Costs more than doubling by mid century. Very concerning and significant.
Reality Checksays
Some people the-ipcc-sixth-assessment-report were discussing their ideas about coal and ff in general being replaced by renewables reasonably quickly and long term.
Here’s some recent info from the IEA (yes, no one body is the font of all knowledge), but the IEA does have a degree of credibility and consistency about it, worth being aware of what their latest data might be telling us – in conjunction with the IPCC reports coming out.
2) April 2021
Renewable electricity generation in 2021 is set to expand by more than 8% to reach 8 300 TWh, the fastest year-on-year growth since the 1970s
China alone should account for almost half of the global increase in renewable electricity in 2021
Over the course of 2021, China is expected to generate 600 TWh and the United States 400 TWh, together representing more than half of global wind output. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2021/renewables
(while the rhetoric about China remains negative on climate change responses/action/contributions)
(Perspective needed – the Global electricity generation in 2019-2020 was ~27,000 TWh – half the global Wind output by China and USA was only 1000 TWh or 3.7% )
3) April 2021
Global coal demand declined 4% in 2020, the biggest drop since World War II. The main driver of the decline was lower electricity demand owing to Covid‑19 restrictions and the resulting economic downturn.
The power sector accounted for just over 40% of the drop in coal use in 2020, but the rapid increase in coal-fired generation in Asia sees it account for three-quarters of the rebound in 2021. Gas prices are also expected to rise in 2021, leading to some switching back to coal, notably in the United States and the European Union. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2021/coal
4) May 2021
Net Zero by 2050 – A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector
Pledges by governments to date – even if fully achieved – fall well short of what is required to bring global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050
Our Net Zero by 2050 Roadmap provides a pathway to reach this formidable and critical goal, setting out more than 400 milestones for what needs to be done, and when, to decarbonise the global economy in just three decades. 2020 Fossil fuels account for almost 80% of TES
The path to net-zero emissions is narrow – For solar power, it is equivalent to installing the world’s current largest solar park roughly every day – from today to 2030.
REF https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050
Every day?
nigeljsays
Ignore the IEA because they are not a reliable source on renewable energy. The IEA predictions on uptake of solar and wind power have repeatedly proven to be far too pessimistic. Refer:
If you had been a participant on The Oil Drum, you’d have known this long ago. In fact, you’d have known the IEA gets pretty much every projection seriously wrong.
nigeljsays
Killian on previous page.
“it is hypocritical to consistently and pejoratively critique things you have a personal beef about because you have a dislike of the primary person on a forum supporting said issue.
Except that your definition of hypocrisy is wrong. And I don’t criticise things you write or post simply because of any views I have about you personally. I criticise things because they wrong or not workable or useful etcetera.
I heard about ” simplification”, and simple living decades ago when hippy communes were all the fashion. I rejected it back then as mostly unworkable.
Killiansays
I don’t criticise things you write or post simply because of any views I have about you personally.
Denial has many ways of presenting.
Reality Checksays
Climate change: The rich are to blame, international study finds
By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analyst
Published
16 March 2020 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51906530
The rich are primarily to blame for the global climate crisis, a study by the University of Leeds of 86 countries claims.
The wealthiest tenth of people consume about 20 times more energy overall than the bottom ten, wherever they live.
The gulf is greatest in transport, where the top tenth gobble 187 times more fuel than the poorest tenth, the research says.
That’s because people on the lowest incomes can rarely afford to drive.
The researchers found that the richer people became, the more energy they typically use. And it was replicated across all countries.
And they warn that, unless there’s a significant policy change, household energy consumption could double from 2011 levels by 2050. That’s even if energy efficiency improves.
See Research Paper
Large inequality in international and intranational energy footprints between income groups and across consumption categories
Authors: Yannick Oswald, Anne Owen & Julia K. Steinberger https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-0579-8 (restricted access)
Inequality in energy consumption, both direct and indirect, affects the distribution of benefits that result from energy use. Detailed measures of this inequality are required to ensure an equitable and just energy transition. Here we calculate final energy footprints; that is, the energy embodied in goods and services across income classes in 86 countries, both highly industrialized and developing.
Our results consequently expose large inequality in international energy footprints: the consumption share of the bottom half of the population is less than 20% of final energy footprints, which in turn is less than what the top 5% consume.
Reality Checksays
The IPCC AR6 WG3 scientists apparently agree with the above and Kevin Anderson’s long term work.
The top 10% of emitters globally, who are the wealthiest 10%, contribute between 36 and 45% of emissions, which is 10 times as much as the poorest 10%, who are responsible for only about three to 5%, the report finds.
“The consumption patterns of higher income consumers are associated with large carbon footprints. Top emitters dominate emissions in key sectors, for example the top 1% account for 50% of emissions from aviation,” the summary says.
The report underlines the lifestyle changes that will be necessary, particularly in rich countries and among the wealthy globally. Refraining from over-heating or over-cooling homes, walking and cycling, cutting air travel and using energy-consuming appliances less can all contribute significantly to the reductions in emissions needed, the report finds.
2020
Rapid transformation needed, Kevin Anderson says, particularly in lifestyles of rich
Anderson is a professor of energy and climate change, working across the universities of Manchester, Uppsala in Sweden and Bergen in Norway. He said: “The constructive, meticulous criticism of the government, which is failing abysmally by any measure, is fine. The problem is the framing the CCC has for net zero is already far removed from what is needed to meet our Paris commitments.”
He said: “Many senior academics, senior policymakers, basically the great and good of the climate world have decided that it is unhelpful to rock the status quo boat and therefore choose to work within that political paradigm – they’ll push it as hard as they think it can go, but they repeatedly step back from questioning the paradigm itself.”
He said the models also ignored the fact that it was the lifestyles of a relatively wealthy few that gave rise to the lion’s share of emissions.
“Globally the wealthiest 10% are responsible for half of all emissions, the wealthiest 20% for 70% of emissions. If regulations forced the top 10% to cut their emissions to the level of the average EU citizen, and the other 90% made no change in their lifestyles, that would still cut total emissions by a third.
“If we were serious about this crisis we could do this in a year – if we were really serious we could do it in a month, but we are not and our emissions just keep rising.”
(green news article) What’s the Degrowth Movement all about?
Proponents of degrowth are often at pains to defend the theory to its critics, and as a result the conversation and narrative around it often ends up hijacked. So, we wanted to take a deeper look at what degrowth would mean in a tangible, digestible sense.
In Ms. Whyte’s view, degrowth is something that is going to happen as we reach our planetary boundaries and the option in front of us is not whether to reject or accept it, but instead to either manage it in a way that can potentially improve livelihoods and reduce inequalities or allow it to happen without any control. https://greennews.ie/degrowth-explainer/
Here’s an article on Ars Technica about how so-called “blue hydrogen” (hydrogen produced by cracking methane via high-pressure steam while recovering the CO2 by-product) might be worse than burning coal.
Reality Checksays
Aug. 12, 2021 – A wildfire raging in northeastern Siberia could become the largest in recorded history
The republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Russia’s largest and coldest region, has been devastated by unprecedented wildfires that are now larger than the rest of the world’s blazes combined. The largest of these fires has exceeded 1.5 million hectares in size, the Greenpeace environmental group’s forestry head Alexey Yaroshenko told The Moscow Times.
A former skeptic of man-made climate change, the Russian leader called on authorities to do everything possible to help Siberians affected by the region’s gigantic wildfires, as well as Russians living in the flood-hit south of the country.
“In the south (of Russia), the monthly norm of rainfall now falls in a few hours and in the Far East on the contrary, forest fires in drought conditions are spreading rapidly,” Putin said.
“All of this once again shows how important it is for us to deeply and systematically work on the climate and environment agenda,” he said. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/08/14/putin-alarmed-over-unprecedented-natural-disasters-in-russia-a74788
Reality Checksays
Uncensored Science
2 July 2021 James Hansen
Part of a Foreword he wrote:
But, like a cancer, the role of special interests and money in our government continued to grow.
Truth is the enemy of special interests
Gradually, truth became malleable to politicians. They became elite and addicted to the money
of special interests. They justified taking money as being required for their campaigns, but it
also supported their lifestyles. Their first priority became their own reelection, not the best
interests of the public. […]
The stated objective of
the (UNFCCC) is “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere
at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.
Such a level should be achieved within a timeframe sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt
naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable
economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner” (United Nations, 1992).
Yet even three decades later,
the Framework Convention has had almost no effect in stemming the growth of
atmospheric greenhouse gases. Indeed, after the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, global fossil fuel
emissions of CO2 the principal drive of global warming, accelerated faster!
If scientists do not speak up, policies will continue on the disastrous course defined by special interests.
Scientific reticence can amount to self-censorship – Indeed, damage from excessive reticence can exceed that from ham-handed government strictures. […]
Scientific reticence (Hansen, 2007) arises partly from the reward structure. A scientist
crying danger is rebuked – by fellow scientists and funders – as we learned in the 1980s. But
there is no penalty for “fiddling while Rome burns.” Indeed, a scientist who lards his
conclusions with excessive caveats and uncertainties is rewarded.
Caution has merits, but in the case of ice sheets and sea level rise, we may rue reticence,
if it locks in future disasters. […]
Resistance by scientists to scientific discovery is widely acknowledged, even though it
clashes with the vision of science as open-minded and unbiased.
Barber (1961) notes famous scientists who chaffed bitterly at this resistance and is disappointed
that they offer only vague explanations, such as “scientists are human” or “fear of novelty.”
Richard Feynman (1986) described resistance that embarrasses physicists. […]
I believe that the IPCC-led climate research community is slowly – too slowly – inching
toward conclusions about climate change that are needed for policy purposes. In my opinion,
one of the reasons for this excessive slowness is an unusual form of resistance and censorship
imposed by scientists who are respected authorities.
Blackballing by grand poohbahs includes both resistance to discovery and censorship
To blackball is to ostracize. Blackballing may not be widespread, but it’s relevant to the climate
story and many of the chapters of this book. I use our paper Ice melt, sea level rise and
superstorms (Hansen et al., 2016), hereinafter abbreviated as Ice melt, as a case in point because
it brings out the physics and the poohbahs. […]
Eerily related: Michael Mann giving testimony this year about the destructive role of the Murdoch Media (NewsCorp) Press and TV News & Cable Networks (FoxNews, SkyNews)- about lies, distortions, disinformation to the public, and political interference.
Climate scientist Michael Mann’s full testimony to the Australian Senate Media Diversity Inquiry https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1381620863770968068
The larger story behind these two ‘tip of the iceberg’ stories (and the funding of climate science denial activities by FF special interests) is how powerful players work behind the scenes to influence and manipulate public opinion and a whole lot more.
It’s not an accident nor just bad luck that FF use and GHG emissions are the highest they have ever been despite 30 years of fairly solid climate science and the UNFCCC supposedly setup to stabilize them asap.
No one wants to be the bearer of bad news. And no one wants to hear it either. This simple fact of life makes both of them easy targets.
Killiansays
Hansen is one of less than five scientists who tell it like it is, or at least get close. K. Anderson, Tim Jackson, etc.
Please let me repeat this one critical line: it is really important not only because it is true but also because it really matters now more than ever:
“If scientists do not speak up, policies will continue on the disastrous course defined by special interests.”
Reality Checksays
(In the news)
An 18-year-old student and climate change campaigner is bidding for a seat on the board of energy company AGL, Australia’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter.
AGL says emissions from its coal and gas power plants were 42.2Mt last financial year and make up about 8% of Australia’s entire greenhouse gas footprint.
He would push the company to become a 100% renewable power generator within nine years “before we pass a turning point that leads to climate catastrophe”.
Nicholas Klein’s words are often summarized as: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Reality Checksays
An open letter to all climate scientists Time to tell it like it is
Bill McGuire
Jul 19
OK. Let’s not beat about the bush. While our world has been going to hell in a handcart, many of you studying and recording its demise have had nothing to say on the subject and have remained deep in the shadows, when what has been needed is for you to hog the limelight. The cod justification you have used is always the same, https://billmcguire.substack.com/p/an-open-letter-to-all-climate-scientists
Killiansays
This is a great example of Diminishing Returns on Complexity: Need a trailer full of batteries to make your EV practical, essentially doubling up on consumption for 100 more miles if range.
Summary
Climate Change is an existential risk to human civilization. Mobilizing for net zero emissions (NZE) by 2030 is critical. A 2050 NZE time-frame will not prevent catastrophic outcomes. A cluster of abrupt climate changes and tipping points could occur between 1.5C and 2.0C. It is well understood by the climate science community that goals to limit warming to under 2.0C are prescriptions for disaster. Longer term targets and promises of future CCS/DAC/BECCS technologies are excuses for procrastination. The world is presently on a path of +3C to +5C of warming by 2100 or soon after which would end civilization as we know it.
The current global warming of a +1.2C temperature increase since 1850 is already dangerous.
+1.5C occurring before 2030 is virtually certain now.
+2.0C is likely before 2050 even with actions better than the Paris-NZE commitments.
+3.0C is likely around 2075 on the current trajectory and would be catastrophic for humanity.
+5.0C before 2100 is possible without immediate sustained drastic long term emissions reductions.
We are heading for levels of warming incompatible with an organized global community. The collapse of civilization is not inevitable but emergency-level action right now is critical to avoid it.
Dr Charlie Gardner @CharlieJGardner
18 Aug
I am a scientist and I have dedicated my life to understanding and preventing the destruction of our planet. My knowledge compels me to rise up against our Omnicidal system and I’ll be doing that with @XRebellionUK on August 23rd. Trafalgar Sq https://extinctionrebellion.uk/event/rebellion/ https://twitter.com/CharlieJGardner
There’s been a big shift and it is gaining momentum. Most of the conversations are already heading in that direction. There is very little tolerance left for dodging, dissembling, reticence and time wasters. The days of the weak-willed middle-of-the-road Inactivist Greenwasher are over.
James Edward Hansen @DrJamesEHansen
Jul 2 Politicians tell the public what they want to hear. Leaders tell them what they need to know, even if it is uncomfortable. Do we have a political leader?
