Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
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Solar Radiation Management/Stratospheric Aerosol Injection geo-engineering
“Geoengineering perpetuates the false belief that today’s unjust, ecologically and socially devastating industrial model of production and consumption cannot be changed and that we, therefore, need techno-fixes to tame its effects.” – Hands Off Mother Earth.
There is also CCS, BECCS, DAC, ice-thickening.
Who decides what technologies are necessary, who controls them and who profits?
The Environment Agency is preparing for 4C of warming in planning the UK’s flood defences, though the Paris agreement aims to limit warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels.
Britain is likely to experience hotter, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters by the 2070s, as well as rising sea levels which can lead to floods, due to the effects of climate change, long-term projections by the Met Office show, in the first major update on Britain’s climate projections since 2009.
Even in the lowest-emission scenario, average annual temperatures are expected to be up to 2.3 degrees Celsius
In the highest-emissions scenario, summer temperatures could be up to 5.4C higher by 2070 and winters up to 4.2C higher.
The report said average summer rainfall could fall by up to 47 percent by 2070 and winter rainfall could be up to 35 percent lower in winter.
Meanwhile, sea levels could rise by up to 1.15 metres (3.77 ft) by 2100, which increases the risk of flooding.
“Sea levels are projected to rise over the 21st century and beyond under all emission scenarios – meaning we can expect to see an increase in both the frequency and magnitude of extreme water levels around the UK coastline,” the Met Office said in a statement.
Britain has already reduced emissions by more than 40 percent since 1990, the projections show a future Britain could face without further action.
How do the temperatures and rainfall equate to growing seasons and choice of crops? I have no idea but surely somewhere there will be an estimate.
Does CCS work? It is not good news.
“I’ve seen it, I’ve read some of it, and it’s fine,” the president told reporters at the White House. Asked about severe economic impacts, he said, “I don’t believe it….Right now, we’re at the cleanest we’ve ever been and it’s very important to me,” Trump said. “But if we’re clean but every other place on Earth is dirty, that’s not so good.”
Whatever else you can say about Trump he doesn’t attempt to hide the capitalist interests behind US policies. He renounces the Paris Agreement on the grounds that it is not good for US businesses, i.e that the restrictions on carbon emissions it envisages puts them at a competitive disadvantage compared with businesses operating from other capitalist states. And now he says it again: if US adopts clean technologies but the rest of the world doesn’t that’s not good, i.e. puts the US at a competitive disadvantage. Such jockeying to avoid being disadvantaged is of course why the capitalist states of the world are finding it impossible to agree to do what scientists say is needed to prevent average global temperature rising by more than 2 degrees C (let alone 1.5 degrees) compared with pre-industrial levels by the end of the century (that’s a further 1 degree as they’ve already risen 1 degree since then, which means that sea levels are going to go up even if all current emissions are stopped).
The Reuters news item about this says:
The congressionally mandated report http://www.globalchange.gov said that climate change will cost the country’s economy billions of dollars by the end of the century
The exchanges on this forum will have taught us to assess such news items critically. What the Report demanded by Congress actually says is that climate change would cost the US billions of dollars if emissions continue at their present rate. That was the Report’s worst case scenario, but it also presents other scenarios in which emissions are reduced and which will have a lesser economic effect.
Trump says he doesn’t believe it, but it is not clear what he doesn’t believe. It could be either that he doesn’t believe the prediction of what would happen if emissions continue at their present level or that he doesn’t believe that its economic consequences will come about as some measures will be taken to reduce emissions. Or it could be both,
Today’s Times reports Trump as adding after his dismissal of that report
that he would not take measures to cut emissions unless other countries did.
That’s what they are all saying but can’t agree on what measures to take as whatever they decide will advantage some states and disadvantage others.
Thought I would beat Alan to bring this news of a report from the Met Office:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/2018/ukcp18-launch-pr
Today’s Times reports its finding as follows:
The research, led by the Met Office, predicted that by 2070 summer temperatures could be up to 5.4C higher than the average in the 1980s and 90s if global emissions rise at the highest plausible level and winters could be up to 4.2C warmer. Even in a “low emissions scenario” where greenhouse gas emissions are cut and global temperatures rise by 2.4C compared with pre-industrial levels, the UK is expected to experience an increase in average yearly temperature of up to 2.3C by 2100 compared with the 1980s and 90s.</p>
It depends on how you report it. The BBC has CLIMATE CHANGE: UK SUMMERS COULD BE OVER 5C BY 2070. The Independent, on the other hand, has CLIMATE CHANGE TO MAKE UK SUMMERS MORE THAN 5C HOTTER BY 2070, MET OFFICE WARNS.
