Can anyone more knowledgeable weigh in? Do we know of any mechanisms that could transfer energy that deep over a relatively short period of time, or are we likely underestimating ice loss elsewhere?
Henk Schuringsays
I have a question. What determined the lowest and highest level of the temperature between ice ages and interglacials? If you look at the graphs the temps seem to bounce between roughly the same maximum and minimum every time. Can anyone tell me or refer to an article that deals with this issue?
Chuck Hughessays
This organization is at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK and his headed by Dr Aled Jones. Their conclusion is that chronic food shortages will result in the collapse of civilization by 2040, assuming a business-as-usual scenario. You have seen this, haven’t you?
Comment by Digby Scorgie — 4 Nov 2015
No, I haven’t. I did look it up though but haven’t been able to locate words to that effect. Lots of warnings about possibilities but nothing concrete. If you or ANYONE ELSE here at Realclimate can provide a specific link to any such information I would be grateful.
Are there any opinions as to how the Paris Climate Conference might play out? Are things looking positive or will it come down to another stalemate? IOW, what’s the outlook at this point?
Thanks
Deansays
AMS has put out an extensive analysis of attribution of extreme weather events to AGW, finding connections in some cases, not in others. Wondering if folks here have thoughts on this. The report is an 8MB pdf.
While economic growth can come from many things, and does not guarantee poverty reduction, most cases of significant poverty reduction have been the result of the kind of economic growth that benefits many people: infrastructure, education, productivity increases, and the kind of economic activity that creates well-paying jobs, etc.
Acknowledging that this has been the history does not necessarily mean it is sustainable then or in the future. So I think the question is whether what has worked most often for poverty reduction in the past is a realistic plan for the future. And while we can debate it, it is those who are currently in poverty who will make that decision.
SecularAnimistsays
Ken Fabian wrote: “I’m not always sure what people mean by a green economy …”
That’s why it is a good idea to avoid such vague and ill-defined terms as “green economy” and speak in terms of specifics — for example, with regard to anthropogenic global warming, to speak in terms of ending the growth in GHG emissions within at most 5 years, and then beginning rapid reductions to near near zero emissions within at most 10-15 years after that, with most of those reductions occurring in the first few years.
Vendicar Decariansays
#38 – “Frugality is unlikely to ever have the necessary popular appeal”
In truth, “Frugality” is already imposed by the marketplace.
Your presumption is that “frugality” is somehow equivalent to reduced utility and that for specifically reduced energy consumption is necessarily equal to a lower quality of life.
If that is your belief then…
1. You are wrong.
and
2. You have already lost the game.
Vendicar Decariansays
Detached from reality.
According to Carson, the pyramids were devised as grain receptacles by the
biblical figure Joseph, and not used as tombs for pharaohs, as most
archeologists maintain. Asked by CBS about his views on Wednesday, Carson stuck
to his guns: “It’s still my belief, yes.”
I may have been overly simplistic, even a bit flippant, in my attempts to challenge overly simplistic assumptions (assertions?) that I see as widely used. One would be “…that for specifically reduced energy consumption is necessarily equal to a lower quality of life. ” My point was that the path that is going to be most politically and socially achievable in wealthier parts (not necessarily equal to minimum required) is to maintain equivalent high carbon intensity quality of life by using other, less Carbon intensive means. Which may reflect some particular assumptions by me about what a “green” economy means.
I don’t doubt – and leaving Jevon aside for now – the links between poverty alleviation and quality of life are complex. For the already prosperous, it depends on personal choices (and all the influences upon those choices) whether or not it does so. The poverty stricken tend to have fewer choices. I know my own choices result in much lower than Australian average energy use without hardship… but I am also relatively frugal by Australian standards, yet I seriously doubt the majority would willingly make the choices I have. Or advise them that they should for that matter.
As an aside I am perennially disappointed that the tag “green” is so widely used, whether it’s framing “green” as irrational and extremist or well meaning but ineffectual or framing of the climate issue and other existential issues as “green” rather than central and mainstream to taint it by such associations. Or whether it’s well intended shorthand for some broader intent to be leave less destruction of the irreplaceable in our wake.
Killiansays
The moment they include the word “economic,” I decide that this is going nowhere.
Comment by Edward Greisch
Bingo. When a proposal starts with an untenable assumption, the rest is not likely worth our time.
Re: 22 Back to my question? Has anything changed as far as projections into the future about some sort of economic/societal collapse by the 2030’s or so? Is this an imminent situation and is anyone preparing for it?…El Nino… Fires are raging… Indonesia… 1.5′ of rain in one day. Over 20 cat. 4-5 hurricanes…
So what are we looking at time wise before some sort of major crisis i.e. “collapse”?
Chuck Hughes
If I may, Chuck, I think you may be asking the wrong question. My light bulb moment wrt timing came four years ago when the likely effect of extremes filtered through to my animal brain: It’s the food supply, Stupid. It only takes a couple-a-few weeks of extreme whether to ruin a regional food supply. We will be having a lot of those. And not only extremes, but whipsawing extremes that throw crops from drought to flood to freeze to too early spring to… you name it.
Economics is a made up thing with no real meaning in terms of the physical world, particularly a sustainable world, so I give it little time anymore preferring to focus on creating the processes and links of exchange needed for a sustainable trade network. That said, long before the economic system per se falls apart, there will be Syria after Syria after Syria, and that will be the true start of the socio-economic-political collapse… unless we simplify first.
#47 We can’t save anybody by letting them come here.
Edward Greisch
Arable Land:
Korea: .08 acre/person
United States: 1.216 acres/person
I beg to differ.
General observation: I await the day any sense of actual sustainable systems, and how things might function in them, is discussed on these pages. I expect a long wait. Hint: Econ? No. GDP? No. Needs, gents. If you aren’t discussing needs and how they can be met, you are discussing the color of the wind.
” If countries go no further than their current global climate pledges, the earth will warm a total of 3.5°C by 2100.”
In other words, they will basically be in the business of planning the extinction of much of the complex life on the planet, possibly including humans.
OT alert!–though I suppose this all does connect with the topic of climate adaptation, writ large.
Ed, let’s recap your comments on population and immigration:
“No, I don’t believe in economics, especially since economists still want unlimited immigration. They claim that unlimited immigration would help the economy. On a planet that can support 3 billion people permanently when there are already 7.5 billion people, those economists have to be crazy.”
Look, if all we are supposed to attend to is that “The point is the total number of 7.5 billion”, then what does it matter whether “economists still want unlimited immigration?” It’s all irrelevant, according to you, right?
“We can’t save anybody by letting them come here. In fact, all you do by letting them come here is encourage their parents to have even more children they can’t feed. Is it wishful thinking? Your desire to save people actually results in your own death sooner.”
This makes no sense, either. The idea that procreative choices in, say, Guatemala are driven by immigration policy in the US (or anywhere else, for that matter) is frankly mind-boggling.
