First and foremost: Thank you for such a very cogent and critically important posting detailing the issues from "the moderates" own writings.
However, it is oh so much worse than this. Consider several points.
1) We are not at 420 ppm, or 422 CO2, or 424 ppm CO2. The meaningful comparison is warming NOT CO2 when comparing to ancient ice cores and other records. CO2(e) is the relevant comparator. Today we are at about 556 ppm CO2(e). The last time we were there is between 21 and 34 Mya with a most likely time of about 31-32 Mya.
2) At 555 ppm CO2(e) we have already blown past any of the trajectories. We are at doubled "CO2".
3) The IPCC is a politically and financially governed body. Everything they say is vetted through politicians from all of the major countries of the world, and limited by all of the major financial players in what they are allowed to say. That is NOT science, nor the opinion of scientists. That is the opinion they are allowed to share after begging mother may I.
4) The IPCC is NOT allowed to incorporate any science newer than a decade old, meaning data from not sooner than a dozen years ago. Talk about driving with the windshield blacked out and relying on our rearview mirrors to tell us where to go.
5) The denialists will come to bloody violence before they accept anything that contradicts what they want, or what the politicians bought and owned by the oligarchs and industrialists will allow them to say. With something like 40% of people in that camp, heavily armed, and firmly denying basic reality, there is no realistic possibility that we can do anything significant to change our course, until the rate of destruction of the environment is so great that they are immediately and repeatedly devastated themselves. And even that is likely not enough.
6) Lastly, why would I or any sane person consider anything Mann has to say?
Regarding Mann, I never thought much of him watching his interviews, but the quote where he said doomerism is a form of mental illness really sealed it. People who don't want to face the truth in others often accuse them of some disability or flaw to skip having to deal with it.
Sure, do some of us "doomers" have mental health issues? When you do the math on this I don't see how you can't, at least for a little while, lmao. Does that mean that climate change isn't as bad as it really is? Hell no.
You know what the scary thing is, Sam? The “moderates” predictions are themselves terrifying and distressing. Shit goes real bad at 2.7C. Now if what Hansen, Richard, and yourself are saying is true – that it’s much worse than what is being let on – then I have no words for the horrors that are to be visited upon us.
I found your point 4. above very interesting (I liked all your points, BTW) due to the fact that I finished Mark Lynas’ book *Our Final Warning* last year (the most recent edition), and he summarises the AGW research up to 2020. So, if IPCC’s research has a 10-year lag, then Lynas' book would seem to paint a much more accurate portrait. Anyway, my point being that Lynas describes what happens from 1C of warming all the way through 6C, devoting a chapter to each degree. And holy fuck, man. It is bad. Like *game over for our current societal setup* bad.
Right now, I’m trying to enjoy what is left. Focusing on friends and family I love.
Edit to add: Richard, thank you for yet another fantastic yet humbling post. I want you to be wrong, but I think you are likely correct. I recall the words of my 90s professor telling us to "follow the evidence wherever it leads."
Recognize please that I am simply paraphrasing or summarizing to the best of my ability pieces of work by thousands, nay - tens of thousands of researchers.
In the 1990s I had the chance to work more directly with some of the experts. One thought particularly concerned me. That was the comment by the experts who created and ran the atmospheric models that they could not explain the Eemian. The models simply did not work.
Recall that way back then with no ice on earth that the arctic ocean was in the 70 degree range. There were alligators and semitropical plants as far north as Ellesmere Island and southern Greenland.
But how?
The whole earth wasn't proportionally hotter. Yes the tropics were hot, really hot. But not that much hotter. So how did this work. The experts referred to this as the "equable climate".
Ok, how?
What seemed obvious to me was that the equable climate could not exist with a three cell atmospheric circulation - Hadley, Ferrell, Polar.
It had to be more closely connected thermodynamically.
Doing that requires less cells.
But with just a little reflection, it is obvious that only odd numbers of cells are stable. We see that with Venus with one cell, and with the gas giants in our solar systems with Jupiter having something like 17 cells (bands).
So what governs the number of cells. The answer to that is long, complex, and not fully understood. Coriolis and drag forces play large roles. So too does atmospheric depth, thermodynamics, and more.
I found a paper from a researcher back around the 1950s (I have mislaid that, and I have been unable to find it again). He and his grad students developed three very different atmospheric models. One of those models as it turned out - predicted and explained third order effects that would create things like the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge" that happened back around 2012 off the Northwest Pacific Coast and that radically changed the weather.
It also explained the major thermodynamic principles involved.
And so I posited that to some of the atmospheric scientists, and I asked them how close we were thermodynamically from tipping from a three cell circulation to a single cell (Hadley only) circulation.
They were quite skeptical.
But they ran the numbers anyway. Their response was sobering.
Using a simple thermodynamic model of Earth's atmospheric circulation, they concluded that "we are very close".
They didn't say more. I rather expected to see papers from them in coming years analyzing that more deeply. Alas, that did not happen. At least, if it did, I am unaware of the results.
But there are other linked parts that have gone-on dealing with the speed of oscillation of the Rossby waves in the polar jet stream, and the depths of the oscillations (north-south) in that, leading to cutoff highs and lows and disruption of the main jet stream. All of that is happening. We see it with the wild weather swings, and the massive movement of hot air far north and cold air far south.
It is the early states of the breakdown of the three cell system headed for a unicellular one.
When that finally does occur, it will wipe away the interface zones between the cells. And with the loss of the interface between the Hadley and Ferrell cells we lose the rain band at about 45 north, And with the loss of that we lose agriculture, and from there - the food supply for most people on Earth.
We also then see radical shifts in ecosystems and species as the old "rules" are rapidly erased.
None of these ideas are included as considerations in the IPCC.
The IPCC relies on a basic set of models that represent the world we have known it, not the world we are creating.
The IPCC acts to judge things as if they are small perturbations in a regular way.
Though they talk of tipping points, they do not elaborate into the rapid nonlinear breakdown of the governing systems that result.
They speak about the cascade of interactions. But they don't actually follow through to elaborate on those.
In other papers, some of these speculations are discussed.
Those are terrifying. And that no doubt is why they are not in the IPCC.
Those include analysis and discussions of things like the shutdown of the AMOC and the PDO, and the resulting anoxification of the oceans, with massive anoxic gyres forming, like subsurface hurricanes, where all oxygen dependent life dies; and of the shift in those to purple cyanobacter dominance where the oceans in large areas cease to produce oxygen, and instead release hydrogen sulfide - killing the creatures in the air and on land.
This isn't universal, but it leads to very tough times indeed.
We have already seen early stages of this with anoxification along coastlines killing crabs and shellfish, whole ecosystems really, as deep anoxic waters rise on the shores.
We mostly ignore the immense drop in flow rate of the great oceanic circulations (measured in Sverdrups - Sv), instead focusing on the end-state of that - the shutdown of circulation. In doing so we miss the warning.
I gave this a great deal of thought and I think you are right. Did you read this paper-
050 - The Earth’s Climate System - A Short Users Guide. Part 03. Permafrost Melting — The role of permafrost in the Climate System. (07/01/23)
In it I discuss this paper.
