I went down to the cross roads

Where do think you're going?

I think you don't know

    Mark Knoffler

And where will you go my blue eyed son

And where will you go, my darling young one?

    Bob Dylan

Greetings

   In case you missed the news -for the first time the monthly average CO2 concentration exceeded 410,  in April.  Just so you know

These CO2 levels, according to NOAA's climate department, haven't been seen on Earth in 3 million years, when temperatures were 3.6° to 5.4°F warmer, and sea level was 50 to 80 feet higher than today

   Of course, in order to deal with climate change we nee to start reducing the Co2 concentration, hopefully to 350.  But before we can do that we need to stop it from growing.   But before we do that we need to stop accelerating!  That's right the growth rate of  CO2 concentration,  is itself growing.  See this chart 

Decadal Average Annual Growth RatesMauna Loa Observatory (MLO)1958 - 2014

Decade	Atmospheric CO2 Growth Rate
2005 - 2014	2.11 ppm per year
1995 - 2004	1.87 ppm per year
1985 - 1994	1.42 ppm per year
1975 - 1984	1.44 ppm per year
1965 - 1974	1.06 ppm per year
1959 - 1964 (6 years only)	0.73 ppm per year

ppm = parts per million

   

    One way to see the climate situation is that we are at a crossroad, and there are three roads ahead to choose from. .   The 2, the 3, and the 4 degree roads. As shown from this article by Dave Roberts

As for the 2 degree road, he find that it is possible, though extremely unlikely. In a nicely titled article "What genuine, no bullshit ambition on climate change would look like."  he reviews a number of proposals that do not incorporate "negative emissions"  such as  BECC,   Why no BECC?    Roberts explains

"There is currently no commercial BECCS industry. Neither the BE nor the CCS part has been demonstrated at any serious scale, much less at the scale necessary. (The land area needed to grow all that biomass for BECCS in these models is estimated to be around one to three times the size of India.)

Roberts concludes that although it is "possible", it would require adopting a number of changes, technical, political and behavioral.  

"...a global carbon tax, maximized efficiency, an explosion of renewable energy, a wholesale revolution in agriculture, rapid reduction of non-CO2 GHGs, a rapid shift in global lifestyle choices, and successful measures to curb population growth — would be an enormous achievement.

To completely avoid BECCS while still hitting the 1.5 degree target, we would have to accomplish all of them.

That is highly unlikely. Still, the important point of the Nature Climate Change research remains: “alternative pathways exist allowing for more moderate use and postponement of BECCS.” Given the substantial and uncharted difficulties facing BECCS, policymakers owe those alternative pathways a look.

Obviously these strategies face all kinds of social and economic barriers. (I’m trying to envision what it would take to rapidly shift Americans from beef to cultured meat ... trying and failing.)

It's hard to imagine this without a dictatorial take over or a wartime situation.

The second road is the one that leads to 3 - 3.5 degrees by 2100.  This is the road Roberts thinks we are on.   To see what that would be like Roberts suggests  a summary of "6 degrees" by Mark Lynas .  It describes the effects 

As Lynas puts it:

With structural famine gripping much of the subtropics, hundreds of millions of people will have only one choice left other than death for themselves and their families: They will have to pack up their belongings and leave... Conflicts will inevitably erupt as these numerous climate refugees spill into already densely populated areas... Uprooted, stateless, and without hope, these will be the first generation of a new type of people: climate nomads, constantly moving in search of food, their varied cultures forgotten, ancestral ties to ancient lands cut forever... As social collapse accelerates, new political philosophies may emerge, philosophies that seek to lay blame where it truly belongs--on the rich countries that lit the fire that has now begun to consume the world.

  

but even more alarming it also suggests

With 3 degrees of warming, "Instead of absorbing CO2, vegetation and soils start releasing it in massive quantities, as soil bacteria work faster to break down organic matter in a hotter environment, and plant growth goes into reverse." The result, in the model, was the release of an additional 250 ppm of carbon dioxide by 2100, and an additional 1.5 degrees of warming. In other words, the 3 C world was not stable--hitting the 3-degree threshold meant hitting a 'tipping point' which led directly (though not immediately) to the 4 C world.

