Moonbeams...and fairy tails

Dear Mr Fantasy

play us a tune

something to make us all happy

      -Traffic

We had it all

Just like Bogie and Bacall

   _Bertie Higgens

    

Good news

Over 6 million people in 185 countries, from schoolchildren to trade-unionists, took to the streets demanding that political elites do something meaningful to address the climate crisis. Taken together, this was the largest protest the world has ever seen. 

Public Service Announcement

Dr. Sarah Myhre will deliver this year's Salem Peace Lecture. Her topic will be "Living, Loving, and Loathing on a Hot and Finite Planet: the Path Towards Climate Leadership." at Willamette University's Hudson Hall, located in the Mary Stuart Rogers Music Center on the Willamette University campus, at 7:30 pm on Wednesday, October 16, 2019. 

Greetings

Many of you have heard Gretta Thunberg's speech to the UN.  Here's a little snip.

Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

Of course, she good reason to be upset.  Here we are at merely 1 degree above pre industrial and things were already dangerous. 

20% of they earth has already warmed by 1.5 degrees and 10% by 2 degrees.

People are already dying from excess heat

800,000 homes in Berkley, San Jose, and Oakland  loose electricity thanks to wild fire threat 

A recent report from the World Meteorology Association indicates that climate change impacts on sea level are accelerating

The Amazon is on fire, and near a tipping point where it would cease to be a forest last all. 

The Australian rainforest is on fire and faces the worst fires in recorded history.

Meanwhile

CO2 concentrations continue to accelerate

Fossil fuel use rising more than renewables

Recent recalibration of models show warming faster than expected

Our planet’s climate may be more sensitive to increases in greenhouse gas than we realized, according to a new generation of global climate models being used for the next major assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The findings—which run counter to a 40-year consensus—are a troubling sign that future warming and related impacts could be even worse than expected.

Gretta doesn't give much credence to the "solutions" offered by the IPPC

The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in ten years only gives us a 50 percent chance of staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control,” she said. “Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution, or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.”

“How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just ‘business as usual’ and some technical solutions?” she asked finally. “There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.” 

50%  is not good enough.  Which is a reasonable complaint.  Would you board a plan that had a 50% chance of crashing.  How about 25%? 10%?

The fact is there  there are event with small chance but a large impact.  For instance abrupt sea level rise, which could happen any time, as explained by Dr Richard Alloey

So who is Richard Alley? He is professor of geosciences at Penn State and a member of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Institute. His expertise is in glaciology, ice sheet stability, ice core analysis, and erosion of ice sheets. He tells Jeff Goodell of Rolling Stone that as bad as we think climate change might be in the coming decades, the reality could be far worse. Within the lifetime of his students there’s some risk — small but not as small as we might hope — that the seas could rise as much as 15 to 20 feet.

If that happens, kiss goodbye virtually every major coastal city in the world. Miami, New Orleans, large parts of Boston and New York City and Silicon Valley, not to mention Shanghai, Jakarta, Ho Chi Min City, Lagos, Mumbai  — all gone. ” I don’t mean ‘sunny day flooding’ where you get your feet wet on the way to the mall,” Goodell writes. “I mean these cities, and many more, become scuba diving sites.”

Why is Alley’s threat assessment greater than the people who are preparing reports for IPCC? Bureaucracy, mostly. They are written in collaboration with a large group of scientists and are often watered down by endless debate and consensus-building. In total there are 18 lead authors and 69 contributing authors on the chapter that considers sea-level rise. Also, by the time the final reports are written, the underlying data is often not the most current available.

Michael E. Mann, Alley’s colleague at Penn State, argues that most coastal areas are incapable of dealing effectively with even a 3 foot rise in ocean levels. “The US is not ready for a meter of sea level rise by 2100. Just look at what happened in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, Katrina, in Houston, or Puerto Rico,” he says.

