Thank you Richard for that firehose of climate science and interpretation. I'm a retired physician/psychiatrist/addictionist/stress researcher and climate collapse nerd/student. I get my info primarily from C3S (EU), and reference their recent article, "hottest May on record spurs call for climate action", 7-18-24. In it, they state that the global average temp has increased 0.75 degC over the 1991-2020 baseline, which I make to be 3.5 yrs. until now, so 0.214 degC annually on average and 1 degC every 5 yrs., if this trend continues, which it appears to be doing. If we calculate from the beginning of 2020 and not the end, then it's 0.17 degC annually and 5.9 yrs. for a 1 degC increase. In either case, nowhere have I seen this data publicized, but suspect that C3S is a gold standard reference in climate science, right?
I got really interested in climate collapse a few months back when I read on C3S that 1.2 trillion tons of global ice were melting annually, 3.3 billion tons daily. This struck me as a "canary in the coal mine" stat. They also predicted that 2/3rds of the 220,000 glaciers on the planet will have melted by 2,100. Again, the real issue is the massive amount of heat energy being absorbed, and one pound of ice absorbs 144 BTUs in melting. Greenland is losing 30 million tons of ice hourly (Guardian). Swiss glaciologists reported that they have measured a 10% loss of glacial ice in just the past 2 yrs.
We hear a lot about the 4-5mm sea level rise on the US East Coast, but nothing about melting ice. Polymath Eliot Jacobson has calculated that we are generating the heat energy equivalent of 20 Hiroshima yield nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND, where each one releases 63 trillion BTUs. We hear a lot about the tremendous promise of solar electricity generation, but nothing about the 42,500 BTUs per sunny day that rooftop solar panels absorb and re-radiate, all 115,000,000 of them. I calculate that even resting or minimally active humans produce 11,000 BTUs per day, for each and every one of us 8 billion+ inhabitants, and that doesn't count the 16B+ domestic animals we use for food. Ever hear/read about any of these waste heat energy sources? No? Hmmmm?
So, Richard, thanks for your erudition, and I'm just a curious 79yo retired physician, so what do I know? But the marvelous internet can make all of us educated fools, if we just take the time to do some of our own research.
So. I watched the "Civil War" movie last night. It was a sobering re-evaluation of what it is to be an American.
You, Richard, are advising a sober re-evaluation of what it means to be a modern human. I think this is good advice.
Also, given the millennia of human history and what's going on right now it would be the height of hubris, and foolishness, to not consider war. Large and small, inter and intra national, civil and very un-civil. Most people, like about 90%, who are in the communities of those reading this do not have more than 3 days of basic necessities like food and potable water, let alone power, transportation, security or functional shelter. There are plenty of a-holes about who will begin taking what they want on Day 4. What then?
So, Richard, as the ALARM becomes the News, what then? Do you have any insight into a 'best' course of action? Do we stand by while modern societies devolve into a medieval state?
There will be little need for information on climate future. The future horizon will collapse to tomorrow morning.
As we begin to focus in on and get more clarity on the rate of warming and global environmental disruption is it not wise to consider our survival? Now that we can coalesce and agree on the what, shouldn't we begin to lay out the how?
I would sure be interested in yours and others thoughts.
Thank you, Richard, for all the time and care you put into these reports. It's a heavy burden.
Anyone following the facts knows that we have passed a number of tipping points. And anyone with a basic knowledge of human nature knows that greed and consumerism will continue mindlessly. As a retired hospice nurse, I look at our way of life as a hospice patient - going into the darkness without the hope of recovery but leaving those of us living now the moral obligation to alleviate the symptoms as best we can, both for others and for all the life forms we have so tragically affected.
I don't know that there is any way to make this deep sadness any easier - I have often suddenly started tearing up just looking at a stand of lovely trees or a documentary about a species dying out. But I don't despair - I know it is all in the hands of my Creator who is infinitely beyond me in wisdom.
No, no, no, we still have a future. Just not the one we expected. There is still plenty of time to plan for the new future. Where in your life could you make it more enjoyable? What can you do to maximize the time you have left? Not necessarily a bucket-list, but a day to day attempt at pleasure and enjoyment of our now short future.
Louis XIV was the last “great” king of France and saw both the height of France’s power as a nation and also the “writing on the wall” so to speak as the treasury could not support the expense of the monarchy and military—the peasants had had enough . He could see that the monarchy was coming to an end as it did in the French revolution.
