Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies

Can't believe a word you say

      -The Knickerbockers

She was practiced in the art of deception

      -The Rolling Stones

Greetings

         In a way, I don't mind if Exxon or the Koch brothers lie to me.  I guess I expect that.  After all, they are "the enemy".  ( Unless DD is right that there is no "them" only "us").  But it kind of bugs me when I see ...ahem ...exaggerations coming from the "good guys" - the "non deniers".

        Like when the IPCC says we can avoid 2 degrees, but declines to mention that it means "we can get to 2 degrees, if someone invents a magical technology to suck up carbon."  Or Oregon passes a "historic". climate bill eliminating coal power by 2030., when the only coal plant in the state had already been slated for retirement by 2020.  

        Now we have the  IEA saying "Decoupling of global emissions and economic growth confirmed.  Likewise Climate Progress tells us Record First: Global CO2 Emissions Went Flat In 2014 While The Economy Grew

       Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?.  CO2 emmisions went flat in 2014!  Wow!    But wait a minute,  that's not exactly true. In fact,   CO2 emissions hit a new record in 2014!     (It is true that the rate of growth slowed  though) .    How about  CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere?  Did they "flatten"?   Well no .. in 2014, they rose by 2.17 ppm and in 2015 they jumped up by a record 3.05 ppm      

        Let's go back and look at the IEA press release again.   Lets' get behind the headline.  Here's what they say: "Global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) – the largest source of man-made greenhouse gas emissions – stayed flat for the second year...."   OK, and the "energy related" emissions amount to about 30% of total emissions.   

      It doesn't cover emissions from other sources such as methane from livestock ,    or agriculture, where the news is not quite as good.  See this study .  

"When observations and models only take into consideration how much carbon dioxide plants and other biological activity pull out of the atmosphere the results can look promising – with the land actually absorbing the equivalent of about 25 percent of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel emissions and partially slowing down climate change.

“But we found that when you include the other two main greenhouse gases – methane and nitrous oxide – this completely changes the role of the land in that instead of having a cooling effect on the climate, it has a net warming effect,” said Benjamin Poulter, an assistant professor with a dual appointment in MSU’s Department of Ecology in the College of Letters and Science and the Montana Institute on Ecosystems.

        I suppose you could interpret these "good news" pronouncements is two possible ways.  The most generous would be to say that these folks know that people are getting discouraged, so they want to throw them a bone.  "Hey troops!, things are getting better!"   Were winning! "   Its probably a good idea to cheer people up, if you can.  After all February 2016 crossed the critical threshold, by averaging 15 degrees above pre industrial.     And on land the average was more than 2 c

         On the other hand, perhaps its an indication of panic.  Panic might be an appropriate reaction to James Hanson's latest study..   see e.g. Scientists Warn of Perilous Climate Shift Within Decades, Not Centuries

"The paper by Dr. Hansen and 18 co-authors dwells on the last time the Earth warmed naturally, about 120,000 years ago, when the temperature reached a level estimated to have been only slightly higher than today. Much of the polar ice disintegrated then, and scientists have established that the sea level rose 20 to 30 feet.

Climate scientists agree that humanity is about to cause an equal or greater rise in sea level, but they have tended to assume that such a large increase would take centuries, at least. The new paper argues that it could happen far more rapidly, with the worst case being several feet of sea-level rise over the next 50 years, followed by increases so precipitous that they would force humanity to beat a hasty retreat from the coasts.

“That would mean loss of all coastal cities, most of the world’s large cities and all their history,” Dr. Hansen said in a video statement that accompanied the new paper.

 For an interesting perspective on panic, see Ugo Bardi's recent post :  The climate emergency: time to switch to panic mode?

"The problem is that societies; specifically in the form called "states" do not normally show much intelligence in their behavior, especially when they are in a state of panic. One of the reasons is that states are normally ruled by psychopaths whose attitude is based on a set of simple rules, mainly involving intimidation or violence, or both. But it is not just a question of psychopaths in power; the whole society reacts to threats like a psychopath: with the emphasis on doing "something", without much concern about whether it is the right thing to do and what would the consequences could be. So, if climate starts to be perceived as a real and immediate threat, we may expect a reaction endowed with all the strategic finesse of a street brawl: "you hit me - I hit you."

A possible, counterintuitive, panic reaction might be of "doubling down" in the denial of the threat. That could lead to actions such as actively suppressing the diffusion of data and studies about climate; de-funding climate research, closing down climate research centers, marginalizing those who believe that climate is a problem; for instance classifying them among "terrorists." All that is already happening in some degree and it may well become the next craze, in particular if the coming US elections will handle the presidency to an active climate denier. That would mean hard times for at least a few years for everyone who is trying to do something against climate change. And, perhaps, it would mean the total ruin of the Earth's ecosystem.