This effect was primarily due to a huge dieback of the Amazon rainforest. With warming and drying the rainforest collapsed almost completely. Later studies found globally similar effects, albeit in differing amounts. And a recent study suggests that the likelihood of an Amazonian collapse may be lower than first thought--welcome news, to be sure.

If that's true, the best you can say about the three degree road is that it doesn't get to 4 degrees quite as fast 

The third road also goes to 4 degrees, but much faster  - by 2100.   We can get to this result by taking no action.   

I'm not going to describe what that would look like - if you are interested take a look  here  Lets just say its not to be wished for. 

It is worthwhile to note that each of these roads assumes the continued growth of the industrial consumer economy. In fact, it may argued that it is that growth that makes these scenarios likely.

(It is worth mentioning that global emissions declined in the 19900's was the period when the USSR broke up, causing what might be called an economic collapse in Russia and the surrounding nations.  They also fell in 2008 -09.  There also was a dip in 2015, but it was quickly at by record breaking amounts )

So, what about a slow down of the industrial / consumer enterprise ?

There are two alternatives.  Voluntary or involuntary.   On the voluntary side, you might find the transition offered by The Simpler Way. See eg here. Here is a summary

Given the magnitude of the overshoot, the huge extent to which we have exceeded sustainable limits, there can be no solution unless there is enormous and radical transition to some kind of Simpler Way. Only this can enable per capita resource use to be cut to the region of 10% of present levels. Thus there must be:

        Much simpler lifestyles, far lower per capita resource consumption.

Mostly small, highly self-sufficient local economies, putting local resources into meeting local needs.  When petroleum becomes scarce there will be no choice about this.

Much more cooperative and participatory ways, enabling people in small communities to take collective control of their own development, to include and provide for all. We must develop commons, co-ops and working bees.

Participatory town self-government, The important decisions about the development and running of the town must be made by town assemblies, local committees andreferenda involving everyone. The town must be have as much control over its own fate as possible.

A new economy, one that is not driven by profit or market forces, that has no growth at all, that involves far less production and work than the present one, and focuses on needs and rights and the quality of life of all. It might have many private firms anda market sector, but there must be (participatory, democratic, open and local) social control over what is developed, what is produced, and how it is distributed. All must be provided for, meaning no poverty or unemployment and everyone having a livelihood, the capacity to make a valued contribution.

New values.  These communities cannot work well unless people shift from the present individualistic, competitive and acquisitive orientation to a world view focused on being content with frugal sufficiency and living within a supportive community in which all enjoy a high quality of life. There must be conscientious and socially responsible citizens who prioritise the public good.

This, also looks fairly challenging!  Like Roberts's  2 degree no bullshit plans, this would require significant behavioral and political changes.

As for the involuntary,  here is another perspective.   Nate Hagens, who now spends his time attempting to prepare college students for what he calls "The Great Simplification", a period of declining available energy and goods    He believes "The Great Simplification"will begin on the next decade.   He hopes to prepare students by giving them some idea why it is happening. As part of this , he offers  a grounding in some topics which they may not be exposed yo otherwise such as :  the role of energy in the economy,  system dynamics, ecological economics, , and evolutionary psychology.

See here for some of ideas - 

Here is his summary

Around 11,000 years ago, as the last ice age ended, our ancestors – in no fewer than 5 locations around the world – took advantage of the new conditions and tried an agricultural way of life.  Fast forward through two momentous phase shifts in human history (agricultural and industrial revolutions), and here we are: approaching 8 billion, seeking freedom, experiences, and material wealth all derived from physical surplus.  As many are aware, the procuring of this ‘surplus’ is also impacting the larger sphere outside our homes, (we call it “Earth”) in increasingly deleterious ways.  Yet, at an annual global growth rate of 3%, which most governments and institutions expect, we would close to double the size of energy and materials it took us 11,000 years to amass, in the next 25 years.

