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Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

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Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#91

Post by NeedMoreTea »

Climate discussion now seems to come from Yes, Prime Minister. (1986). We appear to be at stage 3.

I don't understand US politics.. Most UK voters, of both political sides, agree there is an issue, and want constructive solutions[0]. Some more US-like differences at the margins, and differences in urgency, but there appears to be a broad consensus among the public. Less so amongst politicians themselves.

Does political consensus no longer exist on any issues in the US any more? Is all science politicised?

Sir Richard Wharton: "In stage one we say nothing is going to happen."

Sir Humphrey Appleby: "Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it."

Sir Richard Wharton: "In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do."

Sir Humphrey Appleby: "Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now."

[0] http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/the-public-suppo...

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#92

Post by Brakenshire »

nabla9 wrote: post #82

I still remember watching TV in early 90's and seeing clips from Hansen's 1988 senate testimony and hearing first time the "Now is the last time to act on climate change." from someone in TV. Key numbers to get the point across. * Starting mitigation in 2000 would have required mitigation rate 4%/year. (1.5 C goal) * Starting mitigation in 2018 will require mitigation rate 18%/year. 18 percent! (1.5 C goal). There is…

One thing I’d be interested to read is the difference between 1.5C and, say, 2.5C of warming. Do you know of any reports (or maybe just part of the IPCC reports) which lay out the incremental risks?

I just read for instance an editorial from nature which said that 10-30% of coral reefs survive at 1.5C but none survive at 2C. I’d like more of that kind of information to understand the risk profile.

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#93

Post by sailingparrot »

skosch wrote: post #10
logjammin wrote: post #3

I'm in my thirties. I don't have kids, but want them. I don't want to admit to them that I did nothing about global warming when it counted. The thing is that I don't know what I should do; it seems so big, so intractable. Articles like these stir me to action, but what action? Where's the mass movement on this? Where's the group, the party, the leadership?

Ignore the doom-and-gloom headlines. Climate change is still a solvable problem. We have all the tools we need. 1. Learn about the best ways to get carbon out of the atmosphere [0] 2. Help build the political will for carbon pricing, ideally via Fee & Dividend. The vast majority of economists agree that once GHG pollution costs are internalized, the problem will solve itself quickly. The most effective organization i…

I also found this one extremely interesting:

What can a technologist do about climate change? By Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#94

Post by Brakenshire »

randyrand wrote: post #89
Brakenshire wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the world was composed of countries living at the quality of life of Western Europe or America and with that level of technical and economic expertise this would I think be reasonable, but in fact billions of people are living hand to mouth. Look at the effect that Syrian migration to Europe or indeed Mexican migration to the USA has had on Western politics. Now imagine instead of 5 million people from Syria 100 m…

People will primarily move more inland within their own countries. Some cities will be raised. Neighboring countries will absorb some. Small border shifts may happen, as have happened for centuries.

People living in Western cities doing desk jobs, living in a globalized flexible economy can just be moved inland, and their food supplies can shift from one commodity food producer to another. That is, assuming these commodity food producers remain stable and invested in the global trading system. People who are subsistence farmers rely on their land to live. You cannot just move those people ‘upland’ away from the agricultural land which feeds their continued existence.

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#95

Post by mr_overalls »

randyrand wrote: post #89
Brakenshire wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the world was composed of countries living at the quality of life of Western Europe or America and with that level of technical and economic expertise this would I think be reasonable, but in fact billions of people are living hand to mouth. Look at the effect that Syrian migration to Europe or indeed Mexican migration to the USA has had on Western politics. Now imagine instead of 5 million people from Syria 100 m…

People will primarily move more inland within their own countries. Some cities will be raised. Neighboring countries will absorb some. Small border shifts may happen, as have happened for centuries.

You have no reason to believe this.

From: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a25422366/trump-ambass...

"The fourth and latest National Climate Assessment put together by 300 scientists from 13 agencies of the U.S. government and released last month found that climate change is real, man-made, and will cost the U.S. 10 percent of its economy by 2100. Midwestern farmers will lose 75 percent of their crop yields, and trillions of dollars in coastal real estate will be at risk. The wildfires out west, already unprecedented in their destruction, will get worse. Hurricanes and typhoons will grow more ferocious. Epidemic diseases will flourish."

