Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
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Petteri Taalas, who is secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said he fully supported UN climate goals, but he criticised radical green campaigners for forecasting the end of the world.
Dr Taalas agrees polar ice is melting faster than expected, but he’s concerned that public fear could lead to paralysis – and also to mental health problems amongst the young.
“We are fully behind climate science and fully behind the (upcoming) New York climate summit”, he said. “But I want to stick to the facts, which are quite convincing and dramatic enough. We should avoid interpreting them too much. When I was young we were afraid of nuclear war. We seriously thought it’s better not to have children. I’m feeling the same sentiment among young people at the moment. So we have to be a bit careful with our communication style.”https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49689018
However,
Dennis Hartmann from the University of Washington in Seattle can’t hide their feelings completely: “I do not use the ‘scary’ word.
“I prefer to talk about moving on to an economy in harmony with the natural world, but still providing a better life to humans. This is entirely possible. It is disheartening to me personally that we are moving faster in the opposite direction in most of the world. Much of what we are doing in increasing atmospheric CO2, extinction of species and destruction of ecosystems is nearly irreversible. So maybe it is time to be frightened.”Prof John Church from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia says
“What is scary is our lack of appropriate response. Our continued lack of action is committing the world to major and essentially irreversible change.”Petteri Taalas, who is secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said he fully supported UN climate goals, but he criticised radical green campaigners for forecasting the end of the world. Dr Taalas agrees polar ice is melting faster than expected, but he’s concerned that public fear could lead to paralysis – and also to mental health problems amongst the young.
“We are fully behind climate science and fully behind the (upcoming) New York climate summit”, he said. “But I want to stick to the facts, which are quite convincing and dramatic enough. We should avoid interpreting them too much. When I was young we were afraid of nuclear war. We seriously thought it’s better not to have children. I’m feeling the same sentiment among young people at the moment. So we have to be a bit careful with our communication style.”Exactly ! Good man ! That’s exactly the position I have been trying to put all along to counter the alarmist stuff that is re-posted here almost daily. It’s the only reasonable attitude that non-scientists like individual socialists and the Party can take.Every time alarmist views are propagated here all I need do from now on is re-post Dr Taalas’s comments !I thought you’d like that bit and it’s why I led with it. But isn’t Hartmann’s contribution more our case.
“I prefer to talk about moving on to an economy in harmony with the natural world, but still providing a better life to humans. This is entirely possible.
And isn’t the really scary part is that the majority of scientists contacted by the BBC did not think governments will act upon their evidence.
Just when is it time to stop staying calm and begin to panic.
The bus is hurtling to the cliff’s edge, the foot-pedal brakes have been stomped upon but it is not slowing us down, some like the XR want the hand-brake pulled to see if that works even when we know it makes the bus even more uncontrollable, some in the fossil fuels are still saying if we do go over it will be a soft landing, some in the first class seats are handing out parachutes…Socialists are shouting, change direction, TURN THE FUCKING STEERING WHEEL .
Fair enough except I don’t see the bus “hurtling” towards the cliff edge. Rather it is cruising along at 60mph towards a cliff edge 100 miles away. Someone suggests that this is too fast, so the drivers says ok I will reduce the speed to 50mph. There’s also a raving maniac at the back insisting that the cliff edge is only 5 miles away. There’s also a socialist suggesting that they change direction but nobody is taking any notice, partly because they can’t be heard over the ravings of the maniac.
We forget to add that the bus had ignored the speed limits and not heeded the warning signs and has now gone through the scientists red light and the bus-driver is a certifiable lunatic with a history of committing crimes against humanity.
😛
As Petteri Taalas appears to be the voice of reason perhaps we should heed what he has to say.
“Greenhouse gas concentrations are once again at record levels and if the current trend continues we may see temperature increases 3-5 degrees C by the end of the century. If we exploit all known fossil fuel resources, the temperature rise will be considerably higher.”
Taalas said that the lower end of the range, a 3C rise in temperatures, came from a model assuming that countries acted on their pledges to meet the Paris targets. “If all the countries were able to meet their pledges, we would be able to reach 3 degrees, which would mean a growing amount of disasters and difficulties with agriculture.”
However the good news is he added that the economic and technological means already existed to limit the rise to 1.5C.
“[3 degrees] Enough, scientists warn, to destroy civilization as we know it” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/16/un-climate-summit-2019-why-it-matters
The geo-engineers put their case
A new effort to rally governments and corporations behind technologies that suck greenhouse gases from the atmosphere to help stave off disastrous global heating will be launched. The Foundation for Climate Restoration, the group behind the forum, has released a manifesto for its goal to “restore” the climate by reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to those of a century ago. The foundation aims to restore this historical norm by 2050.
