The Crisis Report - 27
The IPCC released yet another report today. The IPCC AR6 synthesis report or “Summary for Policymakers”. Let's discuss it.
So,
The IPCC released yet another report today. The IPCC AR6 synthesis report or “Summary for Policymakers”.
This is the fourth and final installment of the sixth assessment report (AR6) by the IPCC. The report released today was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic. With its completion this is the first full update since 2014, when the 5th Assessment Report (AR5) was published in time to provide a scientific framework for the Paris Agreement in 2015.
What were the first three installments?
The first three sections covered the physical science of the climate crisis, including observations and projections of global heating, the impacts of the climate crisis and how to adapt to them, and ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They were published in August 2021, February and April 2022 respectively.
This is the “synthesis report” because it draws together the key findings of the preceding three main sections. Combined, the four reports make a comprehensive review of global knowledge on the climate system. This is over 4,500 pages of reading. The Synthesis Report shrinks that down to about 40 pages.
The synthesis report also includes three other shorter IPCC reports published since 2018, on the impacts of global heating of more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, climate change and land, and climate change and the oceans and cryosphere (the ice caps and glaciers).
What are the key findings of this new report?
There is no “new” science in the synthesis report. It’s a recap and summary of the main findings of the previous publications.
Those findings included warnings.
That the world was approaching “irreversible” levels of global heating.
That catastrophic impacts from that warming were rapidly becoming inevitable.
That it was “now or never” to take drastic action to avoid disaster.
So, if the main findings have already been published, why is this report needed?
Its purpose is to reduce the thousands of pages of science into a shorter format, which is then further condensed into this “Summary for Policymakers”. It’s “Climate Science for Dummies” basically.
Here's something that is REALLY important to know about this report.
It’s written by scientists, but haggled over by representatives of the UN’s nearly 200 governments. It is a “consensus report”.
It’s what EVERYONE could be persuaded to sign off on.
It is subject to watering down by governments (including the US under Trump) that do not like its messages.
The report is supposed to inform the next UN climate summit, Cop28, which will be hosted by the United Arab Emirates in Dubai from 30 November. There, nations’ progress on cutting greenhouse gas emissions since the Paris climate agreement of 2015 will be assessed.
Will this report change anything?
This is the sixth IPCC report on the state of the Earth’s Climate since the body was set up in 1988, with each comprehensive assessment taking roughly six to eight years to compile. As the reports have grown in size and urgency, so have global greenhouse gas emissions.
In 2018, the IPCC warned that emissions must be halved by 2030, compared with 2010 levels, to have a good chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C. Yet emissions continue to climb. Last year, they rose by just under 1%, according to the International Energy Agency.
Short answer, probably not.
When is the next IPCC report?
Not until about 2030. This means AR6 is effectively the last full IPCC report we will get this decade. These are the “official” numbers we have to work with until then, however flawed they may be.
What does it want governments to do?
Pretty much what ALL the earlier reports have wanted.
Reduce emissions sharply and give up fossil fuels, through investments in renewable energy and other low-carbon technologies.
Increase energy efficiency throughout our entire civilization at every level.
Rethink agriculture.
Restore forests and degraded natural landscapes.
Develop technologies that suck carbon dioxide from the air, called “direct air capture”, or explore other means of “climate repair”.
Do you need to read this report?
You don't need to read it. The graphic shown above tells you everything you need to know. The reports conclusions are contained in the 40 page Summary for Policymakers Synthesis Report if you want to walk through them. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres hit the high points of the report in his speech today when he declared.
National governments haven’t done nearly enough to stop global warming in the seven years since they signed the Paris Climate Agreement.
As a result, the world is running out of options to defuse the “ticking” climate time bomb.
The new report shows that “the 1.5-degree limit is achievable … But it will take a quantum leap in climate action. In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts—everything, everywhere, all at once.
This report is an urgent call for leaders to decarbonize developed countries by 2040, and developing countries by 2050.
Keep in mind when you look at these projections. They are GOOD SCIENCE but they are CONSERVATIVE ESTIMATES. These are not “worst case” or “most likely” estimates. These are “low-ball” estimates.
