[TheClimate.Vote] December 30, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/December 30, 2018/

[Making lists of important news stories]
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
*Six memorable climate change pieces from 2018*
By Dan Drollette Jr, December 26, 2018
This is the time of year when you find yourself sending and receiving 
holiday cards, going through photos, digging out decorations from the 
attic, and exchanging emails with long-lost friends. Inevitably, midway 
through all the cardboard boxes, you find yourself reflecting on all 
that has happened throughout the year--and it's always amazing just how 
much has occurred, and how many cool little goodies are tucked away and 
nearly forgotten from the past 12 months. (As in: "Wow, I forgot I 
picked that up on vacation.")
The same is true when going through the Bulletin's attic of climate 
change stories from 2018. It's impossible to include all the gems from 
our files from this year, but here are some goodies that made an 
impression. If you want to see more, you can always scroll to the bottom 
of the home page and click on the "Climate Change" box under "Browse the 
Bulletin by Topic."

*1. Hot but not bothered: Major media are ignoring the climate crisis 
*Dawn Stover
https://thebulletin.org/2018/07/hot-but-not-bothered-major-media-are-ignoring-the-climate-crisis/
In the midst of record-breaking heat waves and wildfires, fewer than 
half of all Americans view global warming as a serious personal threat. 
A big reason for that: Many journalists are not doing their jobs...

*2. Say WHAT? Ryan Zinke's rough interior* Thomas Gaulkin
https://thebulletin.org/2018/11/say-what-ryan-zinke/
Secretary Ryan Zinke is at the forefront of the Trump administration's 
mission to extract resources from public lands. In the first episode of 
a new Bulletin  series on the devaluation of expertise in government 
policy, UCLA environmental law professor Sean Hecht reacts to the 
unscientific statements and decisions coming out of the Department of 
the Interior...

*3. Florence and the 5 stages of climate change acceptance* Dan 
Drollette Jr.
https://thebulletin.org/2018/09/florence-and-the-5-stages-of-climate-change-acceptance/
Now that we've gotten through Hurricane Florence, Americans should be 
completely up to speed when it comes to dealing with disasters that have 
been amplified by anthropogenic climate change, right?...

*4. Little Ice Age? No. Big Warming Age? Yes*. Dana Nuccitelli
https://thebulletin.org/2018/12/little-ice-age-no-big-warming-age-yes/
The 'imminent mini ice age' myth rears its ugly head in the conservative 
media like clockwork every year or two. But every single part of the 
myth is wrong...

*5. Climate report understates threat Mario Molina*, V. Ramanathan, 
Durwood J. Zaelke
https://thebulletin.org/2018/10/climate-report-understates-threat/
Dire as it is, the latest IPCC report largely ignores what may be the 
most significant climate risk: self-reinforcing climate feedback loops 
pushing the planet into chaos beyond human control. So says a team of 
climate experts, including the winner of the 1995 Nobel for his work on 
depletion of the ozone layer...

*6. Day Zero: Lessons from Cape Town's crisis* Interview with Peter Gleick
https://thebulletin.org/2018/02/day-zero-lessons-from-cape-towns-crisis/
Water expert and MacArthur "genius" award winner Peter Gleick says we 
can learn much from watching what happens with South Africa's water 
shortage. Biggest lesson: The cheapest source of new water is not 
actually new water...
https://thebulletin.org/2018/12/six-memorable-climate-change-columns-from-2018/


[Audio podcast https://drumbaker.podbean.com/feed.xml]
The New Lifeboat Hour
*Our Collective Madness: Mapping How This Happened**
*June 26, 2018
If we don't understand how we got here, we are powerless to respond to 
our predicament. Before we can respond, we need a map because often maps 
help us acquire a clarity we would not otherwise have. Just as we buy 
into unspoken agreements in our dysfunctional families, we buy into 
unspoken agreements in our culture. What are those agreements? We can't 
buy out of them until we understand how we bought in.
https://drumbaker.podbean.com/e/our-collective-madness-mapping-how-this-happened/


[Peter Sinclair brings forth media that is difficult to watch]
*Why Uncle Dittohead Still Doesn't Get Climate Change*
December 30, 2018
*CNN and Fox News repeatedly gave climate deniers a platform in 2018*
Until he and Aunt Teabag start watching something besides Fox News, 
they're doomed to be ignorant and obnoxious.
https://youtu.be/wWFZGZgdeGU


[Dave is a philosopher writing for VOX]
*The case for "conditional optimism" on climate change*
Limiting the damage requires rapid, radical change -- but such changes 
have happened before.
By David Roberts - Dec 28, 2018
Is there any hope on climate change, or are we just screwed?
I hear this question all the time. When people find out what I do for a 
living, it is generally the first thing they ask. I never have a 
straightforward or satisfying answer, so I usually dodge it, but in 
recent years it has come up more and more often.

So let's tackle it head on. In this post, I will lay out the case for 
pessimism and the case for (cautious) optimism, pivoting off a new 
series of papers from leading climate economists.

First, though, let's talk about the question itself, which contains a 
number of dubious assumptions, and see if we can hone it into something 
more concrete and answerable.

