Posts Tagged ‘climate change’

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Summary of points by points

February 15, 2024

Systems and Complexity

  • Systems theory implies that humans, societies, ecologies, and biochemical functioning make up one vast interactive system affecting each other, even if not in harmony.
  • Humans are part of this. They are not currently independent of earth functions, or of Gaia if you prefer.
  • Dominant systems of human social action seem to be disrupting planetary systems and breaking ‘planetary boundaries‘. One of these disruptions is the generation of climate change via the burning of fossil fuels for energy, and cheap but harmful agricultural practices.
  • There are many intersecting systems which influence each other – not only the ecological systems, but the human systems of energy, technology, illth [1], economics/power, information and social psychology. All of these seem stretched to breaking point. Economics and power is shoveling riches and power to the hyper-rich, information is becoming propaganda and defense, energy is breaking due to peak oil and the energy that will be needed to transform to renewables to stop system collapse. New technologies like 3 D printing, AI, Genetic Modification are likely to have systemic effects.
  • The complexity of these systems makes prediction, knowledge and co-ordination difficult. We do know that the current interactions are likely to be disruptive and cause struggles between social groups.
  • Small changes can make large differences. Tipping points accumulate and cascade throughout the system.
  • Unintended consequences of action and policy are normal, hence political action should be considered as an experiment, and unintended consequences be looked for rather than dismissed.
  • People at different places in the system will perceive things differently. Hence a functional information system is required, which we do not seem to be able to organise, partly because capitalism seems to depend on inaccurate information (advertising, hype, PR, marketing, misdirection etc are market tactics).
  • In complexity, ‘Knowledge’ is always a simplification.
  • Simplification leads to unconsciousness as well as awareness. Knowledge is paradoxically both necessary and a possible misdirection.
  • Uncertainty is normal and should be recognised.
  • The only accurate model of the system is the system itself.
  • Diversity can help survival by allowing a multitude of experimental responses to change.
  • Suppression of diversity reduces resilience and adaptive capacity, even if it helps administration, because diversity can hinder centralised governance. Everything nowadays should be run like a business, irrespective of whether that is appropriate or not.
  • Government in complex systems appears distributed, and it is easy to avoid responsibility, or try and freeload onto others. The problems of co-ordinated action are boosted if everyone has to agree to a strategy for it to work – such as not increasing fossil fuel consumption, and then phasing it down. those who don’t agree will maintain what appear to be advantages.
  • Even the ultra powerful can feel stymied.

Challenges and Avoidence

  • Societies and individuals regularly face challenges.
  • Turning away from these challenges to try and maintain the status quo or ‘elite consciousness and knowledge’ (social egos), does not help survival, mental health, or future progression.
  • During their development, societies have produced ‘resolution sets’ which have solved, postponed or hidden past challenges.
  • Resolution sets include types of technology and the elites that have commanded those technologies and used them in particular ways.
  • Technologies include forms of social organisation. Military, economic or political forms etc. Neoliberal capitalism and developmentalism are both resolution sets that have probably developed into obstacles to facing challenges, partly because they involve continual growth and a convenient belief that The Market solves every problem and its victors should be helped rather than hindered.
  • The problems neoliberal capitalism and developmentalism have ‘resolved’ largely do not include the current energy, ecological or climate challenges.
  • The current resolution sets have generated the new challenges.
  • Elites can get ‘stuck’ in their resolution sets as those sets provide them with status, income, power and the certainty of being useful. They give meaning.
  • It is easier to turn away from those challenges when they are as big as current challenges, and solving them may involve giving up power, familiarity and meaning, which are already under threat because of the challenges.
  • Sometimes new resolutions come from creative groups hidden in ‘niches’ or the spaces between powers, where they can develop without being prematurely crushed. This is a diversity in action.
  • If these creative groups succeed they may become a new elite from without or, if the current elites are functional, a new part of the established elites and produce change from within.
  • The presence of successful movements can change the politics of the dominant system, as politicians seek the potential votes of those involved in the new success.
  • Not changing the workings of the economic and political, neoliberal and developmentalist elites, will lead to disaster.

