I know what I want

But I just don't know

How to go about getting it

      -Jimi Hendrix

Well I guess
That I just don't know
    -Velvet underground

I really don't know
Clouds at all

     -Joni Mitchell

Greetings

First a couple of weird news stories.

   Here's one where folks from  NOAA  saying sea level rise could be 3 meters by 2050.   That seemed a little soon to me.  Here  it is from the Insurance Journal: 

"Margaret Davidson, NOAA’s senior advisor for coastal inundation and resilience science and services, and Michael Angelina, executive director of the Academy of Risk Management and Insurance, offered their take on climate change data in a conference session titled “Environmental Intelligence: Quantifying the Risks of Climate Change.”

Davidson said recent data that has been collected but has yet to be made official indicates sea levels could rise by roughly 3 meters or 9 feet by 2050-2060, far higher and quicker than current projections. Until now most projections have warned of seal level rise of up to 4 feet by 2100.

These new findings will likely be released in the latest sets of reports on climate change due out in the next few years.

“The latest field data out of West Antarctic is kind of an OMG thing,” she said."

I wonder if the 12 million or so residents whose property will be under water in 30 or so years are aware of this?   

"More than half of the area of 40 large cities (population over 50,000) is less than 10 feet above the high tide line, from Virginia Beach and Miami (the largest affected), down to Hoboken, N.J. (smallest). Twenty-seven of the cities are in Florida, where one-third of all current housing sits below the critical line — including 85 percent in Miami-Dade andBroward counties. Each of these counties is more threatened than any whole state outside of Florida – and each sits on bedrock filled with holes, rendering defense by seawalls or levees almost impossible.

By the metric of most people living on land less than 10 ft above the high tide line, New York City is most threatened in the long run, with a low-lying population count of more than 700,000. Sixteen other cities, including New Orleans, La.; Norfolk, Va.; Stockton, Calif.; Boston, Mass.; St. Petersburg, Fla.; and Jacksonville, Fla.; are on the list of places with more than 100,000 people below the line. (Much of New Orleans is already below sea level, but is protected at today’s level by levees.)

(Here's a handy tool from NOAA to see your favorite city under water.)

      And here's a story about clouds.   It seems that the climate models all assumed that clouds would be reflecting light much more than the data shows.  See Scientific American  Clouds wont save us from Global Warming

"Analysis of the first seven years of data from a NASA cloud-monitoring mission suggests clouds are doing less to slow the warming of the planet than previously thought, and that temperatures may rise faster than expected as greenhouse gas pollution worsens—perhaps 25 percent faster...

Tan, meanwhile, said it would be a mistake to focus too closely on the exact [climate sensitivity] number. The sensitivity result from the modeling experiments should be taken “with a grain of salt,” she said.

That’s because the study was based on a single model. A main point in conducting the experiments was to show that climate models contain a bias that could be corrected. The group hopes other scientists will conduct similar experiments using different models to help hone in on a more reliable measure of climate sensitivity."

OK, so where does that leave us?    -Here's an article from the Washington Post. .   It points out that  although  we are poised to sign the Paris accords, we neither  "know what we want", nor "how to go about getting it"    Here are few problems.

      " 1. Knowing when we cross the threshold. The first problem is simply with knowing when the world is actually 1.5 degrees C or 2 degrees C above a pre-industrial baseline temperature, often taken to be the average between the years 1850 and 1900 (though this, too, is disputed). Indeed, some havenoted that we breached the 1.5 degree threshold in February of 2016, albeit only for the space of a single month (which probably isn’t what scientists have in mind when they think of truly crossing a climate threshold).

The problem is both that it will be hard to define where the actual threshold lies, and also hard to be sure when we’ve crossed it, given differing baselines and periods of analysis, and the fact that temperatures will always fluctuate up and down. And there’s an even bigger problem, which involves so-called “overshoot” scenarios in which the world emits too much and presumably warms up more than 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius, but then starts to mass-produce “negative emissions” technologies that pull some carbon dioxide back out of the air again.

If this happens, we also will not know, for some time, how long it will actually take to get back to 1.5 or 2 degrees C, moving in the opposite direction, once we’ve overshot. “It may not be known for many decades if 1.5C/2C has been exceeded or successfully avoided,” Peters notes.