Latitudinal temperature gradients and climate change
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 103, NO. D6, PAGES 5943-5971, MARCH 27, 1998
The first sentence of this paper asks.
“How variable is the latitudinal temperature gradient with climate change?”
Then goes on to tell us that;
“This question is second in importance only to the question of overall climate sensitivity. Our current inability to answer it affects everything from understanding past climate variations, and paleoclimate proxies, to projections of regional effects of future greenhouse warming [Rind, 1995].”
In this book this is resolved.
Some Thoughts on Global Climate Change: The Transition for Icehouse to Hothouse Conditions From book: Earth History: The Evolution of the Earth System (2016)
Here's what the paleoclimate research indicates about how the Climate System really works.
In this graphic there are seven different “climate states” shown for a variety of different periods of the Earth. The Tropics-to-Pole Temperature Gradient is shown for each of these climate states, in both of two hemispheres.
The way to use the graph, is to pick the state each of the poles is currently in and average the results to get the Global Mean Temperature of the planet. We are currently in a 5/7 configuration, so the GMT should be around 15C (59F). Which, of course, is the current GMT.
Now, what happens if we dump enough CO2 into the atmosphere to raise the GMT by +4C?
At the North Pole temperatures go up about +20C. Shrinking the difference between the Equator and the NP from 45C to just 25C. Meaning that if is 77F at the Equator we would expect it to be about 32F at the North Pole.
This causes the Latitudinal Equator to Pole Temperature Gradient to "flatten out" and become shallower.
What I suspect, after reading your comment, is that when the temperature gradient flattens out enough, three cell circulation collapses into an unstable two cell state. Finally collapsing into a single cell state.
As I noted, there is at least one paper on this subject from ~75 years ago. It went into detail about the atmosphere. Though it made no effort to analyze the impacts on the ecosystems.
One of the major problems in paleoclimatology is in trying to figure out how the earth could support the conditions we see in the ancient past. Even pushing the models as far as they could, they still don't go far enough.
However, with a one cell atmosphere and heavy cloud cover in the winter, it may work.
As you astutely note, we need studies on those possibilities.
Sam, as promised I re-read our dialogue / comments the next morning after having been a bit boozeful on the night of our exchange. Cheers, coz I learned something new about 3 band / 1 band circulation which I hadn't heard before. I'm just a dude who got their BA in humanities in the 90s trying my damndest to understand this all.
Cheers, Sam. Thank you for taking the time to answer.
I like to do chatGPT summaries of comments due to my own noggin’s method of processing comments. I am also a little drunk right now, so my comprehension Gen X brain is reaaaal slow at the moment. Would this summary be a fair approximation of what you’re getting at?
Sam is sharing their concerns about climate change, particularly about how our understanding of atmospheric systems may be flawed or incomplete. Here’s a summary:
1. Historical Context: They mention a time in the 1990s when experts struggled to explain a past warm period (the Eemian), during which areas now cold had tropical conditions.
2. Atmospheric Models: Current models of Earth's atmosphere (which divide it into three circulation cells) may not accurately reflect how climate works. The commenter suggests that a simpler system with fewer circulation cells might be more stable and better explain past climates.
3. Potential Changes: Sam warns that we are close to a significant shift in atmospheric circulation, which could lead to extreme weather and disrupt ecosystems. This shift could also harm agriculture and food supplies.
4. IPCC Limitations: They criticize the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for relying on models that do not fully account for rapid changes and tipping points in the climate system. They argue that these models overlook complex interactions that could lead to severe consequences, such as ocean deoxygenation and ecosystem collapse.
5. Urgency of the Issue: Sam emphasizes that we need to pay attention to early signs of these changes and not dismiss them, as they could lead to drastic environmental and societal impacts.
Edit to add: I'll definitely re-read the comment I replied to in the morning when I am fully sober and of more sound mind. Sober-me comprehends a lot more. I just need to booze a bit to cope with the severity of it all, ya know? This is pure nightmare fuel.
It's not far off. It's point 2 summary is off a bit,
Atmospheric circulation is complex and dynamic.
It organizes into cells (bands) based on a balance of energies and forces.
Those apparently can organize in two ways on Earth, with either a three band (per hemisphere), or 1 band circulation.
Each's atmospheric circulation is quasi-stable.
Which the Earth actually adopts depends on that balance of energies and forces. And far back in time, the one band organization seems to explain how the conditions were possible that existed, and that our current setup cannot explain.
This seems to pair with the quasi-stable climate on Earth that for most of geologic history has either existed as hot-house, or ice-house conditions, and only relatively rarely has existed in the quasi-stable middle ground between these.
The danger we face niw is in pushing earth out of this delicate balance and toward hot-house conditions.
Your comment was great and you clearly understand the issues.
1. I may start using a CO2e number in the future. However, there is a certain degree of ambiguity to that number. Hansen for example puts it at 525ppm CO2e.
2. But, yeah. We are effectively above the current 423ppm. Again however, there is the question of how the CH4 number "resolves" itself in the Climate System. Are we seeing a huge pulse of warming that is followed by a sudden drop in 20 years? Or is this going to be an ongoing flow of CH4 that lasts for hundreds or thousands of years? Boosting temperatures above what the CO2 level would indicate during this "outgassing event".
3&4. I completely agree with you. Two of my earliest posts layout the dishonesty around how the "official numbers" are arrived at. They still represent the "mainstream".
003 - How much has the Earth warmed up since the “preindustrial” period? Surprisingly it’s hard to get a straightforward answer to that question. The “politics’ of +1.2C.
004 - How 1.2C became "the number" for the amount the Earth has warmed.
5. This is something that I disagree with you on. I don't think there was ever any intent for this all to happen. There were HUGE amounts of wealth and power at stake which influenced everyone. BUT, no one destroys the planet "on purpose". They still have have to live here and so will their kids. What's happening is a "mistake".
The fossil fuel industry and the Moderates in Climate Science basically predicted the same amount of warming from 2XCO2 in the 70's. That's WHY it's the "mainstream" view the MAJORITY of scientists agreed on it. Based on what they observed about the Climate System between 1850 and 1975 they predicted +1.8°C to +3°C for 2XCO2.
Nobody was "hiding" anything. The fossil fuel industry had a representative at the Woods Hole Climate Summit in 1979. EVERYONE there understood that increasing the CO2 level would cause a rise in global temperatures.
We have ALWAYS known that. The disagreement has been over "how much"?
The argument in 1979 was that +1.8°C to +3.0C was an "acceptable" amount of warming for the huge economic boost cheap fossil fuels could give the economy. Plus, after 3 Mile Island there was a terrific amount of fear around nuclear power. Politically sticking with fossil fuels was far easier than trying to push nuclear on a fearful angry population.
Whatever people "think", the government has known since the Church memo to Carter in 1977 that CO2 caused warming. The government position has been to "trust the science" and they have listened the the Moderate "mainstream" faction of Climate Science.