Greta also seems to give short shrift to "green growth" or new green deal 

"Wherever I go I seem to be surrounded by fairytales. Business leaders, elected officials all across the political spectrum spending their time making up and telling bedtime stories that soothe us, that make us go back to sleep. These are ‘feel-good’ stories about how we are going to fix everything. How wonderful everything is going to be when we have ‘solved’ everything. But the problem we are facing is not that we lack the ability to dream, or to imagine a better world. The problem now is that we need to wake up. It’s time to face the reality, the facts, the science. 

And the science doesn’t mainly speak of ‘great opportunities to create the society we always wanted’. It tells of unspoken human sufferings, which will get worse and worse the longer we delay action – unless we start to act now. And yes, of course a sustainable transformed world will include lots of new benefits. But you have to understand. This is not primarily an opportunity to create new green jobs, new businesses or green economic growth. This is above all an emergency, and not just any emergency. This is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced.”

And she is not alone

This is essentially the view of the climate situation laid out by University of Manitoba environmental scientist Vaclav Smil’s new book Growth, which was excerpted this week in New York magazine. “[N]o government has ever made policies with the biosphere in mind,” it reads. “No government has advocated moderate, subdued economic growth as its priority, even in the world’s most affluent countries, and no major political party has been serious about reconsidering the pace of economic growth.” Seriousness, for Smil and other pessimistic climate analysts, would mean accepting a world of “deliberately declining levels and performances that would put civilization into a state of ‘regress.’” 

Perhaps a state of "regress" is in the cards no matter what.

Here is a recent tweet from Kevin Anderson

Whatever the arguments for or against XR’s actions, their demands for emission cuts more accurately reflect the rates & timeframe of 1.5°C than those proposed by any government. There is no non-extreme future. Extreme 1.5-2°C mitigation or status quo & extreme impacts/adaptation.

See here for Extinction Rebellion's demands

"Government must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.

Here is one version of the "extreme future" of the status quo, from Nature:

Speeding freight train

Three lines of evidence suggest that global warming will be faster than projected in the recent IPCC special report.

First, greenhouse-gas emissions are still rising. In 2017, industrial carbon dioxide emissions are estimated to have reached about 37 gigatonnes2. This puts them on track with the highest emissions trajectory the IPCC has modelled so far. This dark news means that the next 25 years are poised to warm at a rate of 0.25–0.32 °C per decade3. That is faster than the 0.2 °C per decade that we have experienced since the 2000s, and which the IPCC used in its special report.

Second, governments are cleaning up air pollution faster than the IPCC and most climate modellers have assumed. For example, China reduced sulfur dioxide emissions from its power plants by 7–14% between 2014 and 2016 (ref. 4). Mainstream climate models had expected them to rise. Lower pollution is better for crops and public health5. But aerosols, including sulfates, nitrates and organic compounds, reflect sunlight. This shield of aerosols has kept the planet cooler, possibly by as much as 0.7 °C globally6.

Third, there are signs that the planet might be entering a natural warm phase that could last for a couple of decades. The Pacific Ocean seems to be warming up, in accord with a slow climate cycle known as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation7. This cycle modulates temperatures over the equatorial Pacific and over North America. Similarly, the mixing of deep and surface waters in the Atlantic Ocean (the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) looks to have weakened since 2004, on the basis of data from drifting floats that probe the deep ocean8. Without this mixing, more heat will stay in the atmosphere rather than going into the deep oceans, as it has in the past.

These three forces reinforce each other. We estimate that rising greenhouse-gas emissions, along with declines in air pollution, bring forward the estimated date of 1.5 °C of warming to around 2030, with the 2 °C boundary reached by 2045. These could happen sooner with quicker shedding of air pollutants. Adding in natural decadal fluctuations raises the odds of blasting through 1.5 °C by 2025 to at least 10% (ref. 9). By comparison, the IPCC assigned probabilities of 17% and 83% for crossing the 1.5 °C mark by 2030 and 2052, respectively.

So, 2 degree by 2045, that's not so bad, is it?   Here's climate scientist Christopher Reyer, one of the co-authors of  "Turn Down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal"

"Two degrees is not a picnic either. Imagine events like the 2003 European heat wave, the 2010 Russian heat wave which had repercussions on the global wheat market, and Hurricane Katrina, all of them happening simultaneously everywhere in the world."

Didn't see that coming!