2. Knowing how much we can emit. And then there’s the problem of the carbon “budget,” which the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defined as no more than 1,000 billion tons, or gigatons, of carbon dioxide emissions (emitted from the year 2011) if we want a 66 percent chance or better of holding warming to 2 degrees C.

This number, too, is shot through with uncertainty. For instance, Peters notes that if you can tolerate less assurance of reaching 2 C, then you can suddenly allow for the possibility of vastly higher emissions: “The total quota for a 2C threshold increases by 800 GtCo2 for a decrease in the likelihood from 66% to 50%,” he notes. He also adds that there are big uncertainties related to the role of non-carbon dioxide gases, like methane, in shaping these budgets.

3. Knowing the future. Finally, the so-called “integrated assessment models” that are employed to determine if and how we can actually stay under a given temperature threshold often include the assumption of new technologies that don’t exist yet, or new policies that aren’t in place, to help us get there. An example of the former would be massive carbon dioxide removal from the air — and an example of the latter would be setting a global price on carbon emissions.

These technologies and policies could develop in the future — but then, they also might not. “Nearly all the literature informing global climate policy uses these strong policy assumptions,” Peters writes, referring to global carbon taxes included in models. “There is an urgent need for scenarios based on more realistic policy assumptions, in addition to a broader range of technological pathways that capture political realities.”

Come sail away with me

Won't you let me take you

on a sea cruise?

    -Frankie Ford

You better free your mind instead

    -The Beatles

Greetings

      Time to get in line to get on the first luxury cruise of the Northwest Passage.    Learn more here.  See the polar bears while you can!   Prepare to be amazed!

    "Prices for the journey aboard the 14-deck luxury liner start at nearly $22,000 rising to $120,000 for a deluxe stateroom—and this year’s cruise is sold out, according to the company."

       It seems that Climate Change has its bright spots, especially when it come to making and spending money.   Warren Buffet suggests that bigger storms will mean bigger premiums, and bigger profits for the insurance industry. .  

         Ugo Bardi, has an interesting post on economic activity and climate change.  He points to a new group  The "New Climate Economy Commission"  which is spreading the good news - we can have it all!

   " The goal of the New Climate Economy is to shift public discourse away from the costs of climate action to one focused on how economic growth and climate action can be achieved together."

        This is , of course is welcome news.  Let the decoupling begin!    (For a skeptic slant on the extent of decoupling see here)..   The notion that we can continue to grow GNP, while reducing emissions, seems rather hopeful.  see here
See also this from the Washington Post: "Clean Energy is winning the race against fossil fuels , but the planet is still losing

        Of course there are a number of ways to reduce CO2 emissions.  One would be to "stop driving around and buying sh*t".  But the way we have chosen to continue to buy "sh*t", but to do so in a more sustainable manner.   By buying renewable energy and electric cars, for instance.   Which really sounds good.   Its easy enough to find "pie in the sky" studies that demonstrate our all renewable future.  But most don't explain how we could do so in time    According this study in Energy Policy, it is basically "undo-able".   see here,  

 “It would require rates of change in our energy infrastructure and energy mix that have never happened in world history and that are extremely unlikely to be achieved,” he says.

  In 2015, the world installed the equivalent of 13,000 five-megawatt wind turbines. But to contain global warming to a figure less than 2°C nations would have to ramp up renewable investment by 2028 to the annual equivalent of 485,000 such wind turbines.

 “That’s a 37-fold increase in the annual installation rate in only 13 years just to achieve the wind power goal,” Professor Jones said.

       This study merely shows that the "green growth" solution is not feasible.

But one might also ask whether it is desirable.   For instance what are the environmental and health implications of such a large scale industrial activity?     This paper from Nature Geoscience provides a summary of materials required

"If the contribution from wind
turbines and solar energy to global energy

production is to rise from the current

400 TWh (ref. 2) to 12,000 TWh in 2035

and 25,000 TWh in 2050, as projected

by the World Wide Fund for Nature

(WWF), about 3,200 million tonnes of

steel, 310 million tonnes of aluminium

and 40 million tonnes of copper will be

required to build the latest generations

of wind and solar facilities (Fig. 2). This

corresponds to a 5 to 18% annual increase

in the global production of these metals for

the next 40 years.