That's why the government is moving so slowly. They think there are still DECADES before it will start getting "serious". After all, that's what the "science" says.
The methane issue is complicated as you note. It is even more complicated based on it leaving the atmosphere in decade to century time scales which makes it difficult to put a single number to the impact.
We are seeing immense releases from the tundra, melting and rotting permafrost, methane clathrate (an adjunct of water and methane that forms a white solid when cold enough or under enough pressure.
As the temperature of the oceans rise, that clathrate breaks down ("breaks") releasing the methane, which then "boils" to the surface and into the air, adding more warming.
There is something like 1,500 gigatons as carbon of carbon compounds to be released from the tundra permafrost alone as carbon dioxide or methane.
If we press the earth so hard that that clathrate "breaks" it is game over fir fighting climate change.
The immense clathrate stores in the sea bed of the arctic plain are equally catastrophic. So too are other large stores in oceans all over the world.
All of these are destabilizing.
People have a string desire to have some definite number that we can then run right up too and be ok. But given a number, we have over run that, with the idea that - well, gee, we can overshoot for a while, and fix it later.
If we can't avoid the limit, there is no chance that we will fix it later.
But worse, all of the equations were guesses. All were created with a heavy indistrial and political thumb on the scales.
The same holds true fir the parameters we use, like climate sensitivity.
As you correctly note, with those biases in mind, "we" had a fair understanding of the consequences 75 years ago.
As expected, our understanding was incomplete. In the vast majority of cases our political and financial bases caused those errors to underestimate the impacts, often by huge amounts.
The 556 vppm number I quoted is my own. I took all of the best estimates of the levels of global warming cases and their sensitivities, and then applied two different ways to assess their impacts. The answers came out reasonably close to the same.
That calculation is in no way simple.
To really do it well requires far more data than exists, and the division of the atmosphere into many discrete layers, along with dealing with the absorption and re-radiation of IR energy in a hugely complex model. That requires a powerful supercomputer.
In the end though, that is pointless, as we lack the discrete data, and the models aren't good enough in the first place.
What we can say with confidence is that we are now at roughly twice the background warming potential from preindustrial times.
Etc... It just gets more and more complex from there.
In real terms though, the problem is simple. There are 4 to 8 times more people a;ive today than the earth can support for long. And, our emission of warming gases has caused and continues to cause obviously huge thermal impacts. And those have on;y just begun.
If that's your independent calculation on the CO2e number KUDOS to you. That's a HARD number to calculate as you spelled out. Hansen is using a "conservative" 525ppm. I have seen serious teams estimates go as high as 550ppm. You are in the ballpark with the "worst case" calculations. That's some serious work getting there on your own.
Of course it's worse than they're telling us. Just ask people in Chimney Rock and Asheville, NC. Both cities are gone😞 Florida is decimated and it will only get worse from here.
I have little use for Michael Mann, Hannah Ritchie, or Katherine Hayhoe of The Nature Conservancy for that matter. They consistently downplay the trouble we're in. When you're talking about an extinction level event, erring on the side of utmost caution and pessimism is a good move, and the majority of climate scientists agree. Yes, 15,364 scientists warned humanity in 2017, dog years in climate change. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/12/1026/4605229
That Pew survey is really disturbing. How can people not understand every other concern in that poll is lost to climate change. That's easy to answer, poor education and sycophant media doing the bidding of the billionaire owners. Good work, Richard.
Thanks for the positive feedback. I really appreciate comments from my readers.
As far as the poll results, I am not surprised at this point. Like the man said, people's concern about the climate is a mile wide and an inch deep. Your average person knows VERY LITTLE about what's happening. Even if they are "aware" and following the news.
Because the Mainstream Media repeats the narrative of Mainstream Climate Science. Which is the Moderate narrative. To be an Alarmist, to listen to Alarmists scientists like Hansen makes you "fringe". Most people are "mainstream".
Excellent research, excellent analysis, and pitched exactly at the right point for aware people to understand the implications of the most recent science and opinion. Good work! Thank you!
As someone that has finally resorted to expecting Gaian solutions (as per James Lovelock) rather than human political and social solutions, I no longer expect a voluntary human path to change, only that which is forced by expediency. I therefore find myself trying to get used to seeing the latest disasters, wars, famines, and crises in their Gaian context of diminishing the Earth's virus of human overpopulation to eventually resolve the problems. That is not easy.
It involves hardening my heart to the suffering of innocents whilst being fully aware that the richest continue their profligate and selfish consumption and pollution, apparently with no conscience. I feel anger with them that I am forced to pay a price too, as I suppress my empathy and try to moderate my feelings of hopelessness and despair.
I feel fortunate that I have lived in this amazing period of wealth and privilège since WW2, the wealthiest time in history, the wealthiest people in history, all based on mining the 'energy gold' of fossil fuels as so many of us became far richer than Croesus. We have actually known that it was a Faustian bargain since the 1970's when climate research took off, only to be suppressed in the 1980's by the political shift rightward by Reagan and Thatcher, although the scale of the pit we have dug for ourselves has only been made more obvious in the last couple of decades.
Keep up the good work, Richard, although I suspect it will simply inform those relatively few of us that already care, rather than change the minds of those with the power to make the kind of changes needed.
I write for readers like you and the feedback I get encourages me to go on. Thank you for your time and attention. Those are valuable things that none of us have "too much" of.
I would be interested to hear HOW you think collapse will occur. I am sure you have given it some thought, and hopefully have made your own plans based on those thoughts.
Whilst I'm not a 'prepper' in American terms and have no illusions (delusions?) about a hunter gatherer existence living in our version of the American wild frontier with my gun and 4x4 (fuelled on magic?), i do like to be conscious of the risks.
Over here in France, I live on a 65' sailboat in a small town surrounded by small organic farms, with a weekly market selling very local food. The water supply is owned by the town and the high rainfall here makes fresh water not an issue. The climate is, so far, moderate and rarely drops below zero *C or above 30*C. France's electricity is 70% nuclear and 20% hydro, wind and solar, so few concerns about electrical power. The medical care is excellent and almost free, with a large hospital in the town. I know lots of people here and everyone looks after each other.
The town is not on a major road or potential migrant route from any city to anywhere else. I can, if needed, move my sailing home north or south, or just into the middle of the estuary and anchor, or moor it next to the extensive riverside woodland to collect wood fuel for the winter stove and cooking range. It is as good as I can envisage as a civilised place to survive in my advanced years.
My optimistic idea, from my thoughts about 20 years ago, was that this region of Europe might be at the critical point where increasing land and sea temperatures from global heating might be moderated by a decline in local sea temperatures due to a decline in AMOC. Subsequent research supported this view as a possibility, at least for the remainder of my own days. And if not, I can untie and move somewhere else!
If you expand the image for France and western Europe, then I now live in the coastal zone which may suffer less net climate change effect, although I would expect severe storm systems to develop between hot land and cold seas.