Blinded by the light

Revved up like a deuce

Another runner in the night

Manfred Mann

Running on empty 

Running blind

Jackson Brown

Greetings

        Happy Solstice. (late, as usual).  

 So, of course, these days we have learned to accept climate change.    But we naturally hope it would be in some other place, or some other time.   For instance,  In Alaska they have to move entire towns;  south Florida is flooding without storms, see here (nice maps here

 ;  water shortages in  India .  But not in my city.  Surely not in Salem.  Yes, in Salem, you can't drink the water

   And maybe lots of other places.  Here's an explanation form The Climate Institute

Climate change contributes to excess cyanobacteria blooms by creating ideal conditions for cyanobacteria to grow. Cyanobacteria thrive in warm waters: as global temperatures rise, so too does global water temperatures. Cyanobacteria not only grow more rapidly in warm water from increased temperatures, but warmer waters also make it more difficult for water to mix, meaning the surface of the water remains much warmer than the rest of the body of water—and cyanobacteria grow more successfully on the surface.5 This is also disadvantageous because growing a thick cover on the surface of the water means that this photosynthetic organism can absorb sunlight easily, and grow even more rapidly.

Furthermore, increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide are also favorable to the growth of cyanobacteria.6 The combination of warmer water temperatures and carbon dioxide absorption further creates perfect conditions for cyanobacteria growth and blooms.

A change in climate also affects precipitation rates and patterns. According to NASA, “Rising temperatures will intensify the Earth’s water cycle, increasing evaporation.  Increased evaporation will result in more storms, but also contribute to drying over some land areas.”7 This poses a problem when increased rainfall and storms causes more frequent nutrient pollution, “Thus, fertilization of arable land, sewage discharging, industrial effluents, use of detergents, extensive livestock farming are some of the activities that are responsible for the anthropogenic input of nutrients.”8

I guess the bottom line is, we need to expect the unexpected.  Here's  Michael Mann

Uncertainty is not our friend here," said Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann. "We are seeing increases in extreme weather events that go well beyond what has been predicted or projected in the past. We're learning that there are factors we were not previously aware of that may be magnifying the impacts of human-caused climate change." Among those are "subtle mechanisms involving the behavior of the jet stream that may be involved in explaining the dramatic increase we've seen in floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires," he said.

"Increasingly, the science suggests that many of the impacts are occurring earlier and with greater amplitude than was predicted," Mann said, after considering new research since the milestone of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment, which served as the scientific basis for the Paris Agreement.

"We have literally, in the space of a year, doubled our assessment of the potential sea level rise we could see by the end of this century. That is simply remarkable. And it is sobering," he said.

Who was expecting toxic algea blooms?  How about "rain bombs" like Houston had?  Or the "hot blob"?

'An ocean heating event called the Blob resulted in mass loss of sea life during the period of 2013-2014. It was associated with a towering high pressure ridge in which the upper level winds ran far to the north and into the Arctic. Beneath the ridge, temperatures both at the land and ocean surface grew to be much warmer than normal.

Or how about " insect Armageddon"?

"An insect Armageddon is under way, say many entomologists, the result of a multiple whammy of environmental impacts: pollution, habitat changes, overuse of pesticides, and global warming. And it is a decline that could have crucial consequences. Our creepy crawlies may have unsettling looks but they lie at the foot of a wildlife food chain that makes them vitally important to the makeup and nature of the countryside. They are “the little things that run the world” according to the distinguished Harvard biologist Edward O Wilson, who once observed: “If all humankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”

So, the impacts are worse than we had expected at this temperature.    And the temperature is rising faster than we had expected.  How fast?   How about  4 degrees above pre industrial as early as 2064?

A great many record-breaking heat events, heavy floods, and extreme droughts would occur if global warming crosses the 4 °C level, with respect to the preindustrial period," said Dabang Jiang, a senior researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "The temperature increase would cause severe threats to ecosystems, human systems, and associated societies and economies."