And… so we see now the writing on the wall that spending Earth’s resources on a decadent lifestyle (for most of the western world) is going to lead to system collapse.
Dude, I don’t even make commitments farther than 48hrs out. If I get to see another day, and it doesn’t suck, I enjoy the day, or look back at the wins.
Anytime I discuss this stuff with people I find myself saying “10-20 years” when estimating how fucked we are. Knowing it won’t be that long before we are longing for these days happening right now. I find explaining the lived experience of people currently living fully collapsed without consistent access to good food or health care, and softly suggesting that we are not immune from that fate, tends to get a few gears cranking in their head.
Fatalism isn't a valid viewpoint? Why isn't it? If you accept inevitable doom it motivates you to get the most out of any time remaining. All these "experts" seem to believe that "valid" viewpoint must contain a solution, otherwise it can't be real. These people are emotional children. "I'll close my eyes and it goes away" There! All better!
Be like me, have as much fun as you can. Think of all the old people that always put off what they really wanted to do so they could be "responsible" Now they're old and can't do any wild stuff, and in fact, don't want to anymore. Get wild kid. You gotta make the most out of the next few years.
This will require a lot of processing. I am numb and I can't react. I had just started to understand all of this and myself and started living . Can I ask you a few questions
It is time for us to get weird. I highly recommend the YouTube channel American Resiliency for guidance on how to live in our new reality. https://youtube.com/@americanresiliency
Richard, thank you for your excellent and passionate overview. I have been following the science of climate change for over 50 years, way back to the original Club of Rome in the 1970's so none of what you say comes as a surprise to me. You are, in my opinion, correct in every substantive point and I am sure that humanity is about to drive at full speed into a wall of reality.
May I add a few observations and perhaps interpretations that have changed the way I interpret these things going forward?
Firstly, regarding your frustration at the lack of governments, companies and people to recognise and solve the problems.
Governments are just groups of people, mostly there to do a job, and a few of those people are good at what they do, but all of them are really there for the paycheck. They are led by 'politicians' whose sole motivation is personal political power (for a variety of reasons), which means they aren't 'leaders' but followers of public opinion. So to get themselves elected, they have to work out what the majority of people want to hear, and then tell them that in a passionate way as though they believe it. None of that will include that the end of the world is nigh, or even that they can't fly to Orlando, or drive their 2 tonne 4x4 to Wallmart any more.
Corporations are owned by investors that have invested to maximise profits. No social agenda. They are managed by Directors, that are employees hired for one purpose - to maximise the returns to investors. No social agenda - in fact they would be sacked if they did anything that cost profits.
Lastly, The People, that much-vaunted concept of democratic social wisdom that the government is pledged to serve. Those people have an average IQ of 100 ( by definition) and, assuming a bell-shaped distribution curve, for every person with an IQ of, say, 125 there is a duffer with an IQ of 75. With a vote. And for every MENSA with an IQ of 150 or more, there is a poor sod with an IQ of 50. Perhaps with a vote. Perhaps even with a job and kids!
So whilst you and I live in our bubbles of intelligent conversation with intelligent partners and friends and colleagues and acquaintances, and all the news we actually watch talks about people like us, the real world we live in is being run on behalf of that greater majority with the 100 IQ, because that's where the voters are.
So what do those people think about climate change? They don't. Most people want to keep their job and pay check, pay the bills, keep the car running, service the boiler, get their kids to turn down the music and get them off the internet porn channels, etc, etc. If they plan for the future, it is for next year's holiday.
In short, NONE of the above are interested in fixing climate change. It isn't a vote winner, it isn't a profit-maker, and it isn't going to help pay the household bills. If there is to be any version of hope, it isn't to be found in any of the above.
I have a saying I use mostly to remind myself, "You can only be disappointed if you started out with unrealistic expectations".
I would respectfully suggest that if you can adjust your expectations, you may find your existence more palatable and find your satisfactions elsewhere.
So where might it be found? For me, I have taken my own refuge in the work of Dr. James Lovelock's research on the Gaia Hypothesis and the self-regulating abilities of the planet Earth. He proposed that the 'virus' of excess humans that was giving the planet a 'fever' would be corrected by complex autonomous planetary feedbacks, checks and balances. For example, if and when AMOC turns off, (increasingly imminent, it seems) northern European temperatures will drop between 8*C and 15*C, that will drive people south and destroy the productivity of a swathe of farmland.
