Wednesday, November 29, 2017

A Vision of a Christmas yet to be


I need something 
to change your mind
  -Talking Heads

You could have a change of heart
      -Steely Dan


Greetings

       I just saw "The man who invented Christmas",  which was quite cute.   I particularly liked Charles Dickens's writing room.  I want one like that!
 In the movie , Dickens has a hard time imagining that Scrooge will have a change of heart, but in the end is persuaded to write the story wit a hopeful ending .  So, I thought it might be interesting to look at our predicament in the light of that story.

        In the role of Scrooge, we have the global elite, (that's you and me), who are unable, or unwilling to make enough of a change to our high energy life styles. Although we assert that we are concerned with climate change, we don't think it will affect us, but only future generations  (See this article on our hard wired future discounting function)

         So, we vote based on other higher priority issues, like immigration, and economic opportunity.     We believe that climate change is important, but it still only ranks 18th out of our top 20 issues.  

We sent our representatives to Bonn, to try to devise a way around these inconsistencies.     Here are Kevin Anderson's reflections on those negotiations 



"Rising emissions and pitiful excuses
Last Monday (November 13th) the Global Carbon Project announced the results of its annual assessment of emissions data. In 2017 carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and cement is anticipated to be 2% higher than in 2016. Is this really such a surprise?
Witness the US and the EU’s fervour for locking-in high-carbon gas[4] behind a veil of closing down old coal. Academic enthusiasm for evermore quixotic ‘negative emission technologies'(NETs)[5] and geo-engineering to support ‘big oil’ and infinite growth. A growing cadre of climate glitterati ratcheting up its rhetoric to align with its rocketing emissions. The UNFCCC’s promotion of expedient offsetting to ‘neutralise’ emissions from air-travel to Bonn and its other global meetings. Meanwhile journalists remain unwilling or ill equipped to call time on this catalogue of subterfuge. It’s twenty-seven years since the IPCC’s first report and a quarter of a century since the Rio Earth Summit, but still our carbon emissions are rising.


Disturbingly, and with the exception of utopian technophiles, few of those deeply engaged in climate change are convinced we “can have our cake and eat it”. Sadly, senior policy, scientific, academic and NGO figures are seldom prepared to voice publically what they admit privately. 


Nevertheless, Anderson, like Dickens comes through with a (slightly) hopeful ending

"Imagine a space where climate academics and others could be truly honest about their analysis and judgements and where disagreements were discussed openly and constructively. Add to this, informed dialogue on the ‘confluence of circumstances’ outlined above. And finally reframe climate change not as a threat to some arbitrary economic indicator, but as a secure, local and high-quality jobs agenda. Under such conditions, and with vociferous engagement by the ‘next’ generation, I can envisage an alternative progressive paradigm being ushered in – and soon.
Do I think this is likely – far from it? But I certainly judge such a decarbonised and prosperous future to be both plausible and desirable.
Here's the  bigger  picture, with this from Dave Roberts, to see what exactly the risks are, and where we we with respect to them.   Here’s the graph 
climate risks

Robert's conclusion is similar .


"In short, panic


There’s a lot to glean from this graph, but here’s the takeaway: We’ve already crossed over into moderate risk on the first three RFCS. Pushing temperatures up 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels — the target at which the world claims to want to stop warming — puts us at high risk on the first three and moderate risk on the last two. That is the best-case scenario.
Three degrees over preindustrial levels, where we are very likely headed this century, puts us at high risk across the board, very high for those uniquely threatened systems. Five degrees, which is entirely possible, puts basically every human and ecological system at high to very high risk.

And his degree of hope ?
"We are already in danger, there’s more danger to come, and the best we can hope for is to slow and stop the process before the dangers are catastrophic. That’s the shape of things.
        One of the more significant risks is of course the risk of a sea rise.  For many years this has been predicted to be a long way off.  (Hundreds or thousands of years).  Recent research indicates that glaciers may collapse much sooner, and over a very short period of time,, .  Here is a good explanation by meteorologist Eric Holthaus from Grist.  