Now, this is where both the “Climate Deniers” like David Friedman and the “Climate Optimists” like MCJ Climate Voices start screaming “he’s wrong, he’s wrong, don’t listen to him, he’s a DOOMER.” They will insist that either these estimates are “overestimates” (David Friedman) because the IPCC has a history of always “over stating” warming. Or, they will insist that these estimates represent the best science available and that the most important thing is to not “scare people”.
Moving Beyond Doomism: Data-Driven Strategies for Effective Climate Content
Because, “Telling everyone the world as they know it is over and that they’re going to die isn’t an effective communications strategy, even if it’s true.”
Putting all that aside, “What do CLIMATE SCIENTISTS actually say about this report?”
Remember, there can be a BIG discrepancy between what Climate Scientists say in public and what they say in anonymous polls or among themselves. The Trumpublicans have made the field extremely toxic by “harassing, ridiculing, and marginalizing” anyone who openly deviates from the prevailing paradigm about Global Warming.
The “Culture” of Climate Science.
If you are a Climate Scientist and say the “wrong thing”, your career could be over. James Hansen, the “Dean” of Climate Science, is treated as a “Doomer” in mainstream “Climate Science” circles. Many people are unaware that he is still active in the field, works at Columbia University, and produces reports like this.
Global warming in the pipeline December 8th 2022
Where he argues that.
Improved knowledge of glacial-to-interglacial global temperature change implies that fast-feedback equilibrium climate sensitivity is at least ~4°C for doubled CO2 (2xCO2), with likely range 3.5-5.5°C. (this is SHORT TERM, by 2100)
Greenhouse gas (GHG) climate forcing is 4.1 W/m2 larger in 2021 than in 1750, equivalent to 2xCO2 forcing.
Global warming in the pipeline is greater than prior estimates. Human-made aerosols are a major climate forcing, mainly via their effect on clouds. (planetary albedo)
Eventual global warming due to today's GHG forcing alone -- after slow feedbacks operate -- is about 10°C. (This is VERY LONG TERM, thousands of years)
He also testifies before the Senate.
The Guardian did a “revisit” on Hansen in 2018 because he has become so marginalized in the public mind. “Deniers” have waged a decades long campaign to convince people that Hansen was completely wrong about Global Warming.
The Guardian’s conclusion.
30 years later, deniers are still lying about Hansen’s amazing global warming predictions.
Koch paychecks seem to be strong motivators to lie.
So, before you write Hansen off because he seems “extreme” and out of sync with what the Climate Scientists on the TV are saying. Keep this in mind.
Recent records disgorged by Exxon in Senate investigations found that Exxon modeled and predicted global warming with ‘shocking skill and accuracy’ starting in the 1970s. Harvard and Potsdam researchers analyzed Exxon’s predictive “skill scores,” or how their predictions matched what actually happened.
They found that Exxon scientists were producing climate research in the 70’s and 80’s with an average skill score of 75 percent.
In comparison, NASA scientist James Hansen, who famously presented his global warming predictions to Congress in 1988, had an average skill score of 66 percent.
Exxon disputed climate findings for years. Its scientists knew better.
When Exxon said shit like this in the late 90’s.
“The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil,”
— Exxon ad, addressing proposals in the late 1990s for the U.S. to join an international climate accord (like the Paris Accord) at the time.
THEY WERE LYING. THEY HAVE BEEN LYING TO US FOR DECADES.
So, perhaps Hansen knows what he is talking about. Even if he seems “more extreme” than the IPCC.
What you, the average citizen, need to be clear about. Is that “Climate Science” is a VERY POLITICIZED and VERY TOXIC field. It is currently dominated by the CLIMATE MODERATE faction of Climate Scientists who came to power in the late 80’s during the Reagan/Bush years.
The years when Republicans decided to ignore warnings from scientists they didn't like and only listen to those who agreed with the Fossil Fuel Industry.
The CLIMATE MODERATE faction are the 1 out of 5 “Climate Scientists” who built their career on not being “Alarmists”. They created the current Climate Science Paradigm and they are vigorously defending it. Even as mountains of new findings show that they got it wrong.