Aug 14
Global warming acceleration can be traced to decreased aerosols. Full payment in our Faustian bargain is coming due. Looks like our children and grandchildren will be stuck with the tab. Sorry. https://twitter.com/DrJamesEHansen
Peter Kalmus @ClimateHuman
Aug 17
Wow, folks, I’ve really got to say I didn’t think we’d be at this point in climate breakdown this soon. My concern has been extremely high for a long time, but it is at entirely new levels now. No words. Feeling **extremely** not good about the prospect of +1.5°C. Let alone what comes beyond. https://twitter.com/ClimateHuman/status/1427460082313293826
@GeorgeMonbiot
Aug 17
Every climate scientist and environmental journalist should make a decision. Is our role merely to document the unfolding tragedy, with sighs and groans about the follies of humankind?
Or also to seek to stop the greatest catastrophe humanity has ever faced? I say the latter. https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1427529592231899158
“You need to explain, clearly, why when scientists are saying we’re in deep trouble, the risks are worse than even many scientists realize, you *still* advocate incrementalism.”
Nuclear energy is cheaper than residential roof top solar.
Nuclear energy is mostly cheaper than commercial/industrial PV solar.
Nuclear is the same price or less than Gas Peaking plants
Nuclear is the same price or slightly more expensive than Solar Thermal Tower with Storage
U.S. Federal Tax Subsidies make all renewable options slightly less expensive relative to all other energy supply.
A carbon price range of $20 – $40/Ton of carbon would increase the LCOE for certain conventional (FF) generation technologies to levels above those of onshore wind and utility-scale solar … but they did not mention that also applies to Nuclear energy too maing it marginally cheaper again.
A carbon price range of $100 – $200/Ton which is where it should already be set at, would immediately make Nuclear Energy price much more competitive with all Gas and Coal (and naturally Oil as well re land transportation for EVs)
A rational carbon price like that would immediately make all Nuclear Energy much cheaper than Gas Peaking plants as well as Diesel powered generation. (see Africa for where that is most used to supply city grids)
PLUS and this is critically important – Nuclear Energy can perform multiple functions that none of the other energy sources can do. Or will never do or cannot do for the price or as efficiently.
NOW Lazard’s is a respected source, but there are other sources. There’s no guarantee Lazard’s is the most accurate or uptodate or considers all the relevant information in all circumstances … plus many things are different from one country to another. Therefore it is best to assume Lazard’s is not automatically applicable without checking the underlying assumption and facts relied upon.
When it comes to how much energy costs and how resource dependent one form is over another, the preferred cherry-picked Logical Fallacies and emotive motivations of this person vs that person tend to rule the day.
Don’t believe anyone – do your own high quality research – educate yourself better & continually over time about the finer details of a subject – and the History of it. Only then you can avoid assuming without good reason Lazards or any commenter on a climate forum knows better than you do about a subject.
1. The USA and it’s social norms are not universal, it is the exception not the norm and is therefore an irrelevant yardstick for the rest of the world – the 96% – to even consider the USA as part of the mix when making rational long term decisions about energy supply where they live and work. This is plain common sense. It should be self-evident unfortunately for many it is not, and it never is. Plus, the USA is far from being an exemplar of best practice standards.
1.1. Until the late 1990s the Australian electricity generation, grid network and retailers were 100% owned and operated by State Governments. And the mining of coal was also tightly controlled by State government regulations (as is the case everywhere) along with the long term supply contracts to electricity generators.
Why? Simple plain common sense, economics, applied intelligence, and logic was applied. That works every time it happens on any topic. That’s why it worked and delivered global best practice results.
1.2 Australia had the most reliable and the cheapest electricity supply in the entire world through the latter of the 20th century, despite a huge land area and a small population – cheap as dirt coal really helped too. Australia was not the USSR, Communist China, Cuba or France or the UK either, so extremely biased opinions bordering on hysterical mindless politics (USA:101) had nothing to do with what was done and achieved.
1.3 Even the most right wing state govt was doing the same and they were the first to provide free public hospital system in Australia, long before Medicare arrived with Universal Health Care. Paid for by profits from the electricity and other services they provided. Echoes of Thatcher and Reagan being the biggest vocal Govt proponents for action on climate change. Today’s political/economic norms are neither normal nor sane.
1.4 All the voters (+80%?) irrespective of their politics loved the system and how cheap it was. It no longer is since Govts sold off the majority of electricity assets to the private sector. Now electricity is amongst the most expensive in the world. And much less reliable and is now often responsible for starting wildfires due to poor maintenance standards vs the past.
2. Rational private investors already choose to put money into nuclear plants and new technology. Some investors are even still building coal and gas powered plants. And whether new nuclear investments are govt or private is irrelevant to the facts of the matter of:- is it sustainable, is it non-carbon emissions energy supply, is it cheap enough, and is it safe as per the IAEA standards, and is the nuclear waste cycle managed effectively and does meet the needs of a nation long term far beyond 50 years from now and to the end of the century?
2.1 What holds back expansion and increases costs and unnecessary delays are emotive reactions, a lack of accurate information, and onerous unreasonable govt imposed restrictions and unreasonable safety concerns, mainly an effect of over-reacting to community concerns and protests, rather than heeding the actual evidence.
2.3 While the latter persists the prior hard evidence is irrelevant and that is what restricts equitable and rational long term investment in the sector by govt and private sources.
Opinions and judgments vary in the extreme.
Because “The world is divided into those who think they are right.”
Killiansays
There is no pathway to sustaunability that does not include a jubilee aka debt forgiveness.
Most ‘Wealth’ Isn’t the Result of Hard Work. It Has Been Accumulated by Being Idle and Unproductive. It has always been so. It’s time to call the housing crisis what it really is: the largest transfer of wealth in living memory. “In Britain, we have yet to confront the truth about the trillions of pounds of wealth amassed through the housing market in recent decades: this wealth has come straight out of the pockets of those who don’t own property.” https://evonomics.com/unproductive-rent-housing-macfarlane/#:~:text=Most%20of%20today's%20'wealth'%20isn,at%20the%20expense%20of%20others
Not only the UK but throughout the developed world the existing global economic system is driving the housing crisis everywhere – and the irrational equity markets – especially most recently on steroids during this Cov19 pandemic period. And unless and until the majority of people truly recognize the direct systemic relationships and connections between these things and the intransigence, lack of action on climate change by Governments everywhere nothing will be done, ever.
More along Keen economics and Truth-telling:
Economists must grapple with climate tipping points before it’s too late
A groundbreaking new model suggests that we’ve massively underestimated the social costs of carbon. Aug 2021
Civilization-ending changes are not likely, but they’re not a zero probability either. Legendary Harvard economist Martin Weitzman called these low-probability, high-impact possibilities “tail risks” and was famous for warning that economists are not taking them into account — and thus are underestimating the need for rapid decarbonization. […]
We are underestimating climate risks and overestimating the costs of action
As its principal metric, the study uses the “social cost of carbon” (SCC), meant to capture the total social and environmental damage done by the emission of a ton of carbon dioxide. For convenience, the paper uses the current U.S. government SCC figure, which is about $51. [..]
This is the significance of tipping points: We are playing with fire, pushing Earth systems to the point that there is a small-but-real chance that some of them will break down entirely, entering phase shifts and becoming something permanently less stable and hospitable.
If that happens, we will have consigned all future generations of human beings to inexorably and irreversibly deteriorating conditions. It is a crime worse than any genocide, worse than any atrocity conceived or conceivable, and even if there is only a small chance that we might stumble into committing it, we should be hyper-cautious. We should spend a lot of money to reduce that risk, to insure against it.
You might notice that we are not, as a global community or within the U.S., expending $50/ton worth of effort to reduce emissions, much less $300/ton. In that sense, this study is just one more voice in the chorus urging (Governments) policymakers to go bigger and faster on decarbonization.
These sensible thoughtful rational ideas and accumulated facts are not reported on via the WEF in Davos or the latest G7 G20 OECD meetings, nor in the US Senate. It would be wonderful were climate scientists and the IPCC to seriously grapple with tipping points treating them with the hyper-caution they warrant..
Instead the scientific community continue to hide behind their assertion of insufficient evidence. When the absence of evidence is not and never will be evidence of absence. A logical fallacy if there ever was one. For good judgement, as King Solomon proves, is not solely reliant upon the existence of irrefutable scientific evidence.
In a world where we are not spending anything near $50 per ton to drive down emissions as they instead continue to rise higher, people and organizations including scientists writing up IPCC Reports, are promoting unproven high-tech solutions that could cost anywhere between $100 to $1000 a ton to implement in the future.
Which is the functional definition of insanity, surely? But fanatical ideological Capitalists, Neoliberals and Bankers simply love it this kind of thinking.
At multiple levels people throughout society, academics and scientists or not, seem incapable of thinking rationally and objectively about climate change and the self-evident immediate solutions already to hand.
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind ….
Reality Checksays
In his book Climate Shock, co-authored with his protégé, New York University’s Gernot Wagner, Weitzman argued that the right way to think about climate mitigation is not through a cost-benefit lens, as though particular levels of spending avoid specific levels of damages, but instead as a kind of insurance. We purchase insurance to cover against tail risks all the time, not because we think they’re likely to happen, but because the consequences would be so dire if they did.
“Economic Impacts of Tipping Points in the Climate System” represents the first formal attempt to quantify the economic impacts of tipping point risks. The results are startling: The economic impact of carbon emissions is much higher than has been acknowledged, as is the value of reducing emissions.
The devilishly difficult task of quantifying risks
The authors of the study adopt a common definition of tipping points: “subsystems of the Earth system that are at least subcontinental in scale and can be switched — under certain circumstances — into a qualitatively different state by small perturbations.”
They included the eight tipping points that have been studied by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
• Thawing of permafrost, leading to carbon feedback resulting in additional carbon dioxide and methane emissions, which flow back into the carbon dioxide and methane cycles.
• Dissociation of ocean methane hydrates, resulting in additional methane emissions, which flow back into the methane cycle.
• Arctic sea ice loss (also known as ‘the surface albedo feedback’), resulting in changes in radiative forcing, which directly affects warming.
• Dieback of the Amazon rainforest, releasing carbon dioxide, which flows back into the carbon dioxide cycle.
• Disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet, increasing sea-level rise.
• Disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, increasing sea-level rise.
• Slowdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, modulating the relationship between global mean surface temperature and national mean surface temperature.
• Variability of the Indian summer monsoon, directly affecting GDP per capita in India.
In the end, they focused on 21 papers that actually linked the geophysical mechanisms of tipping points to economic damages.
The brilliant methodological move the paper makes is pulling these different studies — many using different models with different assumptions — into a single “meta-model,” with replicas of each studied tipping point combined in a single framework. (There is a great deal of discussion of this innovative approach in the paper, and even more in an extended appendix, if you’re interested.)
PS another important Tipping Point (imo) are the coral reefs. Near +1.5C GSAT increase or above circa 2030-2040 or by 2050 at the very latest it’s almost certain the majority of coral reefs will be destroyed becoming unsustainable, the great barrier reef included. Caused by ocean heat waves, de oxygenation, and coral bleaching in particular where the reefs cannot recover before the next high impact.
In the short-medium term coastal regions and populated island atolls currently protected by reefs will no longer be protected from ocean waves as in the past, plus extreme events of severe storms and cyclones will probably cause a lot of damage and storm surge flooding. New Surf beaches will arise where none have existed for millions of years.
Another major impact will be how the loss of coral reefs might affect marine species and fish stocks. Then subsequently any impost upon human food supply of protein.
The other more immediate economic impact will be the effect upon tourism revenues and employment. Despite an active group of activists and climate marine scientists this looming loss of coral reefs attracts a very high level of denial by Governments. Pacific islanders excluded.
Killiansays
The real question is, why haven’t these more comprehensive approaches been happening all along? It’s a *system*, after all.
And, see? Risk! Somebody must be listening…
Reality Checksays
It’s a *system*, after all.
Yes, but killian, many many people believe they already know it all.
“…underscored that the necessary technologies barely exist—and will be tremendously difficult to deploy.”
“The model used to create the most optimistic scenario in the report, which limits warming to 1.5 ˚C, assumes the world will figure out ways to remove about 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year by mid-century and 17 billion by 2100.”
[ noting the +1.5C limit is already blown with emissions already in the pipeline this decade, as is the SSP1-1.9 scenario unachievable short or long term. https://www.climaterealitycheck.net/download ]
“In the model above, nearly all the carbon removal is achieved through an “artificial” approach known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS. ….But despite the billions and billions of tons of carbon removal that climate models are banking on through BECCS, it’s only been done in small-scale projects to date. ”
“Chapter five of the report lays out a variety of other trade-offs and unknowns surrounding pretty much every potential approach to wide-scale carbon removal.
“Carbon-sucking machines require large amounts of energy and materials. Planting more trees for carbon sequestration or crops for fuels will compete with growing food for an expanding global population.
“Climate change itself will undermine the ability of forests to suck up and store carbon dioxide, as the risks of droughts, wildfires, and insect infestations grow with rising temperatures.”
“The good news is there are a variety of ways to remove carbon from the air, and a growing number of research groups and companies are working to develop better, cheaper methods. But as Monday’s report makes clear, we’re falling far behind in a race with very high stakes.”
Reality Checksays
In addition to the global temperature outcomes of policies and pledges, the CAT also assesses the expected absolute emissions in 2030 and compares these with emissions consistent with benchmark pathways in line with the 1.5°C Paris Agreement goal.
The current global warming of a +1.2C temperature increase since 1850 is already dangerous.
+1.5C occurring before 2030 is virtually certain now.
+2.0C is likely before 2050 even with actions better than the Paris-NZE commitments.
+3.0C is likely around 2075 on the current trajectory and would be catastrophic for humanity.
+5.0C before 2100 is possible without immediate sustained drastic long term emissions reductions.
We are heading for levels of warming incompatible with an organized global community. The collapse of civilization is not inevitable but emergency-level action right now is critical to avoid it. https://www.climaterealitycheck.net/download
Carbomontanussays
Dr. R Check
I cannot quite follow this. Remember Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem.