All this could play out in a mere 20 to 50 years — much too quickly for humanity to adapt.
“With marine ice cliff instability, sea-level rise for the next century is potentially much larger than we thought it might be five or 10 years ago,” Poinar says.
A lot of this newfound concern is driven by the research of two climatologists: Rob DeConto at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and David Pollard at Penn State University. A study they published last year was the first to incorporate the latest understanding of marine ice-cliff instability into a continent-scale model of Antarctica.
Their results drove estimates for how high the seas could rise this century sharply higher. “Antarctic model raises prospect of unstoppable ice collapse,” read the headline in the scientific journal Nature, a publication not known for hyperbole.
Instead of a three-foot increase in ocean levels by the end of the century, six feet was more likely, according to DeConto and Pollard’s findings. But if carbon emissions continue to track on something resembling a worst-case scenario, the full 11 feet of ice locked in West Antarctica might be freed up, their study showed.
Three feet of sea-level rise would be bad, leading to more frequent flooding of U.S. cities such as New Orleans, Houston, New York, and Miami. Pacific Island nations, like the Marshall Islands, would lose most of their territory. Unfortunately, it now seems like three feet is possible only under the rosiest of scenarios.
At six feet, though, around 12 million people in the United States would be displaced, and the world’s most vulnerable megacities, like Shanghai, Mumbai, and Ho Chi Minh City, could be wiped off the map.
At 11 feet, land currently inhabited by hundreds of millions of people worldwide would wind up underwater. South Florida would be largely uninhabitable; floods on the scale of Hurricane Sandy would strike twice a month in New York and New Jersey, as the tug of the moon alone would be enough to send tidewaters into homes and buildings.
It is also explained in this video.  (at about 6:30 Eric Rignot discusses the melting glaciers in West Antarctica.)
But really?  Are these early melt scenarios really plausible ?
“When I asked Richard Alley, almost certainly the most respected glaciologist in the United States, whether he would be surprised to see Thwaites collapse in his lifetime, he drew a breath. Alley is 58 [now 60]. ‘‘Up until very recently, I would have said, ‘Yes, I’d be surprised,’ ’’ he told me. ‘‘Right now, I’m not sure…”
Holthaus notes:
"Next to a meteor strike, rapid sea-level rise from collapsing ice cliffs is one of the quickest ways our world can remake itself. This is about as fast as climate change get
But, it seems, up to now, our knowledge of glacier behavior has been rather limited.
 
"Bassis, the ice sheet scientist at the University of Michigan, first described the theoretical process of marine ice-cliff instability in research published only a few years ago.
"Every revision to our understanding has said that ice sheets can change faster than we thought,” he says. “We didn’t predict that Pine Island was going to retreat, we didn’t predict that Larsen B was going to disintegrate. We tend to look at these things after they’ve happened.”

         Robert (Fanney) Scribbler offers his reflections on this risk, as well as the risk of more frequent high intensity thunderstorms, like the one that flooded Houston.  Scribbler, normally, a relentless optimist offers these thoughts
These increases are on top of already elevated rates of rainfall intensity we presently see today in destructive events that our infrastructure and disaster planning is clearly not prepared for (as seen during Harvey). So as we take the time to give thanks for the great bounty that many of us still have, perhaps we should also take the time to think of the things we can do to keep safe what we have worked so hard for and care so much about and to do our best to help those who are less fortunate. Who have already fallen casualty to a time of troubles.
         At this point, climate change, like real estate values, is all about location.  If you don't live where the fires, droughts and storms are, its not so bad.  But if you do....    Right now the people of Puerto Rico,  US citizens (!), are still struggling with the impact of Hurricane Maria.  Half the population has been without power 63 days after the event.
         See.   Richard Heinberg. Puerto Rico is our future.   
         So, I may not be too hopeful about a change of heart in the Scrooges of our world, but perhaps we can still send a Christmas gift to the Tiny Tims .
          Here's one way
          https://www.directrelief.org.   (Ranked #1 by Charity Navigator )

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