Meantime, in the real world, nobody starves to death in country A because country B is in famine–or to put it more precisely, famine is a function of *local*, not mean global, food supply. Which means that you can most certainly ‘save someone’ by admitting them (presuming, of course, that they are in danger in the first place.) You can’t save everybody. But you can save some–and if the *local/national/whatever* economy is strengthened by that extra pair of hands, then you may just be saving yourself, too, or at least doing yourself a favor.
The economic arguments are perhaps less monolithic than you suppose, but this particular historical (and personal–my family sponsored a several ‘boat people’ siblings) experience has been a touchstone for me:
One of the most important studies of the economic impact of immigration to Canada is Morton Beiser’s Strangers at the Gate. This study looked at the arrival of the Vietnamese boat people who began to arrive in Canada in 1979 to much controversy. The total number of refugees was 60,000, the largest single group of refugees to ever arrive in Canada. Beiser first studied the boat people upon their arrival, finding that few spoke English or French, that most were farmers with few skills useful in Canada, and that they had arrived with no assets with which to establish themselves. Beiser then followed the progress of the boat people to see what effect they would have on Canada. Within ten years of arrival the boat people had an unemployment rate 2.3% lower than the Canadian average. One in five had started a business, 99% had successfully applied to become Canadian citizens, and they were considerably less likely than average to receive some form of social assistance.
Yes, of course relative magnitudes matter. But immigration flows are also constrained by all kinds of real-world factors, from available transport to supply and demand in countries of origin to human emotion and calculations of self-interest. And in general, immigrants bring something valuable to the table because the difficulties of ‘getting out’ already act as a sort of Darwinian filter.
I’m not, ahem, exactly sure how to include the link, but if you enter “aled jones nafeez ahmed” in Google, the top item you get is the latter’s report on the essential results.
As for Paris, are you asking people to stick out their necks and make some predictions?! Here are mine:
(1) There will be an agreement to reduce emissions.
(2) The promised reductions will put us on a path to three degrees of warming.
(3) The promised reductions will be only partially implemented.
(4) The actual reductions will put us on a path to four degrees of warming.
(5) The current increasing rate of fossil-fuel production will slow.
(6) But fossil-fuel production will not fall below current levels.
(7) The foregoing will apply until the next big conference following AR6.
(8) In the meantime the impact of the changing climate will become worse.
Anybody care to put forward some contrary predictions?
Vendicar Decariansays
#41 -“Wow! What devastating logic! It is such a privilege to see your mind at work.”
Since you obviously didn’t read what came after, you have only yourself to blame.
Lawrence Colemansays
Has anyone seen the Ted YouTube vid by Alan Savory about the world’s increasing desertification and his radical but proven method to stop the spread. In a nutshell most of the world’s desertification is happening because the naturally migrating herds of beasts that once roamed the earth have gone. Without the natural fertiliser that these massed together herds produce the ground and ground cover becomes impoverished and quickly returns to the atmosphere as carbon or becomes oxidised and does the same. Thus grasses die, the soil becomes hard and unreceptive to moisture and a vicious cycle begins resulting in permanent desertification. The only way he sees to reverse that trend is to keep masses of cattle/sheep etc moving slowly through affected areas fertilising as they go. The result even after a couple of years is breathtaking. The area that once was a carbon source quickly becomes a very effective carbon sink as atmospheric carbon is rapidly sequestered as grasses, shrubs and trees and this affects the micro climate and if enough of these areas are in general proximity to one other it affects the macro climate as well. I was really blown away by this video. Alan Savory also happens to be a great orator as well and it is a real joy and privilege listening to him.
The nett result in re: CO2 forcing in probably negative feedback however if we do this on a massive scale the flatulence that these cattle produce is not negligible especially when the numbers are increasing to mitigate desertification, when the numbers finally stabilise the CO2/flatulence effect will be neutral. Two main benefits, a reversal of desertification and enough high grade protein in meat to feed the world or at the very least the indigenous peoples. What do you guys think?
1) how to deal with a growing population ( now ) without growth in resources/food/services, meaning without growth in economy (now). No need to talk about the future if we cannot tackle the now…
2) has anybody managed to calculate the $$ and time needed to transition to a fully renewable/sustainable energy grid ??
3) there is no life without energy so what is the solution to the following equation :
Growing population now + stop using FF now + Slowly build renewable energy infrastructure = ???
Everybody likes to contemplate the steady states of the system but most struggle to comprehend the transition/dynamic regions. You miscalculate and many unintended consequences appear…
“I’m not always sure what people mean by a green economy …”
pyramids full of grain, maybe?
Joris van Dorpsays
In my opinion, the Green Economy cannot be achieved globally until prosperity has increased globally toward the level currently seen in rich countries.
Germany is able to finance a shift to a green economy because it is rich. But even Germany is running into problems caused by the high cost of the Green economy. Increasing numbers of Germans are protesting the financial and external cost (NIMBY) of the existing and planned green investments. If even a rich country is struggling, then it should be clear that poor countries will struggle even more to get off fossil fuels.
IMO the key concept is that the global community will first prioritise further wealth creation, perhaps for another 50 to 100 years, and only after a sufficient measure of global prosperity is achieved, a German-style subsidy-based global Green Economy would become politically and economically feasible.
Of course, we don’t have time to continue to use unmitigated fossil fuels for another 50 to 100 years. Fortunately we have an alternative to fossil fuels. There is one technology which due to it’s astronomical energy density and its abundant and geographically dispersed fuel availability can credibly compete with the dirties fossil fuels, without the need for structural subsidies. That would give humanity time to grow without adding to greenhouse gas emissions. In time, this will allow the final switch to a green economy within 100 to 200 years without first cooking the climate.
zebrasays
Dean at 52,
“Attribution” is an area where the scientific community is continuing past errors in communicating with the public. I’m reposting this from the previous thread– I don’t think anyone disagrees with it.
—
Let’s imagine we have three (standard sci-fi) parallel universes– A, B, C.
In A, increasing CO2 has no effect on Earth’s energy balance– maybe it isn’t a greenhouse gas, or there really is a “magic thermostat” that whisks the excess away to space.
B is our universe, where we have calculated the energy imbalance based on established physical facts and principles, and we are confident enough to predict phenomena through causal chains as I said above– energy, water vapor, yadda yadda downpours and storms.
In C, we don’t know. We don’t have any opinion about CO2 and energy balance.
So, there’s an extreme (say rainfall) event on each Earth. The question is: Is this connected to the increase in CO2?
A: The answer is “Of course not”.
C: The parsimonious answer is “We can’t rule it out, but no. It happened on Earth A as well, without CO2 effect, so we would need to propose new entities to argue otherwise.”
B: The parsimonious answer is “Yes, of course. Everything that happens is affected by the energy balance of the atmosphere, and we would have to propose new entities to argue that the established effects of CO2 are being negated.”