 One hopes that these materials would be provided from recycling, or "sustainable" mining operations.  However, in all likelihood, they would be off shore, in countries with lax environmental laws. See e.g   Solar - Not as green as you think   or  .The worst place on earth. 

      So what's the alternative?  

          I recently can across an outfit known as the Simplicity Institute.  They suggest that in dealing with  Climate Change and Resource limits, the focus should be on demand, rather than supply,  that perhaps its time to try something other than our high tech "solutions" . see here

"All problems have hi-tech solutions. This is one of the defining assumptions of our technocratic, industrial civilisation, and yet it is an assumption that seems to be failing on its own terms. As the world continues to celebrate the most ‘advanced’ and ‘profitable’ technologies, we find our ecosystems being degraded and our communities fragmented more so now than ever before. Unfortunately, it seems that technology often just helps us get better at doing the wrong things, or the right things in unnecessarily harmful, energy-intensive ways.
Without denying the obvious benefits of many advanced technologies – such as the Internet, medical procedures, labour-saving machinery, etc. – humanity must nevertheless develop a more critical understanding of the costs of our technologies, costs that are often hidden or indirect, escaping our notice as we marvel at the latest invention. It is naïve to think that advanced technologies can solve all societal problems, and yet this naivety permeates contemporary understandings of what ‘progress’ and ‘sustainable development’ mean (Huesemann and Huesemann, 2011). The most pernicious consequence of this blind faith in technology is that it deflects attention away from the need to rethink our lifestyles, our economic structures, or our systems of governance, because it is assumed that technology will solve our problems without the perceived inconvenience of having to change the way we live. In this light, technology becomes an ethical void, one in which our societies are expected to become just and sustainable, without us having to live justly or sustainably ourselves. Even ethical problems are assumed to have hi-tech rather than behavioural solutions. This is techno-fetishism.    

      Richard Heinberg suggest a transition from a "consumer" to a "conserver" economy.

"If the transition to renewable energy implies a reduction in overall energy availability, if mobility is diminished, and if many industrial processes involving high heat and the use of fossil fuels as feedstocks become more expensive or are curtailed, then conservation must assume a much higher priority than consumption in the dawning post-fossil-fuel era. If it becomes more difficult and costly to produce and distribute goods such as clothing, computers, and phones, then people will have to use these manufactured goods longer, and repurpose, remanufacture, and recycle them wherever possible. Rather than a consumer economy, this will be a conserver economy.

"The switch from one set of priorities and incentives (consumerism) to the other (conservation) implies not just a major change in American culture but also a vast shift in both the economy and in government policy, with implications for nearly every industry. If this shift is to occur with a minimum of stress, it should be thought out ahead of time and guided with policy. We see little evidence of such planning currently, and it is not clear what governmental body would have the authority and capacity to undertake it. Nor do we yet see a culture shift powerful and broad-based enough to propel policy change.  

    

  (Perhaps in the future, when conserver approach is accepted, perhaps the Ministry of Information will  have PSA's which say 

      "Stop driving around buying sh*t. ")       ;.)

-------

Bonus:  New Kevin Anderson video.  I haven't seen it yet. Here is a summary I got from another poster

Professor Kevin Anderson interviewed. As an aid to navigation, the first 10 minutes or so deal with Kevin’s observations on Ireland’s response to climate change. The next five minutes deal with the aftermath of the Paris Agreement, then he moves to address the growth paradox; then, he deals with his own decision not to fly. From there, he deals with climate sensitivity and extreme events. Next, he deals with the relative merits of carbon taxes versus rationing. From here, he examines the fitness for purpose of the neoliberal economic and political model. He also discusses the ‘new normal’ of life in a climate-changed world, where human impacts have already wrought disastrous changes to much of the natural world upon which we depend. The interview concludes by placing a moral framework on humanity’s relationship with the world. He remains deeply concerned that society, despite the overwhelming evidence of the need to act, that “we will choose to fail”.

March 21, 2016

http://www.thinkorswim.ie/choosing-to-fail-prof-kevin-anderson-interviewed/