Obviously your focus is America and I'm (happily) in Europe, but for us America is the front line (highest consumptions, wide range of climates, most fragile fossil-dependant lifestyle and binary politics.... and all those guns!). You guys are the canary in the coal mine.
So, to cut to the chase....
Do you think it will be an energy crash, or a food crash, or a series of climate catastrophes, or civil insurrection and mass migration? How do you think all this will pan out?
Heroic effort, Richard, and much appreciated. I'm a retired physician/psychiatrist and Great Lakes sailor, so, long standing weather nerd. Sometimes the outsider's perspective can be helpful, as your appears to be and mine sure as hell is. What tripped my emergency breaker switch in the past year was discovering C3S and their publications, especially the 1.2 trillion tons of melting global ice annually, so 3.3 billion tons per day, where one pound of melting ice absorbs 144 BTUs of heat energy. This melting ice seems to me to be the "canary in the coal mine" of earth's energy imbalance, but is never factored in. It is, also, the starting point of the hydrological cycle: ice-->water--> water vapor--> outer space. I think of it like a conveyor belt moving excess heat energy off planet.
Also, I believe that the most important factor in "global warming", is, well, the heat energy doing the "warming", of which the melting ice is a smack in the face indicator. C3S published "Hottest May on record spurs call for climate action" last June 5th, 2024, and they use the more telling and disturbing 1991-2020 baseline, over which they recorded/reported a 0.75 degC increase by mid 2024, so a 0.214 annual global temperature increase on average, and, thus a 1 degC increase every 5 yrs. if this trend line continues. Chris used this trend line in his "2.7" degC increase by 2027 prediction. Carried out further, I get a 6 degC global ave. temp increase over the 1991-2020 baseline by 2047, when any child born today may celebrate (?) his/her 23rd BD. No candles needed. I get that this is "OMG" territory, but isn't C3S the gold standard for climate change info.? Your thoughts? And thanks again for all your hard work and heart felt efforts. Thanks, also, to the other commenters. Have a blessed day! Gregg
"post-growth economics framework"--ugh, this is the most important of their "recommendations," and it's not just anathema to MAGA!
America is, fundamentally, parasitic on the world system due to imperialism. Its workers are part of the labor aristocracy, enjoying a high standard of living based on super exploitation of the productive labors of the oppressed (mostly in the global south). American profits are so huge, the powers-that-be can afford to bribe the underclass with outsized wages for unproductive work: aka hiring them as servants (why does America have so many restaurants?).
EVERY American benefits hugely from this arrangement, not just MAGA. The moment those outsized profits go into reverse and super exploitation becomes impossible basically forever--degrowth + imperial downfall--American standards of living will crash in an oversized replay of the Soviet Union's collapse. Millions upon millions of Americans will die.
So the "post growth economic framework," without which climate catastrophe cannot be prevented, is the single most politically unpalatable aspect of the moderate program. Americans, MAGA or not, will never accept it. Like with empires past, degrowth will be forced on the imperial core, and its death-throes will be cataclysmic (as we can all see right now--it has begun with genocide in Gaza and will only escalate from there).
I definitely agree that "Collapse" has already started and is accelerating.
And you are right, I just saw an economic analysis published in Nature Titled: Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy.
Abstract:
Researchers have argued that wealthy nations rely on a large net appropriation of labour and resources from the rest of the world through unequal exchange in international trade and global commodity chains.
Here we assess this empirically by measuring flows of embodied labour in the world economy from 1995–2021, accounting for skill levels, sectors and wages.
We find that, in 2021, the economies of the global North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of embodied labour from the global South, across all skill levels and sectors. The wage value of this net-appropriated labour was equivalent to €16.9 trillion in Northern prices, accounting for skill level.
This appropriation roughly doubles the labour that is available for Northern consumption but drains the South of productive capacity that could be used instead for local human needs and development.
Unequal exchange is understood to be driven in part by systematic wage inequalities. We find Southern wages are 87–95% lower than Northern wages for work of equal skill. While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy, they receive only 21% of global income.
Yes, the US is happier to see Germany crash than in alliance with Russia. US peevishness and Imperialism will take the UK and the EU down with it.
Though many of the population of the West condemns Israel and US invasions of Iraq etc and also want action on climate change- we all benefit so much from Imperialism, with our mostly cushy life styles, that I don't think change will come until it is forced upon us.
You are right it's not just MAGA or Reform here in the UK, it's all of us. It's human nature. Not wrong, just the way it is.
It is a fine day today.. sun is shining and very pleasant out. How can anything be wrong?
But a check of the calendar records says we are 8 degrees C above the long term average for this day. My wife says “but the summer wasn’t as hot as last year” which is true—2023 was historically a scorcher and we didn’t have as many days of extreme heat this summer as last… but the average temperature for 2024 has been about the same as 2023.
I remember that we have had snow at Thanksgiving (in Canada) this weekend.
Really strong takedown of the consensus climate scientist approach to the Climatastrophe.
I always look for sociology in both their approach and the criticisms- mostly lacking, as in the casual use of the word. “We.”
Human civilization is run by huge, transnational corporations and state corporations that own social power. “We,” as in the lowly single human, are nothing against this massed power. “They” have every incentive, and virtually no institutional opposition, to continued extraction and production.
One critical thing about science: if the conclusion of your study is known a priori or dictated by your funding source, it's not science. Scientists that claim that the effects of CO2 on climate change aren't as commonly depicted, even when presenting evidence, typically see their character and careers torched -labelled as denialists. That's not science, it's a which hunt.
Science should be about inquiry, that's why most studies should have a research question. Climate science does not attempt to inquire for instance why some evidence appear contrary to its central theory. It eliminates the evidence (or the researcher publishing the evidence) to then claim consensus.
Piss off Duh-nier boy. No one cares about your right-wing dogma & nonsensical word salad. You took 2 paragraphs to say climutt chang not reel. We've heard the same stupid fucking babbling for 30 years. Retard fuck head. I love watching hurricanes and wildfire kill you and your loved ones. Take your dog shit breath and fuck off forever.
I'm glad we can have such a civil debate and discussion about a scientific topic. I'm sure you know all about it having read and written scientific articles in the past, although I have some doubts given your grammar and spelling (e.g., climutt chang not reel). If you do find some time in your busy schedule and randomly come across a dictionary, perhaps in a library, look up the word zealot.
Richard,
First and foremost: Thank you for such a very cogent and critically important posting detailing the issues from "the moderates" own writings.
However, it is oh so much worse than this. Consider several points.
1) We are not at 420 ppm, or 422 CO2, or 424 ppm CO2. The meaningful comparison is warming NOT CO2 when comparing to ancient ice cores and other records. CO2(e) is the relevant comparator. Today we are at about 556 ppm CO2(e). The last time we were there is between 21 and 34 Mya with a most likely time of about 31-32 Mya.
2) At 555 ppm CO2(e) we have already blown past any of the trajectories. We are at doubled "CO2".
3) The IPCC is a politically and financially governed body. Everything they say is vetted through politicians from all of the major countries of the world, and limited by all of the major financial players in what they are allowed to say. That is NOT science, nor the opinion of scientists. That is the opinion they are allowed to share after begging mother may I.