The other possibility is to switch all the way to the other extreme and fight climate change with the same methods used to fight terrorism; that is, bombing it into submission. Of course, you cannot bomb the earth's climate into submission, but the idea of forcing the ecosystem to behave the way we want is the basic concept of "geoengineering".

In the world of environmentalism, geoengineering enjoys more or less the same reputation that Saddam Hussein enjoyed in the Western press in the 1990s. That's for good reasons: geoengineering is often a set of ideas that go from the dangerous to the impossible, all ringing of desperation. For a good idea of how exactly desperate these ideas can be, just take a look at the results of a recent study on the idea of pumping huge amounts of seawater on top of the Antarctic ice sheet in order to prevent sea level rise. If it were a science fiction novel, you'd say it is too silly to be worth reading.

However, it may be appropriate to start familiarizing with the idea that geoengineering might be the next world craze. And, perhaps, it is better to take the risk of doing something that could go wrong than to do nothing, considering that we have been doing nothing so far. Don't forget that there are also good forms of geoengineering, for instance the form called "biosphere regeneration." It is based on reforestation, fighting desertification, regenerative agriculture and the like. Removing some CO2 from the atmosphere by transforming it into plants can't do too much damage, although it cannot be enough to solve the problem. But it may stimulate also other fields of action against climate change; from adaptation to switching to renewable energy. Maybe there is still hope..... maybe.

No Direction Home

Blowin' and burnin' blinded by thirst

They didn't see the stop sign;

 Took a turn for the worst"

      - The Eagles

And I'm sorry when I say
that straight to this very day
It was the wrong way
     -Sublime

-----
Breaking News:
      New Study : "Trading Off Global Fuel Supply, CO2 Emissions and Sustainable Development", in Plos 1, predicts 1.5 by 2020, 2 degrees by 2030.    Authors assert that the accepted method of modelling energy use is overly optimistic, and  inaccurate .   See here , here 

   "In contrast our model shows that a dominant factor driving global energy demand is not energy use GDP^-1, but energy use person^-1 which is forecast to rise rises rapidly towards 2050, while the efficiency of production/conversion only gradually improves.

The model’s ability to account for these interactions provides international policy makers with new tools and insights to guide the development of improved global energy security models and to assist with the development of effective emissions reductions and poverty alleviation scenarios. Importantly these capabilities challenge the common assumption of the EIA and IEA that increasing efficiency (energy use GDP^-1) will solve our future energy supply problems.

______

Greetings

      As I see it, there are basically two routes away from overshoot.   One is to make necessary changes, and, to crawl back into sustainability.   The other is to let nature take its course.  (As  one sage has said, "If something can not go on forever, it will stop. ")

       Let's take a look at efforts to deal with the problem of CO2.    Oregon has just enacted a "ground breaking"  climate bill, the Healthy Climate Act..   Under the bill Oregon utilities will cut coal use by 2030  and be 50% fossil fuel free by 2040  (Oregon is already 43% hydro, thanks to the Columbia dams).

       We are told this bill is the most ambitious in decades     So, is this a formula that would avoid "dangerous" climate change?     Well, according to Kevin Anderson, in order to achieve 2 degrees, we would need all sectors ( not just  electricity)  to  "decarbonization " by 2040.   

"Of the available scenarios for peaking in 2020, says Anderson, 13 of 18 show hitting 2 degrees C to be technically impossible. (D’oh!) The others involve on the order of 10 percent reductions a year after 2020, leading to total decarbonization by 2035-45." 

       Decarbonize.  That's a 100%  reduction,  not 50%. .   So The Healthy Climate Bill,  doesn't quite do the trick, but maybe its a "step in the right direction".  Well,  unfortunately its  not really a step in the direction of 1.5 or 2 degrees.  That would be the "right direction".  Its  more of a step toward 3 or 4 degrees *.

      

       .  Here is a speech Anderson gave at the London School of Economics earlier this year.  

     He starts with an interesting quote from Richard Feynman,"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."     This is important because, it seems that most of the encouraging messages we get about climate change are really public relations messages, designed to assure us that we can continue to have economic growth and avoid dangerous climate change,   As Anderson points out, this can only be achieved if you believe in magic.   The assumptions in the studies that support this optimistic view use one of two magical devices.  Most assume a magical technology, that will spring into existence and suck out the carbon .   The rest postulate time travel,  that is the models only work if you assume that CO2 peaked some time in the past.