So, with that in mind. These actions in the Climate Science Community last year, speak to the growing sense of desperation in the field.
Last year, some of them were talking about “going on strike”.
February 2022
Dr. Glavovic, 61, a professor at Massey University in New Zealand, and two colleagues to send a jolt recently through the normally cautious, rarefied world of environmental research. In an academic journal, they called on climate scientists to stage a mass walkout, to stop their research until nations take action on global warming.
Some of them are protesting in other ways.
April 2022
Climate Activist Dies After Setting Himself on Fire at Supreme Court in Protest.
The court’s conservative majority had voiced skepticism of the agency’s authority to regulate carbon emissions, suggesting that a decision by the justices could deal a sharp blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to address climate change.
Here’s what Climate Scientists said about today’s report.
Prof Rachel Warren, from UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at UEA.
“It emphasizes how science has revealed that the risks of global warming are larger than previously thought, with high or very risks in all categories assessed with only 2C global warming. This means that pursuing efforts to limit global warming to 1.5C is now more important and urgent than it has ever been.”
Prof Andy Turner, a climate scientist with particular expertise in monsoon systems at University of Reading, and a Lead Author of IPCC AR6.
“The IPCC 6th Assessment Report has demonstrated clearly that every additional fraction of warming will lead to intensification of the global water cycle and larger extremes. For the monsoon regions around the globe, most worrying is the increase in variability, associated with a greater likelihood of flood and drought, which are damaging to agricultural yields, water supply and human health.
Just as the damaging impacts of climate change will worsen with each degree of warming, the costs of taking action will also rise, should we delay making the necessary deep and sustained cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.”
Dr Friederike Otto, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science at Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London, and member of the report’s core writing team.
“What the new Synthesis Report shows is the gravity of the problem. The very first figure shows all the human and natural systems that are already adversely affected. In other words, many more people have lost their lives and livelihoods than originally thought.
The climate changes are as much as we’ve expected for decades, but we humans and our societies are more fragile than we thought before.
And this is only at 1.2 degrees of warming.
Even the small changes that we are already observing are having huge impacts around the world.
Leaders and pundits shouldn’t “cherry pick” appropriate passages from the IPCC report that are convenient for their political goals. For example, when the IPCC says something about technology, it shouldn’t be an excuse to fixate on technological solutions and ignore everything else in the report.
Because that is the most important message is that we still have time to act and that we have everything we need to act. We know which mitigation and adaptation measures work. But the sense of urgency in implementing them is currently lacking.”
“We need to stop burning fossil fuels. We know there is no alternative. There is no saving future technology that would allow us to just carry on as before.”
Prof Lisa Schipper, Institute of Geography, University of Bonn.
“The Synthesis Report retains the three most important messages across the IPCC AR6. These are
(1) that time is limited and the window of opportunity to act is closing quickly.
(2) actions currently being taken, and actions that governments have committed to, are not enough to ensure either reduction of emissions to stay below 1.5C or to sufficiently help people adapt to climate change.
(3) that increasingly damaging – and in some cases irreversible – impacts that we cannot adapt to are expected unless drastic cuts to emissions are taken now.”
Dr Alaa Alkhourdajie, Research Fellow at Imperial College London’s Centre for Environmental Policy – IPCC Working Group III Senior Scientist.
“It is clearer now more than ever that with every increment of warming, the risks, impact and related losses and damages escalate substantially across all regions and sectors, more so for the most vulnerable communities. Choices made in this decade will determine the extent to which current and future generations will experience a hotter and different world.
Across the entire report, there are always three key words associated with almost all findings related to limiting warming to 1.5°C and 2°C: “deep, rapid and sustained” GHG emissions reductions this decade, in all sectors and across all regions.”
Prof Ilan Kelman, Professor of Disasters and Health at University College London and the University of Agder.
“The synthesis report highlights a terrifying aspect of human-caused climate change: devastating heatwaves. People are dying now from increasing heat-humidity directly attributable to climate change. Without concerted action, as the report recommends, death rates will worsen quickly. Knock-on impacts for food are expected as outdoor agricultural workers struggle with the rising temperatures while crops and livestock wilt.
