Nine climate tipping points now 'active,' warn scientists
phys.org
phys.org
> First, no credible scientific body has ever said climate change threatens the collapse of civilization much less the extinction of the human species.
> I asked the Australian climate scientist Tom Wigley what he thought of the claim that climate change threatens civilization. “It really does bother me because it’s wrong,” he said. “All these young people have been misinformed. And partly it’s Greta Thunberg’s fault. Not deliberately. But she’s wrong.”
> All of this helps explain why IPCC anticipates climate change will have a modest impact on economic growth. By 2100, IPCC projects the global economy will be 300 to 500% larger than it is today. Both IPCC and the Nobel-winning Yale economist, William Nordhaus, predict that warming of 2.5°C and 4°C would reduce gross domestic product (GDP) by 2% and 5% over that same period.
Additionally, what is a “planetary state of emergency?” Like global martial law? Because if the tipping point theory is correct, that’s what we have to be talking about, right. It can’t just be a metaphor for “try harder to meet climate change protocols.”
> Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” and Green Book Award Winner. He is also a frequent contributor to The New York Times, Washington Post
Additionally, the author cites and links to specific facts in IPCC and UN reports regarding population displacement, sea levels, crop yields, and economic impact.
it is clearly based on a consensus
> This "cascade" of changes sparked by global warming could threaten the existence of human civilisations.
That's not supported by the underlying IPCC report (a 2018 publication that's one of the latest statements of consensus science): https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/SR15...
While the IPCC talks about "tipping points," it does not mean "cascades" that "threaten the existence of human civilization." It's important to understand that what the IPCC means by "tipping points" is certain irreversible changes in things like sea ice coverage, or collapse of maize crops in "certain areas." Those things might be bad, but they don't imply "runaway climate change" or collapse of global agricultural systems, or anything like that. See Table 3.7.
The aggregate effect of these local effects is estimated in box 3.6. For the United States, it says:
> The results for the baseline no-policy case indicate that economic damages along median temperature change and median damages (median-median) reach 4.5% of GDP by 2100, with an uncertainty range of 2.5% and 8.5% resulting from different combinations of temperature change and damages. Avoided damages from achieving a 1.5°C temperature limit along the median-median case are nearly 4% (range 2–7%) by 2100.
That's the bottom-line figure quoted in the article I linked. Avoided damages from keeping climate change to 1.5C are 2-7% of GDP by 2100. That means significant disruptions to the structure of our economy in response to climate change will almost certainly cost us more than what we avoid in damage from climate change.
The last section of the Nature article says that in the authors' view, the aggregate effect of these tipping points could be worse than the IPCC projects. (Note that the above GDP figures do attempt to account for tipping point effects.) That may or may not be true, but that conclusion is not part of the IPCC consensus.
Thus he often leaves me with feeling that I have to check every citation back to source to see the part he didn't quote, or the preceding and following sentence. He has such a clear agenda I find him hard to trust on any topic.
Being anti-nuclear is a pretty good indication that you don’t think climate change is really a serious problem. France has a CO2 footprint much lower than its neighbors because it’s grid is heavily nuclear. (Right now, we don’t have the battery technology for a fully renewable grid, so countries like Germany must backup renewables with coal and gas. Also, it makes no sense to shut down nuclear plants that have already been paid for to build renewables. If climate change was really pressing, you’d keep the nuclear plant running, build the renewable resource, and shut down a coal plant instead.)
Being a pro-nuclear zealot who feels solar, wind, and hydro essentially has no place is as damaging and unhelpful, with as much of an agenda as anyone pro-fossil or believing climate heating isn't a problem. The man has a one issue agenda, read all his writings accordingly. shrug :)
> Meanwhile CBO’s 2010 premium projections were remarkably accurate: within 1 percent of actual average 2017 marketplace premiums.
Note that economists aren't running climate models. IPCC climate scientists are running models projecting what will happen (e.g. crop yields will decline by 20%.) IPCC economists are then putting a dollar value on those effects. (If crop yields decline by 20%, what will be the hit on the economy?)
https://www.ineteconomics.org/events/the-economic-crisis-and...
For the ice sheet collapses, it takes 100s or 1000s of years for the effects to be realized. Others such as permafrost melting or Amazon forest disappearance are faster, but time scales are not given. For example -
>The Greenland ice sheet is melting at an accelerating rate3. It could add a further 7 m to sea level over thousands of years if it passes a particular threshold. Beyond that, as the elevation of the ice sheet lowers, it melts further, exposing the surface to ever-warmer air. Models suggest that the Greenland ice sheet could be doomed at 1.5 °C of warming3, which could happen as soon as 2030.