*"Is there hope?" is the wrong question*
- -
More importantly, though, when it comes to climate change, "Is there 
hope?" is just a malformed question. It mistakes the nature of the problem.

The atmosphere is steadily warming. Things are going to get worse for 
humanity the more it warms. (To be technical about it, there are a few 
high-latitude regions that may see improved agricultural production or 
more temperate weather in the short- to mid-term, but in the long haul, 
the net negative global changes will swamp those temporary effects.)

The international community has agreed, most recently in the Paris 
climate accord, to try to limit the rise in global average temperature 
to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, with 
efforts to keep it to 1.5 degrees.
- - -
But there's nothing magic about 2 degrees. It doesn't mark a line 
between not-screwed and screwed.

In a sense, we're already screwed, at least to some extent. The climate 
is already changing and it's already taking a measurable toll. Lots more 
change is "baked in" by recent and current emissions. One way or 
another, when it comes to the effects of climate change, we're in for worse.

But we have some choice in how screwed we are, and that choice will 
remain open to us no matter how hot it gets. Even if temperature rise 
exceeds 2 degrees, the basic structure of the challenge will remain the 
same. It will still be warming. It will still get worse for humanity the 
more it warms. Two degrees will be bad, but three would be worse, four 
worse than that, and five worse still.

Indeed, if we cross 2 degrees, the need for sustainability becomes more 
urgent, not less. At that point, we will be flirting with non-trivial 
tail risks of species-threatening -- or at least 
civilization-threatening -- effects.

In sum: humanity faces the urgent imperative to reduce greenhouse gas 
emissions, then eliminate them, and then go "net carbon negative," i.e., 
absorb and sequester more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits. It 
will face that imperative for several generations to come, no matter 
what the temperature is.

Yes, it's going to get worse, but nobody gets to give up hope or stop 
fighting. Sorry.

Rather than just rejecting the question, though, let's give it a little 
more specificity, so we can discuss some real answers. Let's ask: What 
are the reasonable odds that the current international regime, the one 
that will likely be in charge for the next dozen crucial years, will 
reduce global carbon emissions enough to hit the 2 degree target?

Remember, the answer to that question will not tell us whether there is 
hope, or whether we're screwed. But it will tell us a great deal about 
what we're capable of, whether we can restrain and channel our 
collective development in a sustainable direction.

With all that said, let's get to the papers.

*The case for pessimism on the 2 degrees target*
The argument for why we're unlikely to hit the 2 degree target is not 
difficult to construct. As the latest IPCC report shows, for any hope of 
hitting 2 degrees, global emissions must peak and begin rapidly falling 
within the next dozen years. And they must continue rapidly falling 
until humanity goes net carbon negative sometime around mid-century or 
shortly thereafter. That means developed countries must go negative 
earlier, to allow for a slower and more difficult shift in developing 
countries.

Accomplishing that would require immediate, bold, sustained, coordinated 
action. And, well ... look around. Look at how things are going. Look at 
who is running things. Look at the established economic regimes of the 
last half-century.
- -
*How can energy demand fall while economies grow? The great hope (and 
lately, great hype) is for "decoupling."*
For centuries now, the growth of economies has been tightly coupled with 
rising energy demand and rising greenhouse gas emissions -- a one-to-one 
correlation, more or less. In recent years, however, several countries 
have seen their economies grow faster than their emissions. From this 
somewhat scant evidence, many analysts have concluded that modern 
economies are "decoupling" GDP and emissions and will eventually sever 
the connection completely...

The premise of many 2 degree scenarios is that global economies will 
continue growing but, thanks to the magic of decoupling, carbon 
intensity -- the ratio of carbon emitted per unit of economic output -- 
will rapidly fall and thus so will emissions.
- - -
In fact, it's worth noting that the vast majority of scenarios used by 
climate policymakers take continued economic growth as an unquestioned 
premise. And they also accept that historical technology improvement 
rates will hold in the future. The question they basically answer: "How 
much can we reduce emissions while continuing to grow our economies at 
historical rates, with technology developing at historical rates?"...
- - -
Greenhouse gas emissions are the result of how many people there are, 
how wealthy they are (gross domestic product, or GDP), how much energy 
they consume per unit of GDP, and how much greenhouse gas emissions they 
produce per unit of energy...
- - -
Basically, it is this: The world's current economies are not capable of 
the emission reductions required to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees. 
If world leaders insist on maintaining historical rates of economic 
growth, and there are no step-change advances in technology, hitting 
that target requires a rate of reduction in carbon intensity for which 
there is simply no precedent. Despite all the recent hype about 
decoupling, there's no historical evidence that current economies are 
decoupling at anything close to the rate required.

"The key insight," they write, "is that marginal, incremental 
improvements in energy and carbon efficiency cannot do the job and that 
what is needed is a structural transformation." *In other words, 2 
degrees requires radicalism...*
- - -
Put simply, if we are determined to maintain the economic status quo, we 
cannot possibly mitigate climate change, so we must turn to adapting to 
it. And if we opt for adaptation, they write, "we have to come to terms 
with the impossibility of material, social, and political progress as a 
universal promise: life is going to be worse for most people in the 21st 
century in all these dimensions. The political consequences of this are 
hard to predict."

