows
Doot, doot, doot, looking out my back door

vote no on prop 14