In the analysis, Jiang and his team used the parameters of scenario in which there was no mitigation of rising greenhouse gas emissions. They compared 39 coordinated climate model experiments from the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (https://www.wcrp-climate.org/wgcm-cmip), which develops and reviews climate models to ensure the most accurate climate simulations possible.

They found that most of the models projected an increase of 4°C as early as 2064 and as late as 2095 in the 21st century, with 2084 appearing as the median year.

Study here

.  

Of course that's the "worst case".  Unfortunately, expecting the worst case seems to be the most prudent approach..

According to a recentanalysis from scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR),  "[t]he worst case projections for global warming may be the most likely.”

 Are we already in a "climate emergency"?  I recently came across a book that suggests we are, and  offer a somewhat different slant on our predicament.  It's called, "Climate and Ecological Delusions and Contradictions That Will Rapidly End Humanity…Unless..."Free download here.    

The author argues that our current "plan", designed by politicians, is a recipe for disaster.  it consists of a rapid build-out of renewables (and a conversion of industrial and transportation to electricity).   As that cannot achieve the necessary reductions in CO2, a carbon sucking technology is proposed to fill the gap. 

 Relying on the work of Kevin Anderson, the book argues that while the plan is politically feasible, in practice it will not, and perhaps can not succeed.  The build-out would need to be much faster (perhaps 400 times as fast - see here ).  The current Paris agreement  proposals  will lead to 2-3 degrees beyond pre-industrial.  And the countries that agreed to them are not following through (see UN emissions gap report).  Furthermore, the carbon sucking technology has not been demonstrated . and the leading contender BECC, is potentially harmful.

But these facts are not well known.   In fact, we are flooded with,"feel good " stories about high tech making great strides.  Of course, strides are being made but they are dwarfed by the size of the problem.

And so the "problem,". (i.e.  something that can be solved,)  is rapidly turning into a "predicament ", (something that must be endured.)  Some aspects are already out of our control - see e.g. melting glaciers in the Arctic.  They argue that the only counterweight to the press and the politicians is the philanthropies .  These organizations control billions of dollars, they could illuminate our actual situation, and what it would really take to adapt to our current predicament and to avoid even more dangerous climate change.

The authors recognized the difficulty in getting through to the general public in a way that is " visible and visceral", a gut punch  of reality.  They offer some examples of techniques but recognize the competing  strength of our habitual world views.

           The  stories we  tell  ourselves,  the  cultural  paradigms that  represent  the  water  we  fish  swim  in,  change slowly  until  they  no  longer  work.   It  is  easy  then  to  ignore  coming  disasters,  even  though  we  may acknowledge  their  looming  reality.  Most  people  continue  to  use  vast  amounts of  fossil  fuels,  and  to consume far  more  than  our  happiness  requires,  even  though  we  are  aware  our  excesses  will  have  dark consequences  down  the  road.  The  future  is  “discounted”168  by  all  of  us,  not  only  by  economists. There  is  no  evidence-based,  rational way  that  we  can  continue  current operating systems–taking  twice  what  Mother  Earth  can maintain, sustain,  regenerate,  supply  to  us without exhaustion.  These  are delusions,  multi-faceted and interconnected.   Yet  facts  alone  will not move  or  change  dominant  human  behavioral  patterns or habituated cultural perspectives.

Here is James Hansons assessment of our actions to date.

All we’ve done is agree there’s a problem,” Hansen told the Guardian. “We agreed that in 1992 [at the Earth summit in Rio] and re-agreed it again in Paris [at the 2015 climate accord]. We haven’t acknowledged what is required to solve it. Promises like Paris don’t mean much, it’s wishful thinking. It’s a hoax that governments have played on us since the 1990s.”

Hansen’s long list of culprits for this inertia are both familiar – the nefarious lobbying of the fossil fuel industry – and surprising. Jerry Brown, the progressive governor of California, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, are “both pretending to be solving the problem” while being unambitious and shunning low-carbon nuclear power, Hansen argues.

There is particular scorn for Barack Obama. Hansen says in a scathing upcoming book that the former president “failed miserably” on climate change and oversaw policies that were “late, ineffectual and partisan”.