       According to Anderson, this magical thinking is designed to divert us from the "inconvenient truth"  that in order to have a reasonable chance ( greater than 50/50)  of avoiding 2 degrees, we, in the west,  need to reduce emissions by 10% per year, until we are completely decarbonized by 2040.  

           OK, so far humans don't seem to be backing away from overshoot with any speed.    So, how about letting nature take it course.   How would that play out?    The best analysis of the likely path is still the Limits to Growth,  Although initially created in 1972, it has been continually updated, and continues to provide a useful guide to the way things may unfold .  

With some luck I can paste the critical graph here.

            The most recent effort to check the models accuracy was made in 2008, and it showed that the data, generally continues to follow the suggested curves.   But importantly,  this could not confirm when  the curves will peak, because at that point things were continuing to grow.    If the model is correct,  foot per capital, industrial output and services will all peak first. 

      One simple way to track services and industrial output, is by tracking GDP.  The IMF tracks what they call Gross Planetary Production.   Interestingly, this figure was reported to have dropped by 4.9%  in 2015,   a drop of the same magnitude as the Great   Recession in 2009.   It is too soon to tell whether this is merely a blip, or whether is represents a trend.  Interestingly, at least one economic forecaster predicts a similar drop for 2016.   See Morgan Stanley.   **  

             So, will "letting nature take its course" have the result of decarbonization by 2040.?   Not according to this analysis.  see here.     Unfortunately, even if were following the Limits to Growth model, the decline of industrial output is not steep enough.   The curve for industrial production in the limits to growth model is essentially a Hubbert curve -  it is symmetrical - the rise is about the same as the fall.   In order to achieve a 10%  reduction would need to be much steeper fall,  more like the  Seneca Curve

         So what will prevail, magical thinking or reality?   Stay tuned.

   -------

* (One may wonder why the bill, if it was so important was labeled as "absolute crap" by PUC Commissioner John Savage, The PUC was  invited by the Governor to _not_ testify on the bill.    Hopefully theiir concerns were addressed before passage.)  

To put a good face on it, lets say that although it would be a step towards an extremely dangerous climate, but, it might be  its a step that doesn't result in runaway climate change, or  perhaps not releasing the perma frost time bomb.     Perhaps its a step that does not result in huge swaths of the earth effectively uninhabitable?  See new Hanson Study.

**(It may be that GPP is falling not a result of feedback from planetary limits, such as peaking fossil fuels, increasing  pollution, but because of some other factor. As to limits on energy,it is unlikely that fossil fuel use will peak before 2025.  An alternate theory might be that the 1% , by taking the lion's share of income and wealth, has in effect stifled the demand that the economy needs to grow.   The median income in the US peaked in  1999, and is currently 6% below that level    Poor people spend their money as soon as they get,  rich people spend some, but often end of saving or investing it.     Maybe we should thank those 1%-ers , doing the or part for ecology! )

Progressively worse

I'm free
   - The Who

Do what you like
  -  Blind Faith

Greetings

       Perhaps in this political season, it is a good time to ask.  "Who will do more for sustainability, progressives, or conservatives ?   Which one will put us on the track toward a smaller ecological footprint?

       Given the fact that Republicans have made it an article of faith that there is no such thing as human caused climate change,  and progressives accept that inconvenient truth,  we naturally assume that progressives must have an appropriate response to climate change.   And to the other insults to our biosphere, such as destruction of habitats, over fishing, releases of toxic chemicals, etc.

       But do they?

     
        Which brings me to a recent post by Eric Lindberg  on Resilience.com.   see here  Lindberg is a very thoughtful writer, and we'll worth reading.   His most recent post deals with Pope Francis ' s  recent Encyclical Letter, "On Care for Our Common Home ".   Lindberg takes up the Pope's letter as part of an ongoing series dealing with the notion of  Freedom.    He suggests that our modern view takes freedom, as the central value.  e.g.    "They hate our freedom". 

        Lindberg calls our modern capitalist liberal democracy ,  "liberalism" , whether is is "progressive"  or "conservative".      Both sorts of liberalism accept the same underlying view of the world, and humanity.   Humans are entitled to be free, free to take what the want, free to "develop", to acquire wealth,  and to modify the environment in the process.  This view assumes no boundaries, that there is always more, and it assumes that we are not connected to the rest of the world, what affects "nature", the "biosphere"  does  not affect us. Both accept the view that humans will continue to reap the benefits of "progress" ,  by providing more consumption to more people.  