And as you mentioned, climate heating and droughts are turning whole regions from productive land to dustbowl deserts.
Whilst global food production may still be sufficient, local food production will collapse and prices will increase beyond affordability for many people, which is, ultimately, the definition of famine.
When I was born in the 1950's the human population of this planet was estimated at around 2.4 billion. It is now at 8.2 billion and expected to reach 10 billion, maybe even 12 billion before reducing again, though a really doubt it!
If the population was still, say, 3 billion, it wouldn't matter if we all drove around in V8 engined cars, and flew to Orlando ( though why would you want to???) because most of the oil would still be in the ground, most of those extinct animals would still be thriving in their habitats, and global warming would still be an academic theory.
In other words, the problem is the vast numbers of excess people, particularly people with profligate Western lifestyles, and if Gaia destroys our fragile, complex systems such that Western lifestyles based on too much fossil energy usage and perhaps technology, then the remaining human population may survive and even thrive.
For my own part, i have given considerable thought for décades about my own responses. So I live in the most resilient country I can find in Europe, with considerable local food production, high rainfall, productive land, forests for fuel and resilient energy production (70% nuclear, 15% hydro, 10% wind and solar). I live on a sailboat and can up-sticks and head south or north according to the latest climate indications (particularly for AMOC). I am in a small town with friendly and supportive people and negligible threat of violence. I plan to sit out the coming changes as an interested spectator. My front row seat at 'The restaurant at the end of the universe'!
Meanwhile I am enormously grateful to have lived through the richest ever period of human history, the longest period of peace in Europe, and surely one of the most fascinating times to have been alive. I watched the 1969 moonshot live on TV, and here I am with a good chance to see the end game too.
So, in brief, I am grateful, feel fortunate, feel as prepared as I can be for the future as best I can imagine it, and have very low expectations of any meaningful changes that will mitigate climate catastrophe.
Sorry for the long reply, but your long post deserved a comprehensive answer (of sorts) and I hoped it may help you, and others, come to terms.
Thank you Richard for that firehose of climate science and interpretation. I'm a retired physician/psychiatrist/addictionist/stress researcher and climate collapse nerd/student. I get my info primarily from C3S (EU), and reference their recent article, "hottest May on record spurs call for climate action", 7-18-24. In it, they state that the global average temp has increased 0.75 degC over the 1991-2020 baseline, which I make to be 3.5 yrs. until now, so 0.214 degC annually on average and 1 degC every 5 yrs., if this trend continues, which it appears to be doing. If we calculate from the beginning of 2020 and not the end, then it's 0.17 degC annually and 5.9 yrs. for a 1 degC increase. In either case, nowhere have I seen this data publicized, but suspect that C3S is a gold standard reference in climate science, right?
I got really interested in climate collapse a few months back when I read on C3S that 1.2 trillion tons of global ice were melting annually, 3.3 billion tons daily. This struck me as a "canary in the coal mine" stat. They also predicted that 2/3rds of the 220,000 glaciers on the planet will have melted by 2,100. Again, the real issue is the massive amount of heat energy being absorbed, and one pound of ice absorbs 144 BTUs in melting. Greenland is losing 30 million tons of ice hourly (Guardian). Swiss glaciologists reported that they have measured a 10% loss of glacial ice in just the past 2 yrs.
We hear a lot about the 4-5mm sea level rise on the US East Coast, but nothing about melting ice. Polymath Eliot Jacobson has calculated that we are generating the heat energy equivalent of 20 Hiroshima yield nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND, where each one releases 63 trillion BTUs. We hear a lot about the tremendous promise of solar electricity generation, but nothing about the 42,500 BTUs per sunny day that rooftop solar panels absorb and re-radiate, all 115,000,000 of them. I calculate that even resting or minimally active humans produce 11,000 BTUs per day, for each and every one of us 8 billion+ inhabitants, and that doesn't count the 16B+ domestic animals we use for food. Ever hear/read about any of these waste heat energy sources? No? Hmmmm?
So, Richard, thanks for your erudition, and I'm just a curious 79yo retired physician, so what do I know? But the marvelous internet can make all of us educated fools, if we just take the time to do some of our own research.
So. I watched the "Civil War" movie last night. It was a sobering re-evaluation of what it is to be an American.
You, Richard, are advising a sober re-evaluation of what it means to be a modern human. I think this is good advice.