And that's just for the US. Large portions of Africa and the Middle East are predicted to become uninhabitable. The threat to human life on a time-scale of 100 years or more is gargantuan.

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#96

Post by vladimirralev »

Comevius wrote: post #35
vladimirralev wrote: post #13

I invite everybody to watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaiZ5BHaUMY A calm, collected, scientific representation of both sides.

There are literally no 2 sides . There is a ~97% scientific consensus, then there are these people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_who_disagre... . John Christy (the other side in your video) represents the ~3%. His research was shown to be wrong over and over again. Most recently in 2017: https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0121... . https://www.theguardian.com/environment/clima…

Please watch the video before commenting. All of this is addressed and you are missing the big picture with policy and costs. As you can see from the video there is a lot of agreement in terms of science. You have to be very careful defining the sides here. Christy is in the 97% for the actual poll that was made. It really comes down mostly to probabilities, what can be done about it and at what cost to human life. Because raising energy prices is not harmless either as recently seen in France.

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#97

Post by nabla9 »

Brakenshire wrote: post #92
nabla9 wrote: post #82

I still remember watching TV in early 90's and seeing clips from Hansen's 1988 senate testimony and hearing first time the "Now is the last time to act on climate change." from someone in TV. Key numbers to get the point across. * Starting mitigation in 2000 would have required mitigation rate 4%/year. (1.5 C goal) * Starting mitigation in 2018 will require mitigation rate 18%/year. 18 percent! (1.5 C goal). There is…

One thing I’d be interested to read is the difference between 1.5C and, say, 2.5C of warming. Do you know of any reports (or maybe just part of the IPCC reports) which lay out the incremental risks? I just read for instance an editorial from nature which said that 10-30% of coral reefs survive at 1.5C but none survive at 2C. I’d like more of that kind of information to understand the risk profile.

carbonbrief.org has interactive comparison between 1.5C, 2C and 3C. https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/impacts-climate-change-o...

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#98

Post by cagenut »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #77
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many people signal that they are against global warming, but very few are ready to give up any thing. Many people I know just think not using polyethylene is the only required thing(which emits less CO2 than reusable bag, even counting reusing), or at most using bicycles for intracity travel. I think here is few of the (hard)things you can do which actually does effect according to my research: - Don't travel…

IIRC something like 70%-80% of CO2 emissions are industrial, not personal. By all means do whatever you can, but the idea that global warming is all about our individual habits is essentially a smokescreen. If we want to fix this, the most important thing is to force corporations and governments to take action.

this is a false dichotomy people use as an excuse to do nothing.

individual action and forcing corporations and governments to change are not in opposition, they are a feedback loop.

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#99

Post by Comevius »

robotrout wrote: post #78
jimjimjim wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should people eat broken glass? let's hear from both sides!

There are many scientists that believe solar forcing is responsible for temperature increases on Earth, Mars, Triton, Jupiter, and Pluto. While CO2 promoters point out the fact that solar irradiance changes are relatively small over time, they ignore that those same irradiance changes correspond to changes in solar magnetism, which means changes in cosmic ray incidence on planetary atmospheres. It is well known that…

"There are many scientists that believe solar forcing is responsible"

The solar constant in the past 400 years has varied less than 0.2 percent.

"It is well known that cosmic rays effect cloud formation."

Not well known, because the research is still ongoing. Henrik Svensmark's research in a dust- and impurity-free atmosphere contributed to our understanding of aerosol microphysics, but others agree that the effect in the real, present-day atmosphere is very tiny.

"Cosmic particles would be negligible compared with the background aerosol and the aerosol humans are adding by burning things, tilling soil, etc.”

"If clouds were affected by cosmic rays, they would have been affected a hundred times more strongly by human air pollution, and the world would have cooled over the past century, rather than warmed."

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6316/1119

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#100

Post by jimjimjim »

robotrout wrote: post #78
jimjimjim wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should people eat broken glass? let's hear from both sides!

There are many scientists that believe solar forcing is responsible for temperature increases on Earth, Mars, Triton, Jupiter, and Pluto. While CO2 promoters point out the fact that solar irradiance changes are relatively small over time, they ignore that those same irradiance changes correspond to changes in solar magnetism, which means changes in cosmic ray incidence on planetary atmospheres. It is well known that…

it really is.
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