If possible, could you slaughter it down to what we can possibly grasp?
Reality Checksays
I believe what people can possibly grasp is entirely up to them. I have no say in it.
Whether I post nothing, or only post a url. Copy paste the headline or add a whole sentence. Add a short paragraph or bold six in a row.
This makes no difference to what readers decide to read or take in.
I only share what I feel is appropriate, meaningful and/or takes my attention.
And what is next via Twitter is quite good yet depressing.
This follows years of the same newspapers pedaling climate denial. Outright Denial is no longer an option in the UK, we’ve entered a new phase of predatory delay.
Predatory delay is the blocking or slowing of needed change, in order to make money off unsustainable, unjust systems in the meantime.
It is increasingly clear that there’s now a concerted effort under way in parts of the British press to derail action on the #ClimateEmergency.
This Thread (with reference to news articles) highlights key examples & shows how the main arguments are textbook #ClimateDelay
In the red corner, the compelling evidence presented in the AR6 WG1 SPM ….
In the blue corner, the unsupportable logical fallacies myths and falsehoods found in the 31/n items listed by Dr. Aaron Thierry ….
And the winner is ….. wait for it …… the blue corner!
aka the Murdoch Media, Lawson’s GWPF et al These guys know how to work as a team. Supporting each other no matter what, while playing the long game and outwitting the competition at every turn.
Another example of a really bad strategy: Framing one’s position around the main taking points of your adversary.
“You are against George W. Bush’s Tax Relief Program. Why don’t you support it?”
Reality Checksays
Kevin Anderson Aug 2021
A useful thread highlighting how many denialists have morphed into snake-oil sellers, pedalling incremental tweaks as an alternative to real-scale action. Whilst others are protecting their hi-CO2/consumption lifestyles behind false concern for those less well off than they are.
What these people are pointing to, along with Mann’s New Climate War book, is Neoliberalism’s reactionary program against Man-Made Global Warming. This Neoliberal program was flagged and warned about years to decades ago.
First the denial of climate science while spreading doubt about elites, then add in cap and trade carbon pricing as a market solution to delay action, third comes geoengineering and looming hi-tech proto-solutions, fourth comes disaster response economics, and fifth comes emergency agriculture solutions …. and then …..
Neoliberalism is an ideological faith based belief system and mindset. Neoliberalism requires the belief in an ‘omniscient being’ – the all-knowing market – transcending all other systems of knowledge. This ‘all-knowing market’ does not exist in reality but adherents to the Cause are unperturbed by this fact.
Real progress to solve global warming might begin to be made once it’s accepted that climate change is not a science problem nor can it be solved by science or scientists. Global warming is the manifestation of a collection of social, psychological, political and economic problems with solutions grounded in Humanist Principles and Reason.
Neoliberalism is winning hands down so far. They operate as a team, they back each other up, they have faith in the same superior being, and hold to the same Mindset. Whereas Environmentalists, Climate activists and Climate scientists will eat their own young when there is the slightest disagreement or misunderstanding.
I must repeat it again. Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem!
Because, it may have the opposite of the intended effect.
It is like reading through large bounces of obsolete litterature and newspapers, that better go for re- cycling of cellulose- products.
Pleace dig out the essencials better and state it on comprehensible form. That is scientific.
And be aware of the opposite, a certain fictional figure, Nicolas Chauvin, who engaged and fought for the Nation and the Principle down into the details in all the wars, and who was ousted at last by Napoleon himself, for praising Napoleon and The Nation and its Principles up to levels and horizons that were no more credible.
See also Chauvinism.
Reality Checksays
Yes, I can slaughter it down to what you can possibly grasp.
This is very easy.
I am done. No more. Goodbye.
See also Bon Voyage
Carbomontanussays
By such manners, they rather close their sho0ps also.
Should we have any hope for that?
Reality Checksays
Some people like to blame China for its vast emissions and indeed it must do much better.
But for countries like the USA and many others in the OECD/EU it would actually be a good start to cut their Emissions per Person down to Chinese levels: https://twitter.com/LasseClimate/status/1429129152716804105/photo/1
We’re done with broken promises. We’re done with politicians who care more for Exxon lobbyists than for our future. We’re done with pipelines.
One of the worst things Biden has done so far – I’d argue THE worst thing – is to double down on the fossil fuel industry while the planet is burning.
Governments must stop kicking the can down the road and actually begin rapidly decreasing the fossil fuel industry. The choice is stark: end the fossil fuel industry or suffer global civilizational collapse.
More people are realizing this; the faster it happens, the more we save.
It’s much too late to prevent climate breakdown (it’s here in case you haven’t noticed) but it’s the perfect time to keep it to a minimum and save absolutely all we can.
I’m all for freedom, but if your planet becomes uninhabitable due to everyone’s freedom to burn fossil fuel and as a result of this you become dead, you don’t have any freedom at all.
Are you a scientist, researcher or academic?
If so, please sign and share this open letter calling for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
We, the undersigned, call on governments around the world to adopt and implement a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, as a matter of urgency, to protect the lives and livelihoods of present and future generations through a global, equitable phase out of fossil fuels in line with the scientific consensus to not exceed 1.5ºC of warming. https://fossilfueltreaty.org/open-letter
@MichaelEMann has signed it.
I’ll be checking the list … to see if you do.
Reality Checksays
Hat tip to M Mann …
One is struck by the ironic mendacity of these false and insidious accusations
We see other remarkable parallels seeking to discredit others by misrepresenting their words and phrases
When it comes to the agenda of inactivism, we once again witness After years when we should have learned of the dangers of ‘false equivalence,’ it baffles me that we are seeing a framing that pits the health of our entire planet against some vague notion of economic prosperity.”
If scientists choose not to engage in the public debate, we leave a vacuum that will be filled by those whose agenda is one of short-term self-interest.
There is a great cost to society if scientists fail to participate in the larger conversation—if we do not do all we can to ensure that the policy debate is informed by an honest assessment of the risks.
In fact, it would be an abrogation of our responsibility to society if we remained quiet in the face of such a grave threat.
Killiansays
But Mann should be talking about the science in the context of risks and extremes, not solutions. He’s way off in the weeds on the solutions side of things.
Reality Checksays
I agree with you there Killian. And I was being a little poetic generic as well.
Anyway, sometimes what Mann says is a good way to say it. Of course, like all humans he’s imperfect.
Reality Checksays
Here is a recent video of M Mann. He’s reviewing the content of his book, the new climate war.
If you can spare an hour, please tell the group what you think about the ideas and recommendations Mann is offering up to 1) Win the new climate war and 2) how to avoid dangerous catastrophic warming / climate change. ie Keep below 1.5C/2C ????
Killiansays
Why? It’s always the same: Tech, tech, tech. I’m sure by now the obvious has become too obvious for him to ignore and he’s adding in some NET stuff, but basically it’s consume “green” and all will be well.
Nobody should be listening to Mann in the solutions side; he’s not saying anything unique and his view is an example of Pied Pipering – as all greenwashing is.
Reality Checksays
PS fyi
Mann devotes the longest chapter of his book to climate doomism
In one key paragraph, Mann notes that state-of-the-art climate simulations ‘provide no support at all for a runaway warming scenario at even 4º or 5ºC, let alone 3ºC, which is where current policies are now likely taking us as we slowly decarbonize the economy.
As for “mass extinction”, the most comprehensive study to date, published in April 2020 in the premier science journal Nature found that less than 2 percent of species assemblages will undergo collapse… from climate change if we keep planetary warming below 2ºC. The number rises to 15 percent if warming reaches 4ºC. That is certainly very troubling, but it doesn’t constitute a “mass extinction” event of the sort that is evident in the geological record.’
Moreover, far from being inevitably doomed, ‘a clean energy revolution and climate stabilisation are achievable with current technology. All we require are policies to incentivise the needed shift.’
Politically, Mann appears fairly centrist (he was an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election campaign, for example). It’s not clear to me that the forms of bipartisan compromise that he favours are even possible with today’s Republican party.
On the last page of The New Climate War, Mann speculates that in a decade or so we may look back on 2019, or thereabouts, as ‘the turning point on the climate crisis’.
Killiansays
Mann devotes the longest chapter of his book to climate doomism
In one key paragraph, Mann notes that state-of-the-art climate simulations ‘provide no support at all for a runaway warming scenario at even 4º or 5ºC, let alone 3ºC, which is where current policies are now likely taking us as we slowly decarbonize the economy.
So, let me see if I’ve got this right: Scenarios civilization will not survive intact, i.e. that will bring about collapse, i.e. 3C+, are not disasters? This is bizarre that for Mann only a Venus-like atmosphere equals “doom.” I think the collapse of society is a pretty freaking good definition of “doom.” Me pointing out that 1. he can’t actually know this because these are scenarios, not proclamations from God of what will be, 2. the IPCC assessments, and climate science in general, have pretty significantly underestimated change to date, so such certitude of the future seems full of hubris, 3. there’s more to this than just climate science, i.e. resource depletions (so much for a long-term green tech high tech society), impacts from extremes, non-climate-related ecological damage (plastics, eutrophic zones, etc.) and 4. the planet has never been in this situation before with the entire ecosystem being degraded concurrently leaving virtually no hysteresis – no process of one domino having to knock down another, etc., as all the dominoes are being knocked down simultaneously, that got him to block me on Twitter.
Mikesays
The problem with nuclear generally is human error combined with the long life of the toxic waste produced by that technology. Engineers always think maybe they can come up with a foolproof design, but that underestimates the foolishness of humans, which appears to be limitless.
The Guardian has an article about these issues as they relate to San Onofre nuclear facility and So Cal Edison. File this under: You Can’t Fix Stupid, I guess.
The modern unitary small reactors have some appeal to me because I love techie stuff, but I expect if/when we build some of those, we will end up putting some foolish humans in charge of managing them and the record with foolish humans and nukes is pretty clear.
My challenge to the techies who are excited about new, “safe” iterations of nukes is always, show me your technical prowess by cleaning a site like Hanford or Fukushima where things have kinda gone off the rails. That kind of techie skill would really impress and reassure me. Just stop the nuclear groundwater leakage that is headed for the Columbia River. Is that too much to ask?
“The waste is buried about 100ft from the shoreline, along the I-5 highway, one of the nation’s busiest thoroughfares, and not far from a pair of faults that experts say could generate a 7.4 magnitude earthquake.”
David B. Bensonsays
Mike, Hanford is the result of over hasty weapons plutonium manufacture. It has nothing to do with nuclear power.
Fukushima Dai-ichi cleanup is proceeding Japanese style. Others would proceed more sensibly.
nigeljsays
Mike: Nuclear power will never be 100% safe because of human error. However studies show nuclear power causes much fewer deaths and disease than fossil fuels, and about the same as renewables. I’m posting this because it surprised me. Refer:
I’ve seen other similar studies so it seems credible. However I have no axe to grind. Both renewables and nuclear power look useful to me, and the right choice is probably a ‘local’ decision..
The problem with nuclear generally is human error combined with the long life of the toxic waste produced by that technology.
You cite an article quoting Gregory Jaczko AND the UCS? You obviously have no idea who they are. They are political activists financed by anti-nuclear interests. Nothing they say should be taken as credible, including “and” and “the”.
Are you ignorant of the natural reactors at Oklo? The “toxic waste” is self-containing; if it scarcely moved in the billion-plus years since those deposits went critical, humans aren’t going to have problems with it.
Engineers always think maybe they can come up with a foolproof design, but that underestimates the foolishness of humans, which appears to be limitless.
Nature takes care of the problem if we just let her, and we shouldn’t even call it a “problem”. Radioisotopes have myriad uses. We are literally wasting their potential to do things like make our food supply safer.
My challenge to the techies who are excited about new, “safe” iterations of nukes is always, show me your technical prowess by cleaning a site like Hanford or Fukushima where things have kinda gone off the rails.
Category error. Working out ways to prevent such things from happening in the first place is not the same skill set as remediating things after so much carelessness resulted in problems.
That kind of techie skill would really impress and reassure me. Just stop the nuclear groundwater leakage that is headed for the Columbia River. Is that too much to ask?
What you fail to ask is, is that actually a problem? If it has no health or ecological impact, why not just ignore it? The tritium at Fukushima is a tiny fraction of what’s naturally produced by cosmic rays every year. The oceans are loaded with radioisotopes. That water should have been loaded into tankers and dumped out at sea years ago.
Mods: What happened to the preview? That used to be automatic. Why is your web design going backwards?
Reality Checksays
Naomi Klein on Global Neoliberalism Coupled with “economic shock therapy” from 2012
And that’s where I came up with the thesis for the book, which is we have entered this new phase that I’m calling “disaster capitalism”; or the Shock Doctrine using a shock – in this case the shock and awe invasion of Iraq – to impose what economists call “economic shock therapy”. So I think it was definitely that experience of seeing it from Latin America – a continent in revolt against these policies – that made it easier to identify this as a new phase. And once I identified that I started to see these patterns recurring. After the Asian tsunami there was a very similar push to use the shock of that natural disaster to push through, once again, these same policies. Water privatization, electricity privatization, labor market …, displacing poor people on the coasts with hotel developers. So a sort of social re-engineering of societies in the interest of corporations, which I think is what we’ve been doing under the banner of free trade. But now it’s under the banner of post-disaster reconstruction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKTmwu3ynOY
But everything is expendable. Free trade is only good while it’s working in the interests of neo-liberalism. As soon as it becomes counter-productive, eg China it is abandoned with ease. Covid-19 is yet another version of social re-engineering of societies in the interest of corporations. Don’t believe me? Go look at the equities markets in record territory despite social disruptions, economic shocks and employment business downturns.
It’s just another version of “disaster capitalism” where money is as cheap as chips. What comes next will be the massive and unprecedented Government largess in response to climate change induced extreme weather disasters.
It is already happening. Despite the good economic times before Governments could not afford to fund any number of emergent needs for the population, or for business and labour. No one could afford to increase wages. No money for climate change action, education, or health services.