So, instead of dealing with the problem - our hyper consumption paradigm that is creating the overshoot in so many areas, we deal only with the symptoms.  Some symptoms are anticipated like wildfires and drought .  Some are not,  like toxic algea.  Are we ready for this Brave New Climate?  

And what about the issue of the day, immigration?  Here's an interesting analysis .    from here.  See also Welcome to the age of climate migration

One factor causing migrants to risk everything—even potentially losing their children—to travel through the heat of summer in the dangerous desert and towards the barbed wire fences and tent cities springing up just south of the United States border: climate change.

Many of the migrants being detained here now hail from what's referred variously as the Dry Corridor or the Northern Triangle, which consists of the three countries immediately south of Mexico: Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.

The agricultural crisis of the Northern Triangle area isn't something that cropped up overnight, but has been in the making for more than a decade. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations published a report in June 2016 that described the depth of the food insecurity crisis in the region, leaving 3.5 million people, or nearly 30 percent of the population, food insecure from crop losses estimated to be as high as 90 percent.

Why the high crop losses? It’s due to a cycle of severe drought followed by tumultuous rainfall in the region, a pair of extreme weather patterns attributed to El Nino and La Nina.

Kicking off in 2015, this latest cycle of El Nino has twisted normal weather patterns in the region. By the next year, 2016, many in the Dry Corridor region reported at least two failed harvests as local weather patterns turned to La Nina, which is characterized by above-normal summer rainfall. That rainfall is made doubly dangerous when the Atlantic hurricane season—which has gotten more violent every year—dumps plenty of its own rainfall, making farming difficult, if not absolutely impossible.

"What we're talking about here are changing precipitation patterns," Robert Albro, a research associate professor in the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University, said. "Climate scientists have observed that climate change is exacerbating El Nino and La Nina, so we see radically changing seasonal patterns."

      So, how are we going to deal with all these changes.  Be resilient, I suppose.   Be prepared, be flexible, have good community networks.  One lesson from Salem's water problems is that average citizens are very unprepared for any emergency.  They expect to be bailed out by somebody else - the government.    see Statesman editorial.

It's flawed reasoning for most residents to assume government will provide all necessary supplies in an emergency or that outside assistance will be instantly ready to offer aid.

The run early last week on water at area stores was worrisome but understandable because few were aware of the potential toxins threatening the water supply, so to them, it came without warning.

But residents with the means should have been able to crack open their emergency kit and take water from it.

It was an ideal opportunity to use water that might have been stored for a few months, and then replace it when the threat receded.

And yet, most raced to the store to buy water and other supplies causing many retailers to run out. Others took advantage of city and state water-distribution points.

...

With these recent water advisories, too many residents demonstrated they were unprepared to be without water and other supplies for a couple of days, let alone the couple of weeks.

Individuals who can, bear primary responsibility for preparing themselves. 

It's easy to bellyache about the failures of government; it's much harder to take responsibility for our own. 

So, expect the unexpected.  And prepare.

After the horse has left the barn

I went to the desert on a horse with no name

It felt good to get out of the rain

-  America

Well be riding Wildfire

  -Micheal Murphy

Greetings. And Happy New Year

     

      Personally, I'm not too sad to see 2017 go. 2017 was when we hit the carbon threshold of 400 ppm 400

Last year marked the first time in several million years that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 passed 400 parts per million. By looking at what Earth’s climate was like in previous eras of high CO2 levels, scientists are getting a sobering picture of where we are headed.

Last year will go down in history as the year when the planet’s atmosphere broke a startling record: 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide. The last time the planet’s air was so rich in CO2 was millions of years ago, back before early predecessors to humans were likely wielding stone tools; the world was a few degrees hotter back then, and melted ice put sea levels tens of meters higher.

“We’re in a new era,” says Ralph Keeling, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s CO2 Program in San Diego. “And it’s going fast. We’re going to touch up against 410 pretty soon.”

There’s nothing particularly magic about the number 400. But for environmental scientists and advocates grappling with the invisible, intangible threat of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, this symbolic target has served as a clear red line into a danger zone of climate change.

(For an interesting discussion of some of the scientific papers from 2017 see "What we Lerned about the Climate System in 2017 That should send shivers down the spines of policy makers.")

