Written By:
Colonial Viper - Date published:
7:39 am, June 14th, 2016 - 136 comments
Categories: capitalism, climate change, Conservation, economy, energy, Environment, global warming, Politics, science, sustainability, thinktank -
Tags: pretend and extend
This is my take on parts of the YouTube video “Kevin Anderson – Delivering on 2 deg C: evolution or revolution.”
According to wikipedia, Professor Kevin Anderson is:
the Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research; holds a joint chair in Energy and Climate Change at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester and School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia
The guts of the message I got from Professor Anderson’s presentation was that the Climate Change scientific/expert community is “flavouring its work”, watering it down in order to fit in with what is “politically palatable” and convenient to those in power, and ignoring the resulting “fraudulent” character of the entire endeavour.
Prof Anderson comments that the CC expert community massages it’s assumptions so that the results it generates sits within a set of positive and “politically palatable outcomes” that cannot be questioned.
This comment applies to the work known as Integrated Assessment Models. These are the principle tool used to inform and guide governments and bureaucrats globally on required climate change policy.
The basic science that is being done is very solid. However the CC scientific and expert community as a whole has been guilty of consistently underplaying what that science is implying that we need to change in society urgently.
Some specifics that I got out of the presentation:
Prof Anderson also relayed a bunch of quotes during the video of some senior political players that he has talked to personally:
Senior Political Scientist
“Too much is invested in 2 deg C for us to say it’s not possible – it would undermine all that’s been achieved. It’ll give a sense of hopelessness – we may as well give in.”
Prof Anderson: “Are you suggesting that we have to lie about our research findings?”
“…well, perhaps just not be so honest – more dishonest…”
Government chief scientific advisor, formerly senior in IPCC
“We can’t tell them (Ministers and politicians) it’s (2 deg C) impossible. We can say it’s a stretch and ambitious – but that, with political will, 2 deg C is still a feasible target.” [This particular person did not believe that the target was at all possible.]
UK Energy and Climate Change Minister one day before attending a COP
“Our position is challenging enough, I can’t go with the message that 2 deg C is impossible – it’s what we’ve all worked towards.”
Final comment by CV:
The upshot of all this is that our governments and our policy makers are getting the news from the climate change expert community that they want. Not the facts that they need.
This is a massive programme of pretend and extend, nothing more.
Personally, I am picking that we will hit 2+ deg C warming soon after 2030 (and that it is already a done deal; we are at about 1.1 deg C warming and rising now) and that we are right on track for circa 6 deg C warming by 2100, which will be fatal to civilisation as we know it.
In theory, today’s infants and preschoolers will live long enough to see this terrifying world that we have handed on to them.
[here are two screenshots of Prof Anderson’s slides on how the Climate Change community has made its findings look “politically palatable” to government officials, and why the Climate Change expert community has kept quiet about it, in essence forming a fraudulent conspiracy on this issue]
The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
Hobsons choice
CV – here’s something worthwhile to read:
http://bit.ly/1VspUKb
Thanks Robert.
Ben Elton said the same thing in his book
Stark
puplished in 1986
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stark_(novel)
and i would venture that most people that are not absolute lemmings now that what is happening and what our stenographers and bobble heads on the Tv are saying are two very different shoes.
Alas, for the most part i think it is too late.
Thanks Sabine. IMO it’s definitely not too late to do a whole lot of good and to save a whole lot of good. But we’re not going to be able to do that until we face up squarely with what is going to be happening to us over the next 20-30 years.
As Prof Anderson said – one way or another, we are going to have radical change in our society this century. It would be better if it was change that we planned and intended, as opposed to the change which is going to happen by default.
“It would be better if it was change that we planned and intended, as opposed to the change which is going to happen by default.”
a logical observation and the frustration obvious but heres an uncomfortable thought, the situation in say Syria would be better resolved through logical planning and implementation, some common sense by all parties…..unfortunately human beings don’t have a great track record when it comes to doing the logical thing EVEN when the facts are staring them in the face.
Why would they(we) behave any differently re climate change?
The civil conflict in Syria and the inability of the Assad government to peacefully manage the start of that conflict was due to several years drought from the mid 2000s culminating in an influx of over a million farmers with failed crops heading into Syria’s largest cities demanding that Assad so something about the situation.
Climate change was not the only cause of Syria’s internal problems, but it was a major cause.
It is now also thought that the bliblical scale drought in Ethiopia in the 1980s which caused the seasonal rains there to fail several years in a row was due to climate change.
This is just a taste of things to come. BTW the advanced northern hemisphere world pollutes massively per capita, but it is the poor world centred around the equator and southern hemisphere which is copping the first severe consequences of climate change.
I have seen the theory linking Syria’s woes with CC, and whether correct or not the situation in Syria was merely used as a demonstration of how humans DON’T behave in their own best interests (collectively).
It is all very well to suggest we can and should as a society begin serious changes to attempt to mitigate the worst impacts of CC however my point was we are unlikely to engage in that task successfully going on past form even should all the stops be pulled out…..remember the situation in Syria is omnipresent and immediately destructive whereas CC can be said (and is by many) to be a potential threat in some undefined future.
Personally I’m all for attempting the change but am realistic(dispirited?) enough to think it is a most unlikely occurrence…..thats my view and I am emphatically convinced of the threat, compare that to the general populations view and consider the reaction.
It’s a big problem all right. The odds are stacked against us, especially if the people with the expertise and who do know the truth, continue their role in the official game of pretend and extend.
“We have a people problem, the people just do not want to know”
Robert Hirsch of The Hirsch Report http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/hirsch.htm in an interview a few years after his/their report was released, I think that was his way of saying – that was a waste of time.
The maternity wards are testimony to the self generated denial.
Young computer literate, so called informed people think there is another 3 score and ten years left of …. this ? And the new grandparents are happy as well? WTF look behind ya, haven’t those past 30 years just flown ??? What chance a child born today? SFA
And then it will dawn on the masses they have been lied to, I wonder if it will be a bloodbath of starving people? Or will we go out in a passive voluntary way?
http://www.22after.com
http://guymcpherson.com/climate-chaos/
So can we say it now….