>Thus, we might already have committed future generations to living with sea-level rises of around 10 m over thousands of years3. But that timescale is still under our control. The rate of melting depends on the magnitude of warming above the tipping point. At 1.5 °C, it could take 10,000 years to unfold3; above 2 °C it could take less than 1,000 years6. Researchers need more observational data to establish whether ice sheets are reaching a tipping point, and require better models constrained by past and present data to resolve how soon and how fast the ice sheets could collapse.
Talk about weasel words
"Exiting the fossil fuel economy is unlikely before 2050, but with temperature already at 1.1°C above pre-industrial temperature, it is likely Earth will cross the 1.5°C guardrail by 2040. The authors conclude this alone defines an emergency"
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told us “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change” likewise Greta Thunberg warned us that according to the UN’s IPCC, (the same one THE Scientists/authors use as a reference on this paper)“we have less than 12 years left in which to correct our mistakes.” and now THE Scientists/authors talk for LIKELY cross the 1.5°C by 2040?
There's a lot of uncertainty regarding the tipping points. Some scientists fear that if we cross the 2 degrees celcius, we could have a runaway breakdown due to processes such as melted ice heating the ocean much more and permafrost releasing enormous amounts of ghg.
We don't know for sure that will happen, but its extremely risky. Some fear we could lock in devastating processes within 12 years (even if they won't happen immediately).
Some people think that even if we don't know for sure it'll happen, we should follow the precautionary principle and not take the risk of these extreme events.
The media is an amplifier that only publishes the most alarmist scientific findings, always blanketed in paragraphs of the editors own apocalyptic interpretation.
Climate science is complex. There's a broad spectrum of findings, many are not world-ending, and sometimes disagree on the details.
The planet will be a very different place in 50 years.
> Nine active tipping points:
> [...]
> The rainforests, permafrost and boreal forests are examples of biosphere tipping points that if crossed result in the release of additional greenhouse gases amplifying warming.
Human activities are pushing atmospheric CO2 concentrations to levels not seen for millions of years.
We've accomplished that in a scant 200 years of fossil fuel use, though with consumption doubling about every 30-40 years, half of the total has occurred since the 1970s.
Atmospheric and oceanic CO2 levels will remain elevated for many thousands of years.
The first awareness of a possible problem seems to have been in the 1850s (yes, the 19th century), and by the early 20th century, the US Naval Research Laboratory was warning of possibly impacts on civilisation. Comprehensive and consistent measurements didn't begin until the 1950s (Charles Keeling and his eponymous curve), and political efforts to address the challenge began in the 1960s. They've been less successful than early activists forecast.
The impacts of climate change not only develop slowly and over time, but through emergent and second-order effects, the full impacts aren't directly forseable. We know that temperatures on average will rise, as will sea levels. Local climactic effects may be above or below those averages. Direct changes include not only temperature but chemistry, and induced effects on ecosystems and human activities, including agriculture and disease. We're seeing long-term trends already in terms of temperatures, sea level rise, shifting climactic zones, changes to forest health, and more. Those are just the harbinger of what will all but certainly be vastly greater consequences playing out over coming decades and centuries.
If it helps: you're in the middle of a train wreck, as a bridge collapses, and the cars hurtle into a fuel storage dump, but are witnessing all of this in super slow motion. What looks like nothing happening is in fact things happening, and most especially approaching critical points at which either it's not possible to roll back to the previous state, much as a block tipped too far doesn't fall back, but continues over, or where behaviour changes dramatically, as the difference between tapping a windowpane and driving your fist through it. Nonlinear responses mean you cannot predict future states based on a steady extrapolation from past experience.
You are in the middle of the emergency -- the emergent situation. The brink lasts a long time, at human scales. On geological ones, this is the blink of an eye, or less.
Of course, as soon as someone says “that’s it, science has concluded we’re all fucked” no one will see the value in the various money-shifting schemes that have been proposed to save the earth.
Reading about nature before humans or where humans settle shows that what passes as nature today is nothing like it used to be. That we are mostly ignorant of it doesn't change that we've passed many tipping points. Each extinction, for example, is irreversible and everyone here knows we're causing more than ever.
