Tag Archives: climate change

September 2020 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • The Covid recession in the U.S. is pretty bad and may be settling in for the long term. Demand for the capital goods we normally export (airplanes, weapons, airplanes that unleash weapons, etc.) is down, demand for oil and cars is down, and the service industry is on life support. Unpaid bills and debts are mounting, and eventually creditors will have to come to terms with this (nobody feels sorry for “creditors”, but what this could mean is we get a full-blown financial panic to go along with the recession in the real economy.

Most hopeful story:

  • The Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis had the courage to take aim at campaign finance corruption as a central reason for why the world is in its current mess. I hate to be partisan, folks, but right now our government is divided into responsible adults and children. The responsible adults who authored this report are the potential leaders who can lead us forward.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • If the universe is a simulation, and you wanted to crash it on purpose, you could try to create a lot of nested simulations of universes within universes until your overload whatever the operating system is. Just hope it’s backed up.

ice loss following worst case predictions

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Treehugger, summarizing an article in Nature Climate Change (which you can’t read without belonging to a university library or paying a lot of money) says loss of ice in Greenland, Antarctica, and around the world is tracking the most pessimistic model results included in the most recent IPCC report.

Up until this point, global sea levels have increased mostly due to thermal expansion, which means the volume of seawater expands as it gets warmer. However in the last five years, water from melting ice sheets and mountain glaciers has become the primary cause of rising sea levels, the researchers point out.

It’s not only Antarctica and Greenland causing sea level rise. The researchers say that thousands of smaller glaciers are melting or disappearing completely.

Treehugger

I think it may be time to get away from coastlines, hot places, and dry places. But not so far north I have to deal with thawing permafrost. And I don’t want to deal with earthquakes or volcanoes. This would seem to leave limited choices.

Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis

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The Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis has a new report, Climate Action: Building a Clean Economy for the American People. It has a laundry list of the kinds of measures that are needed and that the next Congress could choose to act on. What is really interesting though is the last chapter, which is called Dark Money. It takes solid aim at the fossil fuel industry’s campaign to misinform, disinform, and buy political influence, especially following the Citizens United decision. On the page introducing this topic is a picture of our Supreme Court justices.

The Democratic Senators blame Republicans, of course, but the cirampaigns need to be funded too. They pretty much admit here that big business owns Congress, and the Supreme Court made that happen. Well, remembering my high school civics, the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution, but Congress wrote the Constitution and Congress can change it.

July 2020 in Review

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Coronavirus certainly continues to be the main thing going on in current events globally. I just don’t have a lot of new or insightful things to say about it. Here’s some other stuff I read and thought about in July. WITH THE STUPID WORDPRESS BLOCK EDITOR, I CAN’T SEEM TO PUT A SPACE BETWEEN THESE PARAGRAPHS NO MATTER WHAT I DO. Most frightening and/or depressing story:
  • Here’s the elevator pitch for why even the most hardened skeptic should care about climate change. We are on a path to (1) lose both polar ice caps, (2) lose the Amazon rain forest, (3) lose our productive farmland, and (4) lose our coastal population centers. If all this comes to pass it will lead to mass starvation, mass refugee flows, and possibly warfare. Unlike even major crises like wars and pandemics, by the time it is obvious to everyone that something needs to be done, there will be very little that can be done.
Most hopeful story:
  • In the U.S. every week since schools and businesses shut down in March, about 85 children lived who would otherwise have died. Most of these would have died in and around motor vehicles.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
  • The world seems to be experiencing a major drop in the fertility rate. This will lead to a decrease in the rate of population growth, changes to the size of the work force relative to the population, and eventually a decrease in the population itself.

Jeff Masters: We’re all going to die!

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Jeff Masters, who used to write a neat blog for Weather Underground before weather.com/IBM destroyed everything that was ever good about that site, has a dark take on climate change. He now writes on Yale Climate Connections, which is okay, but I notice that one by one my beloved RSS feeds are falling prey to neglect (there’s an RSS feed for Yale Climate Connections, which is okay, but not one for Jeff Masters’s blog specifically.)

When the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica melt, the forests of the Amazon transition to scrubland, and vast swaths of once-fertile land become inhospitable desert, there will be no climate change vaccine that will suddenly bring an end to these essentially irreversible catastrophes. Tens of millions will starve. Wars will break out over scarce resources. Hundreds of millions of climate change refugees will flee rising seas, coasts will be ravaged by stronger storms, and desert-like lands will be without the food and water needed to sustain civilization.

