This month’s open thread on climate science topics. Things to look for – Arctic sea ice minimum, boreal wildfires and the Atlantic hurricane season – you know, the usual…
Reader Interactions
231 Responses to "Unforced variations: Sep 2020"
BJ Chippindalesays
Not a lot of people know
— that the classical economists who define the economic costs and values of our public policies regarding climate, are a bunch of sorry, stupid and incompetent neoliberal goons. AND they write the part of the IPCC reports that the policymakers look to for recommendations. OOPS!
The United Nations weather agency says this summer will go down for leaving a “deep wound” in the cryosphere — the planet’s frozen parts — amid a heat wave in the Arctic, shrinking sea ice and the collapse of a leading Canadian ice shelf.
Yes, 2020 may be the year we look back on and say the big thaw started then. I think that’s not especially true, but the thaw and melt has been pretty dramatic this year.
But, one thing to bear in mind is that 2020 is not an El Nino year with the temp boost that normally comes with that. I am not looking forward to observing the global temp impacts that we will see with the next El Nino.
The global heat up has really become obvious with 2020 temps set to come in number 2 behind a recent El Nino year.
Meanwhile, we continue to drive the emissions curve up. We need to flatten that curve. One good thing about the Covid pandemic is that it has helped lots of folks understand what it means to flatten the curve on graphs that show dangerous rising trajectories. I think the “flatten the curve” meme carries over to CO2 emissions quite easily.
Thanks for that link. Interesting that Nordhaus et al. in method #1 assume that “For the bulk of economic activity, non-climate variables like labour skills, access to markets, or technology swamp climatic considerations in determining economic efficiency,” but then in method #2, start with a correlation assuming precisely the opposite.
Significance? I have no idea, but perhaps worth noting.
Carl Ellströmsays
Thanks BJ, very interesting paper. Economists are not all frauds, but they really have a knack of making very strong assumptions. Assumptions which if the fail, invalidate the whole theory.
zebrasays
#1 BJChippendale,
Maybe you could elaborate on how an article titled
“The Appallingly Bad Neoclassical Economics Of Climate Change”
dismembers neoliberals?
Me, I’m just a humble Adam Smith type, so I find this confusing.
And RSS TLT has posted for August 2020 with an anomaly of +0.77ºC, as with UAH a value not greatly different from the preceding months. Over 2020 so far, the RSS TLT monthly anomalies sit in the range +0.74ºC to +1.02ºC.
August 2020 is the warmest August on the RSS TLT record (3rd warmest on UAH), sitting ahead of August 2017 (+0.75ºC), 2019 (+0.69ºC), 2010 (+0.69ºC), 2016 (+0.69ºC), 2015 (+0.62ºC), 1998 (+0.61ºC) & 2018 (+0.53ºC).
August 2020 has the 19th highest anomaly of the all-month RSS TLT record.
The 2020 year-to-date average anomaly sits 2nd in the ranking tabled below. (It was 3rd in UAH.) To gain warmest year accolade from 2016 would require the Sept-Dec average to top +0.75ºC and to slip to 3rd below 2019 would require Sept-Dec to average below +0.57ºC.
The folk at Arctic Neven’s Forum have a bit to contend with as the Arctic minimum ice approaches. With the site that provides JAXA’s daily Arctic Sea Ice numbers down for three days, the Arctic watchers have been thrown back onto relying on other daily data like the NSIDC. And the NSIDC Daily Extent data currently presents an intriguing situation. While the JAXA 2012 record daily Arctic Sea Ice Extent minimum was being considered unattainable for 2020 prior to JAXA’s website shut-down, the NSIDC daily data was perhaps going in the same direction with 2012 Extent having dropped below 2020 a month ago and slowly dipping further ahead. The situation presented by the JAXA data is graphed out here as daily SIE Anomalies (usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’).
Yet a week ago, the 2020 Extent numbers began narrowing the gap to 2012 and the NSIDC numbers now show the gap has shrunk from 690k sq km down to 280k sq km and so-far is not showing any let-up. (Note that JAXA had been showing a far weaker narrowing; 530k down to 414k.) And with the minimum expected any time in the next two or three weeks, a big storm is forecast to run across the ice pack which could have all sorts of consequences (assuming it arrives as forecast).
nigeljsays
BJ Chippindale @1, thanks, interesting. I would hope governments look at not just Nordhaus’s work, but some other alternative analyses as well. Economics makes big assumptions, way beyond what the physical sciences do, and has many ideological divisions, so it would seem unwise to rely on just one point of view.
————————
I think this is an interesting discussion of the differences between neoclassical economics (closely related to Adam Smiths ideas) and neoliberalism (closer to Milton Freidman, Thatcher and Reagon):
Both share certain tenets like private ownership and competition and free markets (meaning free trade), but neoclassical economics seems to me more about optimising outcomes, while neoliberalism seems more about progressing business interests and the interests of the ruling class as against the public good, in other words its quite predatory.
O 6: As long as capitalism exists, there will be no meaningful way to mitigate the effects of climate change and ecocide effectively.
BPL: Communism was even harder on the environment. The problem is the use of specific technologies and the orientation toward growth, not patterns of ownership.
Ray Ladburysays
Oxyaena,
True as far as it goes, but it ain’t just capitalism. None of the current economic and political systems can achieve sustainability.
Al Bundysays
zebra: Me, I’m just a humble Adam Smith type, so I find this confusing.
AB: Yeah. So little was known about the mind, about networks, about much at all back when Adam was doing his musings.
That made the conclusions easy for sub-geniuses to follow.
Fortunately, neither quantum physics nor society function at that level of inelegance. Imagine how hard it would be to build a typical animal without the twisting, projecting, and hiding of genetic sequences in a dynamic interactive fashion.
Silvia Leahu-Aluassays
Does the worst-case scenario have to be made worse for ice sheet melting?
#6 I am afraid so. And as long as the majority of decision makers, at all levels, are captive to bad economics (~90% of it) and the storytelling economists, we will not find the will and imagination to transition to a new economic system. Ecologism? If there are any economists worth collaborating with in solving the climate emergency, in time (as difficult to pinpoint as is, but clearly closer than even the worst scenario IPCC projections), they are the ecological economists and all the other making up the non-mainstream 10%, who have the decency and awareness to learn and apply real science and the laws of nature to the system of human artifacts.
CCHolleysays
RE. Coeur de Lion @26, Responses to “Nenana Ice Classic 2020”
Taking bets that Arctic ice will bottom out at over four million sq km as usual next September.