Our dear leaders are just like Stalin. They just want to hear the news, they want to hear.
I see lots of reports buggered if I can see anything but targets and stats, which honestly makes little impact on me.
What is the Co2 content of the atmosphere currently? What was it, 20 years ago, what was it during the industrial revolution when coal was the main fuel.
Is their any scientific proof of cause and effect, has the link between CO2, emissions and increasing extreme weather patterns been proven.
Has anyone checked the earths orbital distance compared to back then? As in is it a planet cycle, or solar cycle?
I can only see CO2 emissions as being PART of the problem NOT the problem in totality. Sorry.
Few years back it was Ozone, now it’s CO2, what next the nitrogen in our atmosphere?
Diesels become more popular, cars are cleaner these days? We have electric vehicles, nuclear energy solar energy hydro dams, Are we really saying it’s down to car emmisions all of it, and the odd oil burning electicity generator?
I’m not so sure your all not gullible, you don’t seem to question anything when it’s from your own side, when you should challenge everything.
To many vested interests on this from both sides of the coin AFAIAC
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/greenhousegases/industrialrevolution.html
‘Few years back it was Ozone, now it’s CO2, what next the nitrogen in our atmosphere?’
Not difficult to understand really….we live in and are part of a closed chemical reactor, which has changed constantly from one extreme to another(over incomprehensible periods of time) but recently our actions have impacted those chemical reactions and unfortunately we can only exist (and most of the flora/fauna) in a very narrow band of those change extremes….so yes, ozone, CO2 or even nitrogen levels and forms have the potential to determine our survivability.
Evolution is slow, climate change not so.
Hi Pat,
I looked at that link you supplied thanks..
Couple points, of the 2 graphs the top one shows cycling bell effect, looking at the graph you see cycles, it appears from analysis that in about the 1880-1900 the levels were as high as now they declined then rapidly increased late 2000’s to the same levels.
On the lower graph there is no correspondence to the upper graph at all, in fact, the second graph claims a HUGE increase only recently.
Logically the top graph looks more accurate? Someone screwing with the results.
Logically as in since the 1880’s when coal emissions peaked and atmospheric pollution was at it’s maximum we have been improving emissions by cleaner energy creation and use , this is where you see the decline since then, Which leaves the big question how did it suddenly rise so much?
The stats don’t seem to match our actual emission levels by the look of it.
“Until the past two centuries, the concentrations of CO2 and CH4 had never exceeded about 280 ppm and 790 ppb, respectively. Current concentrations of CO2 are about 390 ppm and CH4 levels exceed 1,770 ppb. Both numbers are much higher than at any time during the last 650,000 years.”
the two graphs don’t appear to correspond due to time scale difference…you will note the top graph records the interglacials….we are talking millions of years….the bottom graph only covers 2000 years, a blink of an eye, and you will see from the above paragraph the concentrations are unprecedented in the time of human existence.
the world has had CO2 concentrations higher than current but it wasn’t a climate or environment in which we would survive.
” Current concentrations of CO2 are about 390 ppm ”
It’s just past 400 ppm.
We blew past 2C warming locked in about 5 yrs ago – we’re now hard on for 3C with no signs of emissions slowing down. Of course the IPCC under quote – the reality of what will happen is too depressing for most.
yep, i know….think the outlook just got worse.
Also consider that between 1 deg C and 1.5 deg C of warming has been hidden by “Global Dimming” where pollutants and particulates suspended in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels has acted to reflect sunlight away, create extra cloud cover and cool the Earth.
A couple of months with no fossil fuel use and that cooling effect will disappear and the full power of global warming will come roaring into effect.
TL/DR without global dimming we’re almost on top of 3 deg C right now.
Coal emissions did not peak in 1880. China today burns 70M tonnes of coal a WEEK!
Further the world as a whole burns at least 90M barrels of oil a DAY.
Each number on that top graph represents a thousand years. The last peak was 120,000 years ago. Primitive humans had just come on the scene.
Consumes, not burns. A lot of oil is made into plastic and so the CO2 is not immediately released into the atmosphere.
I stand corrected thanks Lanth, a good chunk of that oil is used as chemical feedstocks.
“I can only see CO2 emissions as being PART of the problem NOT the problem in totality. Sorry.”
I haven’t verified this number at all, but you are right that CO2 is PART of the problem, and not the problem in totality.
The problem is that the PART that CO2 (and other manmade GHGs) contributes to warming is about 90%.
Which is near enough to be the ‘totality’ of it.
No – of course not.
However if you wish to get absolute proof, then by letting about 30 years of unrestrained emissions of greenhouse gases should provide that “proof”. Of course that particular experiment appears to be one that you can only run once every 20-30 thousand years. It appears that previous paleoclimatic effects from excess CO2 and CH4 emissions from ‘natural’ causes and emitted over thousands of years rather than hundreds take at least that period of time to revert back to a steady state after
Unless you have more than one planet to experiment on.
To provide the absolute proof that someone* like yourself appears to wish, then I’d suggest having a supply of at least 10 or 20 planets to do side by side experiments on. If you wish to now provide the cheap faster than light or time travel drive, we will certainly go off to devise the types of experiments that you require.
/sarc
* The scientific idiots like Richard appear to have a phobia learning enough basic science to understand simple physics. Perhaps framing it into a sarcastic set of requirements about what their lazy arses can do to provide the proof they require would help educate them. They appear to be too lazy and/or stupid to understand much else.
For those of us who have taken the time to learn the basic science over the past decades, we’d prefer not to experiment on our home simply to pleasure a marching morn’s view of how science should be done.
Well said lprent!
Exercise your brain. Read volume 1 of the IPCC reports. I’d give you a link, but I suspect you need practice using google.
You will find ALL of the weakly understood ideas examined in depth there.
After all you don’t appear to understand the predominant roles of coal usage for the generation of electricity, steel and other industrial products or even the greenhouse gas cost of manufacturing and using cement.