Under current trends, a college student today would see over 2 such doublings in her lifetime. (yes,  2Xè 4X in size by the time they’re 70).  Is this possible? Is this desirable?  What are the variables that will influence this trajectory? What would be the impacts if it happens?  And if it doesn’t? There currently is no natural entity in our society charged with such questions.  Or answers to the questions.  But perhaps there should be.  A systems synthesis which integrates aspects of energy, the environment, the economy and human behavior is a prerequisite to understanding what is unlikely, what is possible, what’s at stake, and ultimately what to strive for and work towards.

My own conclusion is that The Next Doubling is now no longer possible.  In the coming decade, we are going to have to collectively deal with what I refer to as the Great Simplification.  This will mean less physical throughput and fewer economic benefits to the average citizen in the developed world than the past 2 decades.  If managed, the Great Simplification could result in positive outcomes and a saner system and very high standards of living vs most periods in our history.

His view is that we are hitting  "peak affordable oil", but that the price of the oil is artificially low, in part as a result of cheap credit for oil companies,   allowing companies to sell oil below cost. see here

We need energy to create our physical realities and create our economic growth and trade for transport, everything. If the energy sector requires a greater and greater chunk of that energy, we have less available for the rest of discretionary society. And once that constraint exists and even accelerates, you need to respond to that. And the way we responded to that was increasing our debt, which, of course, as you know, is pretty much created by a pen stroke. So that can temporarily offset energy shortages at a cost of a steeper decline, because debt actually functions as a spacial and temporal reallocater of resources, away from the periphery towards the center and away from the future towards the present. So there’s a very subtle but important relationship between debt and energy. And the problem is, is that most of, as you term, economic priests and priestesses, don’t have training in the biophysical economic world, and they treat everything in monetary terms. And we just throw more money at the problem, and it’ll go away. Well, our energy, and especially our net energy story, is getting worse. So we’re increasing our money supply while our energy supply is declining, and, yeah, that’s not a good situation.

 And eventually we get to a point where the oil companies need higher and higher oil price in order to make a profit, but society can afford less and less. And at some point those two prices of oil cross and we have a real problem. You know, right now, the marginal barrel of oil costs between $70 and $90, so there’s a little bit of a cushion in there now. But a lot of people say above a hundred dollar oil, it has significant economic headwinds. So at some point there, dollars don’t become an accurate measure of our real natural resource balance sheet. 

It's pssoble that we have hit that point.  Art Berman reports that 2/3 of tight oil companies lost money in the first 3 quarters of 2017

and the Wall Street Journal reported    

"... the oil giants are still barely able to pay for new investments and dividends without selling assets or going deeper into debt. Last year, the five companies spent $31 billion more in cash on new investments and dividends than they generated from operations, according to FactSet.

See also Heinberg, here

Is "the Great Simplification" inevitable?  Will it be beneficial?  Is it something to encourage?  see Crash on Demand

For an interesting discussion of the possibility of, and the likely impacts of, an economic. "collapse",  with George Monbiot, David Holmgren, Nicol Foss and others see here.  .  Its quite entertaining.

Climate Hawks

Did you ever have to make up your mind?

-Loving Spoonful

Forty thousand head men 

couldn't make me change my mind.

-Traffic

Greetings

I'm going to start off with public service announcement

The Clean Energy Jobs Bill is back before the legislature.

