Send in the clowns

Fools rush in

Where wise men fear to tread 

    -Elvis

Idiot wind
Blowing every time you move your mouth

    Bob Dylan

Greetings 

        Phil C sent this to me. I'm a scientist . I'm blowing the whistle on the Trump Administration.

What can I say?  A bit heavy handed but fairly typical of this administration .       See also Glacier Park Ranger can't talk to Zuckberg about the future of glaciers. here.     The market place is at least slowing Trump's efforts to re-carbonized the economy.  As long as natural gas is cheaper than coal, less coal plants will be running.  Similarly Rick Perry's attempt to prove the fossil fuels are better than renewables seems to have hit a snag..

       As this op ed points out ,Trump trying to lobotomizing America, introducing The Golden Age of Stupidity

“The opposite of knowledge is ignorance. But the willful disregard of knowledge — regardless of motive — is stupidity. That is because those who battle facts are at war with reality. It is an unwinnable proposition. Furthermore, specialized knowledge, particularly that of scientists, is essential if we are to do what leaders must, anticipate change, understand its consequences and harness the opportunities it presents. Trump, in waging a systematic campaign to rid the government of the experts and ideas he sees as threats to his agenda, has done more than just usher in a Golden Age of Stupidity.  He is unwittingly asking a question it doesn't take an expert to figure out: "What happens when you lobotomize the world's leading power?"

        LOokingat th e bigger picture, it seems to me that the "big question "seems to have shifted from "Can we avoid "dangerous"climate change ( 1.5 or 2 degrees)"   To something like "Can we slow things down at bit, maybe decarbonize before we hit 4 degrees?"  

      Four degrees does look a little spooky:  Here's one description.  From here 

 "But according to one of the world’s most influential climate scientists, John Schellnhuber, ‘the difference between two and four degrees is human civilisation.’ Thanks to the global paralysis since 1992, the ‘window of opportunity’ for reducing emissions fast enough to avoid this scenario is starting to look more like a crack in the plaster.

Four degrees of warming, Marshall tells us, is likely to bring heatwaves of magnitudes never experienced before, and temperatures not seen on Earth in the last five million years. Forty per cent of plant and animal species would be at risk of extinction, a third of Asian rainforests would be under threat and most of the Amazon would be at high risk of burning down. Crop yields would collapse, possibly by a third in Africa. US production of corn, soy beans and cotton would fall by up to 82 per cent. Four degrees guarantees the total melting of the Greenland ice sheet and probably the Western Antarctic ice sheet, which would raise sea levels by more than thirty feet. Two-thirds of the world’s major cities would end up underwater. And we aren’t looking at a multigenerational timescale: we may see a four-degree rise over the next sixty years. ‘The science around four degrees keeps moving,’ Marshall notes, ‘usually in the direction of greater pessimism.’

       Trump and his fossil fueled friends seem happy to push ahead burn what there is, and deal with 4 when that comes. 

          I've been reading an interesting book called Defiant Earth, by Clive Hamilton.  He explores some ideas about what it means to be in the Anthropocene.  Stuff like :  In the post anthropocene - what is "nature", what is  "progress", and what is humanity's role?  Its pretty dry, but  worth a look,  One quote sticks with me:

"What kind of creature interfered with the Earths functioning and would not desist when the facts became known?"

           So, Trump's "plan" is pedal to the metal.  What about the rest of the world?   Plan B seems to be green growth,  as growth is apparently non negotiable .  For instance see here.

'There seems to be a complete inability for senior policy makers to even countenance the possibility that a period of economic contraction may be required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the rate required to forestall dangerous climate change. This inability was on display in an interview given by Christiana Figueres, the former UN Climate Chief, to Radio New Zealand[1]. She went out of her way to state that the decarbonization of the global economy was not inconsistent with continued economic growth. The desperation to not question the growth paradigm, and the many misleading tactics used to keep questions of growth at bay, were fully on display in the Figueres interview and the recent paper she published with others[2]:

       Arguably  both Plan Trump, and Plan B are both versions of what has been called "the politics of unsustainability ".   Consciously, or unconsciously, the unsustainability of our life style is accepted.  Therefore the only real strategy is how to adapt to its effects  -  rising tides, drowning cities, burning forests, climate refugees.  These are all just facts of life in the Athropocene.  Expressing ourselves through consumption,  travel,  and other high status displays are the highest good.  Maintenance of nature, the biosphere get lip service only.    We are in a post e ogical era    This is described in a somewhat academic way as follows:

The governance of unsustainability: ecology and democracy after the post-democratic turn.  