The most promising of these options, such as Climeworks, a Swiss company that uses giant machines to pull CO2 from the air and use it in greenhouses to boost plant growth. It has more than a dozen projects under way and has partnered with an Icelandic project that injects CO2 deep underground into basalt formations. A company that turns CO2 into limestone that can be used in building. It recently supplied concrete for a new terminal at San Francisco’s airport. The intentional placing of iron in parts of the ocean to boost its ability to absorb CO2, as well as efforts to seed reflective sand across the Arctic to reduce escalating melting.
The bad news – A study in 2016, published in the Royal Society Biology Letters journal, highlighted the risk posed by projected climate change on the world’s ability to grow enough food.A US team of researchers found that forecasted shifts in climate by 2070 would occur too quickly for species of grass crops to adapt to the new conditions.
The species facing an uncertain future included wheat, corn, rice and sorghum, which provided almost half of the calories consumed by humans.The good news – Wild relatives of food crops, such as wheat, host an abundant array of genetic material to help the plants cope with a changing climate. In a study over 28 years showed that populations of wild wheat developed “beneficial mutations” such as a tolerance to temperature increases. Dr Fu also highlighted the work of UK scientists who, reporting in Nature Biotechnology, who were developing ways to clone disease-resistance (R) genes from wild relatives in order to engineer broad-spectrum resistance in domesticated crops. He said that a similar approach could be used to clone climate-resistant genes from the plants’ wild relatives in order to make our food crops more climate resilient.
New climate models unveiled by French researchers Tuesday showed Earth’s average temperature could rise a “terrifying” 6.5-7.0°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century if dramatic action is not immediately taken to slash carbon emissions.
The findings suggest the planet may be warming significantly faster than scientists previously believed as the world’s major economies continue to burn fossil fuels at unsustainable rates.
This worst-case scenario of 6.5-7.0°C of warming assumed continued economic expansion driven by growth of fossil fuel production.
And so far this is still what is taking place.
However, Penn State University climate scientist Michael E. Mann sounded a note of caution about the dire scenarios predicted by the new models.
“Some earlier versions of the models appeared to underestimate climate sensitivity somewhat,” said Mann, “and I suspect that some of these more recent versions are actually over-estimating it a bit.”
“I suspect, when all is said and done, we’re probably looking at something in the range of 3-4°C and no higher, at least for near-term warming,” Mann added. “If we allow the warming to persist for centuries, then other long-term positive feedbacks (vicious cycles) could kick in, giving us substantially more warming.”
So even conservatively now, the 1.5 – 2.0C target will be exceeded.
More climate alarmism. People will be getting the impression that we are a climate alarmist party whereas we are not. The French scenarios, as Michael E Mann points out, are based on assumptions which nobody knows for certain, in particular a high “climate sensitivity” (the relationship between an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and an increase in global average temperature). The worst-case scenario which gets the sensational(ist) headline treatment is also based on nothing being done to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels (which is unlikely and indeed the intention of the authors to avoid) but in fact for it to increase as production does.
Why is the same headline and bold type treatment not given to Mann’s guess that:
““I suspect, when all is said and done, we’re probably looking at something in the range of 3-4°C and no higher, at least for near-term warming,”
Forgot to add:
Petteri Taalas, who is secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said he fully supported UN climate goals, but he criticised radical green campaigners for forecasting the end of the world. Dr Taalas agrees polar ice is melting faster than expected, but he’s concerned that public fear could lead to paralysis – and also to mental health problems amongst the young.
“We are fully behind climate science and fully behind the (upcoming) New York climate summit”, he said. “But I want to stick to the facts, which are quite convincing and dramatic enough. We should avoid interpreting them too much. When I was young we were afraid of nuclear war. We seriously thought it’s better not to have children. I’m feeling the same sentiment among young people at the moment. So we have to be a bit careful with our communication style.”My real point is that even at the now accepted lower end of projections the Paris Agreement of 1.5-2.0C is no longer seen as valid.
But no projection can stick to facts, can they. They are predictions.
But this is not merely media or activist alarmism, but interpretation of data from two sources of researchers with two different models, one from France’s National Centre for Meteorological Research which are using better more exact models than those from the past.
It cannot be so easily dismissed as alarmist. Fuller details here
“…The new models is that increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will warm Earth’s surface more — and more easily — than earlier calculations had suggested.