Perhaps you should do some reading and then come back AFTER you have learnt enough 5rd form science to understand the explanations. It is rather useless explaining to someone who appears to have landfilled the area between their ears with cement.
wow.. For someone who bans people for doing exactly what you just did i’m shocked you rude, sacastic fucker.
0 Had a rough day, well don’t come here read my first post and start a rant.
If you had followed lower down you will get a shock.
Where I thanks Pat and CV for helping me learn something that didn’t take a degree in physics to understand. bigotry also, involves intelligence, you’d be the first to ban anyone who attacks a woman but here I am bi-polar with learning difficulties and perhaps not the highest intelligence in the world like others lower than your geniuses selves. You want people top change and understand it, talk so they understand it without getting fucking sarcastic either.
WOW Serve returned.
Hey Richard, don’t feel bad. Some people were just born with an empathy deficit. So they get off on being reactive on blogs, so what? Just ignore the buggers.
I graduated with a BSc in physics long ago & can assure you that the climate change controversy isn’t easy for anyone because it is multidimensional, complicated to the extent that I wish there was a word for immensely complex! I’ve read & own plenty of books that go into considerable depth on the subject, including some by deniers. There are indeed flaws in the spin presentations by both camps of advocates.
When I read the original climategate emails a few years back, I was baffled that those university professors thought it acceptable to delete data points on the grounds that they were `outliers’. In the early ’60s we were taught at college that all data points must be included in a graph. It’s elementary scientific protocol. So these alarmist academic turkeys think it’s okay to fake science, if you only do it cosmetically, a wee bit here & there, just to make your propaganda more compelling. Gotta save humanity, have to abandon ethical conduct…
Born a sceptic, I know that faith in models can make people delusional. As Gregory Bateson famously said, “the map is not the territory”. However, I’m still more of an alarmist – due to what I see as the balance of evidence. Like others here, I suspect we are headed for upwards of three degrees of global warming.
With the likes of john key in power nothing can be done there removal is critical
Sorry but that’s a nonsense statement.
here is Andersons own words on the topic
http://kevinanderson.info/blog/duality-in-climate-science/
“Kevin has a decade’s industrial experience, principally in the petrochemical industry. He sits as commissioner on the Welsh Governments climate change commission and is a director of Greenstone Carbon Management – a London-based company providing emission-related advice to private and public sector organisations. Kevin is a chartered engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.”
His views here about looking back are interesting
” politicians should consider a rationing system like the one introduced during the last “time of crisis” in the 1930s and 40s, meaning not necessarily a recession or a worse lifestyle but making adjustments in everyday life such as using public transport and wearing a sweater rather than turning on the heating. “Our emissions were a lot less ten years ago and we got by ok then.”
And this
” ‘We will not make all human beings extinct as a few people with the right sort of resources may put themselves in the right parts of the world and survive. But I think it’s extremely unlikely that we wouldn’t have mass death at 4C. If you have got a population of nine billion by 2050 and you hit 4C, 5C or 6C, you might have half a billion people surviving’.
he wouldnt get a look on Wekas posts with his ‘we are all doomed’ views
“he wouldnt get a look on Wekas posts with his ‘we are all doomed’ views”
Blatant, unnecessary troll move. Don’t tell lies about what I would do, DoU. And don’t try and derail the post by picking a fight with me about how I see things. I’m happy to explain it to you but take it to Open Mike.
You also appear to be lying about Anderson, who doesn’t believe we should give up or that there is nothing that we can do and from what I can tell is one of the people really putting things on the line to effect change.
I read it Weka, I took it as he was having a joke with you, but I don’t know really?
You ok Weka?
Hi Richard, I’m good thanks 🙂
It’s not a joke, and DoU has a history of this.
I’d have banned for recidivist stupidity….
(Wasn’t here and wasn’t signed in but DoF lets fly with so many bullets of bullshit that it’s only a matter of a very short time before he’s buried in his own muck)
Those are Andersons very words
“politicians should consider a rationing system like the one introduced during the last “time of crisis” in the 1930s and 40s.
And your very own words were ‘no doom and gloom’.
The part I found was most interesting was going back to the lower carbon levels of a few decades back, which is true that we got on OK.
Going back to carbon consumption from a few decades ago won’t reverse the heating though, it’ll only slow it.
It also pretty much means death for tourism, and large parts of the economy dedicated to transportation.
In essence, the change in temperature is only a symptom…the real key is the energy imbalance per square metre of the earths surface, which is due to GHGs.
As long as that energy imbalance is positive, the Earth is going to retain more energy (heat) than it radiates out, and therefore it will keep warming.
“And your very own words were ‘no doom and gloom’.”
Link or it didn’t happen.
I apologise for any misrepresentation I have done of your comment guidelines.
It was a graceless thing to say. I would support those guidelines unreservedly .
Apology accepted. My suggestion is that you resist the temptation to have a go at me. There really was no reason to even mention me in that original comment, especially given this is someone else’s post.
[Have removed DoF from pre-mod list]-Bill
Wake up establishment boy, and make sure that you are part of the truth and not part of the lie.
Im sticking with the view of the thousands of scientists that make up the IPCC reports on this.
So much anti- science here. I use long term figures from NIWA and you can get buried under the grief.
I say the poor residents of South Dunedin have poor drainage, built on a former swamp ( and are less than 0.5m above sea level) and you get jumped on.
I would expect nothing less from a self-blinded establishment loyalist.
The IPCC scenarios are built around assumptions of carbon capture and storage and do not represent the view of the scientists who provide the raw data – they don’t get a say in how their data is utilised.
Carbon capture and storage works at the theoretical level only and to say any scaling up would present logistical nightmares, would be a gross understatement.
But if you want to stick with scenarios that assume an area up to three times the land area of India can be planted and harvested every year; that geological formations for sinking 36 Billion tonnes of sequestered CO2 can be found every single year; that a wee man in a pokey hat will suddenly just produce all the infrastructure that would have to accompany that – then you go for gold DoF.
You’re in the good company of all the political parties and policy makers who are selling the world a dummy.