4) The IPCC is NOT allowed to incorporate any science newer than a decade old, meaning data from not sooner than a dozen years ago. Talk about driving with the windshield blacked out and relying on our rearview mirrors to tell us where to go.
5) The denialists will come to bloody violence before they accept anything that contradicts what they want, or what the politicians bought and owned by the oligarchs and industrialists will allow them to say. With something like 40% of people in that camp, heavily armed, and firmly denying basic reality, there is no realistic possibility that we can do anything significant to change our course, until the rate of destruction of the environment is so great that they are immediately and repeatedly devastated themselves. And even that is likely not enough.
6) Lastly, why would I or any sane person consider anything Mann has to say?
Regarding Mann, I never thought much of him watching his interviews, but the quote where he said doomerism is a form of mental illness really sealed it. People who don't want to face the truth in others often accuse them of some disability or flaw to skip having to deal with it.
Sure, do some of us "doomers" have mental health issues? When you do the math on this I don't see how you can't, at least for a little while, lmao. Does that mean that climate change isn't as bad as it really is? Hell no.
What a tool.
Excellent comment. Thank you.
You know what the scary thing is, Sam? The “moderates” predictions are themselves terrifying and distressing. Shit goes real bad at 2.7C. Now if what Hansen, Richard, and yourself are saying is true – that it’s much worse than what is being let on – then I have no words for the horrors that are to be visited upon us.
I found your point 4. above very interesting (I liked all your points, BTW) due to the fact that I finished Mark Lynas’ book *Our Final Warning* last year (the most recent edition), and he summarises the AGW research up to 2020. So, if IPCC’s research has a 10-year lag, then Lynas' book would seem to paint a much more accurate portrait. Anyway, my point being that Lynas describes what happens from 1C of warming all the way through 6C, devoting a chapter to each degree. And holy fuck, man. It is bad. Like *game over for our current societal setup* bad.
Right now, I’m trying to enjoy what is left. Focusing on friends and family I love.
Edit to add: Richard, thank you for yet another fantastic yet humbling post. I want you to be wrong, but I think you are likely correct. I recall the words of my 90s professor telling us to "follow the evidence wherever it leads."
Thank you James.
Recognize please that I am simply paraphrasing or summarizing to the best of my ability pieces of work by thousands, nay - tens of thousands of researchers.
In the 1990s I had the chance to work more directly with some of the experts. One thought particularly concerned me. That was the comment by the experts who created and ran the atmospheric models that they could not explain the Eemian. The models simply did not work.
Recall that way back then with no ice on earth that the arctic ocean was in the 70 degree range. There were alligators and semitropical plants as far north as Ellesmere Island and southern Greenland.
But how?
The whole earth wasn't proportionally hotter. Yes the tropics were hot, really hot. But not that much hotter. So how did this work. The experts referred to this as the "equable climate".
Ok, how?
What seemed obvious to me was that the equable climate could not exist with a three cell atmospheric circulation - Hadley, Ferrell, Polar.
It had to be more closely connected thermodynamically.
Doing that requires less cells.
But with just a little reflection, it is obvious that only odd numbers of cells are stable. We see that with Venus with one cell, and with the gas giants in our solar systems with Jupiter having something like 17 cells (bands).
So what governs the number of cells. The answer to that is long, complex, and not fully understood. Coriolis and drag forces play large roles. So too does atmospheric depth, thermodynamics, and more.
I found a paper from a researcher back around the 1950s (I have mislaid that, and I have been unable to find it again). He and his grad students developed three very different atmospheric models. One of those models as it turned out - predicted and explained third order effects that would create things like the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge" that happened back around 2012 off the Northwest Pacific Coast and that radically changed the weather.
It also explained the major thermodynamic principles involved.
And so I posited that to some of the atmospheric scientists, and I asked them how close we were thermodynamically from tipping from a three cell circulation to a single cell (Hadley only) circulation.
They were quite skeptical.
But they ran the numbers anyway. Their response was sobering.
Using a simple thermodynamic model of Earth's atmospheric circulation, they concluded that "we are very close".
They didn't say more. I rather expected to see papers from them in coming years analyzing that more deeply. Alas, that did not happen. At least, if it did, I am unaware of the results.
But there are other linked parts that have gone-on dealing with the speed of oscillation of the Rossby waves in the polar jet stream, and the depths of the oscillations (north-south) in that, leading to cutoff highs and lows and disruption of the main jet stream. All of that is happening. We see it with the wild weather swings, and the massive movement of hot air far north and cold air far south.
It is the early states of the breakdown of the three cell system headed for a unicellular one.
When that finally does occur, it will wipe away the interface zones between the cells. And with the loss of the interface between the Hadley and Ferrell cells we lose the rain band at about 45 north, And with the loss of that we lose agriculture, and from there - the food supply for most people on Earth.
We also then see radical shifts in ecosystems and species as the old "rules" are rapidly erased.
None of these ideas are included as considerations in the IPCC.
The IPCC relies on a basic set of models that represent the world we have known it, not the world we are creating.
The IPCC acts to judge things as if they are small perturbations in a regular way.
Though they talk of tipping points, they do not elaborate into the rapid nonlinear breakdown of the governing systems that result.
They speak about the cascade of interactions. But they don't actually follow through to elaborate on those.
In other papers, some of these speculations are discussed.
Those are terrifying. And that no doubt is why they are not in the IPCC.
Those include analysis and discussions of things like the shutdown of the AMOC and the PDO, and the resulting anoxification of the oceans, with massive anoxic gyres forming, like subsurface hurricanes, where all oxygen dependent life dies; and of the shift in those to purple cyanobacter dominance where the oceans in large areas cease to produce oxygen, and instead release hydrogen sulfide - killing the creatures in the air and on land.
This isn't universal, but it leads to very tough times indeed.
We have already seen early stages of this with anoxification along coastlines killing crabs and shellfish, whole ecosystems really, as deep anoxic waters rise on the shores.
We mostly ignore the immense drop in flow rate of the great oceanic circulations (measured in Sverdrups - Sv), instead focusing on the end-state of that - the shutdown of circulation. In doing so we miss the warning.
I gave this a great deal of thought and I think you are right. Did you read this paper-
050 - The Earth’s Climate System - A Short Users Guide. Part 03. Permafrost Melting — The role of permafrost in the Climate System. (07/01/23)
In it I discuss this paper.
Latitudinal temperature gradients and climate change
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 103, NO. D6, PAGES 5943-5971, MARCH 27, 1998
The first sentence of this paper asks.
“How variable is the latitudinal temperature gradient with climate change?”
Then goes on to tell us that;
“This question is second in importance only to the question of overall climate sensitivity. Our current inability to answer it affects everything from understanding past climate variations, and paleoclimate proxies, to projections of regional effects of future greenhouse warming [Rind, 1995].”
In this book this is resolved.