—
The problem is that you can’t use the formal term “attribution” without explaining the statistical standard, which people will tune out anyway. How does saying “half are attributable and half aren’t” make any sense to anyone who is not already closely following the science? Maybe for once the jargon could be set aside and an attempt made to use language the public can relate to?
zebrasays
Tasos at 62,
The answer is in history, and it isn’t that complicated. I think someone already said something along these lines, but there are more people today without toilets than there were at the beginning of the 20th century.
So, do you need to burn fossil fuels to give people good sanitation and clean drinking water? A stable food supply?
The plan is simple; you reduce FF consumption in the developed countries, and the technology gets cheaper and gets transferred eventually to everyone. Eventually may be a while, but where I found the numbers for toilets I also found that more than 2/3 of the population have cell phones. Cell phones, but no toilets, see how that works?
In some local parks where I live, there are now solar powered outhouses that work quite well as far as my sense of smell tells me. No coal-fired power plant needed.
62 Tasos: The answer is very simple: There is going to be a population crash. We don’t know where it will end, maybe at zero humans, maybe at a few times ten thousand humans, or whatever.
Deal? with a growing population? I assure you that we will not and Nature will. Tasos will not be among the survivors, if any.
Omega Centaurisays
OK Digby, I’ll bite.
(1) The agreement will be too weak, i.e. the trajectory will still be +3C or higher, but
efforts to decrease CO2e emissions will be incrementally increased.
(2) The cost of renewables will keep dropping, so the estimated cost of the transition
will keep falling over time. Ultimately it is the improving economics of renewables which
will drive us towards greater reductions as time goes by, as more and more energy players
will recognize the a bargain when they see it.
(3) The cost reductions in (2), are largely driven by economy of scale effects, so any nearterm increases in renewables will have their biggest effect by bringing of the positive feedback effect of (2) faster.
Mike Robertssays
Digby (8 Nov 9:36),
I agree with your first prediction, that there will be an agreement in Paris (that’s almost inevitable).
I’d modify your 2nd prediction by prefixing it with “It is thought that”.
After that, it all goes bad, apart from 8, which I agree with. I don’t expect the agreement will be implemented at all, except by chance, through economic cantraction, which could happen in some parts. So I don’t expect to see greenhouse gas concentrations fall and probably not emissions, either.
Killiansays
#71 In my opinion, the Green Economy cannot be achieved globally until prosperity has increased globally toward the level currently seen in rich countries.
Joris van Dorp
Let see if I understand you: There is zero risk of collapse of the global society due to climate chaos and resource constraints. Have I got that right?
patricksays
@62 willi: Great graphics there from ClimateInteractive. They set a new standard for clarity for their type, I think. They’re very helpful.
I like the overweight analogy in the article too. It’s used very well.
I’m not finding the second chart in the article on the ClimateInteractive Scoreboard page, but there’s a graphics page under construction on the site.
K: Economics is a made up thing with no real meaning in terms of the physical world
BPL: Probably because it’s a social science, not a physical science. The observations, however, that supply generally rises with price, demand falls with price, and pricing is determined by marginal utility, are all backed by enormous amounts of evidence.
Vendicar Decariansays
#83 “supply generally rises with price”.
Half of that equation is physical, the other half is imaginary.
Economists are primarily concerned with maximizing the imaginary half, and that is why Economics has been such a spectacular failure.
People should ask themselves… What do I want in life? Money, or a good quality of life? Capitalism has duped the apes into thinking that the two are equivalent.
Nothing is further from the truth.
People are constrained in their actions by Capitalism. These constraints exist all though the system and in every form imaginable.
To this day, new homes that are being built are not required to be constructed such that the roofs are optimally oriented for PV and passive solar energy collection.
Why is this? Because the builders are concerned with maximizing their profit (unreal).
Hello from France. It seems that American politicians have not fully realised yet what is really going on with climate. Without long-lasting policies, if they still have in mind to take the climate urgence back to second rank each time economical crisis may occur, therefore… no way we can look for an acceptable global Earth surface at the end of 2100s. Plan B must be seriously investigated from now: geoengineering. Whatever regional climate changes, global temperature must be kept under control, so that we can avoid dramatic evolution of glaciers and sea level. It is likely a realistic solution, compared to unrealistic struggling limitations of economical life. Science community has a lot of work in perspective, but somewhat exciting.
… I started by asking myself the question: what will the Earth look like if severe climate change happens, and humans survive?
… because I’m a crazy ecologist and world-builder, I thought I could answer that question. I also realized that people probably wanted to know the answer more than they wanted a novel based on it. So, with a great deal of trepidation, I started reading, and most of three years later, I’d finished Hot Earth Dreams.
As my friend Matt put it, this is a sourcebook for the deep future. It’s 42 chapters, 900-6,000 words each, designed for people with short attention spans who want to easily find ideas once they’ve read them. This isn’t a future history. Rather, it’s what you need to know and think about to write a future history. I wanted to make it easier for people to talk about such a future, to dream about it. That’s part of where the title came from. Another reason it’s called Hot Earth Dreams is that it’s pure speculation, a conceptual model, a what-if story that happens to be formatted as a non-fiction book.
It’s well-grounded speculation of course, but as most of you know, any congruence between futurist dreams and the actual future is more due to random luck than anything else, and I wanted to make that clear. I’m looking to inspire people to think and create, not to recruit acolytes. It’s also a unique title, so it’s easy to find.
You’ll find it useful if you want to write a science fiction or fantasy story set in the deep future, if you want to create a game, a comic, or art, or write up a scenario for your boss. You’ll also find it useful if, like me, you’re trying to figure out why conservation still matters under climate change. If you’re a climate activist suffering from pre-traumatic stress disorder, perhaps this will give you a reason to struggle on. Even though this is a very pessimistic book, everyone who’s read it so far thought it was uplifting. Apparently, being able to speak about a scary future is a good thing.
Probably because it’s a social science, not a physical science. The observations, however, that supply generally rises with price, demand falls with price, and pricing is determined by marginal utility, are all backed by enormous amounts of evidence.
Thus my opinion, and the (presumed but hard-to-quantify) consensus of economists, that a carbon price would most efficiently (by certain metrics) drive the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. As long as a large fraction of the total cost of burning fossil fuels for energy is externalized, the build-out of essential components of a large-scale carbon-neutral infrastructure (e.g. storage capacity) is impeded by market forces.
The principles of the anthropocene–I mean the drivers–and the story of the anthropocene [as problem/crisis/solution] apply.
Chuck Hughessays
Whatever regional climate changes, global temperature must be kept under control, so that we can avoid dramatic evolution of glaciers and sea level. It is likely a realistic solution, compared to unrealistic struggling limitations of economical life. Science community has a lot of work in perspective, but somewhat exciting.