And that we can somehow keep all that sequestered CO2 hidden away for 1000-2000 years without leaking…
When the IPCC talks about the IAM ( Integrated assessment models) you may well be right
“Current integrated assessment research uses one or more of the following methods (Rotmans and Dowlatabadi, 1998):
computer-aided IAMs to analyze the behaviour of complex systems;
simulation gaming in which complex systems are represented by simpler ones with relevant behavioural similarity;
scenarios as tools to explore a variety of possible images of the future;
and
qualitative integrated assessments based on a limited, heterogeneous data set, without using any models.
A review by Parson and Fisher-Vanden (1997) shows that IAMs have contributed to the establishment of important new insights to the policy debate.”
Its all way over my head, but it seems the policy debate is still evolving, part of the problem seem to be they have constructed an ‘economic-biophysical’ model and the physical side is fairly robust, but as we would all know, the economic side would be very rubbery.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg3/index.php?idp=311
WGIII, Mitigation
I’ll make this very easy for you.
The IAMs assume that carbon capture and storage will be workable and up and running in a few decades or so. That means that although the scenarios overshoot 2 degrees, the ‘take home’ conclusion they put out is that temperatures will not exceed 2 degrees because we’ll be sucking the excess CO2 out of the air.
The other point of ‘massage’ is to input false or unrealistic peak emission dates.
I believe that all IPCC IAMs have CCS embedded. Anderson has done the homework and speaks of it on a few occasions. (Try his presentations at the Earth 101 gathering in Iceland if you’ve any serious intention of getting with the play. I think he reels out the numbers in one of those presentations)
Given the recent success of Iceland based research on turning CO2 into stone, the assumption that CCS will be unworkable is equally speculative.
As Prof Anderson has said…and this is me paraphrasing here…no one would accept a 50% chance that the plane you are flying on will crash.
Why are we accepting that for the whole Earth.
As for that experiment – how many years do you reckon before the first coal fired or gas fired thermal station is hooked up to that system? Five years? 10 years? 15 years?
And then how long after that to refit the first 5,000 coal and gas fired power plants with this technology?
Events have overtaken you a bit. Doesn’t make it a silver bullet; it’s still encouraging.
So now there is only a 49% chance of our plane crashing. I’m encouraged too.
PS they still haven’t hooked it up to a coal or gas power station.
Can that be done without using fossil fuels? What are the GHG emissions created in the process?
we’re currently putting up roughly 50B tonnes of CO2 a year. They’re hoping to ramp their system up to capture 10,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.
So to capture 10% of our current CO2 emissions, they would need to create half a million of their upgraded sites around the world.
To capture half of our current CO2 emissions they would need to create 2.5M of their upgraded capture sites around the world.
I know precisely as much about it as the two articles I linked, Weka. The full paper is linked in the first one. The Guardian quotes the Iceland site as sequestering 10kT /a, five orders of magnitude less than required, and points out that it must be one solution of many.
Haven’t had time to read it properly OAB. It’s always my first question with high tech solutions though, because we’re still not used to thinking cradle to grave or seeing that to use high tech at the moment at least means relying in fossil fuels (am curious about Iceland though, and what they do).
I agree about multiple solutions, it’s going to be our only hope. Which is why I think soil sequestration from the regenag people should be looked at seriously. It’s not as attractive though, because it requires us to change 😉
Doesn’t really sound that hi-tech. That’s why I brought it up in the first place: basalt is common, etc etc.
it’s still encouraging.
Yeah, like bigger buckets in steerage.
The problem isn’t so much the workability, though that is questionable due to the sheer logistics if nothing else. The problem is that it’s getting built into all scenarios as though it works right now and will exist at scale sometime around 2050.
I’m no scientist, but embedding a piece of currently unavailable technology into a scenario that’s meant to be based on science, doesn’t seem very scientific to me.
What if it simply doesn’t work at scale…efficiencies break down or whatever?
What if an area up to three times the size of India can’t be planted and harvested every year?
What if not enough suitable geological formations can be found to store 36 billion tonnes of CO2 every year?
What if storage sites leak?
Seems that the compilers of reports don’t bother their pretty little heads with that mundane level of stuff. As far as they’re concerned, an engineer will figure it out. Land will appear. Stuff will grow. She’ll be right.
And yes, I read the Icelandic stone thing before and call me cynical, but these days I look at that stuff with the same jaded eye that I cast over those ‘cure for cancer found’ stories.
This description makes it seem workable for this instance
“In 2012, Stute and the rest of the team began a pair of pilot studies, starting with a proof-of-concept using pure, commercial-grade CO2. That went swell, so the team went ahead and started pumping emissions from the power plant, which are a mixture of CO2, hydrogen sulfide, and other gases, about 500 meters deep into the basalt substrate—which is the other way this carbon capture scheme is different. ”
http://www.wired.com/2016/06/iceland-pumped-co2-underground/
This probably the most pertinent observation
““This is not a tool to extend fossil fuel use forever,”
In other words you reckon it won’t work, despite the fact that the report you read describes it working…
Ok then.
– Wikipedia
The current episode of global warming is attributed to increasing emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into Earth’s atmosphere. The global annual mean concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by more than 40% since the start of the Industrial Revolution, from 280 ppm in the mid-18th century to 407 ppm as of 2016.[4] The present concentration is the highest in at least the past 800,000 years[5] and likely the highest in the past 20 million years.[6] The increase has been caused by anthropogenic sources, particularly the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.[7] The daily average concentration of atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa first exceeded 400 ppm on 10 May 2013.[8] It is currently rising at a rate of approximately 2 ppm/year and accelerating.[9][10] An estimated 30–40% of the CO2 released by humans into the atmosphere dissolves into oceans, rivers and lakes.[11][12] which contributes to ocean acidification.
This explained it better for me, So if wiki hasn’t been hacked by some vested scientist and these stats are true it looks to me like deforestation maybe more of the cause than what we produce, we have worked on emissions, no one seems to be doing much about the deforestation of places like the Amazon etc.