Now, look at the mega-Trillion$ globally appearing suddenly out of thin air to address Covid-19, Vaccines, Infrastructure and Building Back Better (pro-Climate actions) plus Millionaire trips into space at the same time. Inspiring stuff. While the IPCC cannot even afford to rent a half decent speech writer.
There’s no way anyone is going to close a coal mine in West Virginia. No one can afford that.
But before too long you’ll watch the Billion$ come pouring in for Direct Air Capture plants in California and Oregon while coal / gas fired generators are still operating and being built. Many regulars here will cheer that on as a great success for Climate Science and the great work of scientists. :)
Given he was in no way attacked or insulted and everything I said was factually accurate, why shouldn’t it have? I think there is a degree of awareness dawning on this site exactly where the problems with civility originated – and continue in some cases.
Reality Checksays
Still it was surprising. I’m less hopeful than you.
PS fyi –
Status-seekers are hostile online & offline, but their online attacks are more visible.
Nice people do not go crazy online.
The Psychology of Online Political Hostility:
A Comprehensive, Cross-National Test of the Mismatch Hypothesis
.. hostile political discussions are the result of status-driven individuals
who are drawn to politics and are equally hostile both online and offline.
… we offer initial evidence that online discussions feel more hostile,
in part, because the behavior of such individuals is more visible than offline.
Thus, our findings suggest that the feeling that online interactions
are much more hostile than offline interactions emerges because hostile individuals
– especially those high in status-driven risk taking – have a significantly larger
reach online; they can more easily identify targets and their behavior is more
broadly visible https://psyarxiv.com/hwb83/
Matias (2019) found that announcing community rules in online
discussion forums not only changed the behavior of established users
but also encouraged more civil individuals to enter these forums,
leading to less hostility.
Consistent with the results of Studies 1, 2 and 4, hostile people have an enhanced
preference for participating in political discussions …
Online environments do not turn nice people into trolls.
Those who are mean to you online would be equally mean to you offline.
Both online and offline hostility is driven by status concerns.
They leave out one very important point, or you did in your summary: Fair and consistent moderation. Toxic sites always have inconsistent moderation. Since most sites do have rules, but toxicity continues, I am certain this is the much bigger factor. It’s just like parenting or classroom management: Inconsistency kills.
Full speed ahead. Nothing has changed. Nothing is changing. The IPCC, the AR6 and the upcoming COP26 are a big waste of everyone’s time.
Scientists really aren’t the best champions of climate science – 2017
This is the sixth episode of Climate Lab, a six-part series produced by the University of California in partnership with Vox. It is as true today as it was when it was first made. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qfI3DZmmQw
“The problem is you have people who are very, very smart when it comes to reading data, but they are dumb when it comes to dealing with people.” Van Jones https://youtu.be/-qfI3DZmmQw?t=46
If we are supposed to be in a new Climate War, does this mean every time I go to the service station to fill up my car with petrol, I am a Traitor guilty of Trading with the Enemy?
The only supplier of electricity to my home and business generates it by burning Coal. More Trading with the Enemy?
I do not wish to be at War with half the population where I live.
When people declare War, especially Civil War, things get extremely nasty and violent. People die.
I refuse to allow myself to be led by incompetent fools into an unnecessary stupid War mentality.
Killiansays
The “war mentality” is not about attacking each other, it refers to the scale of the response needed. “A WWII-level mobilization.”
Reality Checksays
Hi, I see what I did wrong there. Sorry killian.
In this case I was thinking of, referring to (but never said it clearly) the New Climate War Mann speaks about in his book, is specifically a war against the fossil fuel companies who are the declared enemy #1 https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann
They are not innocent all, but the problem/s and causes transcend their mere existence and their selective denialism and political funding of recalcitrants.
He notes that ‘if we took the disinformation campaign funded by the fossil fuel industry out of the equation, the climate problem would have been solved decades ago’.
I think that is mystical thinking. So is this: ‘the surest way to lose a war is to refuse to recognise that you’re in one in the first place’.
That may be a truism, but there are others more pressing – no point going to war against the wrong enemy. If you’re going to go to war you better have a definition of what Winning that War looks like, possess the “Arms to Wage it” and have a defined Exit Strategy.
Who won the last climate war? Who won the war on drugs? Who won the war in Afghanistan? Vietnam? There is a powerful American cultural bias to his writings word choices and thinking. Probably because the US is ground zero for denialism, always has been. It’s not how the rest of the world necessarily thinks or operates.
I am all for a world war level mobilisation. And I think Mann is a first class climate scientist.
“……….the new climate war is a ‘war on action’. And the weapons the climate inactivists bring to this battlefield are ‘an array of powerful Ds: disinformation, deceit, divisiveness, deflection, delay, despair-mongering, and doomism’. ”
There’s a lot of truth in what he says. It’s mirrored in neoliberal thinking. I just question the Framing of a call to action to stop climate change it that way in a book, a political book, which will alienate half the population immediately. As per the ref with 800 comments I gave for an artcile by him on this topic.
The emphasis needs to be on what people can do, present potential turning points, suggest rational practical action that’s doable, and lay out what the politicians must do, what the media must do, what scientists can do better, and not be about what his perceived enemies are doing or why they are so Bad and Evil! Besides, *War Strategy* meetings are supposed to be done in secret, not laid out in public. :)
In his doomism chapter he portrays +3C to +4C models as not being that big a deal. Not anywhere near mass extinction levels. More on that next month maybe.
The researchers then used computational modelling to extract information from that data about the participant’s perception and learning, and their ability to engage in complex and strategic mental processing.
Overall, the researchers found that ideological attitudes mirrored cognitive decision-making, according to the study published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
“Individuals or brains that struggle to process and plan complex action sequences may be more drawn to extreme ideologies, or authoritarian ideologies that simplify the world.”
A key finding was that people with extremist attitudes tended to think about the world in black and white terms, and struggled with complex tasks that required intricate mental steps, said lead author Dr Leor Zmigrod at Cambridge’s department of psychology.
She said another feature of people with tendencies towards extremism appeared to be that they were not good at regulating their emotions, meaning they were impulsive and tended to seek out emotionally evocative experiences.
… “It’s fascinating, because conservatism is almost a synonym for caution,” she said. “We’re seeing that – at the very basic neuropsychological level – individuals who are politically conservative … simply treat every stimuli that they encounter with caution.”
The “psychological signature” for extremism across the board was a blend of conservative and dogmatic psychologies, the researchers said.
The cognitive and perceptual correlates of ideological attitudes: a data-driven approach
Although human existence is enveloped by ideologies, remarkably little is understood about the relationships between ideological attitudes and psychological traits. Even less is known about how cognitive dispositions—individual differences in how information is perceived and processed— sculpt individuals’ ideological worldviews, proclivities for extremist beliefs and resistance (or receptivity) to evidence. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.0424
Note: whenever someone posts something here, a good idea is go back to the original source, the research, what was actually said, and check it out fully – how much is conjecture, how much is data driven findings? What is false? Misquoted? Misrepresented? What’s the context? The scope? The purpose? The meaning? Being mindful those people who espouse extremist attitudes, intolerance, dogmatic psychologies and belief systems tend to perform poorly on complex mental tasks. The giveaway being lies and logical fallacies are the lazy man’s way to a convincing argument.
Reality Checksays
Extreme pro-group attitudes, including violence endorsement against outgroups, were linked to poorer working memory, slower perceptual strategies, and tendencies towards impulsivity and sensation-seeking—reflecting overlaps with the psychological profiles of conservatism and dogmatism.
Cognitive and personality signatures were also generated for ideologies such as authoritarianism, system justification, social dominance orientation, patriotism and receptivity to evidence or alternative viewpoints; elucidating their underpinnings and highlighting avenues for future research.
Together these findings suggest that ideological worldviews may be reflective of low-level perceptual and cognitive functions.
Want to solve the problem of global warming? Best first accept it is not a science problem nor does it have a scientific solution. We are all in this together, whether you like that or not.
So if you are one of those who want to go to War then join the Army or your local street gang.
“We are going to see more and more climate-related disclosure and regulatory agencies are across that, both here and overseas,” Frydenberg said. The treasurer acknowledged with the world moving to constrain carbon emissions in line with the Paris agreement goals, there were now “material risks” to Australian businesses.
He said he had spoken recently with Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, about international developments. “He’s been very engaged in this and it was a very interesting discussion.
“We are going to see more and more climate-related disclosure and regulatory agencies are across that, both here and overseas,” Frydenberg said. The treasurer acknowledged with the world moving to constrain carbon emissions in line with the Paris agreement goals, there were now “material risks” to Australian businesses.
It is ASTONISHING how far these people are behind events. We are SEEING things happening that the models predicted would not occur for decades. The time for action isn’t NOW, it was decades ago. The IPCC was established in 1989, but we probably should have acted no later than 1958, when “The Unchained Goddess” was first broadcast.
We have to do what we can, and salvage what we can. How much that is, I don’t know. I won’t live to see it. Radical atmospheric remediation is essential if ocean life and species are to be preserved. Who’s planning for this? I recall reading about ONE experiment with iron fertilization of the ocean and its massive benefits to a salmon run. We need DOZENS of these things every year and around the world. We are out of time.
Ray Ladburysays
Those of us who are battle-scarred veterans of the climate wars of the past 3 decades could not help but feel a bit of deja vu as the COVID pandemic began to roll across the world. We were seeing the same denial, hostility and idiocy–indeed, from mainly the same people–as we’d seen in the climate wars.
But the COVID catastrophe runs about a factor of 30x faster than the climate crisis, so I wonder if we are now seeing our climate future being played out in front of our eyes. If so, the future will be one of ongoing tragedy continuing its transition into farce. Because even when gifted a magic bullet that’s more than 90% effective for free, nearly a third of the population will continue to reject the solution out of stupidity and sheer bloodymindedness. Regardless of the miracles that the best and the brightest manage to pull off, our ultimate extinction will be ensured by the stupidest among us.
Just an update on the ongoing fallout from the VC Summer nuclear debacle (and a bit on Vogtle, as well.) Some very upper management types in Westinghouse were deeply corrupt, apparently.
I’d already concluded (despite the serious lack of transparency on projected costs for Vogtle, making it a ‘gut’ estimate on my part) that those costs are now likely to hit $30 billion. Apparently, I’m not the only one thinking so.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/12/nature-is-interconnected-and-collaborative-and-our-business-is-too?utm_term=4a0ade5146bcd9257d2b528c127ea9ef&utm_campaign=GreenLight&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=greenlight_email
good article in the Guardian about regenerative ag project
Cheers
Mike
Research study: “Hospital healthcare costs attributable to heat and future estimations in the context of climate change in Perth, Western Australia”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674927821001076?via%3Dihub
Costs more than doubling by mid century. Very concerning and significant.
Some people the-ipcc-sixth-assessment-report were discussing their ideas about coal and ff in general being replaced by renewables reasonably quickly and long term.
Here’s some recent info from the IEA (yes, no one body is the font of all knowledge), but the IEA does have a degree of credibility and consistency about it, worth being aware of what their latest data might be telling us – in conjunction with the IPCC reports coming out.
1) 15 July 2021
New IEA report sees 5% rise in electricity demand in 2021 with almost half the increase met by fossil fuels, notably coal, threatening to push CO2 emissions from the power sector to record levels in 2022
https://www.iea.org/news/global-electricity-demand-is-growing-faster-than-renewables-driving-strong-increase-in-generation-from-fossil-fuels
2) April 2021
Renewable electricity generation in 2021 is set to expand by more than 8% to reach 8 300 TWh, the fastest year-on-year growth since the 1970s
China alone should account for almost half of the global increase in renewable electricity in 2021
Over the course of 2021, China is expected to generate 600 TWh and the United States 400 TWh, together representing more than half of global wind output.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2021/renewables
(while the rhetoric about China remains negative on climate change responses/action/contributions)
(Perspective needed – the Global electricity generation in 2019-2020 was ~27,000 TWh – half the global Wind output by China and USA was only 1000 TWh or 3.7% )
3) April 2021
Global coal demand declined 4% in 2020, the biggest drop since World War II. The main driver of the decline was lower electricity demand owing to Covid‑19 restrictions and the resulting economic downturn.
The power sector accounted for just over 40% of the drop in coal use in 2020, but the rapid increase in coal-fired generation in Asia sees it account for three-quarters of the rebound in 2021. Gas prices are also expected to rise in 2021, leading to some switching back to coal, notably in the United States and the European Union.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2021/coal
4) May 2021
Net Zero by 2050 – A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector
Pledges by governments to date – even if fully achieved – fall well short of what is required to bring global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050
Our Net Zero by 2050 Roadmap provides a pathway to reach this formidable and critical goal, setting out more than 400 milestones for what needs to be done, and when, to decarbonise the global economy in just three decades.
2020 Fossil fuels account for almost 80% of TES
The path to net-zero emissions is narrow – For solar power, it is equivalent to installing the world’s current largest solar park roughly every day – from today to 2030.
REF https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050
Every day?
Ignore the IEA because they are not a reliable source on renewable energy. The IEA predictions on uptake of solar and wind power have repeatedly proven to be far too pessimistic. Refer:
https://www.vox.com/2015/10/12/9510879/iea-underestimate-renewables
https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2017/11/14/all-is-lost-renewable-energy-growth-will-hit-a-brick-wall-no-not-really-its-just-the-iea/
https://climatenexus.org/climate-change-news/iea-historically-underestimates-renewables-overestimates-fossils/
If you had been a participant on The Oil Drum, you’d have known this long ago. In fact, you’d have known the IEA gets pretty much every projection seriously wrong.
Killian on previous page.
“it is hypocritical to consistently and pejoratively critique things you have a personal beef about because you have a dislike of the primary person on a forum supporting said issue.
Except that your definition of hypocrisy is wrong. And I don’t criticise things you write or post simply because of any views I have about you personally. I criticise things because they wrong or not workable or useful etcetera.
I heard about ” simplification”, and simple living decades ago when hippy communes were all the fashion. I rejected it back then as mostly unworkable.
I don’t criticise things you write or post simply because of any views I have about you personally.
Denial has many ways of presenting.