Comment by modeller — 12 Nov 2015
I’ve just about decided that humans can’t keep anything “under control.” We can’t even control ourselves. How are we going to stop the environmental forces from killing us? The problem is NOT the Climate, the problem is Humans. If alcohol is killing your liver… STOP DRINKING! That’s the first order of business. If you can’t you’re an alcoholic by definition.
We’re addicted to unbridled consumption, wealth for the few and unlimited resources for the taking. What’s to stop us? Carpe Diem!
Just like a true alcoholic we won’t stop until we take the last available drink. Don’t believe it??? Take a good look at the Christmas Holidays and the shopping spree known as Black Friday. People will kill each other for another flat screen TV to put in the bathroom. To He// with Climate Change. Let’s see what the Kardashian’s are up to.
It is impeded by anti-market forces as well, and I wonder which is the greater problem.
What if we eliminated the monopoly exercised by “utility” companies and instead treated them as regulated common carriers…meaning they could neither produce nor retail electricity, and would charge the same unit (transportation) rate for all suppliers?
Perhaps rooftop solar would become ubiquitous very quickly; perhaps distributed storage (in various forms) as well. Mitigation and adaptation at the same time as a bonus with respect to those future storms.
Edward Greischsays
88 Mal Adapted: Storage capacity is limited by physics and chemistry. So go to school and study physics and chemistry. After you have a degree in physics or chemistry, it will be worth repeating what I have told you before. http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math
modellersays
(strangling in place of struggling in my last message)
Chuck, you are right about short-term fore-viewers. But they are clever actors who have the ability to think and do better. It has been already succesful on the “ozone hole” issue, do not forget. If economical rules can not prevent from global warming, then global warming must be lowered in parallel by other action. It is clearly a feasible solution. Economists would have to focus on economics as today, and “geo” engineers would have to focus on the “balancing action”. And there is no need to explain to economists and people what would be the outcome of a “balancing action”. People like to think about Nature as “random”, don’t they? it would be “random” again…except the climate statistics would be slightly different at every location, and most of all without freaky global averages, sea level and ice melting.
Robert Scribbler and a few other outlets are carrying story about melting ice sheets of Greenland. Things seem to be happening faster than models have predicted. I don’t think we should be worried, we may find new fossil fuel deposits as these pesky ice sheets go away and access to the fossil fuel should be easier without glaciers in the way. Could also be boon to new ecotourism to view pristine coastland. http://robertscribbler.com/2015/11/13/11038/
Steve Fishsays
Re- Comment by Chuck Hughes — 12 Nov 2015 @ 11:59 PM, ~#89
If wasteful consumerism was an addiction then addicts would spend all their time buying and playing with their purchases so that they lose their jobs, take to stealing in order to maintain their habit, and suffer physical symptoms when deprived of their drug. Even someone described as having process addiction involves continuing a behavior well beyond causing immediate damage to themselves and others. There are no immediate negative feedbacks for buying the next unnecessary, poorly made, “have to have” gadget. Mischaracterizing a problem makes it difficult to find a good solution.
I have been thinking that this problem probably has to do with how planned obsolescence and aggressive advertising have biased societal values away from enjoying the utility of products and toward conspicuous consumption. A contributing problem is how many folks look to inappropriate role models and, for example, imitate the practices of the rich and famous. When societal values change, such as the war economy during world war two, then how one chooses to live can change radically.
Steve
Killiansays
#90 mike said “Help me, I’m melting!!” said Greenland.
Yes. Saw an article on this. Posted this on Facebook:
I repeatedly have tried to make clear to climate scientists and “greens”, et al., that rate of change in this situation can *only* exceed what models suggest for two reasons: 1. Models use the climate system and only tangentially include the full global system. Weakness: Both Chaos Theory and non-linear systems inform us that very small changes in initial conditions can have massive effects later. Climate history tells us the same thing as sudden large changes occur throughout climate history. We are talking 5 degrees C in a decades. Nase you can imagine, our embedded, modern, inflexible human systems would be devastated by this.
It is only this year, however, that scientists fully showed that most climate change is, in fact, this sort of punctuated equilibrium: Slow change with massive disruptions that lead rapidly to a new period of relative equilibrium.
In other words, as I have warned for nearly a decade now, we *will* be experiencing such massive shifts. Period. Sane risk assessment is to act as if we are already in such a bifurcation. We probably are. Many signs say so. We are certainly approaching one.
Second, other than large meteor and asteroid impacts, the planet doesn’t have every ecosys already damaged when changes happen. Intact ecosystems should act as a brake or hysteresis on change, but we have weakened all of them pretty much simultaneously… just like an an asteroid impact.
Oops.
Thus, scientists are, imo, badly underestimating potential, even expected, rate of change.
The story below indicates rate of change is reaching extremely dangerous levels. An average annual global ice melt rate doubling every five years could literally melt all ice on the planet.
Read this article carefully.
#83 Barton Paul Levenson said BPL: Probably because it’s a social science, not a physical science. The observations, however, that supply generally rises with price, demand falls with price, and pricing is determined by marginal utility, are all backed by enormous amounts of evidence.
Can you tell me, do they use digits in addition and subtraction? Inquiring minds…
87
Hank Roberts said Worth a look, for those who like this sort of thing, by Frank Landis at Charlie Stross’s blog
… I started by asking myself the question: what will the Earth look like if severe climate change happens, and humans survive?
… because I’m a crazy ecologist and world-builder, I thought I could answer that question. I also realized that people probably wanted to know the answer more than they wanted a novel based on it. So, with a great deal of trepidation, I started reading, and most of three years later, I’d finished Hot Earth Dreams.
Yes, by all means, given how simple getting back to sub-300 ppm CO2 is, let’s all just give up instead. Makes sense to me.
Peter Bjørn Perlsøsays
@Vendicar: “Economic growth is nothing but growth in the dollar value of a select set of goods and services. Decreasing the health of a nation’s population may very well increase GDP by increasing the number of dollars spent on health care.”
It is true that GDP measures expenditure, i.e. is basic accounting procedure, it does not mean that it does not refect the exchange of goods and services, only that there is no 1:1 correspendence between tangible items and figures on the paper. You can yourself run the stats on it between physical goods and GDP and find the correlation.
“Economics is pure fail.”
The dismal science is a work in progress, however that does not mean that it is meaningless.
Nice to see you here, by the way.
Peter Bjørn Perlsøsays
By the way – hot off the press (if not, or if duplicate, please wipe this post, thanks):
I do not have access to the article, but those commenting on the content point out that it posits possible abrupt climate change over the span of as little as one decade.
My beef with this is that the denialist counterpoint to the gradual warming we have charted over the past century, is that non-antropogenic waming can be rapid (though certainly not as quickly as the spike that is causes since 1880 if seen on a 10000-year graph) and this will be a boon to them.