'Whatever its declared commitments, this politics of unsustainability is no longer powered by the ecologist attempt to change individual lifestyles and societal structures in such a way that environmental integrity may be sustained and ecologist visions of authentic social well-being achieved. Instead, its primary concern is to manage the inevitable consequences, social and ecological, of the resolve to sustain the established order. Rather than tryingto suspend or even reverse the prevailing logic of unsustainability, its main preoccupation is to promote societal adaptation and resilience to sustained unsustainability.

The mechanism is described below.   This may seem a little cynical, but consider this little factoid from the head of the IEA.

"Fossil fuels accounted for 81% of the world's energy consumption in 1987. Thirty years later it's still 81%."  (Kyoto was in 1997, ever since CO2 concentrations have been accelerating)

"For their politics of unsustainability, so the theory of post-ecologist politics suggests, advanced post-industrial societies are relying, in particular, on strategies of simulation. These strategies entail the production and maintenance of societal self-descriptions in which modern societies portray themselves as having fully recognised the seriousness and urgency of the sustainability crisis, as having a clear understanding of what remedial action is required and as commanding the political will and ability to implement it. These societal self descriptions provide reassurance that the problem is taken seriously, that it is being researched and addressed with all available expertise, and that appropriate counter-strategies are being pursued with undivided determination. They create discursive spaces in which individuals, collective actors and society at large can present and experience themselves as ecologically virtuous and committed without compromising the post-ecologist value preferences which condition their thinking and behaviour otherwise. These narratives of reassurance include, for example, the above-mentioned stories of ecological modernisation and the Green New Deal, the story that a ‘science of sustainability’ can ‘provide the rock-solid foundations upon which the structures of sustainable development’ can then be raised...

            

         What would the politics of sustainability look like?   Here's  a critique of green growth and decoupling.   Here;s a possible  Plan C  Avoiding Collapse, An agenda for sustainable degrowth  

Torn between two lovers

We are just prisoners

Of our own device

  -  The Eagles

Did you ever have to make up your mind

To pick up on one and leave the other behind

   -John Sebastian

Greetings

     The monkey Trap

    

         There are two recent climate change controversies that are sucking up lots of energy.  To my mind they both seem to be missing the point .   The first is over the Jacobson 100% renewable plan   and it's feasibility or lack thereof,  it has spawned an acrimonious debate in the relevant journals.  e.g. see here

        Richard Heinberg offers an intelligent commentary, noting that both sides seem to have accepted the premise that it is even possible to rebuild our modern society to run on renewables.. Based on his own research, has serious doubts.  He says:

"When we start our transition planning by assuming that future Americans will use as much energy as we do now (or even more of it in the case of economic growth), then we have set up conditions that are nearly impossible to design for. And crucially, that conclusion still holds if we add nuclear power (which is expensive and risky) or fossil fuels (which are rapidly depleting) to the mix. The only realistic energy future that David Fridley and I were able to envision is one in which people in currently industrialized countries use far less energy per capita, use it much more efficiently, and use it when it’s available rather than demanding 24/7/365 energy services. That would mean not doing a lot of things we are currently doing (e.g., traveling in commercial aircraft), doing them on a much smaller scale (e.g., getting used to living in smaller spaces and buying fewer consumer products—and ones built to be endlessly repaired), or doing them very differently (e.g., constructing buildings and roads with local natural materials).

  

                He may be wrong , he may be right.  What I find interesting is that question itself is never discussed.  Because, perhaps, it is inconceivable that things must change.

                 A more recent flap has arisen about the article by science writer David Wallace Wells,   about what the world will look like if (when?) we don't make big changes .   see The Uninhabitable Earth  .  Many commenters suggested it was "too doomerish"  and didn't offer enough hope that we would make the necessary changes  . And it is true, the article didn't pull any punches.  I urge to read it yourselves.  Here is short quote to give you a feel for it .

"The present tense of climate change — the destruction we’ve already baked into our future — is horrifying enough. Most people talk as if Miami and Bangladesh still have a chance of surviving; most of the scientists I spoke with assume we’ll lose them within the century, even if we stop burning fossil fuel in the next decade. Two degrees of warming used to be considered the threshold of catastrophe: tens of millions of climate refugees unleashed upon an unprepared world. Now two degrees is our goal, per the Paris climate accords, and experts give us only slim odds of hitting it. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issues serial reports, often called the “gold standard” of climate research; the most recent one projects us to hit four degrees of warming by the beginning of the next century, should we stay the present course. But that’s just a median projection. The upper end of the probability curve runs as high as eight degrees — and the authors still haven’t figured out how to deal with that permafrost melt. The IPCC reports also don’t fully account for the albedo effect (less ice means less reflected and more absorbed sunlight, hence more warming); more cloud cover (which traps heat); or the dieback of forests and other flora (which extract carbon from the atmosphere). Each of these promises to accelerate warming, and the geological record shows that temperature can shift as much as ten degrees or more in a single decade. The last time the planet was even four degrees warmer, Peter Brannen points out in The Ends of the World, his new history of the planet’s major extinction events, the oceans were hundreds of feet higher.*