I recommend The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (audiobook free on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8z6vsg1OH8) and The Once and Future World by J. B. MacKinnon http://www.jbmackinnon.com/index.html. I recorded a video essay on Once and Future World: http://joshuaspodek.com/your-daily-environment-009-the-once-....
We've crossed tipping point after tipping point. We just don't know what we've lost.
If anyone is interested in helping to make this a reality, shoot me an email at together@highestsupport.com
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-carbon-emissions-in-... https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-
Meanwhile it's widely understood that all major fossil fuel-producing nations—including the United States, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, Canada, and Australia—have ambitious plans to increase production.
It's understanding on the part of the odd 70% that counts and good luck with that. Lectures from the West don't go down very well especially since most of these countries are committed to increasing their standard of living and that's necessarily linked to energy use.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/barnaby-joyce-auctions-lump-of-c...
But when I talk to people about not flying, or avoiding packaged food, they tell me it's impossible.
It's not only possible, it will improve your life as much as dropping sugar or any other addiction. Nobody gets it. They think I'm suffering or privileged when it's the opposite. I explain more in my second TEDx talk http://joshuaspodek.com/my-second-tedx-talk-what-everyone-ge....
Come to think of it, maybe I should stop posting about the joys of not flying since it almost always leads to people responding with thoughtless misunderstandings like: one person's actions don't matter or they need to for work and family. We have to get past these knee-jerk misunderstandings.
If you’re in a privileged enough situation, I’d highly recommend renewable energy sector, lots of problems where applying technical skill can be extremely impactful.
I don't not steal to stop others from stealing. I don't steal because I don't want to hurt others. If everyone in the world stole, I still wouldn't. If the whole world pollutes, I'm still going to avoid polluting as much as I can.
I am not sure I understand the context of the question. Does my comment somehow imply I don't?
Likewise support Green New Deal politicians in the US and elsewhere.
If we are really trying to avert climate change, how is spending trillions on labor unions and guaranteed jobs going to help?
If this was the plot of the movie Armageddon, and there was an asteroid hurtling towards earth, would your planned respond spend pages talking about unions, wealth inequality, indigenous people, and guaranteed healthcare, jobs, and housing? If climate change is really imminent and existential threat that requires “war time mobilization” then how can we afford to water down our response with these tangential things?
Under the Green New Deal you’d spend trillions more a year on healthcare, housing, etc. For that money you could buy up the major oil companies like Exxon (market cap $300 billion) and keep the oil in the ground. You could make the US carbon neutral using existing or near-term CO2 recapture technology. You could bankroll India and China to keep their fossil fuels in the ground and build out fully renewable capacity. You could invest in renewables technology, nuclear, carbon capture at the same time. If you sincerely believed that climate change was an existential crisis, why would you divert 90%+ of the force of the “war time mobilization” on social programs?
In my view, the Green new deal has done incalculable damage to the environmental movement. It is a transparent and cynical attempt to piggy-back traditional left wing politics onto the environmental movement, undermining its credibility and seriousness.
It’s a political solution to a technical problem. You may not like the politics, but it’s pretty damn logical.
> The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” Chakrabarti said to Inslee’s climate director, Sam Ricketts, according to a Washington Post reporter who attended the meeting for a profile published Wednesday.
> “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,” he added.
The question is whether there is a logic to it beyond the pretext that motivated it originally. And I don’t think there is. Protecting jobs from displacement as a result of climate change mitigation efforts makes sense. That could be accomplished for a fraction of the price of offering guaranteed housing, jobs, healthcare, higher education, etc.
We are talking about spending trillions a year on social welfare to get maybe $100 billion (at most?) on climate change mitigation. Is that “pretty damn logical?”?)
The idea of green growth is probably false: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13563467.2019.15...
This seems like hyperbole to me. I'll be glad to buy Hawaiin real estate (at an appropriate discount, of course) to show my sincerity.
Any sellers?
Seriously, articles of this kind are so over the top that they cause mental fatigue for the issue and de-emphasize climate change.
It’s hard to take climate alarmism seriously when its proponents are taking actions like that.
He is as much a “proponent” of climate change as, say, Angela Merkel. Which is to say, not all that much. He cares a little bit but not that much.
Also, he’s rich and for rich people the risk of sea level rise is dramatically lower because they can fight for their little corner either through technological means or they can just move away and it’s not an existential threat to them, no matter what they do.
What are your qualifications that enable you to come to this conclusion?
I would be very interested in studying your publications - where can I find your analysis?