Jeff Masters, Yale Climate Connections

I think that’s a pretty good elevator pitch for the “why should I care?” crowd: (1) massive melting of ice sheets on both poles leading to catastrophic sea level rise, (2) loss of the Amazon rain forest, which along with the oceans maintains the mix of gases in the atmosphere that we have become accustomed to throughout human history, (3) loss of huge amounts of what used to be productive farm land, due to high temperatures and lack of water. These processes will play out slowly, maybe over decades. We are the frogs in the slowly heating up cook pot. We may see slowly rising prices for food, and we will have to clean up after increasingly frequent storms, floods, and fires. Eventually we may see absolute food shortages. These acute crises will start to affect poorer nations, and poorer people in richer nations, before others, of course. Mass migrations, civil conflicts within nation-states, and geopolitical conflicts between nation-states may break out. Throw in a few random events like earthquakes and pandemics at already vulnerable moments, and things may get dicey.

This sounds awful, and there is certainly no worldwide effort to effectively deal with it. At the same time, science, technological know-how, and financial wealth continue to increase, although they obviously are not spread equally or fairly among the world’s people. We have seen examples of effective leadership and cooperation in the past at times of crisis, and maybe these will emerge again. As Jeff Masters rightly points out though, unlike wars and pandemics, a big difference with climate change is that when it becomes obvious to absolutely everyone that something has to be done, there may be no good options left.

May 2020 in Review

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You can’t say that 2020 has not been interesting so far. The Covid-19 saga continued throughout May. I certainly continued to think about it, including a fun quote from The Stand, but my mind began turning to other topics.

 

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • Potential for long-term drought in some important food-producing regions around the globe should be ringing alarm bells. It’s a good thing that our political leaders’ crisis management skills have been tested by shorter-term, more obvious crises and they have passed with flying colors…doh!

Most hopeful story:

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • There are unidentified flying objects out there. They may or may not be aliens, that has not been identified. But they are objects, they are flying, and they are unidentified.

drought

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Alarm bells are beginning to sound on drought risk in western North America and around the world, including some important and populous food growing regions.

Here’s an article in Science talking about “an emerging North American megadrought”:

Severe and persistent 21st-century drought in southwestern North America (SWNA) motivates comparisons to medieval megadroughts and questions about the role of anthropogenic climate change. We use hydrological modeling and new 1200-year tree-ring reconstructions of summer soil moisture to demonstrate that the 2000–2018 SWNA drought was the second driest 19-year period since 800 CE, exceeded only by a late-1500s megadrought. The megadrought-like trajectory of 2000–2018 soil moisture was driven by natural variability superimposed on drying due to anthropogenic warming. Anthropogenic trends in temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation estimated from 31 climate models account for 47% (model interquartiles of 35 to 105%) of the 2000–2018 drought severity, pushing an otherwise moderate drought onto a trajectory comparable to the worst SWNA megadroughts since 800 CE.

Science

Here’s an article in Earth’s Future (from the American Geophysical Union, which I consider prestigious) talking about some other regions with high drought risk.

The multi‐model ensemble shows robust drying in the mean state across many regions and metrics by the end of the 21st century, even following the more aggressive mitigation pathways (SSP1‐2.6 and SSP2‐4.5). Regional hotspots with strong drying include western North America, Central America, Europe and the Mediterranean, the Amazon, southern Africa, China, Southeast Asia, and Australia. Compared to SSP3‐7.0 and SSP5‐8.5, however, the severity of drying in the lower warming scenarios is substantially reduced and further precipitation declines in many regions are avoided. Along with drying in the mean state, the risk of the historically most extreme drought events also increases with warming, by 200–300% in some regions.

AGU

So, our species has identified the problem and identified solutions, but is continuing to fail to actually do anything. This is a little like the coronavirus, where early action could have been cheap and effective compared to the drastic action required when the problem became really obvious to even the densest politicians. It’s unlike the coronavirus in that once the problem becomes obvious to even the densest politicians, there may be no effective measures that can be taken, even maximally disruptive ones.

The mention of the Amazon and Southeast Asia are particularly concerning to me. These are both important food growing regions and biodiversity hot spots.

Noam Chomsky on coronavirus

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Here’s Noam Chomsky on coronavirus:

Describing the US president as a “sociopathic buffoon”, Chomsky said while the coronavirus was serious, “it’s worth recalling that there is a much greater horror approaching. We are racing to the edge of disaster, far worse than anything that’s happened in human history.

“Donald Trump and his minions are in the lead in racing to the abyss. In fact there are two immense threats that we’re facing – one is the growing threat of nuclear war … and the other of course is the growing threat of global warming.”