              Too doomerish?        Dave Roberts responded to the controversy saying:  " Did that New York Magazine story freak you out? Good"  .   He suggests that the article is basically accurate and is just what is needed to get people to realize how serious the situation is.   (Note:   Wallace Wells has responded to his critics in an "annotated " version of the article, carefully footnoting his sources  see here)

 

         But, to me the more relevant question is," if we need to hold out hope -  hope for what?"    Hope  that we can continue to  have more growth, more stuff, and more high energy life styles?  As well as an intact biosphere?    If that's what we are hoping for, we will probably be disappointed.  Roger Boyd in his blog Humanity's Test, argues that it's time for us to recognize that growth and sustainability are not reconcilable. He offers a number flaws in the view that we can have growth and sustainability -  including.his view that there is no remaining carbon budget because of  

"The high probability of increases in natural emissions from forests, soils, permafrost etc. that will offset part of any human emission cuts

• The probability that climate sensitivity is at least at the high end of the range used by the UN IPCC, and possibly higher than that range
• The impact of an ice-free Arctic, as the reduction in albedo leads to energy balance of the Earth being significantly increased
• The probability that sea level rise is much more sensitive to temperatures than previously assumed

             He also, offers a good explanation for the reason that all politicians and nearly all policy wonks refuse to consider the possibility that future growth must be curbed .

       

"The politicians understand the Pandora’s Box that will open up once they cross the Rubicon into acceptance of a period of degrowth. The horrors that sit within that box include:

• A large-scale reduction in wealth, as much of that wealth represents the current value of future growth.
  • Share prices based on assumed rates of future profit growth
  • Loans based upon the assumption that future growth will provide the income to pay off the principal and interest

• A financial system crash as the assets on the books of banks and other financial intermediaries lose significant amounts of value

• A need for the rich to share their wealth and income with the less rich
  • Without the additional income produced by growth, the only way for the less rich to improve their lot will be by redistribution from the wealthy through such things as progressive taxation (higher taxes on the rich) and higher wages. This will be both within countries, and between countries.

• A reduction in pensions and a reorientation toward public provision. The whole pension industry relies on future growth in asset prices to provide the majority of the funds required to pay future pensions.

  

      So, yes, we are "torn between to love(r)s."   The love of our riches and the goodies that implies , and our love of a future .  In a more recent article by Dave Roberts  The Best way to reduce your personal carbon emissions : don't be rich he notes a that a recent study evaluated a number of personal choices in terms of their impact, and he concludes:

"As you can see, your lightbulbs and laundry verge on meaningless, carbon-wise. The only “high-impact” actions are ditching your car, flying less, switching to a plant-based diet, and, the biggie, not having a child."

    He also includes this graphic from Oxfam - which is pretty telling.  

  

Fortunate one

Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Ooh, they're red, white and blue
And when the band plays "Hail to the chief"
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord

       -Creedence  Clearwater

Citizen ship we got mem'ries
Stateless, they got shame
Cast adrift from the citizen ship
Lifeline denied, exiled this castaway

          -Patty Smith

Greetings

    I hope you are enjoying this warm weather.  Being out in the garden, makes me wonder about what gardening will be like in the future.   Of course temperatures will rise.  May of 2017 was the second hottest on record See here    Check out this as you watch hardiness zones change from 1990 to 2006.   Or this

But let's not  forget variability .    Higher temps are only one side of the problem.  This paper from Hansen et al, shows that while the average temperature gets hotter, the range of possible temperature gets wider.

The width of the distribution has doubled since 1951-1980. 

Thus, plants not only have to be able to endure hotter temperatures, but a much more variable temperature regime.      

Eric Holhaus (weather nerd), reports on the drought in the upper midwest

"There's a quickly worsening drought right now in the upper Midwest. In just the last week, "extreme" drought expanded from 7.7 percent to 25.1 percent of North Dakota, the hardest-hit state. And next week, a multi-day heat wave is on the way. It's expected to reach as high as 107 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the Dakotas, more than 20 degrees above normal.

Why does that matter? For one, it might seriously affect this year's wheat harvest there.

Wheat is humanity's most important grain food source, the United States is the world's largest wheat exporter, and the Dakotas and Montana are now the most important wheat growing region of the United States. Wheat prices have already gone up more than 10 percent in just the past few weeks in response to the drought. This year's American wheat crop is currently rated the worst in 29 years. In large parts of the Dakotas and eastern Montana, spring rains have been less than half of normal. Although this is a worrying development, it doesn't yet directly equate to a major food crisis, though—we won't know that until the harvest is completed in the comping weeks. According to one wheat analyst, "It’s pretty likely that we’ll get high-protein wheat at harvest -- there just won’t be that much of it."