Also it would be really very appreciated if you would like to publish the datasets that lead you to this conclusion - would you like to give us a public repo with the data, so we can check your results?
Thank you very much!
Second, the problem here is not only the total temperature variation but the speed at which the temperature is changing.
Think of the difference between a car going from 130 km/h to 0 km/h in 8 seconds, and a car going from 130 km/h to 0 km/h in 0.3 seconds. Not really endearing.
Just for the sake of argument, let's say you find yourself in a car in the second scenario, with no known way to stop it. What would you do? I say this as a pragmatist - if we take the headlines at face value, and we only have ~10 years to avert a catastrophe, then the only realistic way to avert it is if 90% of the world's population spends that 10 years planting trees before killing themselves.
As far as we know, the loss of arable land caused by the climate change (and other anthropogenic environmental changes) far outweighs possible gains elsewhere, and even if it didn't, agricultural land area is not exactly fungible.
As for his point about humans preferring warmer temperatures - hopefully that is self-evident.
>As far as we know, the loss of arable land caused by the climate change (and other anthropogenic environmental changes) far outweighs possible gains elsewhere
Would like to see an analysis of arable land gained vs. lost. This is all purely hypothetical, of course - such a change would be drastic, and as you point out, arable land isn't exactly fungible.
12C warmer would put vast amounts of the land area of the planet outside habitable conditions for humanity. We'd probably be restricted to former arctic regions, and not much else. So no, I don't think it's self evident at all. It won't take many degrees rise to rule us out of equatorial regions, then tropical...
My concern is we're changing the climate at geologically unprecedented rates, likely far too quickly for species to evolve and migrate, even if we hadn't locked up 50% of the world's landmass for our own use. That will play interesting havoc with food chains no matter what former permafrost and arctic is freed up for use (with its own emissions load on melting).
That leaves dramatic and expensive global scale action. We're not doing it. There's no sign we're thinking about doing it. Let the market resolve is the sole incredibly weak suggestion.
I don't think history is going to view citizens and politicians of the 21st century kindly. I can forgive and understand those contributing to the problem before say 1990, before the awareness was widespread. We've emitted more since 1990 than in the entire time before.
So a planetary scale game of chicken...
Do you have a source for this or are you just basing it on "common sense"
It does toe that Hans have primarily impacted species that tend to sit higher on the food chain. We have caused the extinction of more animals than plants. Rapid warming can kill of plants that can't move quickly migrate quickly enough to stay within the temperature ranges where they can survive.
It isn't just matter of spreading their seeds far enough (like the reforestation of New England), many plants rely on a prexistingnset of conditions created by the the presence of other species to be able to grow. When the required shifts get large enough there simply may not be enough time for those conditions to be established elsewhere before the temperatures in the current areas kills off the species.
Plants species (and animals like coral) serve as a critical component for many other species. It is quite conceivable that rapid global warming will lead to an extinction event that far exceeds anything that humans have managed to date.
Our understanding of ecological systems is still pretty limited and I don't think we can know for sure how bad it will be. I am personally hopeful that we can delevope terraforming techniques to assist with ecosystem relocation that can mitigate some of this.
>It is quite conceivable that rapid global warming will lead to an extinction event that far exceeds anything that humans have managed to date. >When the required shifts get large enough there simply may not be enough time... >Our understanding of ecological systems is still pretty limited
You've made a number of assertions here about ecology with no reference to research.
This is one of my main issues with the way climate change is presented - much is made of tipping points and the scale of the incoming catastrophe, but the fact is we simply don't know. Even if it is true that we have a low number of decades until irreversible catastrophe, what exactly can be done about that?
I made relatively few assertions and the ones I did make are basic ecological science. I was pointing out that your strong claim was irresponsible given the plausible possibilities and our limited knowledge.
Take a look again at what you are responding too and what you said, it is not at all clear that we're were contrasting past effects on diversity. Indeed, given the topic of the the prospective of rapid global warming causing it is unclear what relevency that point would have.
Every coastal city is under threat, and east Asia (where half the world's population lives) is especially vulnerable. I have a feeling things are going to get really, really bad in about 20 years because there's no realistic plan to do anything about it.
Not if other humans deny the process of "coping".
Refugees aren’t bad people, but they are desperate. They will not abide by your country’s rule of law if it means they starve as a result.
The global political environment is actively hostile to coordinated climate action. Without that, we’re just going to see a series of uncontrolled crises spilling over into neighboring nations as countries fight over limited and shifting resource patterns.