Looks like Coeur de Lion has lost that bet.
nigeljsays
Some interesting stuff on these large holes in Siberia’s permafrost, believed to be due to methane build up:
Thanks for the update, and the link to the NSIDC data. I was occupied with other things for a bit, and wondering why JAXA wouldn’t load, and when it might again…
Most intriguing. Note, though, that per NSIDC yesterday was a zero melt day; i.e., no change in extent from Friday. But this is the time of year when the extent can easily go up for a day due to ice dispersal, despite a downtrend trend. So the NC is not a shocker by any means. We can still expect a bit of loss yet–especially if that cyclonic low exports a lot of ice into the North Atlantic.
Given that the 2012 record low extent was driven by the so-called GAC–“Great Arctic Cyclone”–maybe we could even yet see a new record, despite all my ramblings to the contrary. Time will tell–and not all that much will be required.
Mr. Know It Allsays
11 – MA Rodger
“With the site that provides JAXA’s daily Arctic Sea Ice numbers down for three days….”
Fixed it for you:
With the site that provides JAXA’s daily Arctic Sea Ice numbers ALLEGEDLY down for three days, leftists can now fabricate worst case alarmist data to present as fact in this important election year.
In other news, dangerous cold front with heavy snow to hit Rockies and Plains this week:
Be careful what you wish for – you may get it. Perhaps some history lessons are in order.
Killiansays
9 zebra: #1 BJChippendale,
Maybe you could elaborate on how an article titled
“The Appallingly Bad Neoclassical Economics Of Climate Change”
dismembers neoliberals?
Me, I’m just a humble Adam Smith type, so I find this confusing.
Because neoliberals also think they can solve climate primary through the core tenets of economics. They can’t because they are diametrically opposed to creating the kinds of conditions that would allow the planet to coole and heal.
As a first measure of the average August surface temperature, the ERA5 re-analysis has posted for August 2020 with an anomaly of +0.44ºC, down on July’s anomaly of +0.49ºC and the lowest anomaly of the year-so-far (which had previously sat in the range +0.49ºC to +0.80ºC).
August 2020 is the 4th warmest August on the ERA5 record, sitting below August 2016 (+0.58ºC), 2019 (+0.53ºC), 2017 (+0.47ºC) and above August 2015 (+0.42ºC), 2018 (+0.38ºC), 1998 (+0.32ºC) & 2014 (+0.31ºC).
August 2020 has the 55th highest anomaly in the all-month ERA5 record.
The 2020 year-to-date average anomaly sits 2nd in the ranking tabled below 2016. To gain “warmest year” accolade from 2016 would require the Sept-Dec average to top +0.63ºC and to slip to 3rd below 2019 would require Sept-Dec to average below +0.51ºC.
BJ – Economics is a combination of mathematical analysis tied to moral philosophy. So two economists can look at a similar situation and make very different judgments based on different value systems.
I don’t think that tarring all economists with a broad criticism is fair.
Karsten V. Johansensays
#9 “Zebra”: Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx are the *classical* economic theorists. The *neoclassical* are Leon Walras, Russell Wallace et al. Difference: the three first all base their theory upon some kind of *labour value theory*, meaning they presume an intimate connection between the amount of labour put into a commodity and its value. Marx develops this theory the furthest.
The later *neoclassical* economists on the other hand throws this away completely, mainly because, as Marx shows, a labour value theory ends up in a theory of exploitation of the working class by the owners of the factories. As Marx says: the labourer does not sell his work, but his working capacity for a number of hours each day. His wage then becomes equal to the value of the products he needs to buy to reproduce his working capacity. This then makes it possible for him to produce a larger value during his working hours, than he gets as wage: the surplus value. This insight of course is not welcome for the factory owners, therefore they need an alternative theory, and this is delivered by the neoclassical economists late in the 19. century: the subjective theory of value. Here value equals market price, only supply and demand decide the value of a commodity. There is deep problems with both theories, but clearly Marx is closer to the reality than Walras et al. Their theory makes it impossible to understand why capitalism is thrown into deep crises. Their theory presumes that every actor on the market always has perfect information about all prices etc., which of course is completely far fetched. For a good critique of this see the book “For the common good”.
Solar Jimsays
RE BJ #1 (off topic?, but in reply to your good comment)
From my number 74 comment about the Schellenberger OpEd,
“RE: Kevin’s: “At the lowest trophic level (the bottom of the food chain), plants convert about 1% of the sunlight they receive into chemical energy. It follows from this that the total energy originally present in the incident sunlight that is finally embodied in a tertiary consumer is about 0.001%…”
As fossil-carbon materials were assembled with about 1% energy efficiency (via photosynthesis), then would a globalized fossil-power system relegate the world economy to an “energy efficiency” of less than 1%? Or, is the social-political power of globalized economics just kidding us since fossil (and fissile) materials in the Lithosphere are not really “forms of energy” at all?”
Perhaps neoclassical economics today, implemented as public policy, is institutionalized fraud via such biased, arbitrary manipulation of what passes as analysis by the likes of W. Nordhaus. Today’s economic construct of fossil and fissile “fuel” (including massive public subsidies) seems to be leading to ecologic/environmental collapse. (by the way, they are “forms of matter”)
patricksays
What, me speechless? Invite this M.D. to the AGU (or any conference you wish), please. His contribution is invaluable in any case, but I for one would like to know if he thinks/what he thinks on climate science. Don’t miss the last paragraph.
von Schuckmann has a review out on earth energy imbalance and OHC.
“The study obtains a consistent long-term Earth system heat gain over the period 1971–2018, with a total heat gain of 358±37 ZJ, which is equivalent to a global heating rate of 0.47±0.1 W m−2. Over the period 1971–2018 (2010–2018), the majority of heat gain is reported for the global ocean with 89 % (90 %), with 52 % for both periods in the upper 700 m depth, 28 % (30 %) for the 700–2000 m depth layer and 9 % (8 %) below 2000 m depth. Heat gain over land amounts to 6 % (5 %) over these periods, 4 % (3 %) is available for the melting of grounded and floating ice, and 1 % (2 %) is available for atmospheric warming. Our results also show that EEI is not only continuing, but also increasing: the EEI amounts to 0.87±0.12 W m−2during 2010–2018. Stabilization of climate, the goal of the universally agreed United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992 and the Paris Agreement in 2015, requires that EEI be reduced to approximately zero to achieve Earth’s system quasi-equilibrium. The amount of CO2 in theatmosphere would need to be reduced from 410 to 353 ppm to increase heat radiation to space by 0.87 W m−2, bringing Earth back towards energy balance.”