If confirmed, this higher “equilibrium climate sensitivity”, or ECS, means humanity’s carbon budget — our total emissions allowance — is likely to shrink… other models developed independently have come to the same unsettling conclusion, Boucher confirmed. “The most respected ones — from the United States, and Britain’s Met Office — also show a higher ECS” than the previous generation of models, he said.
This is bad news for the fight against global warming…”As I previously argued, many scientists are on the conservative side and this article confirms this by relating how
“…Stephen Belcher from the UK Met Office and Rowan Sutton from the UK National Centre for Atmospheric Science — wrote in a blog earlier this year, tiptoeing around the implications of the new models…”
But if we step back to get a fuller picture of the situation, we can see that the prevailing is now that prognosis is not getting any better and each report is reflecting bad news. Even the scientist you cite holds that 3.0C is likely, not 1.5C-2.0C and that is not at all good news, even if it is not as bad as some higher figures being projected. Unless of course you dismiss the current extreme weather events are not linked to the current 1.0C rise
If you check back in this and other threads on the subject you will see I have guessed that the aim of limiting the rise in global average temperature to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2099 is unlikely to be met.
What I have been objecting to is other, alarmist guesses of a rise of 5. 6, or 7 degrees.
A rise of 2 degrees will still cause problems (rising sea levels, mass population movements, more extreme weather) that capitalism won’t be able to cope with properly. But it won’t be the extinction of humanity or the end of the world.
Yes I know you think Paris limits won’t be met. Sorry if I inferred that you did. Governments are still basing policy on their achievement though, with many people not fully realizing they were political targets not scientific ones.
If the 7.0C by 2100 is indeed the trajectory we are heading towards because not sufficient action is being taken (and there isn’t, quite the contrary, in fact) and N.B. this is not media click-bait stories or maverick scientists with personal agenda but only two first published in a series of 30 expected research papers which some may and some may not concur with.
But with 6.0C- 7.0C then there is guaranteed runaway climate change which cannot have any predictions made about it because of the lack of data on all the possible feedback loops and their various different impacts. It becomes outside the realms of science, or at least any accurate models of the details of what could occur.
Of course, it can be argued that increased counter-measures will be taken when the situation grows acute and serious. But that is just as speculative. The present facts is that not enough is being done, and that recommendations are being ignored.
I worry that you are not worrying about those scientists who are worried about future events which are no longer seen as possible but is increasingly viewed as probable.
Our message is a simple one to convey – Capitalism is going to fail in controlling climate change and if not an existential to our species it will give pain and suffering and death to millions of our fellow humans and when that happens we don’t know what effect it will have politically or economically and it is justifiable to consider the likelihood of the breakdown of society on a global scale and describe it as the end of civilisation as we know it now. Utopia or Dystopia? Socialism or Barbarism?
“… either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes…”
That is the outcome facing us, isn’t it, if you were a betting man?
Our big question is do we thing that honesty is the best policy or that it will be more politically circumspect for socialists to offer hope, no matter how remote or forlorn it might be in reality.
A genuine pessimist would be advocating a return to primitive communism of clans and tribes as capitalist economy and nation-states disintegrates.
The scientists offer their answer
“…We can now say the next decade has the potential to see the fastest economic transition in history…”
Experts identified 36 developments that would produce GHG being halved, from renewable energy to changes in food production, the design of cities, and international transport, such as shipping. All of them are judged possible to achieve by 2030.
“…Key to any transition will be the growing social movements that are pressing for urgent action on climate breakdown. By driving behavioural change, such as moving away from the overconsumption of meat and putting pressure on governments and companies, civil movements have the power to drive the transformation needed in the next decade, say the report’s authors…”
Will capitalism take up the baton and run with it?
Another positive report
https://www.dw.com/en/un-environment-chief-inger-andersen-the-solutions-are-there/a-50365306
“There are about one to 1.5 billion hectares of degraded forest land which are not used for anything, so let’s invest in that, grow trees. If we were to do that, nature would give us a break of about 12 gigatons of carbon. And when we invest in nature, we also get biodiversity back. When we invest in nature we also ensure that we get better health outcomes.” explains Danish economist and environmentalist Inger Andersen was appointed as the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
“That all sounds very good, but we’re not doing terribly well right now.
We are not. And I guess the issue is that these are difficult choices. It’s difficult to make those shifts rapidly, but thinking of it on the bigger global scale, shortly after 2050, there will be nearly 10 billion people on this planet. And today we have about 800 million people going to bed hungry and about 1.3 billion living in extreme poverty.
These people have every right to aspire to what you and I have. But if we all live like you and I, we would need five planets…Poorer countries want wealth, they want growth, they want the opportunity to have what you and I have. But in a smarter way. And the solutions are there because today we have energy options that are cleaner.”
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