The Independent wins the prize for bad and dishonest journalism.
You have to get up very early in the morning (or alternatively stay up very late) , alb, to beat me, because of the time zones.
You missed this earlier post by myself using Reuters as source
OK. I missed that as it didn’t mention the Met Office but it did send me to the Guardian report, which I guessed would be as tendentious as the Independent one but couldn’t find it. It is as bad:
The warning came as a Met Office report found Britain would experience much wetter winters and summers as much as 5C hotter as a result of climate change.
So the Guardian shares the prize for bad and dishonest journalism with the Independent. All it required to not get this prize was to have said “could” instead of “would” like the BBC did.
This has been published while Alan is asleep:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/11/1026691
They say:
The authors of the report note that nations would need to triple their efforts on climate action without further delay, in order to meet the 2°C-rise limit by mid-century. To meet the 1.5°C limit, they would have to quintuple their efforts. A continuation of current trends will likely result in global warming of around 3°C by the end of the century, with continued temperature rises after that, according to the report findings.
So we don’t get the degree rises confused, the 3°C rise here is what is predicted if current promised emission reduction measures are applied (the 5°C rise mentioned in other reports is what is predicted if nothing is done and emissions continue at their current rate).
Implementing unconditional NDCs [National Determined Contributions], and assuming that climate action continues consistently throughout the 21st Century, would lead to a global mean temperature rise of about 3.2°C (with a range of 2.9–3.4°C) by 2100 relative to pre-industrial levels.
So the “threat” at the moment is of an increase in global average temperature by 2100 of around 3°C above pre-industrial levels, i.e an extra 2°C this century. Though of course not as bad as a 5°C rise, this would have still serious consequences in terms of rising sea levels, more severe weather and population movements.
Due to conflicting economic interests between states and their jockeying for competitive advantage the chances of them agreeing to cut emissions in the next decade or so to limit the rich to 2°C, let alone 1.5°C, look remote. Let’s see what happens (or doesn’t happen) at the Climate Change Conference in Katowice next month).
It is worth bearing in mind that they have been doing these predictions for at least 10 years.
The predictions from then to where we are now have of course all been wrong; it is significantly worse now than it was predicted to be 10 years ago.
5C increase would be catastrophic for places that suffer heatwaves.
People without air conditioning, or the young and old, start to die of heatstroke at 50C
At 55C they will dropping like flies in their millions in places like India.
As far as CO2 capture is concerned anybody should be able to realize that digging up a tonne of coal in a massive digger in an open caste mine and dumping it into a truck and ‘burying’ another 5 tonnes of CO2 that is a gas at atmospheric pressure or above -80 C, or whatever,is a problem?
The whole thing needs to be read carefully as business managers at universities are chasing after economic impact research grants.
It was initially looked at with a view to selling C02 as a commodity to be later released into the atmosphere when you pop open a can.
The whole point is as we know too well the prime directive of capitalism is short term profit not rational decisions; or even long term rational decisions re the profitability of capitalism.
The international capitalist class are fragmented into ruthlessly competing economic blocks.
They are , or the capitalist economic system, is endemically incapable of co-operating even to prevent their own obvious destruction.
What about us poor Geordies. People around here don’t put their coat on until it’s minus 15. People get heatstroke at minus 5. And all the poor people of Sunderland, they’re waiting for hell to freeze over so they can get back in the Premiership
lol Bijou Drains poor Mackems.
Southern safties, in Sutherland -15’s “taps aff weather,” any warmer and they’d melt! 🤣
Love seeing all this pessimism.
Even ALB’s saying
“There is a problem. Rising sea levels, more stormy weather, more forest fires, more droughts, desertification, etc will make things worse for millions of people but there is no “existential threat” either to civilisation or to the human species.”
A scenario that sounds pretty bad to me.
(To be clear, in what I’ve read of ALB, in the SS, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him describe a “Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.” in which our needs would be fulfilled with the mere push of a button on a console.” As I’ve saw some of our newer comrades in the WSM do.
In fact I think the only thing I’ve read him saying is “the party line” (apart from the obvious do we have a “party line?”) of “we can’t speak for the whole of the working class of the world, describe/proscibe exactly how socialism will function.”)Still trying to digest all this (catch up with other WSM stuff.)
Could some of the party mathematicians not get on the case and produce statistical models accounting for bias (bourgeoisie/green etc?)
If they don’t stop pumping oestrogen (nevermind micro-plastics) into the sea, if humanity has a future it might well be female.
(If the birds, and BEE’s survive.)
One foot in the Frazers house one outside, I’m Hame-ish.
(Just wait till the last oppressed group revolt – Children’s Revolution! 😮)
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