Perhaps more needs to be voiced on that now!
Thanks Pat and CV for making me think this morning . Making people think for themselves is something more valuable than you realize keep up the good work guys.
Most welcome
Good post CV. I don’t have time to respond much this morning, but I think this will be a useful reference post in times to come.
I’ll try and post later about some of the cultural reasons why I think more scientists aren’t whistleblowing, but this initially from the scientist who is breaking the bounds of what scientists are supposed to do, re the unfolding tragedy at Great Barrier Reef.
Stretching for half a kilometre or so, Loomis Reef is the place where the alarm bells started going off.
Prof Justin Marshall has been diving this reef, about 270km north of Cairns, for 30 years. Right now he is, to say the least, angry.
“My veil is down,” he says, no longer bothering with the kind of polite niceties common among academics.
“I have cried. I have broken down in front of cameras. This is the most devastating, gut-wrenching fuck up,” says Marshall, of the University of Queensland.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2016/apr/21/mourning-loomis-reef-the-heart-of-the-great-barrier-reefs-coral-bleaching-disaster
Thanks weka. I wrote this post because the disconnect I was finding behind what actual climate scientists like Hansen and Anderson were saying and what establishment players and the ‘official reports’ were saying was becoming increasingly large.
Let no-one make the mistake that it is the scientists’ fault that governments and policy makers are just getting the news they want. As someone who was in the weather industry for 24 years, the Greenhouse Gas phenomenon (as it was called in earlier decades) was well known and discussed at considerable length. Equipment was set up to measure the specific effects at various locations in NZ as early as at least 1970. But it soon became clear that anyone who dared stand up and express public concern about global warming would find their careers going nowhere and, in a few cases, they came to a bitter end.
The establishment mentality was and maybe still is: Don’t alarm the masses. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.
John Key’s comments in recent times suggest some are still trying to pretend it’s not really happening. The stupidity of these individuals is mind boggling!
Edit: just seen weka’s comment @ 10 which illustrates the cost in human terms for many scientists. Thanks for that weka.
Your perspective as a former professional in this field is so valuable, Anne.
Yes we cannot underestimate the pressure; we are all trying to do what it takes to get along in the world, to get the rent/mortgage paid, to put food on the table and pay the kids school fees and medical bills.
Unfortunately these mundane and very proper motivations are currently sending us down a very bad one way road, how bad is going to become clear in the next 10 or so years, but eventual 3 deg C rise will also become inevitable within that time frame IMO.
A 3 deg C average rise means occasional on land heat events which are 2x or 3x higher than that: so 6 deg C or 9 deg C hotter.
Imagine a typical 39 deg C day in India turning into a 48 deg C heatwave.
Unfortunately, an economic system which relies on constant growth to function, is incapable of dealing with the “impossibility of infinite growth in a finite world”.
A steady state economy is required, which pretty much excludes economically expansionist interest and rentier profits.
A world where being able to eat, does not depend entirely on finding ever more creative ways of ripping off everyone else, is required.
Precisely.
This economy is going to stop growing, one way or another. (I have a theory that real economic growth since 2000 has been roughly zero anyway once you get rid of the effects of financial asset prices being artificially pushed up and up).
Is our political class going to start proposing measures to fundamentally restructure our economy and financial system, or are they going to keep playing their game of pretend and extend, tweaking a detail here, managing a detail there, and claiming that things will be good after that.
Thanks for the post CV. As you know, Anderson is my kind of ‘go to’ source for common sense on AGW.
If only he and other scientists who also have their feet planted firmly in the ground were given the access to mainstream media that we need them to have.
Hi Bill, even 2 years ago I was shrugging off climate change as a real issue but one which could be gradually managed over the next few decades.
In the last 6 months after reading some of your posts and doing some extra digging around, it’s clear to me how fucked things have become at every level.
In the next few decades there will be radical change in our society, one way or another.
I think I’ve probably always been a bit more of a doomer than you, CV, but this post of yours has made it clear that I wasn’t being enough of a doomer.
It’s a bit of a mess to be honest. It also creates a self perpetuating loop…the official reports say things aren’t too bad, the politicians can point at the official reports saying things aren’t too bad, the people are reassured that things aren’t too bad, the resulting political consensus prevents anything but official reports which say that things aren’t too bad…
They conveniently forget to add the … for now.
Colonial Viper – have you followed the fortunes of Nandor Tanzcos since he jettisoned politics and went back to his turangawaewae, having realised that grass roots beats talking heads any day (my interpretation of why he left Parliament)? His story should interest you greatly, given that you appear to be caught in limbo between the two options, still hoping/wishing that the solution lies in political change, it seems to the casual reader (me). Nandor is active in a different sphere now and is able to effect change in a way that he was prevented from doing by dint of his position as a politician. Russel Norman, similarly, has moved into a position of influence that I’m sure he finds more rewarding than when he had to endure the idiocy of the PM’s ‘replies’ in the House, etc. Greenpeace has, btw, struck some serious home runs since Russel went aboard, but you’ll have noticed that. Just sayin’
I take what one of the founders of Greenpeace has to say about them is the truth. Captain Paul Watson is very unimpressed with GP, they have millions tied up in the banking system.
And who helped give us the growth based savings scam Kiwi Saver?
Nandor has at least 1 child under 15, (part of the last human generation?), he clearly wasn’t listening when I was handing him stuff back in 2,000.
From my site –
«We are the guardians of the earth for our children. They are our future, so we must give them the best possible start to life.
Each child should have the opportunity to grow with joy, be fully supported by their family and be an integral part of our society. Each child deserves a secure base from which they can express their creativity and discover life as an adventure.» NT 2002 ish
Could the Green Party please tell us at what age do we stop worrying about children and their future, because after reading all the facts contained on oilcrash.com you will understand that most children born today face a dark future, albeit extremely short, “life as an adventure” would be an understatement. RA
We did have one. Dr. Jim Salinger. He dared to raise his head above the parapet and warn the population of the consequences of C.C. if nothing was done about it. He was hounded out of NIWA for speaking up without the permission of “the authorities”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Salinger
Edit: note the trouble started in 2009 – after the change of government.