Unfortunately this isn’t the 1940’s. Not only is the country divided politically but there are twice as many people living on the planet. The oceans are dying and the ice will melt. Human behavior doesn’t change overnight.
To piggyback off of Vincent (#29), it would seem that this NASA study from last year now leaves plenty of sea level budget for warming of the ocean below 2000 m:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/06oct_abyss/
Can anyone more knowledgeable weigh in? Do we know of any mechanisms that could transfer energy that deep over a relatively short period of time, or are we likely underestimating ice loss elsewhere?
I have a question. What determined the lowest and highest level of the temperature between ice ages and interglacials? If you look at the graphs the temps seem to bounce between roughly the same maximum and minimum every time. Can anyone tell me or refer to an article that deals with this issue?
This organization is at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK and his headed by Dr Aled Jones. Their conclusion is that chronic food shortages will result in the collapse of civilization by 2040, assuming a business-as-usual scenario. You have seen this, haven’t you?
Comment by Digby Scorgie — 4 Nov 2015
No, I haven’t. I did look it up though but haven’t been able to locate words to that effect. Lots of warnings about possibilities but nothing concrete. If you or ANYONE ELSE here at Realclimate can provide a specific link to any such information I would be grateful.
Are there any opinions as to how the Paris Climate Conference might play out? Are things looking positive or will it come down to another stalemate? IOW, what’s the outlook at this point?
Thanks
AMS has put out an extensive analysis of attribution of extreme weather events to AGW, finding connections in some cases, not in others. Wondering if folks here have thoughts on this. The report is an 8MB pdf.
http://www2.ametsoc.org/ams/assets/file/publications/bams_eee_2013_full_report.pdf
While economic growth can come from many things, and does not guarantee poverty reduction, most cases of significant poverty reduction have been the result of the kind of economic growth that benefits many people: infrastructure, education, productivity increases, and the kind of economic activity that creates well-paying jobs, etc.
Acknowledging that this has been the history does not necessarily mean it is sustainable then or in the future. So I think the question is whether what has worked most often for poverty reduction in the past is a realistic plan for the future. And while we can debate it, it is those who are currently in poverty who will make that decision.
Ken Fabian wrote: “I’m not always sure what people mean by a green economy …”
That’s why it is a good idea to avoid such vague and ill-defined terms as “green economy” and speak in terms of specifics — for example, with regard to anthropogenic global warming, to speak in terms of ending the growth in GHG emissions within at most 5 years, and then beginning rapid reductions to near near zero emissions within at most 10-15 years after that, with most of those reductions occurring in the first few years.
#38 – “Frugality is unlikely to ever have the necessary popular appeal”
In truth, “Frugality” is already imposed by the marketplace.
Your presumption is that “frugality” is somehow equivalent to reduced utility and that for specifically reduced energy consumption is necessarily equal to a lower quality of life.
If that is your belief then…
1. You are wrong.
and
2. You have already lost the game.
Detached from reality.
According to Carson, the pyramids were devised as grain receptacles by the
biblical figure Joseph, and not used as tombs for pharaohs, as most
archeologists maintain. Asked by CBS about his views on Wednesday, Carson stuck
to his guns: “It’s still my belief, yes.”
After nearly 100 years (since 1922, to be precise) of witnessing NO cyclones, Yemen is about to experience its 2nd cyclone in a WEEK. If anyone thinks that there has been no fundamental shift in the basic workings of the planets climactic structure, they might want to start to rethink that position now…
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-303.19,9.62,1830
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/11/rare-cyclone-bears-beleaguered-yemen-megh-socotra-weather-151107221838657.html
I may have been overly simplistic, even a bit flippant, in my attempts to challenge overly simplistic assumptions (assertions?) that I see as widely used. One would be “…that for specifically reduced energy consumption is necessarily equal to a lower quality of life. ” My point was that the path that is going to be most politically and socially achievable in wealthier parts (not necessarily equal to minimum required) is to maintain equivalent high carbon intensity quality of life by using other, less Carbon intensive means. Which may reflect some particular assumptions by me about what a “green” economy means.
I don’t doubt – and leaving Jevon aside for now – the links between poverty alleviation and quality of life are complex. For the already prosperous, it depends on personal choices (and all the influences upon those choices) whether or not it does so. The poverty stricken tend to have fewer choices. I know my own choices result in much lower than Australian average energy use without hardship… but I am also relatively frugal by Australian standards, yet I seriously doubt the majority would willingly make the choices I have. Or advise them that they should for that matter.
As an aside I am perennially disappointed that the tag “green” is so widely used, whether it’s framing “green” as irrational and extremist or well meaning but ineffectual or framing of the climate issue and other existential issues as “green” rather than central and mainstream to taint it by such associations. Or whether it’s well intended shorthand for some broader intent to be leave less destruction of the irreplaceable in our wake.
The moment they include the word “economic,” I decide that this is going nowhere.
Comment by Edward Greisch
Bingo. When a proposal starts with an untenable assumption, the rest is not likely worth our time.
Re: 22 Back to my question? Has anything changed as far as projections into the future about some sort of economic/societal collapse by the 2030’s or so? Is this an imminent situation and is anyone preparing for it?…El Nino… Fires are raging… Indonesia… 1.5′ of rain in one day. Over 20 cat. 4-5 hurricanes…
So what are we looking at time wise before some sort of major crisis i.e. “collapse”?
Chuck Hughes
If I may, Chuck, I think you may be asking the wrong question. My light bulb moment wrt timing came four years ago when the likely effect of extremes filtered through to my animal brain: It’s the food supply, Stupid. It only takes a couple-a-few weeks of extreme whether to ruin a regional food supply. We will be having a lot of those. And not only extremes, but whipsawing extremes that throw crops from drought to flood to freeze to too early spring to… you name it.
Economics is a made up thing with no real meaning in terms of the physical world, particularly a sustainable world, so I give it little time anymore preferring to focus on creating the processes and links of exchange needed for a sustainable trade network. That said, long before the economic system per se falls apart, there will be Syria after Syria after Syria, and that will be the true start of the socio-economic-political collapse… unless we simplify first.
Syria, Climate, Drought
#47 We can’t save anybody by letting them come here.
Edward Greisch
Arable Land:
Korea: .08 acre/person
United States: 1.216 acres/person
I beg to differ.
General observation: I await the day any sense of actual sustainable systems, and how things might function in them, is discussed on these pages. I expect a long wait. Hint: Econ? No. GDP? No. Needs, gents. If you aren’t discussing needs and how they can be met, you are discussing the color of the wind.
Chuck H @ # 49 wondering about prospects in Paris. You might find this interesting/depressing:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/11/03/3718146/misleading-un-report-confuses-media-paris-climate-talks/
” If countries go no further than their current global climate pledges, the earth will warm a total of 3.5°C by 2100.”
In other words, they will basically be in the business of planning the extinction of much of the complex life on the planet, possibly including humans.