“The synthesis report describes a key action: removing fossil fuel subsidies, which amount to hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Our taxes should not be supporting an industry that hurts us.”
Prof Tom Welton, former president of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
“An urgent shift to renewable and low carbon sources of energy is required to minimise the devastating impacts of climate change but we must be careful that we don’t introduce new sources of pollution or deplete critical minerals.”
Prof Bill Collins, Professor of Climate Processes, University of Reading.
“This latest report sets out the exciting possibility of a sustainable future.
But we are not currently on this path.
Future CO2 emissions just from the fossil fuel infrastructures currently in place will take us beyond 1.5 degrees. Time is running out. How much fossil fuel we burn this decade will determine whether warming can be limited to 1.5 or 2 degrees. The time is now to decide whether or not to take the sustainable path set out by the IPCC.”
Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, Chair in Mathematical Modelling of Climate Systems at the University of Exeter.
“The IPCC AR6 synthesis report perfectly summarizes current and future climate change and associated impacts and the absolute necessity to reduce greenhouse gases emissions immediately to limit further warming. At current level of CO2 emissions, the 1.5°C target would be breached in the coming decade.
To me, the one single sentence from the report that says it all is the following: “The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years.”
Dr Rob Bellamy, Lecturer in Climate and Society at the University of Manchester.
“Today’s IPCC Synthesis Report makes it crystal clear that taking carbon dioxide out of the air is not just an option – but a necessity.
Whether to speed up mitigation, to counterbalance leftover emissions from hard-to-abate sectors like aviation and agriculture, or to bring the temperature back down in the case of overshooting 1.5 degrees; carbon removal is firmly on the climate policy agenda. But carbon removal methods, such as afforestation and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, also bring significant risks to people and the environment.
Make no mistake, we need to do carbon removal; but we need to do it responsibly.”
Prof David Lee, an expert on aviation at Manchester Metropolitan University, and a Lead Author of AR6.
“The Synthesis Report SPM highlights that aviation is a sector with no easy answers – a “hard-to-abate” sector. The Synthesis Report is a very clear signal that there are significant challenges ahead for aviation and no easy answers or quick fixes.”
Prof Daniela Schmidt, Professor in Earth Sciences, University of Bristol and Cabot Institute.
“It is time to acknowledge that the 10% highest-emitting households contribute about ~40% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The poorest 50% globally contribute only a fraction of the Earth’s GHG burden but will experience the worst hunger, droughts and floods if we not dramatically reduce emissions.
The burden of our lack of action will be carried by those who are young today and have not caused this problem. We are accepting that children in the most vulnerable regions in the world will have a challenging future.”
Prof Ed Hawkins, climate scientist at the University of Reading.
“The use of the warming stripes in the IPCC’s Assessment Report is a haunting reminder of the consequences we are facing if we fail to act on climate change now.
These stripes portray a stark picture of the different and dangerous worlds that future generations could inherit, depending on our actions today. The deepening red stripes are an urgent warning of the adverse effects of rising temperatures.
If we don’t take rapid action by lowering emissions, our children and grandchildren will be left to bear the brunt of extreme weather, such as more intense heatwaves, droughts, floods, and storms. This is not just about rising numbers on a chart, this is about the genuine impact on people’s lives, businesses and communities.
Every bit of warming avoided makes the consequences less severe.”
Dr Chris Jones, Met Office Hadley Centre, and member of the report’s core writing team.
“Today’s report reveals the sheer scale of the ambition required to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. We know that climate change is already happening, and the world has already witnessed extreme events associated with the relatively modest warming we have seen so far. In fact, the world now is the coolest it is going to be, at least for many centuries.”
Prof Richard Allan, Professor of Climate Science, University of Reading.
“This comprehensive synthesis of the state of knowledge on climate science assessed by many hundreds of scientists across three weighty reports is clear that greenhouse gas emissions must be rapidly cut across all sectors of society until net emissions are zero.
Every bit of warming avoided is less worse news for societies and the ecosystems upon which we all depend.”
Kaisa Kosonen, Greenpeace climate expert.