Also, given the millennia of human history and what's going on right now it would be the height of hubris, and foolishness, to not consider war. Large and small, inter and intra national, civil and very un-civil. Most people, like about 90%, who are in the communities of those reading this do not have more than 3 days of basic necessities like food and potable water, let alone power, transportation, security or functional shelter. There are plenty of a-holes about who will begin taking what they want on Day 4. What then?
So, Richard, as the ALARM becomes the News, what then? Do you have any insight into a 'best' course of action? Do we stand by while modern societies devolve into a medieval state?
There will be little need for information on climate future. The future horizon will collapse to tomorrow morning.
As we begin to focus in on and get more clarity on the rate of warming and global environmental disruption is it not wise to consider our survival? Now that we can coalesce and agree on the what, shouldn't we begin to lay out the how?
I would sure be interested in yours and others thoughts.
Thank you, Richard, for all the time and care you put into these reports. It's a heavy burden.
Anyone following the facts knows that we have passed a number of tipping points. And anyone with a basic knowledge of human nature knows that greed and consumerism will continue mindlessly. As a retired hospice nurse, I look at our way of life as a hospice patient - going into the darkness without the hope of recovery but leaving those of us living now the moral obligation to alleviate the symptoms as best we can, both for others and for all the life forms we have so tragically affected.
I don't know that there is any way to make this deep sadness any easier - I have often suddenly started tearing up just looking at a stand of lovely trees or a documentary about a species dying out. But I don't despair - I know it is all in the hands of my Creator who is infinitely beyond me in wisdom.
So to summarize, we're fucked.
And you haven't even read part two yet.
No, no, no, we still have a future. Just not the one we expected. There is still plenty of time to plan for the new future. Where in your life could you make it more enjoyable? What can you do to maximize the time you have left? Not necessarily a bucket-list, but a day to day attempt at pleasure and enjoyment of our now short future.
Louis XIV said it best: “Apres moi, la deluge.”
No speaka French. What's that mean?
“After me, the storm.”
Louis XIV was the last “great” king of France and saw both the height of France’s power as a nation and also the “writing on the wall” so to speak as the treasury could not support the expense of the monarchy and military—the peasants had had enough . He could see that the monarchy was coming to an end as it did in the French revolution.
And… so we see now the writing on the wall that spending Earth’s resources on a decadent lifestyle (for most of the western world) is going to lead to system collapse.
And it is “le deluge”… my French is a long way from “parfait”.
Dude, I don’t even make commitments farther than 48hrs out. If I get to see another day, and it doesn’t suck, I enjoy the day, or look back at the wins.
Just ever so slightly…we also got to be lucky enough to all be alive at all. Then to be alive in the age of dying is like a double whammy.
Anytime I discuss this stuff with people I find myself saying “10-20 years” when estimating how fucked we are. Knowing it won’t be that long before we are longing for these days happening right now. I find explaining the lived experience of people currently living fully collapsed without consistent access to good food or health care, and softly suggesting that we are not immune from that fate, tends to get a few gears cranking in their head.
Fatalism isn't a valid viewpoint? Why isn't it? If you accept inevitable doom it motivates you to get the most out of any time remaining. All these "experts" seem to believe that "valid" viewpoint must contain a solution, otherwise it can't be real. These people are emotional children. "I'll close my eyes and it goes away" There! All better!
Well fuck I am only 20. What do I even do from here on?
Be like me, have as much fun as you can. Think of all the old people that always put off what they really wanted to do so they could be "responsible" Now they're old and can't do any wild stuff, and in fact, don't want to anymore. Get wild kid. You gotta make the most out of the next few years.
This will require a lot of processing. I am numb and I can't react. I had just started to understand all of this and myself and started living . Can I ask you a few questions
Absolutely. It's a lot to take in.
It is time for us to get weird. I highly recommend the YouTube channel American Resiliency for guidance on how to live in our new reality. https://youtube.com/@americanresiliency
Richard, thank you for your excellent and passionate overview. I have been following the science of climate change for over 50 years, way back to the original Club of Rome in the 1970's so none of what you say comes as a surprise to me. You are, in my opinion, correct in every substantive point and I am sure that humanity is about to drive at full speed into a wall of reality.
May I add a few observations and perhaps interpretations that have changed the way I interpret these things going forward?
Firstly, regarding your frustration at the lack of governments, companies and people to recognise and solve the problems.