Some Thoughts on Global Climate Change: The Transition for Icehouse to Hothouse Conditions From book: Earth History: The Evolution of the Earth System (2016)
Here's what the paleoclimate research indicates about how the Climate System really works.
In this graphic there are seven different “climate states” shown for a variety of different periods of the Earth. The Tropics-to-Pole Temperature Gradient is shown for each of these climate states, in both of two hemispheres.
The way to use the graph, is to pick the state each of the poles is currently in and average the results to get the Global Mean Temperature of the planet. We are currently in a 5/7 configuration, so the GMT should be around 15C (59F). Which, of course, is the current GMT.
Now, what happens if we dump enough CO2 into the atmosphere to raise the GMT by +4C?
At the North Pole temperatures go up about +20C. Shrinking the difference between the Equator and the NP from 45C to just 25C. Meaning that if is 77F at the Equator we would expect it to be about 32F at the North Pole.
This causes the Latitudinal Equator to Pole Temperature Gradient to "flatten out" and become shallower.
What I suspect, after reading your comment, is that when the temperature gradient flattens out enough, three cell circulation collapses into an unstable two cell state. Finally collapsing into a single cell state.
There's a graduate thesis for someone.
Precisely.
As I noted, there is at least one paper on this subject from ~75 years ago. It went into detail about the atmosphere. Though it made no effort to analyze the impacts on the ecosystems.
One of the major problems in paleoclimatology is in trying to figure out how the earth could support the conditions we see in the ancient past. Even pushing the models as far as they could, they still don't go far enough.
However, with a one cell atmosphere and heavy cloud cover in the winter, it may work.
As you astutely note, we need studies on those possibilities.
Sam, as promised I re-read our dialogue / comments the next morning after having been a bit boozeful on the night of our exchange. Cheers, coz I learned something new about 3 band / 1 band circulation which I hadn't heard before. I'm just a dude who got their BA in humanities in the 90s trying my damndest to understand this all.
Cheers, Sam. Thank you for taking the time to answer.
I like to do chatGPT summaries of comments due to my own noggin’s method of processing comments. I am also a little drunk right now, so my comprehension Gen X brain is reaaaal slow at the moment. Would this summary be a fair approximation of what you’re getting at?
Sam is sharing their concerns about climate change, particularly about how our understanding of atmospheric systems may be flawed or incomplete. Here’s a summary:
1. Historical Context: They mention a time in the 1990s when experts struggled to explain a past warm period (the Eemian), during which areas now cold had tropical conditions.
2. Atmospheric Models: Current models of Earth's atmosphere (which divide it into three circulation cells) may not accurately reflect how climate works. The commenter suggests that a simpler system with fewer circulation cells might be more stable and better explain past climates.
3. Potential Changes: Sam warns that we are close to a significant shift in atmospheric circulation, which could lead to extreme weather and disrupt ecosystems. This shift could also harm agriculture and food supplies.
4. IPCC Limitations: They criticize the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for relying on models that do not fully account for rapid changes and tipping points in the climate system. They argue that these models overlook complex interactions that could lead to severe consequences, such as ocean deoxygenation and ecosystem collapse.
5. Urgency of the Issue: Sam emphasizes that we need to pay attention to early signs of these changes and not dismiss them, as they could lead to drastic environmental and societal impacts.
Edit to add: I'll definitely re-read the comment I replied to in the morning when I am fully sober and of more sound mind. Sober-me comprehends a lot more. I just need to booze a bit to cope with the severity of it all, ya know? This is pure nightmare fuel.
It's not far off. It's point 2 summary is off a bit,
Atmospheric circulation is complex and dynamic.
It organizes into cells (bands) based on a balance of energies and forces.
Those apparently can organize in two ways on Earth, with either a three band (per hemisphere), or 1 band circulation.
Each's atmospheric circulation is quasi-stable.
Which the Earth actually adopts depends on that balance of energies and forces. And far back in time, the one band organization seems to explain how the conditions were possible that existed, and that our current setup cannot explain.
This seems to pair with the quasi-stable climate on Earth that for most of geologic history has either existed as hot-house, or ice-house conditions, and only relatively rarely has existed in the quasi-stable middle ground between these.
The danger we face niw is in pushing earth out of this delicate balance and toward hot-house conditions.
Sam, you wrote: "The danger we face now is in pushing earth out of this delicate balance and toward hot-house conditions."
Yep, I also recently read Professor Bill McGuire's "Hothouse Earth" and the message / warning it issues.. Things are not looking good..
Sam: "The danger we face niw is in pushing earth out of this delicate balance and toward hot-house conditions. "
This is what my current readings are leading me to believe, mate.
Just an fyi- I loved this discussion and found it really fruitful.
Yeah it sucks. 2.7 is likely happening within the next 5 to 7 years tops.
Treating life the same way. Every single week is a gift from here on out.
I write for people who "want to know, even if it's bad". A few years ago I used to say "I hope I'm wrong". Now we know, I wasn't.
Your comment was great and you clearly understand the issues.
1. I may start using a CO2e number in the future. However, there is a certain degree of ambiguity to that number. Hansen for example puts it at 525ppm CO2e.
2. But, yeah. We are effectively above the current 423ppm. Again however, there is the question of how the CH4 number "resolves" itself in the Climate System. Are we seeing a huge pulse of warming that is followed by a sudden drop in 20 years? Or is this going to be an ongoing flow of CH4 that lasts for hundreds or thousands of years? Boosting temperatures above what the CO2 level would indicate during this "outgassing event".
3&4. I completely agree with you. Two of my earliest posts layout the dishonesty around how the "official numbers" are arrived at. They still represent the "mainstream".
003 - How much has the Earth warmed up since the “preindustrial” period? Surprisingly it’s hard to get a straightforward answer to that question. The “politics’ of +1.2C.
004 - How 1.2C became "the number" for the amount the Earth has warmed.
5. This is something that I disagree with you on. I don't think there was ever any intent for this all to happen. There were HUGE amounts of wealth and power at stake which influenced everyone. BUT, no one destroys the planet "on purpose". They still have have to live here and so will their kids. What's happening is a "mistake".
The fossil fuel industry and the Moderates in Climate Science basically predicted the same amount of warming from 2XCO2 in the 70's. That's WHY it's the "mainstream" view the MAJORITY of scientists agreed on it. Based on what they observed about the Climate System between 1850 and 1975 they predicted +1.8°C to +3°C for 2XCO2.
Nobody was "hiding" anything. The fossil fuel industry had a representative at the Woods Hole Climate Summit in 1979. EVERYONE there understood that increasing the CO2 level would cause a rise in global temperatures.
We have ALWAYS known that. The disagreement has been over "how much"?
The argument in 1979 was that +1.8°C to +3.0C was an "acceptable" amount of warming for the huge economic boost cheap fossil fuels could give the economy. Plus, after 3 Mile Island there was a terrific amount of fear around nuclear power. Politically sticking with fossil fuels was far easier than trying to push nuclear on a fearful angry population.
Whatever people "think", the government has known since the Church memo to Carter in 1977 that CO2 caused warming. The government position has been to "trust the science" and they have listened the the Moderate "mainstream" faction of Climate Science.