And a few other disturbing things happened in 2017.  Are they canaries in a coal mine?    Some ecosystems are, or have, moved into new states.  Permanently. 

For instance, coral reefs     (I don't like it much when people start talking about " last rites for an ecosystem ")

A study published Thursday in Science by some of the world’s top coral experts amounts to last rites for the ecosystems often referred to as “the tropical rainforests of the sea.” Scientists surveyed 100 reefs around the world and found that extreme bleaching events that once occurred every 25-30 years now happen about every five or six years.

“These impacts are stacking up at a pace and at a severity that I had never anticipated, even as an expert,” says Kim Cobb, a climate scientist and coral researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “It’s really the rapidity of it that is so sobering and shocking — and for me personally, life-altering.”

“Before the 1980s, mass bleaching of corals was unheard of,” Terry Hughes, a coral scientist at Australia’s James Cook University and lead author of the new study, said in a statement.

The new study finds that 94 percent of surveyed coral reefs have experienced a severe bleaching event since the 1980s. Only six sites surveyed were unaffected. They are scattered around the world, meaning no ocean basin on Earth has been entirely spared.

Interview with one of the authors here

The "new Arctic"?

The region is now definitively trending toward an ice-free state, the scientists said, with wide-ranging ramifications for ecosystems, national security, and the stability of the global climate system. It was a fitting venue for an eye-opening reminder that, on its current path, civilization is engaged in an existential gamble with the planet’s life-support system.

In an accompanying annual report on the Arctic’s health — titled “the Arctic shows no sign of returning to reliably frozen region of recent past decades” — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees all official U.S. research in the region, coined a term: “New Arctic.”

This, of course, has devastating effects on the humans and other animals who relied on the " old arctic".    

The loss of sea ice is already having profound changes all the way down at the base of the Arctic food web. As more sunlight hits darkly-colored open water, more heat energy is retained, and temperatures are rising further. That’s kicking off what Mathis, of NOAA’s Arctic Program characterizes as “an almost runaway effect,” involving a lengthening of the growing season, a greening of the tundra, a surge in wildfires, and a boom in plankton growth. All that adds up to a wide-ranging disruption to patterns that Arctic natives have relied on for millennia.

But it also has other knock effects, like melting permafrost 

In the NOAA report, Arctic scientists lay out their best ideas of what this shift could mean for the world. Their depictions are sobering.

Take, for instance, the hypothesis of University of Alaska-Fairbanks permafrost scientist Vladimir Romanovsky: So far, 2017 has seen the highest permafrost temperatures in Alaska on record. If that warming continues at the current rate, widespread thawing could begin in as few as 10 years. The impact of such defrosting “will be very very severe,” Romanovsky says, and could include the destruction of local infrastructure — like roads and buildings — throughout the Northern Hemisphere and the release of additional greenhouse gases that have been locked for generations in the ice.

Unfortunately what happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the arctic.   Here an interview with Dr. Jennifer Francis linking the jet stream to events in the lower 48, like the California drought.

Or how about turning one-quarter of the planet into a desert, by the time we hit 2 degrees (2060?)  More here

Roughly a quarter of the planet is slowly turning into a perpetual desert.

A study published Monday inpre-industrialNature Climate Change contains a stark warning for humankind: If global temperatures rise 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels by 2050, between 20 and 30 percent of the world’s land surface could face desertlike conditions.

Swaths of Asia, Europe, Africa, Central America, and southern Australia would be hit particularly hard by drought and aridification, the long-term reduction of moisture in soil. More than 1.5 billion people currently live in these regions

Things would go much better, the researchers find, if we managed to stay within 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels. Manoj Joshi, one of the study authors from the University of East Anglia, said in a statement: “Our research predicts that aridification would emerge over about 20-30 percent of the world’s land surface by the time the global mean temperature change reaches 2 degrees Celsius.

 But two thirds of the affected regions could avoid significant aridification if warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

Kind of spooky -   read that last sentence again .   One third of the desertification happens before we hot 1.5  (2040?). 