The bill will lower Oregon’s greenhouse gas emissions by adopting a cap, trade, and invest plan — we will cap greenhouse gas emissions from major sources, trade emission permits to allow maximum market efficiency in reducing carbon pollution, and invest proceeds to help Oregon transition to a greener, cleaner future.  You can learn about the bill and join the fight to protect our future in two ways:

For those who want to learn more about the CEJ Billbefore Lobby Day:

On Monday, Feb 5 at 3 PM the Joint Environmental and Energy and Natural Resources Committees will roll out the CEJ Billwith an Informational Meeting in Room F at the Capitol.

and on Wed, Feb 7 at 3 PM the same Joint Committee will hold a Public Hearing regarding the bill in Room F.

and you can join your friends from the Oregon League of Conservation Voters and Renew Oregon at the Clean Energy Jobs LOBBY DAY at the State Capitol on Monday, Feb. 12.  

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 You may want to stop reading here

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It may be a good idea to put this bill in perspective.  What can we hope to achieve?   What would we have to give up to get there?  Dave Roberts, a clear eyed "climate hawk"  displays what he sees as the best case scenario, as part of an article chiding environmentalists for getting in the way of implementing climate policy. see    Reckoning with Climate Change will demand ugly trade offs from environmentalists and everyone else  .  He says we can't meet our 2 degree target using solar and wind alone.   We also will need nuclear power, more dams, and loads of transmission lines running across sensitive habitats.

Mostly its because we waited so long, so we missed the gradual ramp down see e.g.

Implications for limiting warming to 2C

Here's what Roberts says it would take.   

It would mean an immediate, sustained global mobilization of a sort that has no precedent in human history.

If something like that mobilization were to happen, it would not be gentle or pretty. It would not unfold according to the best-laid plans of wonks. Some people, landscapes, and legitimately worthwhile priorities would suffer in the short- to mid-term.

One example: environmentalists often cite studies showing that high penetrations of renewables are possible in the US. But those studies all show that achieving high penetrations requires a country-spanning network of new transmission lines. If there’s a study showing how to fully decarbonize without tons of new transmission, I haven’t seen it. So yes, transmission lines connecting zero-carbon power sources and loads might disrupt some people and ecosystems, but systematically opposing them simply isn’t commensurate with being a climate hawk.

Another example: full decarbonization would require, among other things, an enormous industrial shift. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of jobs in polluting industries would be wiped out and workers displaced. There would be new jobs in clean energy, but the US has not typically handled such workforce transitions well. Being a climate hawk means accepting serious social and economic disruption.

Decarbonization will also involve a mind-boggling amount of manufacturing, building, and retrofitting. Multiple solar and wind gigafactories would be built every year. Renewables would cover every open surface. Every city would be as dense and transit-served as possible. Being a climate hawk means accepting that some natural areas will be turned over to energy production and that “the character of the neighborhood” is going to be disrupted by infill and multi-modal transportation systems.

Conservative climate hawks may have to tolerate climate solutions that involve heavy government intervention. Farmer climate hawks may have to tolerate swaths of their land being claimed for transmission lines or wind turbines. Wealthy climate hawks may have to tolerate restrictions on their consumer purchases or airline travel. Environmentalist climate hawks may have to tolerate large-scale carbon sequestration or new rivers given over to dams. And so on.

This is the future Roberts suggests that we need.   I am reminded of the "Chinese miracle".  New factories, new industries.  Forward !

So, lets put this activity in context.  How are we doing with respect to overshoot?    It just so happens that 15,000 scientists in 184 countries recently issued  a report :World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice"  which noted the a number of deteriorating trends

Among the negative 25-year global trends noted in the article are:

• A 26 percent reduction in the amount of fresh water available per capita
• A drop in the harvest of wild-caught fish, despite an increase in fishing effort
• A 75 percent increase in the number of ocean dead zones
• A loss of nearly 300 million acres of forestland, much of it converted for agricultural uses
• Continuing significant increases in global carbon emissions and average temperatures
• A 35 percent rise in human population
• A collective 29 percent reduction in the numbers of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish

So, Robert's prescription would make some of those things worse.   But perhaps the additional impacts would be offset by the reduced impacts of climate change on the biosphere?