“Our results show that EEIis not only continuing, but also increasing. Over the period 1971–2018 average EEI amounts to 0.47±0.1 W m−2, but it amounts to 0.87±0.12 W m−2 during 2010–2018 (Fig. 8).Concurrently, acceleration of sea-level rise (WCRP, 2018;Legelais et al., 2020), accelerated surface warming, record temperatures and sea ice loss in the Arctic (Richter-Mengeet al., 2019; WMO, 2020; Blunden and Arndt, 2020) and ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet (King et al., 2020), and intensification of atmospheric warming near the surface and in the troposphere (Steiner et al., 2020) have been – for example – recently reported. To what degree these changes are intrinsically linked needs further evaluations”
doi: /10.5194/essd-12-2013-2020
Very nice. open access. Read all about it.
sidd
nigeljsays
Mr KIA @21, you are confusing economics with politics. Suggest you consult a dictionary.
Mr. Know It Allsays
26 – Split Dog
Just be thankful you arent living back in the 1800s when LA set most of their daily record highs:
I always thought LA had mild temps – nope – they hit 90s and 100s in many months of the year!
Karsten V. Johansensays
Re #1 Chippindale: thank you for linking to that excellent article. Suddenly I realized from where this famous two-degree nonsense comes: from the neoclassical vulgareconomists, cfr. Keens first figure, taken from the IPCC summary “for” (by) policymakers. It pretends to show that only after the global mean temperature rises above 2 degrees C above preindustrial value, there is any significant fall in GDP…
The arguments for this “calculation” is indeed complete nonsense, for here the neoclassical economists suddenly become all-knowing experts in climate science, ecology etc. Everyone here should read that paper by Steve Keen!
KIA 20: With the site that provides JAXA’s daily Arctic Sea Ice numbers ALLEGEDLY down for three days, leftists can now fabricate worst case alarmist data to present as fact in this important election year.
BPL: And KIA has gone full-blown paranoid conspiracy theorist. Way to go, KIA!
KVJ 25: clearly Marx is closer to the reality than Walras et al.
BPL: There’s nothing clear about that! Marginal utility theory makes accurate predictions of how markets behave, Marx does not. Marxism became a pseudoscience as soon as the theory of marginal utility was discovered (about simultaneously by three different researchers in three different countries, much as Darwin and Wallace both discovered natural selection and Adams and Leverrier both discovered Neptune). Marx would have been right if the labor theory of value was right, but it was wrong. Deal with it.
KVJ, thanks, but I was being a bit sarcastic there. Couple of points:
1. Comment #1 sounded like someone who throws around terms like neoliberal and neoclassical without a clue what they mean… like the other guys use “socialist” in place of “bad”. Lack of a response makes me think perhaps I was correct. And the truth is, even people who do this stuff for a living argue about the definitions, right?
2. If we are trying to look at the effects of climate change on the human condition globally, mixing it up with righteous moralizing and ideology is pointless, because the other guys just make up their own set of “goods” and “bads” to suit their purpose. The term “value” has no value.
3. Even the effort to characterize the effects in conventional macroeconomic terms is not going to change things very much. Do you think Russia, and Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, and so on, are going to stop promoting and pumping oil and gas because you show some spreadsheet that demonstrates some future negative economic consequences for them?
I’m not completely pessimistic, but the way forward requires some subtlety and a recognition that it will take time, and there will be great disruption, even if things get sorted eventually.
(And this discussion is perhaps better followed up on Forced Responses.)
Killiansays
29 jef: Oxy – Spot on! There is no profit motive to do anything that needs to be done.
Economics of biosphere destruction?
“New UN report finds almost no industry profitable if environmental costs were included”
I would say NONE!
Yet, ,ost here cling to current economics even after they are made aware economics and Capitalism, and other ~isms, are B.S.
Wake up, people. If NO industry is profitable if ecology is properly accounted, then ***you can’t have industry.***
And don’t need it.
Killiansays
24 E Axelrod: BJ – Economics is a combination of mathematical analysis tied to moral philosophy. So two economists can look at a similar situation and make very different judgments based on different value systems.
This is bass ackwards. Economics is philosophy layered over with maths to make it seem legit.
I don’t think that tarring all economists with a broad criticism is fair.
Well, they’re all wrong, but if you’re going to pay attention to any, pay attention to the Minsky/heterodox economists like Keen, etc.
nigeljsays
Actually if industry had to pay the costs of its environmental externalities (and it should) they would just pass these costs onto the consumer and absorb some of them in efficiencies, and still make a profit on top of all that. So the UN article on the issue is a bit silly.
Ken Fabiansays
Seems to be getting off topic but my 2c worth –
Corruption, not Capitalism is at the heart of our problems addressing the energy/emissions/climate problem. Corruption, not Socialism is at the heart of the problem.
Nation’s that do best have elements of both Socialism and Capitalism and allow the balance to shift according to opportunity and need; those with extremes of either usually suffer, but if they are corrupt it doesn’t matter; they will be incapable of good governance and effective climate policy.
Regimes established and maintained by force will always choose to put themselves above the law – and a lot of communists/socialist regimes have been like that; they can dodge responsibility by decree and will favour loyalty to the regime in their appointments over abilities and dedication to best practice.
But Capitalists have their own toolkit for undermining democracy and the rule of law to ensure climate responsibility does not apply to them. Rather than the direct corruption of paying Baksheesh to avoid regulation or responsibility, the regulation itself is remade to their liking.
I think the best results addressing the climate problem will and do come from responsible free enterprise within democracies with the independent rule of law and it won’t matter if they lean a bit more towards Capitalism or towards Socialism. “Responsible” is the key word – climate science denial and obstructionism is all about avoidance of responsibility and accountability. And most especially avoidance of liability.
von Schuckmann et al (2020) ‘Heat stored in the Earth system: where does the energy go? presented up-thread by sidd @230 is a major piece of work with over two dozen co-authors (including a certain James Hansen). Perhaps its main message, other than their quantification of the global energy imbalance, is to urge the imbalance to be now adopted as a primary measure of AGW.
“This simple number, EEI [Earth Energy Imbalance], is the most fundamental metric that the scientific community and public must be aware of as the measure of how well the world is doing in the task of bringing climate change under control, and we call for an implementation of the EEI into the global stocktake based on best available science.”
The Charctic interactive graph from NSIDC reports that Arctic SIE reached 3.800 km2–yes, they report to three decimals–yesterday. That’s considerably lower than any previous year, barring the record-low 2012.