Governments are just groups of people, mostly there to do a job, and a few of those people are good at what they do, but all of them are really there for the paycheck. They are led by 'politicians' whose sole motivation is personal political power (for a variety of reasons), which means they aren't 'leaders' but followers of public opinion. So to get themselves elected, they have to work out what the majority of people want to hear, and then tell them that in a passionate way as though they believe it. None of that will include that the end of the world is nigh, or even that they can't fly to Orlando, or drive their 2 tonne 4x4 to Wallmart any more.
Corporations are owned by investors that have invested to maximise profits. No social agenda. They are managed by Directors, that are employees hired for one purpose - to maximise the returns to investors. No social agenda - in fact they would be sacked if they did anything that cost profits.
Lastly, The People, that much-vaunted concept of democratic social wisdom that the government is pledged to serve. Those people have an average IQ of 100 ( by definition) and, assuming a bell-shaped distribution curve, for every person with an IQ of, say, 125 there is a duffer with an IQ of 75. With a vote. And for every MENSA with an IQ of 150 or more, there is a poor sod with an IQ of 50. Perhaps with a vote. Perhaps even with a job and kids!
So whilst you and I live in our bubbles of intelligent conversation with intelligent partners and friends and colleagues and acquaintances, and all the news we actually watch talks about people like us, the real world we live in is being run on behalf of that greater majority with the 100 IQ, because that's where the voters are.
So what do those people think about climate change? They don't. Most people want to keep their job and pay check, pay the bills, keep the car running, service the boiler, get their kids to turn down the music and get them off the internet porn channels, etc, etc. If they plan for the future, it is for next year's holiday.
In short, NONE of the above are interested in fixing climate change. It isn't a vote winner, it isn't a profit-maker, and it isn't going to help pay the household bills. If there is to be any version of hope, it isn't to be found in any of the above.
I have a saying I use mostly to remind myself, "You can only be disappointed if you started out with unrealistic expectations".
I would respectfully suggest that if you can adjust your expectations, you may find your existence more palatable and find your satisfactions elsewhere.
So where might it be found? For me, I have taken my own refuge in the work of Dr. James Lovelock's research on the Gaia Hypothesis and the self-regulating abilities of the planet Earth. He proposed that the 'virus' of excess humans that was giving the planet a 'fever' would be corrected by complex autonomous planetary feedbacks, checks and balances. For example, if and when AMOC turns off, (increasingly imminent, it seems) northern European temperatures will drop between 8*C and 15*C, that will drive people south and destroy the productivity of a swathe of farmland.
And as you mentioned, climate heating and droughts are turning whole regions from productive land to dustbowl deserts.
Whilst global food production may still be sufficient, local food production will collapse and prices will increase beyond affordability for many people, which is, ultimately, the definition of famine.
When I was born in the 1950's the human population of this planet was estimated at around 2.4 billion. It is now at 8.2 billion and expected to reach 10 billion, maybe even 12 billion before reducing again, though a really doubt it!
If the population was still, say, 3 billion, it wouldn't matter if we all drove around in V8 engined cars, and flew to Orlando ( though why would you want to???) because most of the oil would still be in the ground, most of those extinct animals would still be thriving in their habitats, and global warming would still be an academic theory.
In other words, the problem is the vast numbers of excess people, particularly people with profligate Western lifestyles, and if Gaia destroys our fragile, complex systems such that Western lifestyles based on too much fossil energy usage and perhaps technology, then the remaining human population may survive and even thrive.
For my own part, i have given considerable thought for décades about my own responses. So I live in the most resilient country I can find in Europe, with considerable local food production, high rainfall, productive land, forests for fuel and resilient energy production (70% nuclear, 15% hydro, 10% wind and solar). I live on a sailboat and can up-sticks and head south or north according to the latest climate indications (particularly for AMOC). I am in a small town with friendly and supportive people and negligible threat of violence. I plan to sit out the coming changes as an interested spectator. My front row seat at 'The restaurant at the end of the universe'!
Meanwhile I am enormously grateful to have lived through the richest ever period of human history, the longest period of peace in Europe, and surely one of the most fascinating times to have been alive. I watched the 1969 moonshot live on TV, and here I am with a good chance to see the end game too.
So, in brief, I am grateful, feel fortunate, feel as prepared as I can be for the future as best I can imagine it, and have very low expectations of any meaningful changes that will mitigate climate catastrophe.
Sorry for the long reply, but your long post deserved a comprehensive answer (of sorts) and I hoped it may help you, and others, come to terms.