“The fossil fuel reduction numbers have been hidden in many brackets and assumptions. But what you can conclude is that, in pathways that limit warming to 1.5 degree C … the global use of coal is projected to decline by up to 100 percent, oil by up to 90 percent, and gas by up to 85 percent by 2050.”
John Furlow, director of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at the Columbia Climate School.
Lack of progress toward these goals since the Paris Agreement isn’t stymied by the science. The failure to achieve many of the climate goals the world has set for itself are political and economic.
The science was clear even before the UNFCCC was created. The thinking early on, was that this would be a fairly easy problem to solve.
We had just solved it for acid rain and for ozone-depleting chemicals, and when you read the original UN Convention on Climate Change, well, it’s long and wordy, but the thought was, ‘We got this.’
Then politics happened.”
In 1990 the first IPCC Assessment was issued.
The report documented a 0.3-0.6 Celsius degree increase in average temperatures over the past 100 years. It urged major cuts in carbon dioxide and methane emissions.
Instead, President Bush the First, at a meeting to discuss “Global Warming” that year emphasizes the "scientific uncertainty" about climate change.
“The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil,” —Exxon Ad 1999
Walther Baethgen, senior research scientist Columbia Climate School’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society.
The problems start when science meets politics. The IPCC assessments produce the best science possible, but the question is what do people do with that information.
Even the summary documents like the one today are so complex that government policy experts have to translate the information into something that is actionable that can inform policy.
To be honest, today, I don’t feel very optimistic. You have a Biden administration that seems to be very conscious about working against climate change, but then, again, you have a war, and the United States is making billions of dollars exporting energy to Europe.
This isn’t an abstract problem.
As we keep blowing through these goals, I think the real question is, do you want more and more summers like last summer, where things are on fire or washing away? Because, that's what we are moving quickly towards.
Michael Mann, director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media and the University of Pennsylvania.
Many IPCC projections have, in fact, been “accurate and even prescient,” especially concerning overall average planetary warming.
“However, when it comes to certain important consequences of the warming, including ice sheet collapse, sea level rise, and the rise in extreme weather events, the reports in my view have been overly conservative, in substantial part because of processes that are imperfectly represented in the models.”
But even if some of the individual predictions are off, the report captures the dire state of the planet’s climate. Rapid and far-reaching transitions are necessary to achieve deep and sustained emissions reductions and secure a livable and sustainable future for all.
Heidi Steltzer, ecologist and mountain climate researcher at Fort Lewis College, Durango Colorado. Lead author of chapter on mountains in the IPCC’s 2019 report on the oceans and cryosphere. Ms. Steltzer gets the last word because I think she reflects what many in the field of Climate Science feels after 30 years of their efforts being ignored by the general public and policy makers.
The question remains how to act on those findings, and the answer may not be simply to do more of the same science.
“More reports aren’t going to do it. We’ve already done that.”
It’s time for action. Because it’s “Now or Never”.
Political Action is the ONLY WAY FORWARD NOW.
All the feel good things:
Picking up trash on the beach.
Recycling your cans, paper, and glass.
Buying an EV.
Going “vegan”, because of cow farts.
The things we do, instead of taking political action.
Those things, are all pointless now.
All those little gestures just won’t cut it any more.
We are out of time, it’s about to get HOT.
This is my analysis.
This is what I see.
This is my “Crisis Report”.
-rc 03212023
The summary of policy makers is nothing compared to the full report. In this full report, that of course politicians will never read, scientists are already seeing degrowth as a viable mitigation pathway, because as you know, all the models rely on CCS and DAC, which today are still problematic and the amount of carbon they suck is minimal, it is more benefitial to restore an ecosystem than deploying CCS. The whole chapter 5 is about reducing consumption and a subtle mention to this. P.524 Chapter 5 from the Full Report of WGIII, and the word degrowth has also several mentions in the whole report. In private, I'm sure the majority of environmental scientists support degrowth, but right now, the political implications of telling that in public would be enormous.
"Faster than expected" from here on out.
Let's hope "the economy" collapses soon. Because that will be easier to deal with, and create political possibility for the needed paradigm change, than environmental collapse. There will be a chance at something beyond civilization as we know and practice. A chance.
When the delusion is ripped away, the revealed reality will not be gentle for most minds.