Salinger was supposed to have rung up Jim Hickey and told him the West Coast rivers were in flood- when they wernt yet at flood stage.
Not really sure thats warning of the (long term) dangers of climate change?
In this interview Salinger himself doesnt really say he was stopped from speaking out about CC.
“You have found yourself at the centre of controversies in your career – how does that happen?
That’s a good question. I don’t think it’s intentional. I think it’s part of my personality. I accidently do things that send me into a controversy. I have a low dose of Asperger’s [syndrome]. I get taken the wrong way…..
Relations with Niwa are fine these days too. It was very odd, that incident, because it had nothing to do with science.It was to do with protocol and procedure. I accidentally, through my Asperger’s I would say, went outside [the procedures] and they decided I had to go…
” When it happened, the University of Auckland said ‘this is your home now” and from there I’ve had positions at Stanford University, in Italy and several in Australia. It has been really exciting. It’s nice being useful”
Interesting that he himself says it was ‘nothing to do with science’ ( why do others now believe that it did , would you revise your views now Anne?)
he was highly regarded for his science work before and still is.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11392074
There would have been much more to it. He was very vocal about C.C. and his superiors would not have liked it. That incident was almost certainly used as an excuse to dismiss him. It was not sacking material even if he had gone beyond some official procedure. He may not be admitting as much, but I know how some of them operate. Professional jealousy and the like causes some people to behave in unprincipled ways.
Salingers own words refute that. Ill repeat it was ‘not about the science’
Good to know that when your claim is debunked, you make up even more stuff- “He may not be admitting as much”
How about saying -I got it wrong, I was hearing stuff second hand as rumour and gossip.
You really are an arrogant sod sometimes dukofurl. You should take time out to do some personal reflecting. I know these people. I worked with these people – or their predecessors. Did you? No you didn’t. But – like the ignorant, arrogant C.C. deniers – you are under some illusion you know better.
Now get lost. I’ve got better things to do than bother with you.
Just remember, scientists are employees. They interpret their results to suit whatever their funding masters so desire. Otherwise they’re on the breadline. Doesn’t change their results though. Or the methods used to obtain them.
The banality of evil. All I do is turn up to work and schedule train wagons between Germany and Poland. There’s nothing wrong with that. I do a damn good job of scheduling train wagons between Germany and Poland, I make sure everything is efficient and co-ordinated. And it all runs on time, like clockwork thanks to what I do.
And I need this job because I need to pay the rent and feed the family, it’s a good job, and I don’t want to cause trouble with my boss because he signs my paychecks and is a great guy overall.
To reduce GHG emissions we need to make many changes in our lifestyles, especially in regard to travel. Entire industries (tourism, exporting bulky commodities) will have to almost close down.
This would have to happen now to improve outcomes in the future.
I work in health, everyday I see many people who can not, or will not, change current behaviours that they like even though they know they will pay (financially and physically) for the consequences in the future.
We don’t seem to be wired to act with the future in mind.
Add to that the billions and billions being made by those profiting from business as usual. That feeds the distraction/misinformation that surrounds us, so that ordinary people are not calling out for change …..(yet)
Ive looked up IPCC AR5 lists of expert authors and reviewers and Kevin Anderson isn’t amoung them.
The WG3 Mitigation seems to cover the area he talks about, he is a leading researcher in this area but doesnt contribute.
if hes not offering his comments to the official reports at the time they are written, why is then later claiming they are spreading falsehoods
Go away dukeofurl, you’re becoming irrelevant.
BTW if you are under 40 years of age, you’re most likely going to see how fucked the planet is in the 2050s and 2060s.
I don’t believe you need to be that young, as I don’t believe the wait will be that long. I am now fairly certain that I, at a couple of decades older, will likely the see the thing that will hasten all of this, and that is all out war. The human race will not be able to wait till mid century. It may be as close as President Trump.
I was around when ‘Nuclear winter’ was talked about and was a very high possibility of happening in under 5 years.
1 degree or so over 30 years and there are collective cries of anguish.
I don’t get you mate. There were at least four or five times during the Cold War that a full scale nuclear launch was less than one hour away.
Now you seem to take the attitude that it was never a real threat, and because it didn’t happen back then it can’t happen now.
You’re a fucking ifiot.
At one point it apparently came down to one officer on a Russian sub disagreeing with his captain on whether to launch or not.
Ignorance is a great excuse. Stick to it as long as you can, then go with stupidity. That way you’ll be thought of as merely stupid.
-dUKEOFURL
nuclear war almost happened but didn’t is not the same as places like Kiribati directly seeing evidence of global warming , rising sea levels.
Arguing for arguing’s sake isn’t saving our neighbouring island nations from the damage higher seal levels and global warming whatever the cause you believe.
As the second largest nation near them we help. and Anything is better than nothing I suppose.
Hmm I think a lot of people are missing an important point I was referring to in my earlier post.
The planet used to scrub CO2 by photosynthesis, we have in resent time had massive loss of forest in the Amazon and worldwide, without massive tree planting and maintenance of the worlds heritage zones we will have to reduce emissions far lower than we would otherwise.
We cannot continue to harvest wood at the rate the planet is.
Simply said we are looking at reducing emissions, we also need to look at how the planet cycles Co2 and fix that because we are killing the earth with deforestation.
Deforestation is a massive problem but worse than that what we have done is remove those forests and replace that land use with industrial ag which goes on to generate massive amounts of Greenhouse Gasses.
Brazil is ignoring the issues pretty much, Nigeria is being raped by oil, gas and forestry enabled through corruption, it’s like a virus has invaded mother earth’s most sensitive organs and is killing us all.
CV, the way I see the future mankind will have to near the brink of disaster before they will take anything seriously. When climate change and rising sea levels start really creating havoc , will they then take proper notice and action?
I mean what sort of corporate global citizen pollutes the planet and is never held to account. AKA petroleum corps and Nigerian oil leaks. I have seen some doco’s recently of clearings in the Amazon and pollution in Nigeria and you have to link that to some of the climate change issues we are having.