OT alert!–though I suppose this all does connect with the topic of climate adaptation, writ large.
Ed, let’s recap your comments on population and immigration:
“No, I don’t believe in economics, especially since economists still want unlimited immigration. They claim that unlimited immigration would help the economy. On a planet that can support 3 billion people permanently when there are already 7.5 billion people, those economists have to be crazy.”
See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/11/unforced-variations-nov-2015/comment-page-1/#comment-637593
“24 Kevin McKinney: You are missing the point. The point is the total number of 7.5 billion.”
See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/11/unforced-variations-nov-2015/comment-page-1/#comment-637593
And you say I’m illogical, and missing the point!
Look, if all we are supposed to attend to is that “The point is the total number of 7.5 billion”, then what does it matter whether “economists still want unlimited immigration?” It’s all irrelevant, according to you, right?
“We can’t save anybody by letting them come here. In fact, all you do by letting them come here is encourage their parents to have even more children they can’t feed. Is it wishful thinking? Your desire to save people actually results in your own death sooner.”
– See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/11/unforced-variations-nov-2015/comment-page-1/#comment-637593
This makes no sense, either. The idea that procreative choices in, say, Guatemala are driven by immigration policy in the US (or anywhere else, for that matter) is frankly mind-boggling.
Meantime, in the real world, nobody starves to death in country A because country B is in famine–or to put it more precisely, famine is a function of *local*, not mean global, food supply. Which means that you can most certainly ‘save someone’ by admitting them (presuming, of course, that they are in danger in the first place.) You can’t save everybody. But you can save some–and if the *local/national/whatever* economy is strengthened by that extra pair of hands, then you may just be saving yourself, too, or at least doing yourself a favor.
The economic arguments are perhaps less monolithic than you suppose, but this particular historical (and personal–my family sponsored a several ‘boat people’ siblings) experience has been a touchstone for me:
Yes, of course relative magnitudes matter. But immigration flows are also constrained by all kinds of real-world factors, from available transport to supply and demand in countries of origin to human emotion and calculations of self-interest. And in general, immigrants bring something valuable to the table because the difficulties of ‘getting out’ already act as a sort of Darwinian filter.
Gavin, thanks for expanding on the point I asked about in my #25!
If you get to COP 21 , but find Le Bourget boring , head downtown to the Great Paris Climate Flea Market
Chuck Hughes
I’m not, ahem, exactly sure how to include the link, but if you enter “aled jones nafeez ahmed” in Google, the top item you get is the latter’s report on the essential results.
As for Paris, are you asking people to stick out their necks and make some predictions?! Here are mine:
(1) There will be an agreement to reduce emissions.
(2) The promised reductions will put us on a path to three degrees of warming.
(3) The promised reductions will be only partially implemented.
(4) The actual reductions will put us on a path to four degrees of warming.
(5) The current increasing rate of fossil-fuel production will slow.
(6) But fossil-fuel production will not fall below current levels.
(7) The foregoing will apply until the next big conference following AR6.
(8) In the meantime the impact of the changing climate will become worse.
Anybody care to put forward some contrary predictions?
#41 -“Wow! What devastating logic! It is such a privilege to see your mind at work.”
Since you obviously didn’t read what came after, you have only yourself to blame.
Has anyone seen the Ted YouTube vid by Alan Savory about the world’s increasing desertification and his radical but proven method to stop the spread. In a nutshell most of the world’s desertification is happening because the naturally migrating herds of beasts that once roamed the earth have gone. Without the natural fertiliser that these massed together herds produce the ground and ground cover becomes impoverished and quickly returns to the atmosphere as carbon or becomes oxidised and does the same. Thus grasses die, the soil becomes hard and unreceptive to moisture and a vicious cycle begins resulting in permanent desertification. The only way he sees to reverse that trend is to keep masses of cattle/sheep etc moving slowly through affected areas fertilising as they go. The result even after a couple of years is breathtaking. The area that once was a carbon source quickly becomes a very effective carbon sink as atmospheric carbon is rapidly sequestered as grasses, shrubs and trees and this affects the micro climate and if enough of these areas are in general proximity to one other it affects the macro climate as well. I was really blown away by this video. Alan Savory also happens to be a great orator as well and it is a real joy and privilege listening to him.
The nett result in re: CO2 forcing in probably negative feedback however if we do this on a massive scale the flatulence that these cattle produce is not negligible especially when the numbers are increasing to mitigate desertification, when the numbers finally stabilise the CO2/flatulence effect will be neutral. Two main benefits, a reversal of desertification and enough high grade protein in meat to feed the world or at the very least the indigenous peoples. What do you guys think?
[Response: It’s not very sound – we had a post on this ages ago: cows carbon and the anthropocene . -gavin]
Questions :
1) how to deal with a growing population ( now ) without growth in resources/food/services, meaning without growth in economy (now). No need to talk about the future if we cannot tackle the now…
2) has anybody managed to calculate the $$ and time needed to transition to a fully renewable/sustainable energy grid ??
3) there is no life without energy so what is the solution to the following equation :
Growing population now + stop using FF now + Slowly build renewable energy infrastructure = ???
Everybody likes to contemplate the steady states of the system but most struggle to comprehend the transition/dynamic regions. You miscalculate and many unintended consequences appear…
“I’m not always sure what people mean by a green economy …”
pyramids full of grain, maybe?
In my opinion, the Green Economy cannot be achieved globally until prosperity has increased globally toward the level currently seen in rich countries.
Germany is able to finance a shift to a green economy because it is rich. But even Germany is running into problems caused by the high cost of the Green economy. Increasing numbers of Germans are protesting the financial and external cost (NIMBY) of the existing and planned green investments. If even a rich country is struggling, then it should be clear that poor countries will struggle even more to get off fossil fuels.
IMO the key concept is that the global community will first prioritise further wealth creation, perhaps for another 50 to 100 years, and only after a sufficient measure of global prosperity is achieved, a German-style subsidy-based global Green Economy would become politically and economically feasible.
Of course, we don’t have time to continue to use unmitigated fossil fuels for another 50 to 100 years. Fortunately we have an alternative to fossil fuels. There is one technology which due to it’s astronomical energy density and its abundant and geographically dispersed fuel availability can credibly compete with the dirties fossil fuels, without the need for structural subsidies. That would give humanity time to grow without adding to greenhouse gas emissions. In time, this will allow the final switch to a green economy within 100 to 200 years without first cooking the climate.
Dean at 52,
“Attribution” is an area where the scientific community is continuing past errors in communicating with the public. I’m reposting this from the previous thread– I don’t think anyone disagrees with it.
—
Let’s imagine we have three (standard sci-fi) parallel universes– A, B, C.
In A, increasing CO2 has no effect on Earth’s energy balance– maybe it isn’t a greenhouse gas, or there really is a “magic thermostat” that whisks the excess away to space.