Or this article in Grist

Rain fall coming in extreme bursts instead of evened out and longer, hotter longer heat extremes will take a nasty toll on bushels per acre totals.

/

A drought in the Dakotas spells trouble for the U.S. wheat harvest. Farmers in the Upper Midwest got a big dose of bad news Thursday: The extent of the region’s ongoing “extreme” drought has more than tripled in the past week.

Temperatures are expected to reach as high as 107 degrees next week in parts of the Dakotas, more than 20 degrees above normal. In large swaths of the Dakotas and eastern Montana, spring rains have been less than half of normal. On Monday, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum declared a statewide fire and drought emergency.

Here's an interesting article about how farmers are coping.  It contains a rather odd sentence, I think

How much farmers will be affected will depend on how much the climate warms, Gepts says. If we stay within 1 to 2 degrees Celsius of current global averages, most farmers will likely be able to grow the same crops by changing their cultivation practices. But if global averages rise 3, 4 or 5 degrees, as many models predict, farmers will have to shift to entirely new crops.

It is interesting that the authors are able to consider the potential rise of 3, 4 or 5 degrees with such equanimity .    It may be a little tricky for farmers, but things will be fine for the rest of us?

The author must not have read this report by the World Bank Why a 4 degree C World Must be Avoided

Or this from the Climate News Network

By 2060, around 1.4 bn people could be climate refugees, driven from low-lying coastal cities by sea level rise. By 2100, as the global population may have reached 11bn, there could be 2bn climate refugees

Or this from here

ROME, Jun 7 2017 (IPS) – By 2025 –that’s in less than 8 years from today– 1.8 billion people will experience absolute water scarcity, and two thirds of the world will be living under water-stressed conditions. Now it is feared that advancing drought and deserts, growing water scarcity and decreasing food security may provoke a huge ‘tsunami” of climate refugees and migrants.

No wonder then that a major United Nations Convention calls drought ‘one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.’ See what the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) says in this regard.

Speaking of climate refugees,  take a look at this map from the New York Times   which should give you an idea of where people are going to me moving from, and where they will be moving to (hint:  the PNW).  

Interesting study by PSU on climate refugees  moving to the Willamette Valley

        Is this avoidable?    Reduction in use of coal use is presumably good.  As long as humans are still in the drivers seat.     However, although CO2 emmisoons from fossil fules are flattening,  this is not translating into reductions in concentrations.  Scientists had thought it was merely an artifact of El Nino, and things would get into line once that was over.  However , the problem has persisted in 2017, despite the end of the El Nino.  see here

    Peerhaps it is like a bathtub with two taps.  The human burning of fossil fuels is one, while the natural impacts are another.   While human emmsiosn slow, with other factors increase? 

ill human emissions continue to stay flat?   See this from the New York Times 

When China halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants this year, even as President Trump vowed to “bring back coal” in America, the contrast seemed to confirm Beijing’s new role as a leader in the fight against climate change.

But new data on the world’s biggest developers of coal-fired power plants paints a very different picture: China’s energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.

These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries.

Crunch Time?

        A recent letter in Nature suggest that we have three years to put emissions onto a negative slope.

11:38 PM · Jun 28, 2017

But the idea that there is really any carbon budget left is  questionable.  Many non-human sources of CO2 or heat have begun  to play a more significant role in warming.See The Evidence Against the Existence of a Positive Carbon Budget

See for instance this article on subsea permafrost

new scientific paper published in Nature Communication Journal demonstrates that the mechanisms of destabilisation of subsea permafrost, contrary to previous claims, provide new insights into increased emissions from the worlds largest deposits of methane, that exists in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS).

The subsea permafrost has for thousands of years acted as a seal, restricting the flow of gas through the water column to the atmosphere. This paper clearly shows that permafrost degradation and the occurrence of gas migration pathways are key factors in controlling the emissions.  

Or this article on soil carbon 

A new Yale-led study in the journal Nature finds that warming will drive the loss of at least 55 trillion kilograms of carbon from the soil by mid-century, or about 17% more than the projected emissions due to human-related activities during that period. That would be roughly the equivalent of adding to the planet another industrialized country the size of the United States.

Critically, the researchers found that carbon losses will be greatest in the world’s colder places, at high latitudes, locations that had largely been missing from previous research. In those regions, massive stocks of carbon have built up over thousands of years and slow microbial activity has kept them relatively secure.

Something to think about as weatch the "bombs bursting in air"

Here's one opportunity help out those folks who have had to leave their homes

http://salemforrefugees.org/