Well......no.     It turns out that climate change has had very little impact on species extinction.   This great extinction is bring caused by the ordinary things that humans do.   A recent article in Nature points out that main cause of species extinction is over consumption -  logging, fishing, agriculture, urban expansion, and pollution are the real culprits.     In fact climate change ranks very low.  see here

But even though climate change is going to have a very powerful impact on plants and wildlife world-wide, climate change has also become a sort of scape-goat, with a “growing tendency for media reports about threats to biodiversity to focus on climate change,” write the authors of a new study analyzing the impact each sector of our society has on life on Earth. According to their findings, the real culprits are staple human activities such as logging, hunting, or farming, which pose a far greater — and much more immediate — danger to Earth’s biodiversity.

“[Agriculture and rampant resource over-exploitation are] by far the biggest drivers of biodiversity decline,” the authors write in a comment published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

A team of scientists led by University of Queensland doctoral student Sean Maxwell analyzed thousands of species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species to determine exactly what we’re doing to put them on that list.

They found that over-exploitation, including logging, hunting, fishing and the gathering of plants is the biggest single killer of biodiversity, directly impacting 72 percent of the 8,688 species listed as threatened or near-threatened by the IUCN. Agricultural activity comes second, affecting 62 percent of those species, followed by urban development and pollution which threaten 35 and 22 percent respectively. Species such as the African cheetah and Asia’s hairy-noes otter are among the 5,407 species that find themselves threatened by agricultural practices, while illegal hunting impacts several populations such as the Sumatran rhino and African elephant.

Climate change on the other hand comes in on a surprising, if somewhat unimpressive, 7th place in the 11 threats identified by the team. Even when you combine all its effects, it currently threatens just 19 percent of the species on the list, the team reports. 

So add to that Robert's prescription of  a " ..... mind-boggling amount of manufacturing, building, and retrofitting. Multiple solar and wind gigafactories would be built every year. Renewables would cover every open surface"  

Of course, the alternative of doing nothing is much worse.   A recent article by David Spratt, author of Climate Code Red, puts the possible futures in perspective

 

Not going to zero emissions would be worse in the short term: other recent work shows warming would be 2.2-2.4°C by 2050 if we continue on the current high-emissions path.  And it would be disastrously worse not to go to zero emission very fast, due to the longer-term impacts: continuing on the current high-emissions trajectory would bring warming of 4.1–5°C by 2100.

Nevertheless,  Spratt, points out that even if we went to zero emissions tomorrow, we would be unlikely to avoid two degrees,

Thus, without solar radiation management (replacing anthropogenic aerosols from fossil fuel use with anthropogenic aerosols spread from planes or fired into the atmosphere) it will be difficult to avoid 2°C no matter what CO2 emissions path we take, and all but impossible not to overshoot 1.5°C by at least a third. It is not yet clear that there is demonstrable clear net environmental benefit from solar radiation management, and we should only do it if that is the case. But in not doing it, we need to be honest about what will be lost and what further tipping points may be crossed.

(Speaking of tipping points,  I suppose its worth pointing out here that a recent study suggests that 1.5 is likely to be the trigger to the beginning of the permafrost melt..  

      Roberts makes a good argument, but it contains a hidden premise.  It may be true that all of the things he mentions, nuclear plants, more dams, transmission lines crisscrossing the country will be needed, if we are to stop CO2 emissions,  and we are to continue to live a high consumption, high energy lifestyle.     But maybe its that lifestyle itself that is the problem.  Not just. for the climate.

 We want a functioning ecosystem.  We want to keep temperatures down.  And we want to continue our high consumption high energy lifestyle.  

We want all three.

But ,  perhaps Roberts is right.   We can't have all three.   

So, how about that lifestyle?

But how much energy do we really need?   Here is an interesting exploration of energy poverty and energy decadence

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.

See more in this interview with Anderson" Our Socioeconomic Paradigm is Incompatible with Climate Change Objectives

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 

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 ?

From the NY Times : 

“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 )