Climate change: The rich are to blame, international study finds
By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analyst
Published
16 March 2020
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51906530
The rich are primarily to blame for the global climate crisis, a study by the University of Leeds of 86 countries claims.
The wealthiest tenth of people consume about 20 times more energy overall than the bottom ten, wherever they live.
The gulf is greatest in transport, where the top tenth gobble 187 times more fuel than the poorest tenth, the research says.
That’s because people on the lowest incomes can rarely afford to drive.
The researchers found that the richer people became, the more energy they typically use. And it was replicated across all countries.
And they warn that, unless there’s a significant policy change, household energy consumption could double from 2011 levels by 2050. That’s even if energy efficiency improves.
See explanatory Twitter thread
https://twitter.com/JKSteinberger/status/1239811251213041665
See Research Paper
Large inequality in international and intranational energy footprints between income groups and across consumption categories
Authors: Yannick Oswald, Anne Owen & Julia K. Steinberger
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-0579-8 (restricted access)
Inequality in energy consumption, both direct and indirect, affects the distribution of benefits that result from energy use. Detailed measures of this inequality are required to ensure an equitable and just energy transition. Here we calculate final energy footprints; that is, the energy embodied in goods and services across income classes in 86 countries, both highly industrialized and developing.
Our results consequently expose large inequality in international energy footprints: the consumption share of the bottom half of the population is less than 20% of final energy footprints, which in turn is less than what the top 5% consume.
The IPCC AR6 WG3 scientists apparently agree with the above and Kevin Anderson’s long term work.
The top 10% of emitters globally, who are the wealthiest 10%, contribute between 36 and 45% of emissions, which is 10 times as much as the poorest 10%, who are responsible for only about three to 5%, the report finds.
“The consumption patterns of higher income consumers are associated with large carbon footprints. Top emitters dominate emissions in key sectors, for example the top 1% account for 50% of emissions from aviation,” the summary says.
The report underlines the lifestyle changes that will be necessary, particularly in rich countries and among the wealthy globally. Refraining from over-heating or over-cooling homes, walking and cycling, cutting air travel and using energy-consuming appliances less can all contribute significantly to the reductions in emissions needed, the report finds.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/12/greenhouse-gas-emissions-must-peak-within-4-years-says-leaked-un-report
2020
Rapid transformation needed, Kevin Anderson says, particularly in lifestyles of rich
Anderson is a professor of energy and climate change, working across the universities of Manchester, Uppsala in Sweden and Bergen in Norway. He said: “The constructive, meticulous criticism of the government, which is failing abysmally by any measure, is fine. The problem is the framing the CCC has for net zero is already far removed from what is needed to meet our Paris commitments.”
He said: “Many senior academics, senior policymakers, basically the great and good of the climate world have decided that it is unhelpful to rock the status quo boat and therefore choose to work within that political paradigm – they’ll push it as hard as they think it can go, but they repeatedly step back from questioning the paradigm itself.”
He said the models also ignored the fact that it was the lifestyles of a relatively wealthy few that gave rise to the lion’s share of emissions.
“Globally the wealthiest 10% are responsible for half of all emissions, the wealthiest 20% for 70% of emissions. If regulations forced the top 10% to cut their emissions to the level of the average EU citizen, and the other 90% made no change in their lifestyles, that would still cut total emissions by a third.
“If we were serious about this crisis we could do this in a year – if we were really serious we could do it in a month, but we are not and our emissions just keep rising.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/26/leading-scientist-criticises-uk-over-its-climate-record
You’re welcome.
And to think I get laughed at and insulted constantly for saying we can get emissions down in 5 to 100 years…
I can hear it already: “He’s just one scientist!”
Thanks for all the stuff you’ve been posting.
All good, I am a wood duck. :)
Can we still hope, post-AR6?
What’s the deal with individual v. systemic change?
We listen to the scientific advice on COVID-19. Why do we ignore it on climate change?
Dr Michael Mann and Dr Rebecca Colvin
Fri 13 Aug 2021 – 22 mins audio
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/we-believe-in-the-science-of-covid,-why-not-climate-change/13495548
(green news article) What’s the Degrowth Movement all about?
Proponents of degrowth are often at pains to defend the theory to its critics, and as a result the conversation and narrative around it often ends up hijacked. So, we wanted to take a deeper look at what degrowth would mean in a tangible, digestible sense.
In Ms. Whyte’s view, degrowth is something that is going to happen as we reach our planetary boundaries and the option in front of us is not whether to reject or accept it, but instead to either manage it in a way that can potentially improve livelihoods and reduce inequalities or allow it to happen without any control.
https://greennews.ie/degrowth-explainer/
Most cited author on degrowth
J.Martinez-Alier
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=c-tnhogAAAAJ
What is Degrowth? From an Activist Slogan to a Social Movement
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/144880881.pdf
Research On Degrowth
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-environ-102017-025941
Shared by Geoff says 11 Aug 2021 https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/08/we-are-not-reaching-1-5oc-earlier-than-previously-thought/#comment-794486
“NET ZERO 2050”: A DANGEROUS ILLUSION
https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/nz2050
The net zero emission illusion
By Ian Dunlop and David Spratt
https://johnmenadue.com/the-net-zero-illusion/
Here’s an article on Ars Technica about how so-called “blue hydrogen” (hydrogen produced by cracking methane via high-pressure steam while recovering the CO2 by-product) might be worse than burning coal.
Aug. 12, 2021 – A wildfire raging in northeastern Siberia could become the largest in recorded history
The republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Russia’s largest and coldest region, has been devastated by unprecedented wildfires that are now larger than the rest of the world’s blazes combined. The largest of these fires has exceeded 1.5 million hectares in size, the Greenpeace environmental group’s forestry head Alexey Yaroshenko told The Moscow Times.
“This fire has to grow by about 400,000 hectares to become the biggest in documented history,” Yaroshenko said. “It is impossible to contain this fire through human efforts. … Firefighters would have to put out a line of fire 2,000 kilometers long.”
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/08/12/siberian-wildfire-could-become-biggest-in-recorded-history-greenpeace-a74762
A former skeptic of man-made climate change, the Russian leader called on authorities to do everything possible to help Siberians affected by the region’s gigantic wildfires, as well as Russians living in the flood-hit south of the country.
“In the south (of Russia), the monthly norm of rainfall now falls in a few hours and in the Far East on the contrary, forest fires in drought conditions are spreading rapidly,” Putin said.
“All of this once again shows how important it is for us to deeply and systematically work on the climate and environment agenda,” he said.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/08/14/putin-alarmed-over-unprecedented-natural-disasters-in-russia-a74788
Uncensored Science
2 July 2021 James Hansen
Part of a Foreword he wrote:
But, like a cancer, the role of special interests and money in our government continued to grow.
Truth is the enemy of special interests
Gradually, truth became malleable to politicians. They became elite and addicted to the money
of special interests. They justified taking money as being required for their campaigns, but it
also supported their lifestyles. Their first priority became their own reelection, not the best
interests of the public. […]
The stated objective of
the (UNFCCC) is “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere
at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.
Such a level should be achieved within a timeframe sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt
naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable
economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner” (United Nations, 1992).
Yet even three decades later,
the Framework Convention has had almost no effect in stemming the growth of
atmospheric greenhouse gases. Indeed, after the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, global fossil fuel
emissions of CO2 the principal drive of global warming, accelerated faster!
If scientists do not speak up, policies will continue on the disastrous course defined by special interests.
Scientific reticence can amount to self-censorship – Indeed, damage from excessive reticence can exceed that from ham-handed government strictures. […]
Scientific reticence (Hansen, 2007) arises partly from the reward structure. A scientist
crying danger is rebuked – by fellow scientists and funders – as we learned in the 1980s. But
there is no penalty for “fiddling while Rome burns.” Indeed, a scientist who lards his
conclusions with excessive caveats and uncertainties is rewarded.
Caution has merits, but in the case of ice sheets and sea level rise, we may rue reticence,
if it locks in future disasters. […]
Resistance by scientists to scientific discovery is widely acknowledged, even though it
clashes with the vision of science as open-minded and unbiased.
Barber (1961) notes famous scientists who chaffed bitterly at this resistance and is disappointed
that they offer only vague explanations, such as “scientists are human” or “fear of novelty.”
Richard Feynman (1986) described resistance that embarrasses physicists. […]
I believe that the IPCC-led climate research community is slowly – too slowly – inching
toward conclusions about climate change that are needed for policy purposes. In my opinion,
one of the reasons for this excessive slowness is an unusual form of resistance and censorship
imposed by scientists who are respected authorities.
Blackballing by grand poohbahs includes both resistance to discovery and censorship
To blackball is to ostracize. Blackballing may not be widespread, but it’s relevant to the climate
story and many of the chapters of this book. I use our paper Ice melt, sea level rise and
superstorms (Hansen et al., 2016), hereinafter abbreviated as Ice melt, as a case in point because
it brings out the physics and the poohbahs. […]
We can achieve the goal of
restoring and preserving nature’s bounty, but only if we are honest about what is required. We
must be guided by realistic scientific analysis, not by wishful thinking.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2021/20210614_ForewordHansen.pdf
Why not read it all?
Eerily related: Michael Mann giving testimony this year about the destructive role of the Murdoch Media (NewsCorp) Press and TV News & Cable Networks (FoxNews, SkyNews)- about lies, distortions, disinformation to the public, and political interference.
Climate scientist Michael Mann’s full testimony to the Australian Senate Media Diversity Inquiry
https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1381620863770968068
The larger story behind these two ‘tip of the iceberg’ stories (and the funding of climate science denial activities by FF special interests) is how powerful players work behind the scenes to influence and manipulate public opinion and a whole lot more.
It’s not an accident nor just bad luck that FF use and GHG emissions are the highest they have ever been despite 30 years of fairly solid climate science and the UNFCCC supposedly setup to stabilize them asap.
No one wants to be the bearer of bad news. And no one wants to hear it either. This simple fact of life makes both of them easy targets.
Hansen is one of less than five scientists who tell it like it is, or at least get close. K. Anderson, Tim Jackson, etc.
@killian thanks for the Jackson mention, I have some new reading to do. .
eg May 2021 Confronting inequality in the “new normal”:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sd.2196
and https://timjackson.org.uk/
This is so “normal’ across the board: not only re growth.
“The structural, possibly psychological, maybe even religious affinity for growth impedes our ability to think clearly about our situation.”
https://greattransition.org/publication/how-to-kick-the-growth-addiction
Please let me repeat this one critical line: it is really important not only because it is true but also because it really matters now more than ever:
“If scientists do not speak up, policies will continue on the disastrous course defined by special interests.”
(In the news)
An 18-year-old student and climate change campaigner is bidding for a seat on the board of energy company AGL, Australia’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter.
AGL says emissions from its coal and gas power plants were 42.2Mt last financial year and make up about 8% of Australia’s entire greenhouse gas footprint.
He would push the company to become a 100% renewable power generator within nine years “before we pass a turning point that leads to climate catastrophe”.
Sharif added: “For the longest time young people have been calling for change and again and again our calls have been disrespected and ridiculed or ignored. But the youth really are rising. We are seeing it.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/16/melbourne-student-and-climate-activist-runs-for-board-seat-at-energy-giant-agl
It’ll never catch on /s
Nicholas Klein’s words are often summarized as:
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
An open letter to all climate scientists
Time to tell it like it is
Bill McGuire
Jul 19
OK. Let’s not beat about the bush. While our world has been going to hell in a handcart, many of you studying and recording its demise have had nothing to say on the subject and have remained deep in the shadows, when what has been needed is for you to hog the limelight. The cod justification you have used is always the same,
https://billmcguire.substack.com/p/an-open-letter-to-all-climate-scientists
This is a great example of Diminishing Returns on Complexity: Need a trailer full of batteries to make your EV practical, essentially doubling up on consumption for 100 more miles if range.
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1133238_teardrop-camper-trailer-fast-charges-evs-with-75-kwh-of-extra-batteries
Climate Reality Check
Summary
Climate Change is an existential risk to human civilization. Mobilizing for net zero emissions (NZE) by 2030 is critical. A 2050 NZE time-frame will not prevent catastrophic outcomes. A cluster of abrupt climate changes and tipping points could occur between 1.5C and 2.0C. It is well understood by the climate science community that goals to limit warming to under 2.0C are prescriptions for disaster. Longer term targets and promises of future CCS/DAC/BECCS technologies are excuses for procrastination. The world is presently on a path of +3C to +5C of warming by 2100 or soon after which would end civilization as we know it.
The current global warming of a +1.2C temperature increase since 1850 is already dangerous.
+1.5C occurring before 2030 is virtually certain now.
+2.0C is likely before 2050 even with actions better than the Paris-NZE commitments.
+3.0C is likely around 2075 on the current trajectory and would be catastrophic for humanity.
+5.0C before 2100 is possible without immediate sustained drastic long term emissions reductions.
We are heading for levels of warming incompatible with an organized global community. The collapse of civilization is not inevitable but emergency-level action right now is critical to avoid it.
https://www.climaterealitycheck.net/download
Dr Charlie Gardner @CharlieJGardner
18 Aug
I am a scientist and I have dedicated my life to understanding and preventing the destruction of our planet. My knowledge compels me to rise up against our Omnicidal system and I’ll be doing that with @XRebellionUK on August 23rd. Trafalgar Sq https://extinctionrebellion.uk/event/rebellion/
https://twitter.com/CharlieJGardner
There’s been a big shift and it is gaining momentum. Most of the conversations are already heading in that direction. There is very little tolerance left for dodging, dissembling, reticence and time wasters. The days of the weak-willed middle-of-the-road Inactivist Greenwasher are over.
James Edward Hansen @DrJamesEHansen
Jul 2
Politicians tell the public what they want to hear. Leaders tell them what they need to know, even if it is uncomfortable. Do we have a political leader?