The choice is radicalism today or disaster tomorrow, and from all signs, 
humanity is choosing the latter...
- - -
*The case for optimism on 2 degrees*
The forum also includes a response from economist Michael Grubb, a 
professor at University College London and editor-in-chief of the 
journal Climate Policy. He makes the case for what he calls "conditional 
optimism" on 2 degrees. He references economist Paul Romer's well-known 
metaphor: Blind optimism is a child expecting his parents to build him a 
treehouse; conditional optimism is a child confident he can build a 
treehouse if given the tools.
- -
Despite the wonky terminology, logistic substitution is quite familiar 
to most modern-day consumers. It is represented by the famous "S curve" 
of technological development, whereby a technology cruises along at a 
low level of market penetration, reducing prices and scaling up 
production, and then hits some sort of magical price/value threshold 
after which adoption skyrockets. The tech then expands rapidly until it 
dominates almost the entire market, and then levels off.
- - -
This is just an idealized example; the thing to note about it is that 
the rate of change for the incumbent industry can start quite slowly 
before accelerating quickly. Eventually, "the percentage growth rate of 
the new entrant declines," Grubb writes, "but only once its share has 
become significant."...
- - -
Similarly, electric vehicles (EVs) show every sign of being poised at 
the bottom of their own S curve. They were an obscure, expensive product 
just a few years ago; today, companies like Volkswagen are pledging to 
go all-electric...
- - -
"Optimism would be rooted in the potential for new industrial processes 
and niche examples to be so attractive as to rapidly grow and spread," 
he writes. "Pessimism is rooted in the evidence to date that 
policy--renewable incentives aside--is more timid and more resistant to 
change than technology itself. But in neither case, I would argue, do 
the statistics of past aggregate trends really indicate the constraints 
on what is possible."

In other words, our future is not yet fated. There is room for 
conditional optimism.

Opti-pessimistic hopeful realism, or something
As I said at the outset, when it comes to climate change, there is no 
such thing as "game over" or "too late" or "screwed" or "no hope." It is 
certainly not the case that, as the latest slogan has it, "we only have 
12 years to act." That is nonsense, even if, in some cases, it's 
motivational nonsense.

The fight to decarbonize and eventually go carbon negative will last 
beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this post. That is true no matter 
how high the temperature rises. The stakes will always be enormous; time 
will always be short; there will never be an excuse to stop fighting.

That said, if there is reason to hope that we can limit warming to 
non-catastrophic levels, that we can hit the target we've set for 
ourselves, it lies in the possibility of non-linear change -- change 
that begins slowly and then radically accelerates. It lies in the 
possibility that we are on the lower slope of not just one but several S 
curves, that change will fuel more change and the lines will soon start 
rapidly rising.
- - -
We are rarely able to predict those tipping points. Relying on them can 
seem like hoping for miracles. But our history is replete with 
miraculously rapid changes. They have happened; they can happen again. 
And the more we envision them, and work toward them, the more likely 
they become.
What other choice is there?
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/12/28/18156094/conditional-optimism-climate-change


[we need to hear what is inside, we speak for the Earth]
*"To Live in the Fullness of Time", Joanna Macy 2014-02-14 (HD)*
ArchetypalView
Published on Feb 26, 2014
(audio corrects at 25 seconds)  Joanna Macy explores her most recent 
work, how it arrived out of her activism in the past, and why it should 
be of concern to the future of humanity as a whole. With genetic 
modification, hydraulic fracking, and nuclear technologies, our 
karma--that is, the consequences of our actions--lasts forever. This 
realization can transform our relationship to time. Instead of the 
suicidally short-term thinking our industrial growth economy requires 
for maximizing quarterly profits, we can recover a deeper experience of 
time, and retrieve our connection with past and future generations.
https://youtu.be/jliSPJxTHak?t=5968


[a classic polemic from 2013]
*The math of runaway warming*
leftymathprof - Published on Jul 15, 2013
26-minute video explaining feedback loops, exponential growth, etc. in 
nontechnical terms. Transcript (and links) at 
https://leftymathprof.wordpress.com/runaway-warming/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-cVI1Mao9U


[Beckwith conjecture]*
**Arctic Summer Temperatures to Skyrocket like a "Bat out of Hell": Part 3*
Paul Beckwith - Published on Dec 29, 2018
Recently released by NOAA, the Arctic Report Card 2018 details profound 
changes underway in the Arctic from rapid temperature increases.
"What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic." Quote: 
Beckwith, 2009
Incredibly fast Arctic warming dwarfs the global average and is 
accelerating. Winter temperature anomalies are highest, followed by 
Autumn and Spring. Arctic Sea-Ice melt keeps Summer anomalies low; when 
Sea-Ice vanishes Summer warming will skyrocket like a "bat out of hell".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN2E3T0iZOo


*This Day in Climate History - December 30, - from D.R. Tucker*

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