It worries me we focus on emissions and forget to hold deforestation and oil spill and bad practise to account for the damage it does.
I’d like to see a politician come out with a informative approach to the issue for once.
If you looked at new Zealand in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s you could have said the same thing about New Zealand. The majority of new Zealand used to be covered in forest. Replacing that with grass and the continued pastoral use of most of the country means the animals on the grass are the worst contributors to global warming in NZ. Remember the response to the “fart tax?”
The farming lobby and the Nats are just as bad for the planet as any corrupt Brazilian or Nigerian politicians and their logging buddies.
Plantation forestry is nicer to the planet than dairy farming. Pity we haven’t worked out how to turn our wood into something permanent here rather than selling it as logs to be shipped overseas by oil-burning ships – presumably to be turned into paper and cardboard which is burnt……
Supposedly we are putting 300 – 400 years worth of forests through our exhaust pipes each year, though the extra soot on the ice is a worry.
+1
zero carbon and reforestation……best chance of mitigation
The human enterprise or project has failed in the court of Planetary sacred balance i.e. Gaia. We are scheduled for extinction. All the talk and yap yap in the World will not save us. So keep yapping on ad infinitum til you’re dead.
It’s already too late to save humanity… our mass extinction is inescapable, says prominent scientist… population out of control
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/050127_human_extinction_Professor_Frank_Fenner_population_control.html#ixzz4BWvf8HkR
(NaturalNews) Professor Frank Fenner says humanity is finished. It’s already too late to save ourselves from the suicidal future we’ve created where the ecosystem can no longer support human life. “We’re going to become extinct,” the scientist says. “Whatever we do now is too late.” (SOURCE)
Frank Fenner, now 95 years old, is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and of the Royal Society. He’s published “hundreds of scientific papers and written or co-written 22 books,” says The Australian, which prints these words from an interview with Fenner:
We’ll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island… Climate change is just at the very beginning … The human species is likely to go the same way as many of the species that we’ve seen disappear. Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years … It’s an irreversible situation. I think it’s too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/050127_human_extinction_Professor_Frank_Fenner_population_control.html#ixzz4BWvwQtW4
I would just like to point out that Professor Fenner died in 2010. He made the speech about inevitable extinction in June 2010, some six months before his own death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Fenner
johnm – a potentially fatal manifestation of ‘the human enterprise’ has spectacularly failed in the court you cite. Extinction is the end game of that experiment but not all humans bought into that line, there are rapidly escalating signs of realisation across the disciplines and while the situation looks dire, there is hope, real, tangible hope. Seems you’ve capitulated and thrown in the towel. Not me. And I’m not alone, far from it.
The natural forces arrayed against us cannot be defeated. Unlike in the LOTRs a magic ring will not save us. I wish it were not so,
I think civilisation as we recognise it today is over across the next 50 or 60 years. This will happen via a series of difficult to predict steep step-wise declines within which there will be years of stability and years of instability (Dmitry Orlov and John Michael Greer).
On top of climate change we will have fossil fuel depletion. Most of the easiest and best sources of oil will be gone in 25 years, leaving behind harder and harder to extract unconventionals.
Commander Adama puts it perfectly…we never asked ourselves if we deserve to survive…we refuse to accept responsibility for the things that we have done…sooner or later the day comes when we can’t hide from the things that we have done any more.
https://youtu.be/f0tW7MiHfhI?t=35
johnm – the Middle Earth rings didn’t do what you seem to think they did, nor will natural forces necessarily do what Frank Fenner says they will – you are putting a lot of faith in his words. Shop around a little, before you settle on a cataclysm scenario like his, I reckon. Natural forces aren’t, as you claim, arrayed against us, as an army of orcs might be. Natural forces are, well, natural, and are not at war with anything. War, defeat and scheduled are human constructs. Waves don’t attack shorelines and humans can deploy sand bags to great effect. Canute would say, no way, but I’m talking above the high tide mark.
Sorry Robert, but you have to at least scan read some of this essay, http://guymcpherson.com/climate-chaos/
Will be interested in what you have to say, after reading, then following some of the links?
“The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that CO2 concentrations must be stabilised at 450ppm to have a fair chance of avoiding global warming above 2C, which could carry catastrophic consequences.
Doing that that will require a 40-70% emissions cut by 2050, compared to 2010 levels, and zero emissions by the end of the century.
CO2 turned into stone in Iceland in climate change breakthrough
Read more
However, despite the Paris agreement last December and a boost in renewable energy that has at least temporarily checked the growth in global emissions, the world is on track to substantially overshoot the target.
“We could be passing above 450ppm in roughly 20 years,” Betts said. “If we start to reduce our global emissions now, we could delay that moment but it is still looking like a challenge to stay below 450ppm. If we carry on as we are going, we could pass 450ppm even sooner than 20 years, according to the IPCC scenarios.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/13/carbon-dioxide-levels-in-atmosphere-forecast-to-shatter-milestone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change
Prof Kevin Anderson regards these 2050 targets as total, unscientific junk. Junk which is very convenient for politicians and leaders who don’t have to do a single thing now while they are in power.
If we are going to have any chance of avoiding 2 deg C or 3 deg C rise, all the action which is taken must be taken in the next few years. Not 2050.
I assume you read the last paragraph?
“We could be passing above 450ppm in roughly 20 years,” Betts said. “If we start to reduce our global emissions now, we could delay that moment but it is still looking like a challenge to stay below 450ppm. If we carry on as we are going, we could pass 450ppm even sooner than 20 years, according to the IPCC scenarios.”
Delaying reaching 450ppm by even a few years gives us time for our leadership class to realise the severity of the predicament we are in and so could be crucial.
But yes I also figure we will reach 450ppm in the 2030s.
As you appear to realise, the problem arises if Mother Nature decides to take the steering wheel out of our hands.
it also appears the IPCC is becoming publicly more concerned and it is being reported in some quarters at least.
-Pat, But even if we do reduce emissions the rate they are stripping the biggest rainforests on earth we will never keep up.