Aug 14
Global warming acceleration can be traced to decreased aerosols. Full payment in our Faustian bargain is coming due. Looks like our children and grandchildren will be stuck with the tab. Sorry.
https://twitter.com/DrJamesEHansen
Peter Kalmus @ClimateHuman
Aug 17
Wow, folks, I’ve really got to say I didn’t think we’d be at this point in climate breakdown this soon. My concern has been extremely high for a long time, but it is at entirely new levels now. No words. Feeling **extremely** not good about the prospect of +1.5°C. Let alone what comes beyond.
https://twitter.com/ClimateHuman/status/1427460082313293826
@GeorgeMonbiot
Aug 17
Every climate scientist and environmental journalist should make a decision. Is our role merely to document the unfolding tragedy, with sighs and groans about the follies of humankind?
Or also to seek to stop the greatest catastrophe humanity has ever faced? I say the latter.
https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1427529592231899158
“You need to explain, clearly, why when scientists are saying we’re in deep trouble, the risks are worse than even many scientists realize, you *still* advocate incrementalism.”
Re @Zebra @Doug Allen on another thread
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/08/deciphering-the-spm-ar6-wg1-code/#comment-794936
According to Lazard’s — V E R S I O N 1 4 – Oct 2020
Levelized Cost of Energy Comparison—Unsubsidized Analysis
https://www.lazard.com/media/451419/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-140.pdf
Nuclear energy is cheaper than residential roof top solar.
Nuclear energy is mostly cheaper than commercial/industrial PV solar.
Nuclear is the same price or less than Gas Peaking plants
Nuclear is the same price or slightly more expensive than Solar Thermal Tower with Storage
U.S. Federal Tax Subsidies make all renewable options slightly less expensive relative to all other energy supply.
A carbon price range of $20 – $40/Ton of carbon would increase the LCOE for certain conventional (FF) generation technologies to levels above those of onshore wind and utility-scale solar … but they did not mention that also applies to Nuclear energy too maing it marginally cheaper again.
A carbon price range of $100 – $200/Ton which is where it should already be set at, would immediately make Nuclear Energy price much more competitive with all Gas and Coal (and naturally Oil as well re land transportation for EVs)
A rational carbon price like that would immediately make all Nuclear Energy much cheaper than Gas Peaking plants as well as Diesel powered generation. (see Africa for where that is most used to supply city grids)
PLUS and this is critically important – Nuclear Energy can perform multiple functions that none of the other energy sources can do. Or will never do or cannot do for the price or as efficiently.
NOW Lazard’s is a respected source, but there are other sources. There’s no guarantee Lazard’s is the most accurate or uptodate or considers all the relevant information in all circumstances … plus many things are different from one country to another. Therefore it is best to assume Lazard’s is not automatically applicable without checking the underlying assumption and facts relied upon.
When it comes to how much energy costs and how resource dependent one form is over another, the preferred cherry-picked Logical Fallacies and emotive motivations of this person vs that person tend to rule the day.
Don’t believe anyone – do your own high quality research – educate yourself better & continually over time about the finer details of a subject – and the History of it. Only then you can avoid assuming without good reason Lazards or any commenter on a climate forum knows better than you do about a subject.
1. The USA and it’s social norms are not universal, it is the exception not the norm and is therefore an irrelevant yardstick for the rest of the world – the 96% – to even consider the USA as part of the mix when making rational long term decisions about energy supply where they live and work. This is plain common sense. It should be self-evident unfortunately for many it is not, and it never is. Plus, the USA is far from being an exemplar of best practice standards.
1.1. Until the late 1990s the Australian electricity generation, grid network and retailers were 100% owned and operated by State Governments. And the mining of coal was also tightly controlled by State government regulations (as is the case everywhere) along with the long term supply contracts to electricity generators.
Why? Simple plain common sense, economics, applied intelligence, and logic was applied. That works every time it happens on any topic. That’s why it worked and delivered global best practice results.
1.2 Australia had the most reliable and the cheapest electricity supply in the entire world through the latter of the 20th century, despite a huge land area and a small population – cheap as dirt coal really helped too. Australia was not the USSR, Communist China, Cuba or France or the UK either, so extremely biased opinions bordering on hysterical mindless politics (USA:101) had nothing to do with what was done and achieved.
1.3 Even the most right wing state govt was doing the same and they were the first to provide free public hospital system in Australia, long before Medicare arrived with Universal Health Care. Paid for by profits from the electricity and other services they provided. Echoes of Thatcher and Reagan being the biggest vocal Govt proponents for action on climate change. Today’s political/economic norms are neither normal nor sane.
1.4 All the voters (+80%?) irrespective of their politics loved the system and how cheap it was. It no longer is since Govts sold off the majority of electricity assets to the private sector. Now electricity is amongst the most expensive in the world. And much less reliable and is now often responsible for starting wildfires due to poor maintenance standards vs the past.
2. Rational private investors already choose to put money into nuclear plants and new technology. Some investors are even still building coal and gas powered plants. And whether new nuclear investments are govt or private is irrelevant to the facts of the matter of:- is it sustainable, is it non-carbon emissions energy supply, is it cheap enough, and is it safe as per the IAEA standards, and is the nuclear waste cycle managed effectively and does meet the needs of a nation long term far beyond 50 years from now and to the end of the century?
2.1 What holds back expansion and increases costs and unnecessary delays are emotive reactions, a lack of accurate information, and onerous unreasonable govt imposed restrictions and unreasonable safety concerns, mainly an effect of over-reacting to community concerns and protests, rather than heeding the actual evidence.
2.3 While the latter persists the prior hard evidence is irrelevant and that is what restricts equitable and rational long term investment in the sector by govt and private sources.
Opinions and judgments vary in the extreme.
Because “The world is divided into those who think they are right.”
There is no pathway to sustaunability that does not include a jubilee aka debt forgiveness.
Listen to A Modern Debt Jubilee with Steve Keen by Macro n Cheese on #SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/r1fts
In the spirit of Keen
Most ‘Wealth’ Isn’t the Result of Hard Work. It Has Been Accumulated by Being Idle and Unproductive. It has always been so. It’s time to call the housing crisis what it really is: the largest transfer of wealth in living memory.
“In Britain, we have yet to confront the truth about the trillions of pounds of wealth amassed through the housing market in recent decades: this wealth has come straight out of the pockets of those who don’t own property.”
https://evonomics.com/unproductive-rent-housing-macfarlane/#:~:text=Most%20of%20today's%20'wealth'%20isn,at%20the%20expense%20of%20others
Not only the UK but throughout the developed world the existing global economic system is driving the housing crisis everywhere – and the irrational equity markets – especially most recently on steroids during this Cov19 pandemic period. And unless and until the majority of people truly recognize the direct systemic relationships and connections between these things and the intransigence, lack of action on climate change by Governments everywhere nothing will be done, ever.
More along Keen economics and Truth-telling:
Economists must grapple with climate tipping points before it’s too late
A groundbreaking new model suggests that we’ve massively underestimated the social costs of carbon. Aug 2021
Civilization-ending changes are not likely, but they’re not a zero probability either. Legendary Harvard economist Martin Weitzman called these low-probability, high-impact possibilities “tail risks” and was famous for warning that economists are not taking them into account — and thus are underestimating the need for rapid decarbonization. […]
We are underestimating climate risks and overestimating the costs of action
As its principal metric, the study uses the “social cost of carbon” (SCC), meant to capture the total social and environmental damage done by the emission of a ton of carbon dioxide. For convenience, the paper uses the current U.S. government SCC figure, which is about $51. [..]
This is the significance of tipping points: We are playing with fire, pushing Earth systems to the point that there is a small-but-real chance that some of them will break down entirely, entering phase shifts and becoming something permanently less stable and hospitable.
If that happens, we will have consigned all future generations of human beings to inexorably and irreversibly deteriorating conditions. It is a crime worse than any genocide, worse than any atrocity conceived or conceivable, and even if there is only a small chance that we might stumble into committing it, we should be hyper-cautious. We should spend a lot of money to reduce that risk, to insure against it.
You might notice that we are not, as a global community or within the U.S., expending $50/ton worth of effort to reduce emissions, much less $300/ton. In that sense, this study is just one more voice in the chorus urging (Governments) policymakers to go bigger and faster on decarbonization.
But it does put a fine point on the fact that there is effectively no way for policymakers anywhere to do too much or to go too fast on decarbonization. The risk of overdoing it is vanishingly small, it’s all but impossible.
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/economists-must-grapple-with-climate-tipping-points-before-its-too-late/
These sensible thoughtful rational ideas and accumulated facts are not reported on via the WEF in Davos or the latest G7 G20 OECD meetings, nor in the US Senate. It would be wonderful were climate scientists and the IPCC to seriously grapple with tipping points treating them with the hyper-caution they warrant..
Instead the scientific community continue to hide behind their assertion of insufficient evidence. When the absence of evidence is not and never will be evidence of absence. A logical fallacy if there ever was one. For good judgement, as King Solomon proves, is not solely reliant upon the existence of irrefutable scientific evidence.
In a world where we are not spending anything near $50 per ton to drive down emissions as they instead continue to rise higher, people and organizations including scientists writing up IPCC Reports, are promoting unproven high-tech solutions that could cost anywhere between $100 to $1000 a ton to implement in the future.
Which is the functional definition of insanity, surely? But fanatical ideological Capitalists, Neoliberals and Bankers simply love it this kind of thinking.
At multiple levels people throughout society, academics and scientists or not, seem incapable of thinking rationally and objectively about climate change and the self-evident immediate solutions already to hand.
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind ….
In his book Climate Shock, co-authored with his protégé, New York University’s Gernot Wagner, Weitzman argued that the right way to think about climate mitigation is not through a cost-benefit lens, as though particular levels of spending avoid specific levels of damages, but instead as a kind of insurance. We purchase insurance to cover against tail risks all the time, not because we think they’re likely to happen, but because the consequences would be so dire if they did.
“Economic Impacts of Tipping Points in the Climate System” represents the first formal attempt to quantify the economic impacts of tipping point risks. The results are startling: The economic impact of carbon emissions is much higher than has been acknowledged, as is the value of reducing emissions.
The devilishly difficult task of quantifying risks
The authors of the study adopt a common definition of tipping points: “subsystems of the Earth system that are at least subcontinental in scale and can be switched — under certain circumstances — into a qualitatively different state by small perturbations.”
They included the eight tipping points that have been studied by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
• Thawing of permafrost, leading to carbon feedback resulting in additional carbon dioxide and methane emissions, which flow back into the carbon dioxide and methane cycles.
• Dissociation of ocean methane hydrates, resulting in additional methane emissions, which flow back into the methane cycle.
• Arctic sea ice loss (also known as ‘the surface albedo feedback’), resulting in changes in radiative forcing, which directly affects warming.
• Dieback of the Amazon rainforest, releasing carbon dioxide, which flows back into the carbon dioxide cycle.
• Disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet, increasing sea-level rise.
• Disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, increasing sea-level rise.
• Slowdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, modulating the relationship between global mean surface temperature and national mean surface temperature.
• Variability of the Indian summer monsoon, directly affecting GDP per capita in India.
In the end, they focused on 21 papers that actually linked the geophysical mechanisms of tipping points to economic damages.
The brilliant methodological move the paper makes is pulling these different studies — many using different models with different assumptions — into a single “meta-model,” with replicas of each studied tipping point combined in a single framework. (There is a great deal of discussion of this innovative approach in the paper, and even more in an extended appendix, if you’re interested.)
Article: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/economists-must-grapple-with-climate-tipping-points-before-its-too-late/
Study: PNAS August 24, 2021 Full paper available
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/34/e2103081118
PS another important Tipping Point (imo) are the coral reefs. Near +1.5C GSAT increase or above circa 2030-2040 or by 2050 at the very latest it’s almost certain the majority of coral reefs will be destroyed becoming unsustainable, the great barrier reef included. Caused by ocean heat waves, de oxygenation, and coral bleaching in particular where the reefs cannot recover before the next high impact.
In the short-medium term coastal regions and populated island atolls currently protected by reefs will no longer be protected from ocean waves as in the past, plus extreme events of severe storms and cyclones will probably cause a lot of damage and storm surge flooding. New Surf beaches will arise where none have existed for millions of years.
Another major impact will be how the loss of coral reefs might affect marine species and fish stocks. Then subsequently any impost upon human food supply of protein.
The other more immediate economic impact will be the effect upon tourism revenues and employment. Despite an active group of activists and climate marine scientists this looming loss of coral reefs attracts a very high level of denial by Governments. Pacific islanders excluded.
The real question is, why haven’t these more comprehensive approaches been happening all along? It’s a *system*, after all.
And, see? Risk! Somebody must be listening…
It’s a *system*, after all.
Yes, but killian, many many people believe they already know it all.
They stopped listening long long ago.
“Hey look, another car!” :)
July 2021 Planning for a changing climate
Connecticut farmers are finding there’s no easy way to deal with climate extremes
https://ctmirror.org/2021/07/25/ct-farmers-are-finding-theres-no-easy-way-to-deal-with-climate-change/
a quite good deep dive news report of present challenges and solutions being tried
July 2021 Connecticut Working and Natural Lands Working Group (Powerpoint presentation)
Agriculture/Soils Sub-Group – Climate Benefits of Agriculture/Soils etc
https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/DEEP/climatechange/GC3/GC3-Public-forums/GC3_WorkingNaturalLands_public_forum_slides_092920.pdf
The UN climate report pins hopes on carbon removal technologies that barely exist
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/08/09/1031450/the-un-climate-report-pins-hopes-on-carbon-removal-technologies-that-barely-exist/
“…underscored that the necessary technologies barely exist—and will be tremendously difficult to deploy.”
“The model used to create the most optimistic scenario in the report, which limits warming to 1.5 ˚C, assumes the world will figure out ways to remove about 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year by mid-century and 17 billion by 2100.”
[ noting the +1.5C limit is already blown with emissions already in the pipeline this decade, as is the SSP1-1.9 scenario unachievable short or long term. https://www.climaterealitycheck.net/download ]
“In the model above, nearly all the carbon removal is achieved through an “artificial” approach known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS. ….But despite the billions and billions of tons of carbon removal that climate models are banking on through BECCS, it’s only been done in small-scale projects to date. ”
“Chapter five of the report lays out a variety of other trade-offs and unknowns surrounding pretty much every potential approach to wide-scale carbon removal.