It still seems unlikely that we’ll catch 2012, but this is a pretty extraordinary melt year nonetheless. By the time we’re done, 2012 will seem much less the outlier, I think.
Thanks, I took a look. Keen launches his attack on “Neoclassical economists” by attacking Bill Nordhaus (my emphasis):
William Nordhaus was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (Mirowski, 2020) in 2018 for his work on climate change…
Whereas Nordhaus characterized Forrester’s work as ‘measurement without data’, Nordhaus’s can be characterized as ‘making up numbers to support a pre-existing belief’: specifically, that climate change could have only a trivial impact upon the economy. This practice was replicated, rather than challenged, by subsequent Neoclassical economists – with some honourable exceptions…
The end product is a set of purported empirical estimates of the impact of climate change upon the economy that are utterly spurious, and yet which have been used to calibrate the ‘Integrated Assessment Models’ (IAMs) that have largely guided the political responses to climate change.
IANAE, thus ill-prepared to explain why DICE projections are, or are not, “utterly spurious”, or judge which exceptions are honorable. Relying on my scientific meta-literacy, I went straight to Wikipedia 8^):
In detailing its reasons for giving the prize to Nordhaus, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences specifically recognized his efforts to develop “an integrated assessment model, i.e. a quantitative model that describes the global interplay between the economy and the climate. His model integrates theories and empirical results from physics, chemistry and economics. Nordhaus’ model is now widely spread and is used to simulate how the economy and the climate co-evolve.”[4]
Many of the news outlets that reported on Nordhaus’s prize noted that he was in the advance wave of economists who embraced a carbon tax as a preferred method of carbon pricing.[33][34] Some climate scientists and commentators were disappointed with the Nobel Prize going to Nordhaus due to his embrace of substantially lower carbon taxes per ton than most scientists, along with his past history of minimal carbon taxes.[35]
The article reports Steve Keen’s criticisms of Nordhaus. I’m not qualified to challenge either guy. Nonetheless, note that Nordhaus’s Nobel was for developing the first models to integrate climate science and economics for cost estimation, not for his specific estimates. He appears to have garnered much positive peer recognition, as well as criticism. AFAICT, “with some honourable exceptions” his critics don’t reject the concept of IAMs, so much as the data they’re calibrated with.
As a non-expert, I’ll reserve judgement for now regarding Nordhaus’s relatively lukewarm estimates of AGW’s economic impact, labeling him neither denialist or alarmist in context. I, for one, favor an initially low carbon tax that increases on some schedule as its effects are observed. That’s primarily for political reasons. My policy preferences reflect both rising alarm and resigned expectations. Once again: if it’s done right, I provisionally conclude a US carbon fee and dividend with border adjustment tariff can drive a global transition to carbon-neutrality to completion as soon as 2050. IMHO, that’s the largest part of capping the eventual net total private and social cost of AGW as quickly and painlessly as feasible. Other policy options may or may not work as well, depending on the balance of political power. At present, that favors the deniers, so any official recognition that AGW even has costs is an advance. But yo – IANAE over here! Argue economics with Nordhaus and Keen, not me, and beware the D-K effect.
Mr. Know It Allsays
41 – Ken Fabian
“I think the best results addressing the climate problem will and do come from responsible free enterprise within democracies with the independent rule of law and it won’t matter if they lean a bit more towards Capitalism or towards Socialism….”
I think you are correct on free enterprise being most likely to produce best results. That is due to the profit motive. Guys with big brains like E-P and Al Bundy come up with good stuff all the time. Eventually someone will hit on a product that will cut energy use so much that everyone will flock to it, the inventor will get rich, and our CO2 emissions will plummet. It is also likely that we will have similar breakthroughs in energy production – fusion perhaps.
On Socialism, gotta be careful with that – it usually ends in tears; nigelj will perhaps learn from this one:
In other CC news, fires attributed to CC are being slowed by a massive summer snow storm in Colorado. 14″ of snow in summer with 415 ppm CO2? Looks that way:
JAXA’s Vishop SIE webpage is back in the land of the living again. In the interim, Arctic Sea Ice Extent has dropped into an emphatic second place behind 2012 in the melty league. Latest figures show SIE dropped to 3.59M sq km which is below that being discussed on the August UV thread just two weeks ago as the bottom of the SIE range being projected by the tag-end of past melt seasons. And, while we are now firmly into the period when SIE minimums appear, there may be still a bit more melt to come.
#25 Too many people think that Karl Marx was an underground revolutionary, running around gluing his “Communist Manifesto” on walls, not the author of one of the major theories of capitalism in “Das Kapital”. Marx offers a primarily economic analysis. Another is Max Weber with “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, a primarily sociological analysis. The third is Joseph Schumpeter with “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy”, reduced to one concept:”creative destruction” through endless repetition. I read them all (Marx partially), because I prefer to know what I am talking about when criticizing economics.
We can debate for ever which one is closer to reality and we will never be sure about the answer, as it is impossible to prove, unlike, for example, the theory of evolution.
In the meantime we are confronted with the “destructive” destruction of our biosphere, caused by an economic model based on carbon-intensive energy and the orthodoxy of GDP growth.
Our energy, expertise and imagination have to focus on saving it. There are a few economists who have the right ideas on solutions. We need them.
Back to the topic: the West Coast is on fire, record fire and record heat. How many warnings do we need to take action?
Silvia Leahu-Aluassays
#6 Just to clarify: I agree with Karsten’s comment and mine is complementary to it.
Not a lot of people know
— that the classical economists who define the economic costs and values of our public policies regarding climate, are a bunch of sorry, stupid and incompetent neoliberal goons. AND they write the part of the IPCC reports that the policymakers look to for recommendations. OOPS!
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2020.1807856
Sorry – I’m being unfair to goons everywhere.
Seriously, Professor Keen dismembers them.
Everyone here needs to see this.
The United Nations weather agency says this summer will go down for leaving a “deep wound” in the cryosphere — the planet’s frozen parts — amid a heat wave in the Arctic, shrinking sea ice and the collapse of a leading Canadian ice shelf.
https://www.9news.com.au/world/climate-change-news-un-agency-laments-summers-deep-wound-to-earth-ice-cover/52152578-420d-40af-932f-cab14f5af6ac?utm_campaign=Carbon%20Brief%20Daily%20Briefing&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter
Yes, 2020 may be the year we look back on and say the big thaw started then. I think that’s not especially true, but the thaw and melt has been pretty dramatic this year.