Africa was once wild, south America was once wild, both continents have been cleared with a staggeringly small comparison to what it was even 200 years ago, when the last rain forests disappear, what then?
as the population continues to increase like an accumulating bank account at ever increasing rates, our need for land and food increases with it.
Without a natural rebalance I am afraid this cannot go on frankly very much longer at all. We got what worst case 50 best 200 years?
am talking a massive worldwide reforestation…especially including rainforest areas.
is a pipe dream i know but think it is the only viable chance of reducing atmospheric CO2 and needs to be combined with zero fossil fuel burning.
….and see this is in wrong thread, never mind still applies.
It’ll destroy a massive amount of food production land.
Like re-covering the entirety of the Waikato and the Hawkes Bay with forest.
yes it will….and we will unlikely be able to feed 8 billion….or we could carry on as we are and feed none…..not that there will be anyone to complain about it.
hmmm, was thinking the way Putin and the west are squaring up it may not matter so much soon.
back to reality
Brazil and Peru etc are starting to see the results of land erosion where they have deforested and cleared hillsides, the ground had no support, we’ve all seen the images I presume of the sides of hills washing away, shocking stuff.
I hope the planet cottons on to green energy and the co-ordinated protection of essential planetary life dependent resources!
and when you think in that manner you realize this whole planets ecosystem is precious and finely tuned, fuck with it at your peril it should be overseen big business cannot be trusted, corrupt governments cannot be trusted.
We could call it eco-terrorism and send those responsible to the Haig.
don’t think the Hague could process 3 or 4 billion people
There are only 1,000,000 people who are largely responsible.
really?..everyone driving, flying,consuming transported goods or coal/oil sourced energy is responsible to one degree or another…..some more responsible than others…..probably couldn’t make a case against your average papua new guinean or amazonian indian, nor perhaps the traditional living Inuit, but apart from them.???????
Funnily enough I don’t think the majority of the planet are informed, or give a shit. It’s a big planet, lots of remote places, and uneducated populations.
I mean that in a sad way.
The top 1M people, the top 0.001%…they’ve driven this whole system to where it is now.
having said that Pat from the standpoint of emissions I am guessing the top 1B humans burn as much as the poorest 6B people put together
could be a good case made for the so called leaders and those at the top of various corps to be strung up for doing everything they could to deny or slow down any action to mitigate however…..
CV is right … over the next 20 years it is the actions of a relatively few extremely high emitters that will have the only really significant impact on the total carbon budgets.
Yep. What I get from Kevin Anderson is that to avoid 2 deg C or 3 deg C it is all about the global top 10% chopping back emissions hard within the next 5 or so years.
Coordinating 700M in developed nations via their established institutions of government to cut back hard while maintaining a decent standard of living is not too much of a challenge.
Far easier than getting 6B people throughout the developing world to reduce by a pittance the already fuck all emissions that they individually put out now.
Longer term, the developing world will also need to limit their emissions, but they are still at the stage where increasing emissions will greatly assist improving their standard of living.
For us in the west, we have increased our emissions far beyond the point where it makes any difference to standard of living measures like life expectancy and happiness. We’re just burning for the sake of it, basically.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
I note international shipping and aviation up there.
Paris COP21 agreement totally exempts shipping and air travel
as you say a lot of people in the world are uninformed and more concerned about where the next meall is coming from or who will try and kill them next…..tis a sad place alright
Sorry CV the only way we were going to avoid plus 2 is if we stay below +.5 to +1.
That was as good as it gets for humans, it was a freak time, that doesn’t happen often, the environment, is now going back to it’s rather warmer norm.
that’s all folks.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/13/report-carbon-dioxide-levels-are-set-pass-400ppm-permanently
I think that the CC scenarios are very limited when you don’t also start to try to bring into play geo-political overlays. In that the models appear to assume that the states and elites will continue as is.
3 degrees is going to change an awful lot and not just with the climate or economy.
Will civil wars be fought over water and land? Syria is an early partial example.
Will wars be fought over water and land? Most probably.
Will they go nuclear? Probably.
Will NZ face invasion? Probably. If not organised, then certainly by refugees.
there was a war game scenario played out a few years ago i recall where the next global conflict was triggered by the Australian navy taking military action against illegal fishing fleets due to scarce resources……hence my assertion that 20 billion on defense is our CC policy
I am remembering the British naval blockade of Palestine was particularly ineffective in stopping cargo ships ships from beaching themselves with hundreds of post WWII refugees. This was a big navy in a small sea defending a tiny coastline. How many of those things are different with NZ.
If it were to come to actually trying to fight then IMO The NZ Navel and Air forces would be easily swamped by a couple of modern destroyers.
My guess is that NZ will be be reflagged but not in a referendum.
anything is possible if (when?) it all collapses
CV, framing the Anderson critique of the IPCC as fraud is really overstating the case. Remember Hansen also criticised the IPCC similarly in Storms of My Grandchildren. These are just instances of experts warning that the consensual view is flawed. Not fraud.
The IPCC is a political organisation composed of many scientists formed to present a consensus view of the issue. Not the truth, right? Merely as close an approximation to it as 1400 people who are well-informed can agree on. Since specialists tend to disagree with each other, expert opinion differs on whatever topic one chooses. To generate such a hefty consensus takes a vast effort of self-discipline. Participants must compromise their personal views considerably. Dissidents will only break ranks with the IPCC when their conscience requires it, and then in precise terms and cogent reasoning.
Despite that we cynics readily see the IPCC framing their public stance carefully to suit the path of political pragmatism, so that their political allies can sell that stance in the political arena, we ought not to jump to the conclusion that any particular dissident from the consensus view is right in asserting that their person spin is correct. Uncertainties abound in all dimensions of climate change. We will never know how close we are to the tipping points till we see natural systems in rapid transition, shifting away from stability into indeterminate trajectories. I agree that the IPCC is insufficiently alarmist, but that doesn’t justify calling their consensual view a fraud. If that view were not produced democratically it would be fraudulent.