B is our universe, where we have calculated the energy imbalance based on established physical facts and principles, and we are confident enough to predict phenomena through causal chains as I said above– energy, water vapor, yadda yadda downpours and storms.
In C, we don’t know. We don’t have any opinion about CO2 and energy balance.
So, there’s an extreme (say rainfall) event on each Earth. The question is: Is this connected to the increase in CO2?
A: The answer is “Of course not”.
C: The parsimonious answer is “We can’t rule it out, but no. It happened on Earth A as well, without CO2 effect, so we would need to propose new entities to argue otherwise.”
B: The parsimonious answer is “Yes, of course. Everything that happens is affected by the energy balance of the atmosphere, and we would have to propose new entities to argue that the established effects of CO2 are being negated.”
—
The problem is that you can’t use the formal term “attribution” without explaining the statistical standard, which people will tune out anyway. How does saying “half are attributable and half aren’t” make any sense to anyone who is not already closely following the science? Maybe for once the jargon could be set aside and an attempt made to use language the public can relate to?
Tasos at 62,
The answer is in history, and it isn’t that complicated. I think someone already said something along these lines, but there are more people today without toilets than there were at the beginning of the 20th century.
So, do you need to burn fossil fuels to give people good sanitation and clean drinking water? A stable food supply?
The plan is simple; you reduce FF consumption in the developed countries, and the technology gets cheaper and gets transferred eventually to everyone. Eventually may be a while, but where I found the numbers for toilets I also found that more than 2/3 of the population have cell phones. Cell phones, but no toilets, see how that works?
In some local parks where I live, there are now solar powered outhouses that work quite well as far as my sense of smell tells me. No coal-fired power plant needed.
“aled jones nafeez ahmed”
http://www.resourceobservatory.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/sustainability-07-04360.pdf
Energy to Surpass the Commitments of Copenhagen
What do you think about
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/international-security/
http://climatecrocks.com/2015/11/10/new-video-drought-climate-security-and-syria/
62 Tasos: The answer is very simple: There is going to be a population crash. We don’t know where it will end, maybe at zero humans, maybe at a few times ten thousand humans, or whatever.
Deal? with a growing population? I assure you that we will not and Nature will. Tasos will not be among the survivors, if any.
OK Digby, I’ll bite.
(1) The agreement will be too weak, i.e. the trajectory will still be +3C or higher, but
efforts to decrease CO2e emissions will be incrementally increased.
(2) The cost of renewables will keep dropping, so the estimated cost of the transition
will keep falling over time. Ultimately it is the improving economics of renewables which
will drive us towards greater reductions as time goes by, as more and more energy players
will recognize the a bargain when they see it.
(3) The cost reductions in (2), are largely driven by economy of scale effects, so any nearterm increases in renewables will have their biggest effect by bringing of the positive feedback effect of (2) faster.
Digby (8 Nov 9:36),
I agree with your first prediction, that there will be an agreement in Paris (that’s almost inevitable).
I’d modify your 2nd prediction by prefixing it with “It is thought that”.
After that, it all goes bad, apart from 8, which I agree with. I don’t expect the agreement will be implemented at all, except by chance, through economic cantraction, which could happen in some parts. So I don’t expect to see greenhouse gas concentrations fall and probably not emissions, either.
#71 In my opinion, the Green Economy cannot be achieved globally until prosperity has increased globally toward the level currently seen in rich countries.
Joris van Dorp
Let see if I understand you: There is zero risk of collapse of the global society due to climate chaos and resource constraints. Have I got that right?
@62 willi: Great graphics there from ClimateInteractive. They set a new standard for clarity for their type, I think. They’re very helpful.
I like the overweight analogy in the article too. It’s used very well.
I’m not finding the second chart in the article on the ClimateInteractive Scoreboard page, but there’s a graphics page under construction on the site.
https://www.climateinteractive.org/tools/scoreboard/
@62 wili: Excuse my spell.
K: Economics is a made up thing with no real meaning in terms of the physical world
BPL: Probably because it’s a social science, not a physical science. The observations, however, that supply generally rises with price, demand falls with price, and pricing is determined by marginal utility, are all backed by enormous amounts of evidence.
#83 “supply generally rises with price”.
Half of that equation is physical, the other half is imaginary.
Economists are primarily concerned with maximizing the imaginary half, and that is why Economics has been such a spectacular failure.
People should ask themselves… What do I want in life? Money, or a good quality of life? Capitalism has duped the apes into thinking that the two are equivalent.
Nothing is further from the truth.
People are constrained in their actions by Capitalism. These constraints exist all though the system and in every form imaginable.
To this day, new homes that are being built are not required to be constructed such that the roofs are optimally oriented for PV and passive solar energy collection.
Why is this? Because the builders are concerned with maximizing their profit (unreal).
The result is a long term social deficit (real).
It appears that Dr. David Evans, the Australian engineer and mathematician (i.e. not a climate scientist) is out with his “Alternative Model” that is sure to get lots of attention from the deniers:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/10/new-science-16-building-the-alternative-model-and-why-it-solves-so-many-major-problems/
I would be interested in Gavin’s comments on it.
Hello from France. It seems that American politicians have not fully realised yet what is really going on with climate. Without long-lasting policies, if they still have in mind to take the climate urgence back to second rank each time economical crisis may occur, therefore… no way we can look for an acceptable global Earth surface at the end of 2100s. Plan B must be seriously investigated from now: geoengineering. Whatever regional climate changes, global temperature must be kept under control, so that we can avoid dramatic evolution of glaciers and sea level. It is likely a realistic solution, compared to unrealistic struggling limitations of economical life. Science community has a lot of work in perspective, but somewhat exciting.
Worth a look, for those who like this sort of thing, by Frank Landis at Charlie Stross’s blog
BPL:
Thus my opinion, and the (presumed but hard-to-quantify) consensus of economists, that a carbon price would most efficiently (by certain metrics) drive the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. As long as a large fraction of the total cost of burning fossil fuels for energy is externalized, the build-out of essential components of a large-scale carbon-neutral infrastructure (e.g. storage capacity) is impeded by market forces.
Disclaimer: IANAE.
The extinctions inside:
http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/how-the-western-diet-has-derailed-our-evolution
The principles of the anthropocene–I mean the drivers–and the story of the anthropocene [as problem/crisis/solution] apply.
Whatever regional climate changes, global temperature must be kept under control, so that we can avoid dramatic evolution of glaciers and sea level. It is likely a realistic solution, compared to unrealistic struggling limitations of economical life. Science community has a lot of work in perspective, but somewhat exciting.
Comment by modeller — 12 Nov 2015
I’ve just about decided that humans can’t keep anything “under control.” We can’t even control ourselves. How are we going to stop the environmental forces from killing us? The problem is NOT the Climate, the problem is Humans. If alcohol is killing your liver… STOP DRINKING! That’s the first order of business. If you can’t you’re an alcoholic by definition.