But, one thing to bear in mind is that 2020 is not an El Nino year with the temp boost that normally comes with that. I am not looking forward to observing the global temp impacts that we will see with the next El Nino.
The global heat up has really become obvious with 2020 temps set to come in number 2 behind a recent El Nino year.
Meanwhile, we continue to drive the emissions curve up. We need to flatten that curve. One good thing about the Covid pandemic is that it has helped lots of folks understand what it means to flatten the curve on graphs that show dangerous rising trajectories. I think the “flatten the curve” meme carries over to CO2 emissions quite easily.
Cheers
Mike
#1, BJC–
Thanks for that link. Interesting that Nordhaus et al. in method #1 assume that “For the bulk of economic activity, non-climate variables like labour skills, access to markets, or technology swamp climatic considerations in determining economic efficiency,” but then in method #2, start with a correlation assuming precisely the opposite.
JAXA SIE: 3.89 km2, down another 50k. ‘How low can it go?’
https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent/&time=2020-08-31%2000:00:00
In terms of burning peatlands, this Siberian summer is looking as bad as 1915
https://www.nature.com/articles/323116a0
As long as capitalism exists, there will be no meaningful way to mitigate the effects of climate change and ecocide effectively.
The arctic has so far been unusually slow to cool, slower than any other year for this date.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2020.png
Significance? I have no idea, but perhaps worth noting.
Thanks BJ, very interesting paper. Economists are not all frauds, but they really have a knack of making very strong assumptions. Assumptions which if the fail, invalidate the whole theory.
#1 BJChippendale,
Maybe you could elaborate on how an article titled
“The Appallingly Bad Neoclassical Economics Of Climate Change”
dismembers neoliberals?
Me, I’m just a humble Adam Smith type, so I find this confusing.
And RSS TLT has posted for August 2020 with an anomaly of +0.77ºC, as with UAH a value not greatly different from the preceding months. Over 2020 so far, the RSS TLT monthly anomalies sit in the range +0.74ºC to +1.02ºC.
August 2020 is the warmest August on the RSS TLT record (3rd warmest on UAH), sitting ahead of August 2017 (+0.75ºC), 2019 (+0.69ºC), 2010 (+0.69ºC), 2016 (+0.69ºC), 2015 (+0.62ºC), 1998 (+0.61ºC) & 2018 (+0.53ºC).
August 2020 has the 19th highest anomaly of the all-month RSS TLT record.
The 2020 year-to-date average anomaly sits 2nd in the ranking tabled below. (It was 3rd in UAH.) To gain warmest year accolade from 2016 would require the Sept-Dec average to top +0.75ºC and to slip to 3rd below 2019 would require Sept-Dec to average below +0.57ºC.
…….. Jan-August Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.88ºC … … … +0.80ºC … … … 1st
2020 .. +0.82ºC
2019 .. +0.72ºC … … … +0.74ºC … … … 2nd
2010 .. +0.69ºC … … … +0.63ºC … … … 4th
1998 .. +0.67ºC … … … +0.58ºC … … … 6th
2017 .. +0.65ºC … … … +0.68ºC … … … 3rd
2015 .. +0.54ºC … … … +0.61ºC … … … 5th
2018 .. +0.53ºC … … … +0.53ºC … … … 7th
2014 .. +0.47ºC … … … +0.48ºC … … … 8th
2005 .. +0.47ºC … … … +0.47ºC … … … 9th
2007 .. +0.46ºC … … … +0.42ºC … … … 11th
A year-on-year plot of the RSS TLT monthly anomalies is resented here (usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’).
The folk at Arctic Neven’s Forum have a bit to contend with as the Arctic minimum ice approaches. With the site that provides JAXA’s daily Arctic Sea Ice numbers down for three days, the Arctic watchers have been thrown back onto relying on other daily data like the NSIDC. And the NSIDC Daily Extent data currently presents an intriguing situation. While the JAXA 2012 record daily Arctic Sea Ice Extent minimum was being considered unattainable for 2020 prior to JAXA’s website shut-down, the NSIDC daily data was perhaps going in the same direction with 2012 Extent having dropped below 2020 a month ago and slowly dipping further ahead. The situation presented by the JAXA data is graphed out here as daily SIE Anomalies (usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’).
Yet a week ago, the 2020 Extent numbers began narrowing the gap to 2012 and the NSIDC numbers now show the gap has shrunk from 690k sq km down to 280k sq km and so-far is not showing any let-up. (Note that JAXA had been showing a far weaker narrowing; 530k down to 414k.) And with the minimum expected any time in the next two or three weeks, a big storm is forecast to run across the ice pack which could have all sorts of consequences (assuming it arrives as forecast).
BJ Chippindale @1, thanks, interesting. I would hope governments look at not just Nordhaus’s work, but some other alternative analyses as well. Economics makes big assumptions, way beyond what the physical sciences do, and has many ideological divisions, so it would seem unwise to rely on just one point of view.
————————
I think this is an interesting discussion of the differences between neoclassical economics (closely related to Adam Smiths ideas) and neoliberalism (closer to Milton Freidman, Thatcher and Reagon):
https://era.org.au/neoliberal-v-neoclassical-economics/
Both share certain tenets like private ownership and competition and free markets (meaning free trade), but neoclassical economics seems to me more about optimising outcomes, while neoliberalism seems more about progressing business interests and the interests of the ruling class as against the public good, in other words its quite predatory.
O 6: As long as capitalism exists, there will be no meaningful way to mitigate the effects of climate change and ecocide effectively.
BPL: Communism was even harder on the environment. The problem is the use of specific technologies and the orientation toward growth, not patterns of ownership.
Oxyaena,
True as far as it goes, but it ain’t just capitalism. None of the current economic and political systems can achieve sustainability.
zebra: Me, I’m just a humble Adam Smith type, so I find this confusing.
AB: Yeah. So little was known about the mind, about networks, about much at all back when Adam was doing his musings.
That made the conclusions easy for sub-geniuses to follow.
Fortunately, neither quantum physics nor society function at that level of inelegance. Imagine how hard it would be to build a typical animal without the twisting, projecting, and hiding of genetic sequences in a dynamic interactive fashion.
Does the worst-case scenario have to be made worse for ice sheet melting?
https://www.sciencealert.com/ice-sheet-melting-is-perfectly-in-line-with-our-worst-case-scenario-scientists-warn
#6 I am afraid so. And as long as the majority of decision makers, at all levels, are captive to bad economics (~90% of it) and the storytelling economists, we will not find the will and imagination to transition to a new economic system. Ecologism? If there are any economists worth collaborating with in solving the climate emergency, in time (as difficult to pinpoint as is, but clearly closer than even the worst scenario IPCC projections), they are the ecological economists and all the other making up the non-mainstream 10%, who have the decency and awareness to learn and apply real science and the laws of nature to the system of human artifacts.