That's why the government is moving so slowly. They think there are still DECADES before it will start getting "serious". After all, that's what the "science" says.
Excellent review.
The methane issue is complicated as you note. It is even more complicated based on it leaving the atmosphere in decade to century time scales which makes it difficult to put a single number to the impact.
We are seeing immense releases from the tundra, melting and rotting permafrost, methane clathrate (an adjunct of water and methane that forms a white solid when cold enough or under enough pressure.
As the temperature of the oceans rise, that clathrate breaks down ("breaks") releasing the methane, which then "boils" to the surface and into the air, adding more warming.
There is something like 1,500 gigatons as carbon of carbon compounds to be released from the tundra permafrost alone as carbon dioxide or methane.
If we press the earth so hard that that clathrate "breaks" it is game over fir fighting climate change.
The immense clathrate stores in the sea bed of the arctic plain are equally catastrophic. So too are other large stores in oceans all over the world.
All of these are destabilizing.
People have a string desire to have some definite number that we can then run right up too and be ok. But given a number, we have over run that, with the idea that - well, gee, we can overshoot for a while, and fix it later.
If we can't avoid the limit, there is no chance that we will fix it later.
But worse, all of the equations were guesses. All were created with a heavy indistrial and political thumb on the scales.
The same holds true fir the parameters we use, like climate sensitivity.
As you correctly note, with those biases in mind, "we" had a fair understanding of the consequences 75 years ago.
As expected, our understanding was incomplete. In the vast majority of cases our political and financial bases caused those errors to underestimate the impacts, often by huge amounts.
The 556 vppm number I quoted is my own. I took all of the best estimates of the levels of global warming cases and their sensitivities, and then applied two different ways to assess their impacts. The answers came out reasonably close to the same.
That calculation is in no way simple.
To really do it well requires far more data than exists, and the division of the atmosphere into many discrete layers, along with dealing with the absorption and re-radiation of IR energy in a hugely complex model. That requires a powerful supercomputer.
In the end though, that is pointless, as we lack the discrete data, and the models aren't good enough in the first place.
What we can say with confidence is that we are now at roughly twice the background warming potential from preindustrial times.
Etc... It just gets more and more complex from there.
In real terms though, the problem is simple. There are 4 to 8 times more people a;ive today than the earth can support for long. And, our emission of warming gases has caused and continues to cause obviously huge thermal impacts. And those have on;y just begun.
If that's your independent calculation on the CO2e number KUDOS to you. That's a HARD number to calculate as you spelled out. Hansen is using a "conservative" 525ppm. I have seen serious teams estimates go as high as 550ppm. You are in the ballpark with the "worst case" calculations. That's some serious work getting there on your own.
Of course it's worse than they're telling us. Just ask people in Chimney Rock and Asheville, NC. Both cities are gone😞 Florida is decimated and it will only get worse from here.
Do you have friends or family who were impacted?
Thankfully I don't but it just missed us. All we got was some minor road flooding. Oh, I'm in North Wilkesboro, NC.
I have little use for Michael Mann, Hannah Ritchie, or Katherine Hayhoe of The Nature Conservancy for that matter. They consistently downplay the trouble we're in. When you're talking about an extinction level event, erring on the side of utmost caution and pessimism is a good move, and the majority of climate scientists agree. Yes, 15,364 scientists warned humanity in 2017, dog years in climate change. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/12/1026/4605229
That Pew survey is really disturbing. How can people not understand every other concern in that poll is lost to climate change. That's easy to answer, poor education and sycophant media doing the bidding of the billionaire owners. Good work, Richard.
Thanks for the positive feedback. I really appreciate comments from my readers.
As far as the poll results, I am not surprised at this point. Like the man said, people's concern about the climate is a mile wide and an inch deep. Your average person knows VERY LITTLE about what's happening. Even if they are "aware" and following the news.
Because the Mainstream Media repeats the narrative of Mainstream Climate Science. Which is the Moderate narrative. To be an Alarmist, to listen to Alarmists scientists like Hansen makes you "fringe". Most people are "mainstream".
You and I are not.
Excellent research, excellent analysis, and pitched exactly at the right point for aware people to understand the implications of the most recent science and opinion. Good work! Thank you!
As someone that has finally resorted to expecting Gaian solutions (as per James Lovelock) rather than human political and social solutions, I no longer expect a voluntary human path to change, only that which is forced by expediency. I therefore find myself trying to get used to seeing the latest disasters, wars, famines, and crises in their Gaian context of diminishing the Earth's virus of human overpopulation to eventually resolve the problems. That is not easy.
It involves hardening my heart to the suffering of innocents whilst being fully aware that the richest continue their profligate and selfish consumption and pollution, apparently with no conscience. I feel anger with them that I am forced to pay a price too, as I suppress my empathy and try to moderate my feelings of hopelessness and despair.
I feel fortunate that I have lived in this amazing period of wealth and privilège since WW2, the wealthiest time in history, the wealthiest people in history, all based on mining the 'energy gold' of fossil fuels as so many of us became far richer than Croesus. We have actually known that it was a Faustian bargain since the 1970's when climate research took off, only to be suppressed in the 1980's by the political shift rightward by Reagan and Thatcher, although the scale of the pit we have dug for ourselves has only been made more obvious in the last couple of decades.
Keep up the good work, Richard, although I suspect it will simply inform those relatively few of us that already care, rather than change the minds of those with the power to make the kind of changes needed.
I write for readers like you and the feedback I get encourages me to go on. Thank you for your time and attention. Those are valuable things that none of us have "too much" of.
I would be interested to hear HOW you think collapse will occur. I am sure you have given it some thought, and hopefully have made your own plans based on those thoughts.
Whilst I'm not a 'prepper' in American terms and have no illusions (delusions?) about a hunter gatherer existence living in our version of the American wild frontier with my gun and 4x4 (fuelled on magic?), i do like to be conscious of the risks.
Over here in France, I live on a 65' sailboat in a small town surrounded by small organic farms, with a weekly market selling very local food. The water supply is owned by the town and the high rainfall here makes fresh water not an issue. The climate is, so far, moderate and rarely drops below zero *C or above 30*C. France's electricity is 70% nuclear and 20% hydro, wind and solar, so few concerns about electrical power. The medical care is excellent and almost free, with a large hospital in the town. I know lots of people here and everyone looks after each other.
The town is not on a major road or potential migrant route from any city to anywhere else. I can, if needed, move my sailing home north or south, or just into the middle of the estuary and anchor, or moor it next to the extensive riverside woodland to collect wood fuel for the winter stove and cooking range. It is as good as I can envisage as a civilised place to survive in my advanced years.
My optimistic idea, from my thoughts about 20 years ago, was that this region of Europe might be at the critical point where increasing land and sea temperatures from global heating might be moderated by a decline in local sea temperatures due to a decline in AMOC. Subsequent research supported this view as a possibility, at least for the remainder of my own days. And if not, I can untie and move somewhere else!