         He says that progressives have embraced the Pope's views, under the mistaken view that he also shares these liberal doctrine.    But the Pope's analysis goes deeper.  Environmental ism, is not  really just another progressive movement.  He explains:         

"Previous liberal or progressive accomplishments, without an exception that I can think of, have all been struggles for increased freedom, or increased consumption, and often both, as progressive politics has increasingly united the two.  Whether we are talking about the abolition of slavery, the Nineteenth Amendment, or the end of the 12 hour work-day, the fight against the political or cultural subordination of ethnic minorities, even rural electrification, the creation of the FDA, or victory in Roe vs. Wade--at stake in each case was freedom and material progress--letting people both do what they want and have more.  To return to the language of freedom articulated by Mill, most progressive accomplishments have won the right for the previously excluded “of framing the plan of their life to suit their own character; of doing as they like.”

But here’s the problem: this progressive—“progress”-based approach--has now run into the oncoming walls of a closed world and has therefore nearly run its possible course.  Ecological devastation, including that caused by carbon dioxide emissions and the warming of the Earth, requires an entirely different kind of morality and politics; it is one that may seem inimical to the stated beliefs of most progressives, but also one that some of them (us) may have started to embrace, at least on the down-low.  Rather than increasing consumption, our common home requires that we limit consumption.  Even if we set aside the issue of climate change, as scientists have calculated it we the people of the Earth use up a year’s worth of renewable resources in about nine months; the remaining three months of consumption involve a permanent ecological “draw-down” of  non-renewable resources

There is no formula, then, according to which the entire planet might enjoy “the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly expanding standard of living.”  As Pope Francis notes, “we all know that it is not possible to sustain the present level of consumption in developed countries and wealthier sectors of society, where the habit of wasting and discarding has reached unprecedented levels” (27).  The neo-liberal view that through free-trade and enhanced technology we might all live like middle-class people in the wealthy segments of the world do now, Francis rightly argues, “is an attempt to legitimize the present model of distribution, where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption.” (50).

Although most citizens of industrial nations--having very little experience in imagining drastically different and more simple ways of life--miss this part of the Pope’s message, Francis holds this scientific and moral ground without apology: in order to maintain the integrity of our ecosystems, the wealthy of the world are obligated to live more simply, not only wasting less, but using less.  This is not a life-style choice.  It is an obligation.  Our expectations and entitlements are no excuse for our consumption. This is a matter of life and death in our closed world where our luxury means that others cannot have enough simply to survive.

The American way of life, in short, amounts to transnational and cross-generational genocide.  Although he doesn’t explicitly call consumption out as a sin, probably for strategic reasons, it certainly meets all the relevant criteria Francis would maintain, violating god’s law, despoiling his creation, and doing deathly harm to others.  Except according a moral code where might makes right, there can be no justification for many of the daily activities of the world’s wealthy middle class, not to mention the second homes, the airplane travel, the recreational vehicles, the in-home luxuries, the endless and all too banal array of clothes, novelties, and bewildering world of constant novelty and amusement.  Look around the room you are in.  Most of what you see, Francis would argue, is morally unjustifiable.  Thou shalt not kill, and all this stuff is killing.

         Of course, progressives and conservatives have different views,  but essentially the difference is about how to divide up the spoils.  The spoils of our unsustainable enterprise.  The progressives want to give the poor, minorities, and  woman a slice of the pie.   But they generally assume a growing pie - endless growth.

      Thus Bernie Sanders, who says that Climate Change represents the biggest that to national security,, also calls for a GDP growth rate of 5.3%.

   It appears that the Pope "gets it".   But do "progressive environmentalists"?     I am reminded of Paul Kings Norths article , explaining why he could no longer be an "environmentalist" 

"For fifteen years I have been an environmental campaigner and writer. For two of these years I was deputy editor of the Ecologist. I campaigned against climate change, deforestation, overfishing, landscape destruction, extinction and all the rest. I wrote about how the global economic system was trashing the global ecosystem. I did all the things that environmentalists do. But after a while, I stopped believing it.

There were two reasons for this. The first was that none of the campaigns were succeeding, except on a very local level. More broadly, everything was getting worse. The second was that environmentalists, it seemed to me, were not being honest with themselves. It was increasingly obvious that climate change could not be stopped, that modern life was not consistent with the needs of the global ecosystem, that economic growth was part of the problem, and that the future was not going to be bright, green, comfy and 'sustainable' for ten billion people but was more likely to offer decline, depletion, chaos and hardship for all of us. Yet we all kept pretending that if we just carried on campaigning as usual, the impossible would happen."