RE. Coeur de Lion @26, Responses to “Nenana Ice Classic 2020”
Looks like Coeur de Lion has lost that bet.
Some interesting stuff on these large holes in Siberia’s permafrost, believed to be due to methane build up:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/04/world/craters-tundra-siberia-trnd-scn/index.html
#11, MAR–
Thanks for the update, and the link to the NSIDC data. I was occupied with other things for a bit, and wondering why JAXA wouldn’t load, and when it might again…
Most intriguing. Note, though, that per NSIDC yesterday was a zero melt day; i.e., no change in extent from Friday. But this is the time of year when the extent can easily go up for a day due to ice dispersal, despite a downtrend trend. So the NC is not a shocker by any means. We can still expect a bit of loss yet–especially if that cyclonic low exports a lot of ice into the North Atlantic.
Given that the 2012 record low extent was driven by the so-called GAC–“Great Arctic Cyclone”–maybe we could even yet see a new record, despite all my ramblings to the contrary. Time will tell–and not all that much will be required.
11 – MA Rodger
“With the site that provides JAXA’s daily Arctic Sea Ice numbers down for three days….”
Fixed it for you:
With the site that provides JAXA’s daily Arctic Sea Ice numbers ALLEGEDLY down for three days, leftists can now fabricate worst case alarmist data to present as fact in this important election year.
In other news, dangerous cold front with heavy snow to hit Rockies and Plains this week:
https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/cold-forecast-fall-temperature-drop-mk/
https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2055249950130/early-blast-of-cold-air-could-drop-significant-snow-in-the-rockies-following-heat-wave-the-weather-channel
Be safe if you live in the areas affected by this dangerous storm.
6 – Oxyaena
“As long as capitalism exists, there will be no meaningful way to mitigate the effects of climate change and ecocide effectively.”
The alternatives aren’t looking that great either:
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.CHAP1.HTM
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Einsatzgruppen_murder_Jews_in_Ivanhorod,_Ukraine,_1942_(cropped).jpg
Be careful what you wish for – you may get it. Perhaps some history lessons are in order.
9 zebra: #1 BJChippendale,
Maybe you could elaborate on how an article titled
“The Appallingly Bad Neoclassical Economics Of Climate Change”
dismembers neoliberals?
Me, I’m just a humble Adam Smith type, so I find this confusing.
Because neoliberals also think they can solve climate primary through the core tenets of economics. They can’t because they are diametrically opposed to creating the kinds of conditions that would allow the planet to coole and heal.
As a first measure of the average August surface temperature, the ERA5 re-analysis has posted for August 2020 with an anomaly of +0.44ºC, down on July’s anomaly of +0.49ºC and the lowest anomaly of the year-so-far (which had previously sat in the range +0.49ºC to +0.80ºC).
August 2020 is the 4th warmest August on the ERA5 record, sitting below August 2016 (+0.58ºC), 2019 (+0.53ºC), 2017 (+0.47ºC) and above August 2015 (+0.42ºC), 2018 (+0.38ºC), 1998 (+0.32ºC) & 2014 (+0.31ºC).
August 2020 has the 55th highest anomaly in the all-month ERA5 record.
The 2020 year-to-date average anomaly sits 2nd in the ranking tabled below 2016. To gain “warmest year” accolade from 2016 would require the Sept-Dec average to top +0.63ºC and to slip to 3rd below 2019 would require Sept-Dec to average below +0.51ºC.
…….. Jan-August Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.66ºC … … … +0.63ºC … … … 1st
2020 .. +0.63ºC
2019 .. +0.56ºC … … … +0.59ºC … … … 2nd
2017 .. +0.54ºC … … … +0.54ºC … … … 3rd
2018 .. +0.44ºC … … … +0.46ºC … … … 4th
2015 .. +0.36ºC … … … +0.45ºC … … … 5th
2010 .. +0.35ºC … … … +0.32ºC … … … 6th
1998 .. +0.28ºC … … … +0.21ºC … … … 14th
2014 .. +0.27ºC … … … +0.30ºC … … … 7th
2007 .. +0.26ºC … … … +0.23ºC … … … 12th
2005 .. +0.25ºC … … … +0.29ºC … … … 8th
A year-on-year plot of the ERA5 monthly anomalies is presented here (usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’).
BJ – Economics is a combination of mathematical analysis tied to moral philosophy. So two economists can look at a similar situation and make very different judgments based on different value systems.
I don’t think that tarring all economists with a broad criticism is fair.
#9 “Zebra”: Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx are the *classical* economic theorists. The *neoclassical* are Leon Walras, Russell Wallace et al. Difference: the three first all base their theory upon some kind of *labour value theory*, meaning they presume an intimate connection between the amount of labour put into a commodity and its value. Marx develops this theory the furthest.
The later *neoclassical* economists on the other hand throws this away completely, mainly because, as Marx shows, a labour value theory ends up in a theory of exploitation of the working class by the owners of the factories. As Marx says: the labourer does not sell his work, but his working capacity for a number of hours each day. His wage then becomes equal to the value of the products he needs to buy to reproduce his working capacity. This then makes it possible for him to produce a larger value during his working hours, than he gets as wage: the surplus value. This insight of course is not welcome for the factory owners, therefore they need an alternative theory, and this is delivered by the neoclassical economists late in the 19. century: the subjective theory of value. Here value equals market price, only supply and demand decide the value of a commodity. There is deep problems with both theories, but clearly Marx is closer to the reality than Walras et al. Their theory makes it impossible to understand why capitalism is thrown into deep crises. Their theory presumes that every actor on the market always has perfect information about all prices etc., which of course is completely far fetched. For a good critique of this see the book “For the common good”.
RE BJ #1 (off topic?, but in reply to your good comment)
From my number 74 comment about the Schellenberger OpEd,
“RE: Kevin’s: “At the lowest trophic level (the bottom of the food chain), plants convert about 1% of the sunlight they receive into chemical energy. It follows from this that the total energy originally present in the incident sunlight that is finally embodied in a tertiary consumer is about 0.001%…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level
As fossil-carbon materials were assembled with about 1% energy efficiency (via photosynthesis), then would a globalized fossil-power system relegate the world economy to an “energy efficiency” of less than 1%? Or, is the social-political power of globalized economics just kidding us since fossil (and fissile) materials in the Lithosphere are not really “forms of energy” at all?”