I have been reassured by more recent research. See 'Image 14' in this 2021 research paper: https://tos.org/oceanography/assets/docs/37-rahmstorf.pdf
If you expand the image for France and western Europe, then I now live in the coastal zone which may suffer less net climate change effect, although I would expect severe storm systems to develop between hot land and cold seas.
Obviously your focus is America and I'm (happily) in Europe, but for us America is the front line (highest consumptions, wide range of climates, most fragile fossil-dependant lifestyle and binary politics.... and all those guns!). You guys are the canary in the coal mine.
So, to cut to the chase....
Do you think it will be an energy crash, or a food crash, or a series of climate catastrophes, or civil insurrection and mass migration? How do you think all this will pan out?
Heroic effort, Richard, and much appreciated. I'm a retired physician/psychiatrist and Great Lakes sailor, so, long standing weather nerd. Sometimes the outsider's perspective can be helpful, as your appears to be and mine sure as hell is. What tripped my emergency breaker switch in the past year was discovering C3S and their publications, especially the 1.2 trillion tons of melting global ice annually, so 3.3 billion tons per day, where one pound of melting ice absorbs 144 BTUs of heat energy. This melting ice seems to me to be the "canary in the coal mine" of earth's energy imbalance, but is never factored in. It is, also, the starting point of the hydrological cycle: ice-->water--> water vapor--> outer space. I think of it like a conveyor belt moving excess heat energy off planet.
Also, I believe that the most important factor in "global warming", is, well, the heat energy doing the "warming", of which the melting ice is a smack in the face indicator. C3S published "Hottest May on record spurs call for climate action" last June 5th, 2024, and they use the more telling and disturbing 1991-2020 baseline, over which they recorded/reported a 0.75 degC increase by mid 2024, so a 0.214 annual global temperature increase on average, and, thus a 1 degC increase every 5 yrs. if this trend line continues. Chris used this trend line in his "2.7" degC increase by 2027 prediction. Carried out further, I get a 6 degC global ave. temp increase over the 1991-2020 baseline by 2047, when any child born today may celebrate (?) his/her 23rd BD. No candles needed. I get that this is "OMG" territory, but isn't C3S the gold standard for climate change info.? Your thoughts? And thanks again for all your hard work and heart felt efforts. Thanks, also, to the other commenters. Have a blessed day! Gregg
"post-growth economics framework"--ugh, this is the most important of their "recommendations," and it's not just anathema to MAGA!
America is, fundamentally, parasitic on the world system due to imperialism. Its workers are part of the labor aristocracy, enjoying a high standard of living based on super exploitation of the productive labors of the oppressed (mostly in the global south). American profits are so huge, the powers-that-be can afford to bribe the underclass with outsized wages for unproductive work: aka hiring them as servants (why does America have so many restaurants?).
EVERY American benefits hugely from this arrangement, not just MAGA. The moment those outsized profits go into reverse and super exploitation becomes impossible basically forever--degrowth + imperial downfall--American standards of living will crash in an oversized replay of the Soviet Union's collapse. Millions upon millions of Americans will die.
So the "post growth economic framework," without which climate catastrophe cannot be prevented, is the single most politically unpalatable aspect of the moderate program. Americans, MAGA or not, will never accept it. Like with empires past, degrowth will be forced on the imperial core, and its death-throes will be cataclysmic (as we can all see right now--it has begun with genocide in Gaza and will only escalate from there).
I definitely agree that "Collapse" has already started and is accelerating.
And you are right, I just saw an economic analysis published in Nature Titled: Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy.
Abstract:
Researchers have argued that wealthy nations rely on a large net appropriation of labour and resources from the rest of the world through unequal exchange in international trade and global commodity chains.
Here we assess this empirically by measuring flows of embodied labour in the world economy from 1995–2021, accounting for skill levels, sectors and wages.
We find that, in 2021, the economies of the global North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of embodied labour from the global South, across all skill levels and sectors. The wage value of this net-appropriated labour was equivalent to €16.9 trillion in Northern prices, accounting for skill level.
This appropriation roughly doubles the labour that is available for Northern consumption but drains the South of productive capacity that could be used instead for local human needs and development.
Unequal exchange is understood to be driven in part by systematic wage inequalities. We find Southern wages are 87–95% lower than Northern wages for work of equal skill. While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy, they receive only 21% of global income.
Yes, the US is happier to see Germany crash than in alliance with Russia. US peevishness and Imperialism will take the UK and the EU down with it.
Though many of the population of the West condemns Israel and US invasions of Iraq etc and also want action on climate change- we all benefit so much from Imperialism, with our mostly cushy life styles, that I don't think change will come until it is forced upon us.
You are right it's not just MAGA or Reform here in the UK, it's all of us. It's human nature. Not wrong, just the way it is.
Michael Mann is a Doomer!
Quick, call out those men in white suits and the white van to take him away. (smile)
Thank you and well done Richard.
Does he sound like a Doomer in his media appearances?
Few people are going to read reports his name is attached to.
I will simply say: If he was on fire .......
It is a fine day today.. sun is shining and very pleasant out. How can anything be wrong?
But a check of the calendar records says we are 8 degrees C above the long term average for this day. My wife says “but the summer wasn’t as hot as last year” which is true—2023 was historically a scorcher and we didn’t have as many days of extreme heat this summer as last… but the average temperature for 2024 has been about the same as 2023.
I remember that we have had snow at Thanksgiving (in Canada) this weekend.
We are so unprepared for what is coming.
Really strong takedown of the consensus climate scientist approach to the Climatastrophe.
I always look for sociology in both their approach and the criticisms- mostly lacking, as in the casual use of the word. “We.”
Human civilization is run by huge, transnational corporations and state corporations that own social power. “We,” as in the lowly single human, are nothing against this massed power. “They” have every incentive, and virtually no institutional opposition, to continued extraction and production.
Are Russians per capita co2 emissions really as high as Americans?
This is the most important thing on Substack.
One critical thing about science: if the conclusion of your study is known a priori or dictated by your funding source, it's not science. Scientists that claim that the effects of CO2 on climate change aren't as commonly depicted, even when presenting evidence, typically see their character and careers torched -labelled as denialists. That's not science, it's a which hunt.
Science should be about inquiry, that's why most studies should have a research question. Climate science does not attempt to inquire for instance why some evidence appear contrary to its central theory. It eliminates the evidence (or the researcher publishing the evidence) to then claim consensus.
Piss off Duh-nier boy. No one cares about your right-wing dogma & nonsensical word salad. You took 2 paragraphs to say climutt chang not reel. We've heard the same stupid fucking babbling for 30 years. Retard fuck head. I love watching hurricanes and wildfire kill you and your loved ones. Take your dog shit breath and fuck off forever.
I'm glad we can have such a civil debate and discussion about a scientific topic. I'm sure you know all about it having read and written scientific articles in the past, although I have some doubts given your grammar and spelling (e.g., climutt chang not reel). If you do find some time in your busy schedule and randomly come across a dictionary, perhaps in a library, look up the word zealot.