Don't overstate 1.5 degrees C threat, new IPCC head says

What's the temperature that accelerates the melting of ice caps to within a few decades, resulting in ocean current collapse and an ice age? People should be very fucking worried.

The first well-done climate models by Manabe and Wethereld in 1975 found that a 2% reduction in solar radiation would cancel the effect of a doubling in atmospheric CO2 levels.[0,1] This problem has an engineering solution that should be implemented as soon as possible.

Stop beating up people with guilt as a “solution” to reversing use of a resource has has become as essential as water. This tactic is as cynical as the bottle industry funded “Make America Beautiful” campaign. Simple blame shifting.

As Mark Laynas summarized in his book Six Degrees of Climate Emergency, 4 degrees of warming means Alaska is climatically equivalent to Florida, and population collapse ensues from crop failure. This will occur between 2050 and 2100, and perhaps sooner, if nothing is done. Look at the graph made by Exxon in 1982 in the opening pages of Michael Mann’s book The New Climate War. They knew this 40 years ago, even with the more limited computing power available then.[2,3]

But there is a solution in a solar shield to reduce insolation 2% while we transition to sustainability. Ironically, stopping burning hydrocarbons suddenly (for example as a result of a global depression) would hasten the problem as SO2 levels partly suppresses the full effects of elevated CO2 levels.[0,1]

I am as tired of denialists as the “reduce reuse recycle” crowd looking for behavioral change solutions because they are more “natural.” Let’s do what works: engineering and carbon market-based solutions that have successfully addressed other similar issues like the ozone hole and acid rain.[2,3]

0. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/32/11/1520-0...

1. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/32/1/1520-04...

2. https://marklynas.org/books/our-final-warning-six-degrees-of...

3. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/michael-e-mann/the-...

Translation: we're going to breach 1.5C.

Good to see a reasonable candidate ... send aloft either atmospheric particulates or any solar shield to cool the planet ... This is geoengineering ... shovel ready, cheap ... any climate change discussion not communicating this approach is not science based but agenda driven

Well, yeah. 1.5C is the maximum number that avoided really catastrophic disaster. It's not the threat. It's the point where the threats really begin.

And now 1.5C is basically impossible. So we begin to pile up the real catastrophes. We've made zero progress on limiting it to 1.5C, and we're going to be there ahead of schedule.

We're instead looking at 2C, 3C, 4C and beyond. And those are threats that aren't overstated.