Perhaps neoclassical economics today, implemented as public policy, is institutionalized fraud via such biased, arbitrary manipulation of what passes as analysis by the likes of W. Nordhaus. Today’s economic construct of fossil and fissile “fuel” (including massive public subsidies) seems to be leading to ecologic/environmental collapse. (by the way, they are “forms of matter”)
What, me speechless? Invite this M.D. to the AGU (or any conference you wish), please. His contribution is invaluable in any case, but I for one would like to know if he thinks/what he thinks on climate science. Don’t miss the last paragraph.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/our-brains-tell-stories-so-we-can-live?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Oxy – Spot on! There is no profit motive to do anything that needs to be done.
Economics of biosphere destruction?
“New UN report finds almost no industry profitable if environmental costs were included”
https://www.exposingtruth.com/new-un-report-finds-almost-no-industry-profitable-if-environmental-costs-were-included/
I would say NONE!
von Schuckmann has a review out on earth energy imbalance and OHC.
“The study obtains a consistent long-term Earth system heat gain over the period 1971–2018, with a total heat gain of 358±37 ZJ, which is equivalent to a global heating rate of 0.47±0.1 W m−2. Over the period 1971–2018 (2010–2018), the majority of heat gain is reported for the global ocean with 89 % (90 %), with 52 % for both periods in the upper 700 m depth, 28 % (30 %) for the 700–2000 m depth layer and 9 % (8 %) below 2000 m depth. Heat gain over land amounts to 6 % (5 %) over these periods, 4 % (3 %) is available for the melting of grounded and floating ice, and 1 % (2 %) is available for atmospheric warming. Our results also show that EEI is not only continuing, but also increasing: the EEI amounts to 0.87±0.12 W m−2during 2010–2018. Stabilization of climate, the goal of the universally agreed United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992 and the Paris Agreement in 2015, requires that EEI be reduced to approximately zero to achieve Earth’s system quasi-equilibrium. The amount of CO2 in theatmosphere would need to be reduced from 410 to 353 ppm to increase heat radiation to space by 0.87 W m−2, bringing Earth back towards energy balance.”
“Our results show that EEIis not only continuing, but also increasing. Over the period 1971–2018 average EEI amounts to 0.47±0.1 W m−2, but it amounts to 0.87±0.12 W m−2 during 2010–2018 (Fig. 8).Concurrently, acceleration of sea-level rise (WCRP, 2018;Legelais et al., 2020), accelerated surface warming, record temperatures and sea ice loss in the Arctic (Richter-Mengeet al., 2019; WMO, 2020; Blunden and Arndt, 2020) and ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet (King et al., 2020), and intensification of atmospheric warming near the surface and in the troposphere (Steiner et al., 2020) have been – for example – recently reported. To what degree these changes are intrinsically linked needs further evaluations”
doi: /10.5194/essd-12-2013-2020
Very nice. open access. Read all about it.
sidd
Mr KIA @21, you are confusing economics with politics. Suggest you consult a dictionary.
26 – Split Dog
Just be thankful you arent living back in the 1800s when LA set most of their daily record highs:
http://www.laalmanac.com/weather/we04.php
I always thought LA had mild temps – nope – they hit 90s and 100s in many months of the year!
Re #1 Chippindale: thank you for linking to that excellent article. Suddenly I realized from where this famous two-degree nonsense comes: from the neoclassical vulgareconomists, cfr. Keens first figure, taken from the IPCC summary “for” (by) policymakers. It pretends to show that only after the global mean temperature rises above 2 degrees C above preindustrial value, there is any significant fall in GDP…
The arguments for this “calculation” is indeed complete nonsense, for here the neoclassical economists suddenly become all-knowing experts in climate science, ecology etc. Everyone here should read that paper by Steve Keen!
KIA 20: With the site that provides JAXA’s daily Arctic Sea Ice numbers ALLEGEDLY down for three days, leftists can now fabricate worst case alarmist data to present as fact in this important election year.
BPL: And KIA has gone full-blown paranoid conspiracy theorist. Way to go, KIA!
KVJ 25: clearly Marx is closer to the reality than Walras et al.
BPL: There’s nothing clear about that! Marginal utility theory makes accurate predictions of how markets behave, Marx does not. Marxism became a pseudoscience as soon as the theory of marginal utility was discovered (about simultaneously by three different researchers in three different countries, much as Darwin and Wallace both discovered natural selection and Adams and Leverrier both discovered Neptune). Marx would have been right if the labor theory of value was right, but it was wrong. Deal with it.
KIA, #20:—
I invoke the Stravinsky doctrine.
Karsten V. J. #25,
KVJ, thanks, but I was being a bit sarcastic there. Couple of points:
1. Comment #1 sounded like someone who throws around terms like neoliberal and neoclassical without a clue what they mean… like the other guys use “socialist” in place of “bad”. Lack of a response makes me think perhaps I was correct. And the truth is, even people who do this stuff for a living argue about the definitions, right?
2. If we are trying to look at the effects of climate change on the human condition globally, mixing it up with righteous moralizing and ideology is pointless, because the other guys just make up their own set of “goods” and “bads” to suit their purpose. The term “value” has no value.
3. Even the effort to characterize the effects in conventional macroeconomic terms is not going to change things very much. Do you think Russia, and Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, and so on, are going to stop promoting and pumping oil and gas because you show some spreadsheet that demonstrates some future negative economic consequences for them?
I’m not completely pessimistic, but the way forward requires some subtlety and a recognition that it will take time, and there will be great disruption, even if things get sorted eventually.
(And this discussion is perhaps better followed up on Forced Responses.)
29 jef: Oxy – Spot on! There is no profit motive to do anything that needs to be done.
Economics of biosphere destruction?
“New UN report finds almost no industry profitable if environmental costs were included”
I would say NONE!
Yet, ,ost here cling to current economics even after they are made aware economics and Capitalism, and other ~isms, are B.S.
Wake up, people. If NO industry is profitable if ecology is properly accounted, then ***you can’t have industry.***
And don’t need it.
24 E Axelrod: BJ – Economics is a combination of mathematical analysis tied to moral philosophy. So two economists can look at a similar situation and make very different judgments based on different value systems.
This is bass ackwards. Economics is philosophy layered over with maths to make it seem legit.
I don’t think that tarring all economists with a broad criticism is fair.
Well, they’re all wrong, but if you’re going to pay attention to any, pay attention to the Minsky/heterodox economists like Keen, etc.