“Carbon-sucking machines require large amounts of energy and materials. Planting more trees for carbon sequestration or crops for fuels will compete with growing food for an expanding global population.
“Climate change itself will undermine the ability of forests to suck up and store carbon dioxide, as the risks of droughts, wildfires, and insect infestations grow with rising temperatures.”
“The good news is there are a variety of ways to remove carbon from the air, and a growing number of research groups and companies are working to develop better, cheaper methods. But as Monday’s report makes clear, we’re falling far behind in a race with very high stakes.”
In addition to the global temperature outcomes of policies and pledges, the CAT also assesses the expected absolute emissions in 2030 and compares these with emissions consistent with benchmark pathways in line with the 1.5°C Paris Agreement goal.
The CAT calculates a gap of 20–23 GtCO2e in 2030.
https://climateactiontracker.org/global/cat-emissions-gaps/
2100 warming projections
https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/
The current global warming of a +1.2C temperature increase since 1850 is already dangerous.
+1.5C occurring before 2030 is virtually certain now.
+2.0C is likely before 2050 even with actions better than the Paris-NZE commitments.
+3.0C is likely around 2075 on the current trajectory and would be catastrophic for humanity.
+5.0C before 2100 is possible without immediate sustained drastic long term emissions reductions.
We are heading for levels of warming incompatible with an organized global community. The collapse of civilization is not inevitable but emergency-level action right now is critical to avoid it.
https://www.climaterealitycheck.net/download
Dr. R Check
I cannot quite follow this. Remember Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem.
If possible, could you slaughter it down to what we can possibly grasp?
I believe what people can possibly grasp is entirely up to them. I have no say in it.
Whether I post nothing, or only post a url. Copy paste the headline or add a whole sentence. Add a short paragraph or bold six in a row.
This makes no difference to what readers decide to read or take in.
I only share what I feel is appropriate, meaningful and/or takes my attention.
The rest is up to you.
The only part worth reading in this AN Book Review is at the end:
What we lack are adequate efforts to prioritize solutions, fix governmental and institutional failures, motivate policymakers, and, sadly, talk rationally to each other about moving forward quickly and effectively.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/07/review-bad-science-and-bad-arguments-abound-in-apocalypse-never/
Meet the new climate sceptics, same as the old climate sceptics (better)
https://www.businessgreen.com/blog-post/4035482/meet-climate-sceptics-climate-sceptics
And what is next via Twitter is quite good yet depressing.
This follows years of the same newspapers pedaling climate denial. Outright Denial is no longer an option in the UK, we’ve entered a new phase of predatory delay.
Predatory delay is the blocking or slowing of needed change, in order to make money off unsustainable, unjust systems in the meantime.
It is increasingly clear that there’s now a concerted effort under way in parts of the British press to derail action on the #ClimateEmergency.
This Thread (with reference to news articles) highlights key examples & shows how the main arguments are textbook #ClimateDelay
by Dr. Aaron Thierry – Graduate student at @CUSocSci – researching the role of emotional processing in climate communications of social movements. PhD Ecology. Activism.
https://twitter.com/ThierryAaron/status/1425849989843103748
In the red corner, the compelling evidence presented in the AR6 WG1 SPM ….
In the blue corner, the unsupportable logical fallacies myths and falsehoods found in the 31/n items listed by Dr. Aaron Thierry ….
And the winner is ….. wait for it …… the blue corner!
aka the Murdoch Media, Lawson’s GWPF et al These guys know how to work as a team. Supporting each other no matter what, while playing the long game and outwitting the competition at every turn.
Another example of a really bad strategy: Framing one’s position around the main taking points of your adversary.
“You are against George W. Bush’s Tax Relief Program. Why don’t you support it?”
Kevin Anderson Aug 2021
A useful thread highlighting how many denialists have morphed into snake-oil sellers, pedalling incremental tweaks as an alternative to real-scale action. Whilst others are protecting their hi-CO2/consumption lifestyles behind false concern for those less well off than they are.
It is increasingly clear that there’s now a concerted effort under way in parts of the British press to derail action on the #ClimateEmergency.
https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1429359485114621958
What these people are pointing to, along with Mann’s New Climate War book, is Neoliberalism’s reactionary program against Man-Made Global Warming. This Neoliberal program was flagged and warned about years to decades ago.
Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the “body of fact” that exists in the mind of the general public.
http://ssrc-cdn1.s3.amazonaws.com/crmuploads/new_publication_3/the-rise-of-the-dedicated-natural-science-think-tank.pdf
First the denial of climate science while spreading doubt about elites, then add in cap and trade carbon pricing as a market solution to delay action, third comes geoengineering and looming hi-tech proto-solutions, fourth comes disaster response economics, and fifth comes emergency agriculture solutions …. and then …..
Neoliberalism is an ideological faith based belief system and mindset. Neoliberalism requires the belief in an ‘omniscient being’ – the all-knowing market – transcending all other systems of knowledge. This ‘all-knowing market’ does not exist in reality but adherents to the Cause are unperturbed by this fact.
Real progress to solve global warming might begin to be made once it’s accepted that climate change is not a science problem nor can it be solved by science or scientists. Global warming is the manifestation of a collection of social, psychological, political and economic problems with solutions grounded in Humanist Principles and Reason.
Neoliberalism is winning hands down so far. They operate as a team, they back each other up, they have faith in the same superior being, and hold to the same Mindset. Whereas Environmentalists, Climate activists and Climate scientists will eat their own young when there is the slightest disagreement or misunderstanding.
See the 31 Point thread of Media examples:
https://twitter.com/ThierryAaron/status/1425849989843103748
Dr.R Check
I must repeat it again. Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem!
Because, it may have the opposite of the intended effect.
It is like reading through large bounces of obsolete litterature and newspapers, that better go for re- cycling of cellulose- products.
Pleace dig out the essencials better and state it on comprehensible form. That is scientific.
And be aware of the opposite, a certain fictional figure, Nicolas Chauvin, who engaged and fought for the Nation and the Principle down into the details in all the wars, and who was ousted at last by Napoleon himself, for praising Napoleon and The Nation and its Principles up to levels and horizons that were no more credible.
See also Chauvinism.
Yes, I can slaughter it down to what you can possibly grasp.
This is very easy.
I am done. No more. Goodbye.
See also Bon Voyage
By such manners, they rather close their sho0ps also.
Should we have any hope for that?
Some people like to blame China for its vast emissions and indeed it must do much better.
But for countries like the USA and many others in the OECD/EU it would actually be a good start to cut their Emissions per Person down to Chinese levels:
https://twitter.com/LasseClimate/status/1429129152716804105/photo/1
Emissions would drop by 20% if they did.
[ Disclaimer: retained for later use ]
With a demand to immediately stop fossil fuel investment, the Impossible Rebellion has started in London!
https://twitter.com/ExtinctionR/status/1429780255888138251
We’re done with broken promises. We’re done with politicians who care more for Exxon lobbyists than for our future. We’re done with pipelines.
One of the worst things Biden has done so far – I’d argue THE worst thing – is to double down on the fossil fuel industry while the planet is burning.
Governments must stop kicking the can down the road and actually begin rapidly decreasing the fossil fuel industry. The choice is stark: end the fossil fuel industry or suffer global civilizational collapse.
More people are realizing this; the faster it happens, the more we save.
It’s much too late to prevent climate breakdown (it’s here in case you haven’t noticed) but it’s the perfect time to keep it to a minimum and save absolutely all we can.
I’m all for freedom, but if your planet becomes uninhabitable due to everyone’s freedom to burn fossil fuel and as a result of this you become dead, you don’t have any freedom at all.
Are you a scientist, researcher or academic?
If so, please sign and share this open letter calling for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
We, the undersigned, call on governments around the world to adopt and implement a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, as a matter of urgency, to protect the lives and livelihoods of present and future generations through a global, equitable phase out of fossil fuels in line with the scientific consensus to not exceed 1.5ºC of warming.
https://fossilfueltreaty.org/open-letter
@MichaelEMann has signed it.
I’ll be checking the list … to see if you do.
Hat tip to M Mann …
One is struck by the ironic mendacity of these false and insidious accusations
We see other remarkable parallels seeking to discredit others by misrepresenting their words and phrases
When it comes to the agenda of inactivism, we once again witness After years when we should have learned of the dangers of ‘false equivalence,’ it baffles me that we are seeing a framing that pits the health of our entire planet against some vague notion of economic prosperity.”
If scientists choose not to engage in the public debate, we leave a vacuum that will be filled by those whose agenda is one of short-term self-interest.
There is a great cost to society if scientists fail to participate in the larger conversation—if we do not do all we can to ensure that the policy debate is informed by an honest assessment of the risks.
In fact, it would be an abrogation of our responsibility to society if we remained quiet in the face of such a grave threat.
But Mann should be talking about the science in the context of risks and extremes, not solutions. He’s way off in the weeds on the solutions side of things.
I agree with you there Killian. And I was being a little poetic generic as well.
Anyway, sometimes what Mann says is a good way to say it. Of course, like all humans he’s imperfect.
Here is a recent video of M Mann. He’s reviewing the content of his book, the new climate war.
Michael Mann – The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back our Planet
146 views 25 Aug 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks99xXtDCok&list=PLCVfFDpAZkFXzKlTrcJlyCarqB_IeN7TC
If you can spare an hour, please tell the group what you think about the ideas and recommendations Mann is offering up to 1) Win the new climate war and 2) how to avoid dangerous catastrophic warming / climate change. ie Keep below 1.5C/2C ????
Why? It’s always the same: Tech, tech, tech. I’m sure by now the obvious has become too obvious for him to ignore and he’s adding in some NET stuff, but basically it’s consume “green” and all will be well.
Nobody should be listening to Mann in the solutions side; he’s not saying anything unique and his view is an example of Pied Pipering – as all greenwashing is.
PS fyi
Mann devotes the longest chapter of his book to climate doomism
In one key paragraph, Mann notes that state-of-the-art climate simulations ‘provide no support at all for a runaway warming scenario at even 4º or 5ºC, let alone 3ºC, which is where current policies are now likely taking us as we slowly decarbonize the economy.
As for “mass extinction”, the most comprehensive study to date, published in April 2020 in the premier science journal Nature found that less than 2 percent of species assemblages will undergo collapse… from climate change if we keep planetary warming below 2ºC. The number rises to 15 percent if warming reaches 4ºC. That is certainly very troubling, but it doesn’t constitute a “mass extinction” event of the sort that is evident in the geological record.’
Moreover, far from being inevitably doomed, ‘a clean energy revolution and climate stabilisation are achievable with current technology. All we require are policies to incentivise the needed shift.’
Politically, Mann appears fairly centrist (he was an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election campaign, for example). It’s not clear to me that the forms of bipartisan compromise that he favours are even possible with today’s Republican party.
On the last page of The New Climate War, Mann speculates that in a decade or so we may look back on 2019, or thereabouts, as ‘the turning point on the climate crisis’.
Mann devotes the longest chapter of his book to climate doomism
In one key paragraph, Mann notes that state-of-the-art climate simulations ‘provide no support at all for a runaway warming scenario at even 4º or 5ºC, let alone 3ºC, which is where current policies are now likely taking us as we slowly decarbonize the economy.
So, let me see if I’ve got this right: Scenarios civilization will not survive intact, i.e. that will bring about collapse, i.e. 3C+, are not disasters? This is bizarre that for Mann only a Venus-like atmosphere equals “doom.” I think the collapse of society is a pretty freaking good definition of “doom.” Me pointing out that 1. he can’t actually know this because these are scenarios, not proclamations from God of what will be, 2. the IPCC assessments, and climate science in general, have pretty significantly underestimated change to date, so such certitude of the future seems full of hubris, 3. there’s more to this than just climate science, i.e. resource depletions (so much for a long-term green tech high tech society), impacts from extremes, non-climate-related ecological damage (plastics, eutrophic zones, etc.) and 4. the planet has never been in this situation before with the entire ecosystem being degraded concurrently leaving virtually no hysteresis – no process of one domino having to knock down another, etc., as all the dominoes are being knocked down simultaneously, that got him to block me on Twitter.
The problem with nuclear generally is human error combined with the long life of the toxic waste produced by that technology. Engineers always think maybe they can come up with a foolproof design, but that underestimates the foolishness of humans, which appears to be limitless.
The Guardian has an article about these issues as they relate to San Onofre nuclear facility and So Cal Edison. File this under: You Can’t Fix Stupid, I guess.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/24/san-onofre-nuclear-power-plant-radioactive-waste-unsafe?utm_term=e232a545e469ac0a8bd1a545744ebcbd&utm_campaign=GreenLight&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=greenlight_email
The modern unitary small reactors have some appeal to me because I love techie stuff, but I expect if/when we build some of those, we will end up putting some foolish humans in charge of managing them and the record with foolish humans and nukes is pretty clear.
My challenge to the techies who are excited about new, “safe” iterations of nukes is always, show me your technical prowess by cleaning a site like Hanford or Fukushima where things have kinda gone off the rails. That kind of techie skill would really impress and reassure me. Just stop the nuclear groundwater leakage that is headed for the Columbia River. Is that too much to ask?
Cheers
Mike
Hmm, yeah.
“The waste is buried about 100ft from the shoreline, along the I-5 highway, one of the nation’s busiest thoroughfares, and not far from a pair of faults that experts say could generate a 7.4 magnitude earthquake.”
Mike, Hanford is the result of over hasty weapons plutonium manufacture. It has nothing to do with nuclear power.
Fukushima Dai-ichi cleanup is proceeding Japanese style. Others would proceed more sensibly.
Mike: Nuclear power will never be 100% safe because of human error. However studies show nuclear power causes much fewer deaths and disease than fossil fuels, and about the same as renewables. I’m posting this because it surprised me. Refer:
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
I’ve seen other similar studies so it seems credible. However I have no axe to grind. Both renewables and nuclear power look useful to me, and the right choice is probably a ‘local’ decision..