How about this:  CLIMATE CHANGE IS SUFFOCATING LARGE PARTS OF THE OCEAN

“Loss of oxygen in many ways is the destruction of an ecosystem,” Breitburg says. “If we were creating vast areas on land that were uninhabitable by most animals, we’d notice. But we don’t always see things like this when they are happening in the water… These low-oxygen zones occur naturally, but have grown by more than 4.5 million square kilometers — an area roughly as large as the entire European Union—just since the mid-20th century. In part that’s because of rising temperatures.

  So, welcome to a new era

So, what are we doing about it ?  We have two responses   One is widely advertised. Another is a bit more hidden

The one that's obvious is called "decoupling ".    It is hoped that that by installing renewables, and making machinery more efficient, fossil fueled plants will become unnecessary.   The economy would grow, and fossil fuel use would shrink.      So far that hasn't really paid off. 

"... it is just not happening, at least at the global scale. Just take a look at this image:

Note how closely related the GDP an the world's energy consumption are. It is impressive because the GDP is measured in terms of money flows.

 For an interesting review of how little has been accomplished through efficiency efforts see here   (hat tip Sarah D).  This study shows how little fossil fuel has been displaced by renewable power to date . (2012)   But  still one hopes.   We need a substantial change.  Here is an illustration of what it would take.  From here

"...true "decoupling" would mean inverting the trend, as shown below (again from Le Petit's paper), where we see what we expect from the IEA scenarios

As you see, true decoupling is quite a challenge. 

Everyone seems to admit that "decoupling" will not get us to  1.5 or 2 degrees above pre industrial  So, the backstop is "Negative Emissions Technologies" , which essentially means sucking the carbon out of the air.  As more fully explained in this November 2017 video, by Kevin Anderson.  Anderson points out that not only  is our reliance on this technology hidden in the fine print,   technology not yet exist,  the policy makers are 

It also assumes that we can run things in reverse.  That we can put CO2 in the atmosphere now, and take it out later, and everything will go back to where it was.  This is apparently not the case for the ocean

"The researchers based their simulation on real-world carbon dioxide emissions from 1800 to 2005, and then projected those emissions into the year 2250. Then they simulated what would happen if technology could remove 18 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year—about half of present-day emission rates—from 2250 until 2700. The researchers found this did decrease atmospheric CO2 levels but could not restore the ocean’s preindustrial dissolved oxygen content or temperature. Even after 450 years of geoengineering, the model ocean was still almost as acidic as it would have been without any intervention at all.

 “It is clear that rather than trying to clean up a mess, it would be wiser to simply not create the mess in the first place.”

What can we expect in 2018?  Here's a hint.     Sacrifice areas.   

The IPCC is due to release a report on the likelihood and effects of achieving 1.5 degrees.  Reuters has obtained a draft .  It confirms that there is a   low probability of success: “There is very high risk that […] global warming will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels [should emissions continue at the current pace].”The draft also states that meeting the climate goal would require an “unprecedented” leap from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy and extensive reforms everywhere from industry to agriculture."    

"Additionally, while curbing global temperatures would help reduce some of the worst impacts of climate change, including sea level rise and droughts, it would not be enough to protect the planet’s most fragile ecosystems, including polar ice caps and coral reefs.

One wonders what else will be sacrificed on the alter of the growth of the industrial economy.  The Amazon?  Low lying areas in South east Asa? 

And as for the Negative Emissions Technology ?

"Gabriel Marty, a climate change analyst and former U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) delegate for France, told Futurism that it’s too soon to speculate on the content of the final report.However, once it is released, he said readers should note the treatment of the uncertainties and risks of the so-called “bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS)” technologies designed to suck carbon emissions out of the atmosphere.  The risks associated [with heavily relying on these technologies] must be clearly outlined,” said Marty. “They do not exist yet, the scale that would be needed would be enormous, and the adverse impacts on land and water resources would likely be huge.”According to sources familiar with the IPCC’s proceedings, the panel has been criticized in the past for being too coy about the limitations of BECCS and for understating their risks in order to present the 2 degrees Celsius target as “still viable.”

So it goes...