Actually if industry had to pay the costs of its environmental externalities (and it should) they would just pass these costs onto the consumer and absorb some of them in efficiencies, and still make a profit on top of all that. So the UN article on the issue is a bit silly.
Seems to be getting off topic but my 2c worth –
Corruption, not Capitalism is at the heart of our problems addressing the energy/emissions/climate problem. Corruption, not Socialism is at the heart of the problem.
Nation’s that do best have elements of both Socialism and Capitalism and allow the balance to shift according to opportunity and need; those with extremes of either usually suffer, but if they are corrupt it doesn’t matter; they will be incapable of good governance and effective climate policy.
Regimes established and maintained by force will always choose to put themselves above the law – and a lot of communists/socialist regimes have been like that; they can dodge responsibility by decree and will favour loyalty to the regime in their appointments over abilities and dedication to best practice.
But Capitalists have their own toolkit for undermining democracy and the rule of law to ensure climate responsibility does not apply to them. Rather than the direct corruption of paying Baksheesh to avoid regulation or responsibility, the regulation itself is remade to their liking.
I think the best results addressing the climate problem will and do come from responsible free enterprise within democracies with the independent rule of law and it won’t matter if they lean a bit more towards Capitalism or towards Socialism. “Responsible” is the key word – climate science denial and obstructionism is all about avoidance of responsibility and accountability. And most especially avoidance of liability.
KIA 32: I always thought LA had mild temps – nope – they hit 90s and 100s in many months of the year!
BPL: I’m pretty damn sure they didn’t hit 120.
K 38: If NO industry is profitable if ecology is properly accounted, then ***you can’t have industry.***
And don’t need it.
BPL: I wonder who’ll manufacture your PC?
von Schuckmann et al (2020) ‘Heat stored in the Earth system: where does the energy go? presented up-thread by sidd @230 is a major piece of work with over two dozen co-authors (including a certain James Hansen). Perhaps its main message, other than their quantification of the global energy imbalance, is to urge the imbalance to be now adopted as a primary measure of AGW.
The Charctic interactive graph from NSIDC reports that Arctic SIE reached 3.800 km2–yes, they report to three decimals–yesterday. That’s considerably lower than any previous year, barring the record-low 2012.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
It still seems unlikely that we’ll catch 2012, but this is a pretty extraordinary melt year nonetheless. By the time we’re done, 2012 will seem much less the outlier, I think.
BJ Chippindale:
Thanks, I took a look. Keen launches his attack on “Neoclassical economists” by attacking Bill Nordhaus (my emphasis):
IANAE, thus ill-prepared to explain why DICE projections are, or are not, “utterly spurious”, or judge which exceptions are honorable. Relying on my scientific meta-literacy, I went straight to Wikipedia 8^):
The article reports Steve Keen’s criticisms of Nordhaus. I’m not qualified to challenge either guy. Nonetheless, note that Nordhaus’s Nobel was for developing the first models to integrate climate science and economics for cost estimation, not for his specific estimates. He appears to have garnered much positive peer recognition, as well as criticism. AFAICT, “with some honourable exceptions” his critics don’t reject the concept of IAMs, so much as the data they’re calibrated with.
As a non-expert, I’ll reserve judgement for now regarding Nordhaus’s relatively lukewarm estimates of AGW’s economic impact, labeling him neither denialist or alarmist in context. I, for one, favor an initially low carbon tax that increases on some schedule as its effects are observed. That’s primarily for political reasons. My policy preferences reflect both rising alarm and resigned expectations. Once again: if it’s done right, I provisionally conclude a US carbon fee and dividend with border adjustment tariff can drive a global transition to carbon-neutrality to completion as soon as 2050. IMHO, that’s the largest part of capping the eventual net total private and social cost of AGW as quickly and painlessly as feasible. Other policy options may or may not work as well, depending on the balance of political power. At present, that favors the deniers, so any official recognition that AGW even has costs is an advance. But yo – IANAE over here! Argue economics with Nordhaus and Keen, not me, and beware the D-K effect.
41 – Ken Fabian
“I think the best results addressing the climate problem will and do come from responsible free enterprise within democracies with the independent rule of law and it won’t matter if they lean a bit more towards Capitalism or towards Socialism….”
I think you are correct on free enterprise being most likely to produce best results. That is due to the profit motive. Guys with big brains like E-P and Al Bundy come up with good stuff all the time. Eventually someone will hit on a product that will cut energy use so much that everyone will flock to it, the inventor will get rich, and our CO2 emissions will plummet. It is also likely that we will have similar breakthroughs in energy production – fusion perhaps.
On Socialism, gotta be careful with that – it usually ends in tears; nigelj will perhaps learn from this one:
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/100-years-communism-death-deprivation
In other CC news, fires attributed to CC are being slowed by a massive summer snow storm in Colorado. 14″ of snow in summer with 415 ppm CO2? Looks that way:
https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2020/09/09/cameron-peak-fire-updates-up-14-inches-snow-but-blaze-still-active/5756938002/
JAXA’s Vishop SIE webpage is back in the land of the living again. In the interim, Arctic Sea Ice Extent has dropped into an emphatic second place behind 2012 in the melty league. Latest figures show SIE dropped to 3.59M sq km which is below that being discussed on the August UV thread just two weeks ago as the bottom of the SIE range being projected by the tag-end of past melt seasons. And, while we are now firmly into the period when SIE minimums appear, there may be still a bit more melt to come.
As for the more distant future:
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-climate-ultimately-humanity-ton-carbon.html
Ruinous.
#25 Too many people think that Karl Marx was an underground revolutionary, running around gluing his “Communist Manifesto” on walls, not the author of one of the major theories of capitalism in “Das Kapital”. Marx offers a primarily economic analysis. Another is Max Weber with “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, a primarily sociological analysis. The third is Joseph Schumpeter with “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy”, reduced to one concept:”creative destruction” through endless repetition. I read them all (Marx partially), because I prefer to know what I am talking about when criticizing economics.
We can debate for ever which one is closer to reality and we will never be sure about the answer, as it is impossible to prove, unlike, for example, the theory of evolution.
In the meantime we are confronted with the “destructive” destruction of our biosphere, caused by an economic model based on carbon-intensive energy and the orthodoxy of GDP growth.
Our energy, expertise and imagination have to focus on saving it. There are a few economists who have the right ideas on solutions. We need them.
Back to the topic: the West Coast is on fire, record fire and record heat. How many warnings do we need to take action?
#6 Just to clarify: I agree with Karsten’s comment and mine is complementary to it.