While the coronavirus can have “terrifying consequences, there will be recovery”, said Chomsky, but regarding the other threats, “there won’t be recovery, it’s finished”.

Al Jazeera

In other words, our government knew a major pandemic would eventually happen, and in fact was certain given enough time. Our experts told our government and political system what it needed to do to prepare and respond. It did next to nothing, and now we are in crisis.

Like he says, this crisis will pass, though not for those of us who don’t survive it. But the climate crisis will not pass. It is certain, and we know what to do, and we are not doing it. We are not preparing, and we will not be able to respond when the worst happens. This is the major lesson of the coronavirus – there is not some secret plan or agency that is quietly and competently preparing to meet the threat when there really is no choice.

Just to review, here’s a short list of things we need to do.

  • Secure the long term food supply.
  • Protect most of our coastal population centers, while possibly strategically and gradually abandoning some areas.
  • Ramp up innovation.
  • Do our fair share to bring down global emissions.

As for nuclear weapons, they are the acute crisis to make all other acute crises seem trivial by comparison. We need to lead by example, and also reengage with international institutions to work on the problem.

the next crisis

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In the thick of the Covid-19 crisis, it’s hard to think about the next crisis. But how many articles are there right now talking about all the research, all the warnings, all the reports and studies and past evidence pointing to something like this being inevitable? So if I were President (or anyone in charge of anything at any level), I would be asking what the ten or so biggest risks are out there that we need to be preparing for. We will probably be prepared if another coronavirus or flu pandemic somewhat similar to this one comes along. But what about an even more horrifying disease, or god forbid one created on purpose in a laboratory? That dark day may come.

Nuclear terrorism, war or accidents would certainly be on the list. We spend a lot of time thinking about this and a fair amount of effort on prevention and preparation, but still it seems like this day may come.

Earthquakes, like disease outbreaks, just happen – small ones happen a lot, big ones less often, catastrophic ones very rarely. A big earthquake or volcanic eruption should be on our list.

A major food crisis should be close to the top if not at the top of our list. We are closing in on 8 billion humans on the planet and have managed to feed most of them most of the time with some to spare. Dwindling groundwater, melting glaciers and snowpacks, heat and drought and floods depressing crop yields especially in the tropics, and the collapse of fisheries all have the potential to change this. Disease outbreaks can also affect crops and livestock, and the less genetic variety in our crops and animals the more susceptible they may be. Habitat loss and other unknown factors are devastating insects, which pollinate our crops and form the base of the food chain. What if one or more of these factors strike at once, and/or a volcano or nuclear exchange blocks out sunlight for years on end?

“Climate change” is real, but part of the problem in building public support to actually deal with it is that it is too broad and too vague. I would try to break it down into concrete things that are going to affect people like the loss of coastal cities, floods, fires, droughts, famines, hurricanes, etc. People should be able to understand how those are going to affect them.

Our complex financial, communication, energy, water, and transportation systems can just melt down if they are not carefully planned, maintained, renewed and continually invested in. External threats like cyberattacks and climate change do not make these challenges easier to deal with, or even easy for the experts to understand and explain well enough to build support for action.

And there is always good old fashioned war.

At the same time, I would want to know how many of the citizens I am accountable to are dying of preventable causes like car accidents, air pollution, diabetes, drug overdoses, homicides and suicides. Maybe the cost of these is such that they should be on the list above some of the existential threats.

Elect me and I won’t promise to solve all these problems, but I will promise to at least make a list of them! Then I’ll figure out how to attack the top 2 or 3, and maybe add one each year for the duration of my administration. I’ll also work on health care, child care, education, infrastructure, research and development. Doesn’t that all sound pretty good?

February 2020 in Review

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Ah, the innocent days of February 2020! (I’m writing this on March 14.) Just two weeks ago, the coronovirus shit hadn’t yet hit the fan in the U.S. (the Pennsylvania governor just ordered schools closed statewide, I have been strongly encouraged, though not coerced, to work from home, the governor has implemented not-strictly-enforced movement restrictions in several neighboring counties and mine could be next, and the closure of all businesses except grocery stores, drug stores and gas stations appears to be next – and yes, this appears to include bars and liquor stores. Luckily, Pennsylvania just recently lifted Prohibition and started allowing some grocery stores to sell beer and wine.) Anyway, coronavirus is about the only thing on anyone’s mind at the moment, even considering we are in an election year (Bernie Sanders looked like a front-runner two weeks ago!) But let’s rewind the clock two weeks and see what was on my mind in more normal times.

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

Most hopeful story:

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • Corporate jargon really is funny. I still don’t know what “dropping a pin” in something means, but I think it might be like sticking a fork in it.