@Mike:
You cite an article quoting Gregory Jaczko AND the UCS? You obviously have no idea who they are. They are political activists financed by anti-nuclear interests. Nothing they say should be taken as credible, including “and” and “the”.
Are you ignorant of the natural reactors at Oklo? The “toxic waste” is self-containing; if it scarcely moved in the billion-plus years since those deposits went critical, humans aren’t going to have problems with it.
Nature takes care of the problem if we just let her, and we shouldn’t even call it a “problem”. Radioisotopes have myriad uses. We are literally wasting their potential to do things like make our food supply safer.
Category error. Working out ways to prevent such things from happening in the first place is not the same skill set as remediating things after so much carelessness resulted in problems.
What you fail to ask is, is that actually a problem? If it has no health or ecological impact, why not just ignore it? The tritium at Fukushima is a tiny fraction of what’s naturally produced by cosmic rays every year. The oceans are loaded with radioisotopes. That water should have been loaded into tankers and dumped out at sea years ago.
Mods: What happened to the preview? That used to be automatic. Why is your web design going backwards?
Naomi Klein on Global Neoliberalism Coupled with “economic shock therapy” from 2012
And that’s where I came up with the thesis for the book, which is we have entered this new phase that I’m calling “disaster capitalism”; or the Shock Doctrine using a shock – in this case the shock and awe invasion of Iraq – to impose what economists call “economic shock therapy”.
So I think it was definitely that experience of seeing it from Latin America – a continent in revolt against these policies – that made it easier to identify this as a new phase. And once I identified that I started to see these patterns recurring.
After the Asian tsunami there was a very similar push to use the shock of that natural disaster to push through, once again, these same policies. Water privatization, electricity privatization, labor market …, displacing poor people on the coasts with hotel developers. So a sort of social re-engineering of societies in the interest of corporations, which I think is what we’ve been doing under the banner of free trade. But now it’s under the banner of post-disaster reconstruction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKTmwu3ynOY
But everything is expendable. Free trade is only good while it’s working in the interests of neo-liberalism. As soon as it becomes counter-productive, eg China it is abandoned with ease. Covid-19 is yet another version of social re-engineering of societies in the interest of corporations. Don’t believe me? Go look at the equities markets in record territory despite social disruptions, economic shocks and employment business downturns.
It’s just another version of “disaster capitalism” where money is as cheap as chips. What comes next will be the massive and unprecedented Government largess in response to climate change induced extreme weather disasters.
It is already happening. Despite the good economic times before Governments could not afford to fund any number of emergent needs for the population, or for business and labour. No one could afford to increase wages. No money for climate change action, education, or health services.
Now, look at the mega-Trillion$ globally appearing suddenly out of thin air to address Covid-19, Vaccines, Infrastructure and Building Back Better (pro-Climate actions) plus Millionaire trips into space at the same time. Inspiring stuff. While the IPCC cannot even afford to rent a half decent speech writer.
There’s no way anyone is going to close a coal mine in West Virginia. No one can afford that.
But before too long you’ll watch the Billion$ come pouring in for Direct Air Capture plants in California and Oregon while coal / gas fired generators are still operating and being built. Many regulars here will cheer that on as a great success for Climate Science and the great work of scientists. :)
@Killian, OMG, how did you manage to get this reply through?
It is a first rate reality check.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/07/forced-responses-july-2021/comment-page-10/#comment-795259
Given he was in no way attacked or insulted and everything I said was factually accurate, why shouldn’t it have? I think there is a degree of awareness dawning on this site exactly where the problems with civility originated – and continue in some cases.
Still it was surprising. I’m less hopeful than you.
PS fyi –
Status-seekers are hostile online & offline, but their online attacks are more visible.
Nice people do not go crazy online.
The Psychology of Online Political Hostility:
A Comprehensive, Cross-National Test of the Mismatch Hypothesis
.. hostile political discussions are the result of status-driven individuals
who are drawn to politics and are equally hostile both online and offline.
… we offer initial evidence that online discussions feel more hostile,
in part, because the behavior of such individuals is more visible than offline.
Thus, our findings suggest that the feeling that online interactions
are much more hostile than offline interactions emerges because hostile individuals
– especially those high in status-driven risk taking – have a significantly larger
reach online; they can more easily identify targets and their behavior is more
broadly visible
https://psyarxiv.com/hwb83/
Matias (2019) found that announcing community rules in online
discussion forums not only changed the behavior of established users
but also encouraged more civil individuals to enter these forums,
leading to less hostility.
Consistent with the results of Studies 1, 2 and 4, hostile people have an enhanced
preference for participating in political discussions …
Online environments do not turn nice people into trolls.
Those who are mean to you online would be equally mean to you offline.
Both online and offline hostility is driven by status concerns.
How to guard against online hate?
It is not an ‘accident’ but a deliberate strategy pursued by status-driven people.
While many do not personally fall victim to attacks, they are public, shaping
overall perceptions. To reduce online hate, such people need to be contained.
https://twitter.com/M_B_Petersen/status/1417125709630382084
and
https://twitter.com/boralexander1/status/1417118939226808324
Dominance (the use of force and intimidation to induce fear) and Prestige
(the sharing of expertise or know-how to gain respect)—on the attainment
of social rank,
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0030398
They leave out one very important point, or you did in your summary: Fair and consistent moderation. Toxic sites always have inconsistent moderation. Since most sites do have rules, but toxicity continues, I am certain this is the much bigger factor. It’s just like parenting or classroom management: Inconsistency kills.
Residents protest as US energy giant starts seismic testing
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/28/frustration-and-angst-king-island-residents-protest-as-us-energy-giant-starts-seismic-testing
Full speed ahead. Nothing has changed. Nothing is changing. The IPCC, the AR6 and the upcoming COP26 are a big waste of everyone’s time.
Scientists really aren’t the best champions of climate science – 2017
This is the sixth episode of Climate Lab, a six-part series produced by the University of California in partnership with Vox. It is as true today as it was when it was first made.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qfI3DZmmQw
“The problem is you have people who are very, very smart when it comes to reading data, but they are dumb when it comes to dealing with people.” Van Jones
https://youtu.be/-qfI3DZmmQw?t=46
If we are supposed to be in a new Climate War, does this mean every time I go to the service station to fill up my car with petrol, I am a Traitor guilty of Trading with the Enemy?
The only supplier of electricity to my home and business generates it by burning Coal. More Trading with the Enemy?
I do not wish to be at War with half the population where I live.
When people declare War, especially Civil War, things get extremely nasty and violent. People die.
I refuse to allow myself to be led by incompetent fools into an unnecessary stupid War mentality.
The “war mentality” is not about attacking each other, it refers to the scale of the response needed. “A WWII-level mobilization.”
Hi, I see what I did wrong there. Sorry killian.
In this case I was thinking of, referring to (but never said it clearly) the New Climate War Mann speaks about in his book, is specifically a war against the fossil fuel companies who are the declared enemy #1 https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann
They are not innocent all, but the problem/s and causes transcend their mere existence and their selective denialism and political funding of recalcitrants.
He notes that ‘if we took the disinformation campaign funded by the fossil fuel industry out of the equation, the climate problem would have been solved decades ago’.
I think that is mystical thinking. So is this: ‘the surest way to lose a war is to refuse to recognise that you’re in one in the first place’.
That may be a truism, but there are others more pressing – no point going to war against the wrong enemy. If you’re going to go to war you better have a definition of what Winning that War looks like, possess the “Arms to Wage it” and have a defined Exit Strategy.
Who won the last climate war? Who won the war on drugs? Who won the war in Afghanistan? Vietnam? There is a powerful American cultural bias to his writings word choices and thinking. Probably because the US is ground zero for denialism, always has been. It’s not how the rest of the world necessarily thinks or operates.
I am all for a world war level mobilisation. And I think Mann is a first class climate scientist.
“……….the new climate war is a ‘war on action’. And the weapons the climate inactivists bring to this battlefield are ‘an array of powerful Ds: disinformation, deceit, divisiveness, deflection, delay, despair-mongering, and doomism’. ”
There’s a lot of truth in what he says. It’s mirrored in neoliberal thinking. I just question the Framing of a call to action to stop climate change it that way in a book, a political book, which will alienate half the population immediately. As per the ref with 800 comments I gave for an artcile by him on this topic.
The emphasis needs to be on what people can do, present potential turning points, suggest rational practical action that’s doable, and lay out what the politicians must do, what the media must do, what scientists can do better, and not be about what his perceived enemies are doing or why they are so Bad and Evil! Besides, *War Strategy* meetings are supposed to be done in secret, not laid out in public. :)
In his doomism chapter he portrays +3C to +4C models as not being that big a deal. Not anywhere near mass extinction levels. More on that next month maybe.
Our brains hold clues for the ideologies we choose to live by, according to research, which has suggested that people who espouse extremist attitudes tend to perform poorly on complex mental tasks.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/feb/22/people-with-extremist-views-less-able-to-do-complex-mental-tasks-research-suggests
The researchers then used computational modelling to extract information from that data about the participant’s perception and learning, and their ability to engage in complex and strategic mental processing.
Overall, the researchers found that ideological attitudes mirrored cognitive decision-making, according to the study published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
“Individuals or brains that struggle to process and plan complex action sequences may be more drawn to extreme ideologies, or authoritarian ideologies that simplify the world.”
A key finding was that people with extremist attitudes tended to think about the world in black and white terms, and struggled with complex tasks that required intricate mental steps, said lead author Dr Leor Zmigrod at Cambridge’s department of psychology.
She said another feature of people with tendencies towards extremism appeared to be that they were not good at regulating their emotions, meaning they were impulsive and tended to seek out emotionally evocative experiences.
… “It’s fascinating, because conservatism is almost a synonym for caution,” she said. “We’re seeing that – at the very basic neuropsychological level – individuals who are politically conservative … simply treat every stimuli that they encounter with caution.”
The “psychological signature” for extremism across the board was a blend of conservative and dogmatic psychologies, the researchers said.
The cognitive and perceptual correlates of ideological attitudes: a data-driven approach
Although human existence is enveloped by ideologies, remarkably little is understood about the relationships between ideological attitudes and psychological traits. Even less is known about how cognitive dispositions—individual differences in how information is perceived and processed— sculpt individuals’ ideological worldviews, proclivities for extremist beliefs and resistance (or receptivity) to evidence.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.0424
Note: whenever someone posts something here, a good idea is go back to the original source, the research, what was actually said, and check it out fully – how much is conjecture, how much is data driven findings? What is false? Misquoted? Misrepresented? What’s the context? The scope? The purpose? The meaning? Being mindful those people who espouse extremist attitudes, intolerance, dogmatic psychologies and belief systems tend to perform poorly on complex mental tasks. The giveaway being lies and logical fallacies are the lazy man’s way to a convincing argument.
Extreme pro-group attitudes, including violence endorsement against outgroups, were linked to poorer working memory, slower perceptual strategies, and tendencies towards impulsivity and sensation-seeking—reflecting overlaps with the psychological profiles of conservatism and dogmatism.
Cognitive and personality signatures were also generated for ideologies such as authoritarianism, system justification, social dominance orientation, patriotism and receptivity to evidence or alternative viewpoints; elucidating their underpinnings and highlighting avenues for future research.
Together these findings suggest that ideological worldviews may be reflective of low-level perceptual and cognitive functions.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms’.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.0424
Want to solve the problem of global warming? Best first accept it is not a science problem nor does it have a scientific solution. We are all in this together, whether you like that or not.
So if you are one of those who want to go to War then join the Army or your local street gang.
https://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/learn-nonviolent-communication/4-part-nvc/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication
https://www.cnvc.org/
“We are going to see more and more climate-related disclosure and regulatory agencies are across that, both here and overseas,” Frydenberg said. The treasurer acknowledged with the world moving to constrain carbon emissions in line with the Paris agreement goals, there were now “material risks” to Australian businesses.
He said he had spoken recently with Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, about international developments. “He’s been very engaged in this and it was a very interesting discussion.
“I talk to the central bank governor, Phil Lowe, and he says this is a major topic at central bank governors’ meetings – so yes [climate change] is influencing in a significant way global capital,” he said.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/28/josh-frydenberg-admits-climate-change-a-major-preoccupation-in-global-markets
@Reality Check:
It is ASTONISHING how far these people are behind events. We are SEEING things happening that the models predicted would not occur for decades. The time for action isn’t NOW, it was decades ago. The IPCC was established in 1989, but we probably should have acted no later than 1958, when “The Unchained Goddess” was first broadcast.
We have to do what we can, and salvage what we can. How much that is, I don’t know. I won’t live to see it. Radical atmospheric remediation is essential if ocean life and species are to be preserved. Who’s planning for this? I recall reading about ONE experiment with iron fertilization of the ocean and its massive benefits to a salmon run. We need DOZENS of these things every year and around the world. We are out of time.
Those of us who are battle-scarred veterans of the climate wars of the past 3 decades could not help but feel a bit of deja vu as the COVID pandemic began to roll across the world. We were seeing the same denial, hostility and idiocy–indeed, from mainly the same people–as we’d seen in the climate wars.
But the COVID catastrophe runs about a factor of 30x faster than the climate crisis, so I wonder if we are now seeing our climate future being played out in front of our eyes. If so, the future will be one of ongoing tragedy continuing its transition into farce. Because even when gifted a magic bullet that’s more than 90% effective for free, nearly a third of the population will continue to reject the solution out of stupidity and sheer bloodymindedness. Regardless of the miracles that the best and the brightest manage to pull off, our ultimate extinction will be ensured by the stupidest among us.
Just an update on the ongoing fallout from the VC Summer nuclear debacle (and a bit on Vogtle, as well.) Some very upper management types in Westinghouse were deeply corrupt, apparently.
https://thebulletin.org/2021/08/us-attorney-details-illegal-acts-at-construction-projects-sealing-the-fate-of-the-nuclear-renaissance/
I’d already concluded (despite the serious lack of transparency on projected costs for Vogtle, making it a ‘gut’ estimate on my part) that those costs are now likely to hit $30 billion. Apparently, I’m not the only one thinking so.