We’re addicted to unbridled consumption, wealth for the few and unlimited resources for the taking. What’s to stop us? Carpe Diem!
Just like a true alcoholic we won’t stop until we take the last available drink. Don’t believe it??? Take a good look at the Christmas Holidays and the shopping spree known as Black Friday. People will kill each other for another flat screen TV to put in the bathroom. To He// with Climate Change. Let’s see what the Kardashian’s are up to.
COP21 newsletter from France:
http://www.cop21.gouv.fr/en
Mal Adapted:
It is impeded by anti-market forces as well, and I wonder which is the greater problem.
What if we eliminated the monopoly exercised by “utility” companies and instead treated them as regulated common carriers…meaning they could neither produce nor retail electricity, and would charge the same unit (transportation) rate for all suppliers?
Perhaps rooftop solar would become ubiquitous very quickly; perhaps distributed storage (in various forms) as well. Mitigation and adaptation at the same time as a bonus with respect to those future storms.
88 Mal Adapted: Storage capacity is limited by physics and chemistry. So go to school and study physics and chemistry. After you have a degree in physics or chemistry, it will be worth repeating what I have told you before. http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math
(strangling in place of struggling in my last message)
Chuck, you are right about short-term fore-viewers. But they are clever actors who have the ability to think and do better. It has been already succesful on the “ozone hole” issue, do not forget. If economical rules can not prevent from global warming, then global warming must be lowered in parallel by other action. It is clearly a feasible solution. Economists would have to focus on economics as today, and “geo” engineers would have to focus on the “balancing action”. And there is no need to explain to economists and people what would be the outcome of a “balancing action”. People like to think about Nature as “random”, don’t they? it would be “random” again…except the climate statistics would be slightly different at every location, and most of all without freaky global averages, sea level and ice melting.
Robert Scribbler and a few other outlets are carrying story about melting ice sheets of Greenland. Things seem to be happening faster than models have predicted. I don’t think we should be worried, we may find new fossil fuel deposits as these pesky ice sheets go away and access to the fossil fuel should be easier without glaciers in the way. Could also be boon to new ecotourism to view pristine coastland. http://robertscribbler.com/2015/11/13/11038/
Re- Comment by Chuck Hughes — 12 Nov 2015 @ 11:59 PM, ~#89
If wasteful consumerism was an addiction then addicts would spend all their time buying and playing with their purchases so that they lose their jobs, take to stealing in order to maintain their habit, and suffer physical symptoms when deprived of their drug. Even someone described as having process addiction involves continuing a behavior well beyond causing immediate damage to themselves and others. There are no immediate negative feedbacks for buying the next unnecessary, poorly made, “have to have” gadget. Mischaracterizing a problem makes it difficult to find a good solution.
I have been thinking that this problem probably has to do with how planned obsolescence and aggressive advertising have biased societal values away from enjoying the utility of products and toward conspicuous consumption. A contributing problem is how many folks look to inappropriate role models and, for example, imitate the practices of the rich and famous. When societal values change, such as the war economy during world war two, then how one chooses to live can change radically.
Steve
#90 mike said “Help me, I’m melting!!” said Greenland.
Yes. Saw an article on this. Posted this on Facebook:
I repeatedly have tried to make clear to climate scientists and “greens”, et al., that rate of change in this situation can *only* exceed what models suggest for two reasons: 1. Models use the climate system and only tangentially include the full global system. Weakness: Both Chaos Theory and non-linear systems inform us that very small changes in initial conditions can have massive effects later. Climate history tells us the same thing as sudden large changes occur throughout climate history. We are talking 5 degrees C in a decades. Nase you can imagine, our embedded, modern, inflexible human systems would be devastated by this.
It is only this year, however, that scientists fully showed that most climate change is, in fact, this sort of punctuated equilibrium: Slow change with massive disruptions that lead rapidly to a new period of relative equilibrium.
In other words, as I have warned for nearly a decade now, we *will* be experiencing such massive shifts. Period. Sane risk assessment is to act as if we are already in such a bifurcation. We probably are. Many signs say so. We are certainly approaching one.
Second, other than large meteor and asteroid impacts, the planet doesn’t have every ecosys already damaged when changes happen. Intact ecosystems should act as a brake or hysteresis on change, but we have weakened all of them pretty much simultaneously… just like an an asteroid impact.
Oops.
Thus, scientists are, imo, badly underestimating potential, even expected, rate of change.
The story below indicates rate of change is reaching extremely dangerous levels. An average annual global ice melt rate doubling every five years could literally melt all ice on the planet.
Read this article carefully.
#83 Barton Paul Levenson said BPL: Probably because it’s a social science, not a physical science. The observations, however, that supply generally rises with price, demand falls with price, and pricing is determined by marginal utility, are all backed by enormous amounts of evidence.
Can you tell me, do they use digits in addition and subtraction? Inquiring minds…
87
Hank Roberts said Worth a look, for those who like this sort of thing, by Frank Landis at Charlie Stross’s blog
… I started by asking myself the question: what will the Earth look like if severe climate change happens, and humans survive?
… because I’m a crazy ecologist and world-builder, I thought I could answer that question. I also realized that people probably wanted to know the answer more than they wanted a novel based on it. So, with a great deal of trepidation, I started reading, and most of three years later, I’d finished Hot Earth Dreams.
Yes, by all means, given how simple getting back to sub-300 ppm CO2 is, let’s all just give up instead. Makes sense to me.
@Vendicar: “Economic growth is nothing but growth in the dollar value of a select set of goods and services. Decreasing the health of a nation’s population may very well increase GDP by increasing the number of dollars spent on health care.”
It is true that GDP measures expenditure, i.e. is basic accounting procedure, it does not mean that it does not refect the exchange of goods and services, only that there is no 1:1 correspendence between tangible items and figures on the paper. You can yourself run the stats on it between physical goods and GDP and find the correlation.
“Economics is pure fail.”
The dismal science is a work in progress, however that does not mean that it is meaningless.
Nice to see you here, by the way.
By the way – hot off the press (if not, or if duplicate, please wipe this post, thanks):
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2580.html
I do not have access to the article, but those commenting on the content point out that it posits possible abrupt climate change over the span of as little as one decade.
My beef with this is that the denialist counterpoint to the gradual warming we have charted over the past century, is that non-antropogenic waming can be rapid (though certainly not as quickly as the spike that is causes since 1880 if seen on a 10000-year graph) and this will be a boon to them.
Can anyone delve into this?
Steve Fish says:
13 Nov 2015 at 7:42 PM
Re- Comment by Chuck Hughes —
– See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/11/unforced-variations-nov-2015/comment-page-2/#comments
Unfortunately this isn’t the 1940’s. Not only is the country divided politically but there are twice as many people living on the planet. The oceans are dying and the ice will melt. Human behavior doesn’t change overnight.