Energy

  • Energy is vital for all life including social life. The basic forms of energy are sunlight and ‘food’.
  • Energy is found in ecologies (social or ‘natural’), in the active patterns of systems.
  • Energy in society tends to be intertwined with power relations.
  • Powerful people often have more access to energy, and to the provision of energy – through money, might and so on. Less powerful people have less available energy.
  • The more energy available, then the more can be funneled to the dominant elites, increasing inequality, and apparently making those dominant elites more secure and more able to ignore challenges.
  • Dominant elites, and dominant ways of life, are threatened by lack of energy. Hence the change from fossil fuels to renewables, which could provide less energy, can be seen as threatening.
  • Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can be released and lost. Releasing energy takes energy – First Law of thermodynamics.

Energy and Entropy

  • Energy is always dissipated when used. A closed system will run down – this is the Second Law of thermodynamics.
  • Energy needs to come from outside the local system, so social access to energy tends to be competitive between social groups and between nations.
  • Structures of order require energy expenditure, or they will decay or wear down, and need to be repaired, or changed, through energy use – or else more energy is required to bypass the decay.
  • The more ‘artificial’ the structures of order the more energy they will need.
  • Societies and businesses tend to let their structures of order such as sewage, electricity cabling, gas piping, buildings and so on decay, as repairing them is endless and takes money away from other more ‘glamorous’ or status filled projects and most of the time we don’t notice.
  • Paradoxically, more energy can lead to both benefit and more destruction especially ecological destruction, reinforcing the smashing of planetary boundaries.
  • Fossil fuels have been an excellent source of energy.
  • The modern world has been built on fossil fuels.
  • Without fossil fuel burning producing the unintended effects of pollution, ill-health, climate change and the possibilities of peak oil, few people might wish to change.
  • The Energy Transition requires large amounts of energy. It will almost certainly be some time before the transition can be powered without burning fossil fuels, and increasing GHG emissions and making the situation worse.
  • This is especially the case if humanity keeps increasing its energy demand, or if Jevons effects mean renewables simply add to energy supply without replacing fossil fuels in the longer term.

Steady State? Degrowth

  • One possible route to transition is to reduce energy use (perhaps through efficiency measures, but perhaps through cutbacks).
  • Perhaps less energy should be devoted to harming the planetary systems, and to the political systems.
  • This (as implied above) will be resisted by current elites, and has other consequences, many of which may not be foreseeable.

The situation is difficult.

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Economics and climate: Another defense mechanism? 02

November 6, 2023

Common economic models of Climate Change

Apparently the Economic models used to predict the damage of climate change are totally unreal. They essentially do not even start to recognise that economies depend upon working ecologies and fairly stable weather patterns. They do not realise that modes of production can be modes of destruction, or that the (dis)information systems cultivated by business can also disrupt understanding of the economy, leading to booms, busts and bailouts. Any model which assumes economic stability, and lack of self-disruption, is not an accurate model of an economy.

William Nordhaus apparently put together the basic types of climate economy models which are used by financial organisations, the US EPA and the IPCC. These are known as ‘Dynamic Integrated Climate Economy’ (DICE) models. The IPCC calls its similar models ‘Integrated Assesment Models’ (IAM).

The prime conclusion from these models is that social and economic adaptation to climate change is pretty cheap. Nordhaus predicted “damage of 2.1 percent of income at 3◦C, and 7.9 percent of global income at a global temperature rise of 6◦C”.

At this price, it may be so cheap that it is not really worth cutting back emissions, or doing anything that could potentially harm profits. He apparently even suggests that the global economy reaches an “optimal” adaptation with a temperature rise between 2.7 and 3.5 degrees Celsius. So that is what we should aim for…. much higher than climate scientists generally think is reasonable.

Apparent assumptions of the models

Nordhaus and others can only argue the lack of both severe costs and serious disruption at even 6 degrees, by assuming that:

  • Frictionless market adaptation can occur easily and that companies which are profitting from damage, will not try and delay change through political connections and information distortion so that people (in power and elsewhere) will not want to change. Resistance to change can accumulate and block change, until only violent and unpredictable change can occur,
  • Global temperature increases have no significant or disruptive outcomes, and that increases in temperatures produce smooth and linear changes in weather and ecology, as if the temperature increase only produced warming and did not have ‘side effects’ like increased storm damage, change in rainfall, increased frequency of fires, activation of trigger points, increased death rates in some parts of the world, and change in agricultural conditions.
  • Pollution and destructive extraction have no effect on the economy, are external to it, or can easily be avoided,
  • Energy supply can continue to grow and will not slow down the economy, and that,
  • GDP can continue to increase in an economy that is hitting planetary boundaries.

He also assumes that thereare no bad consequences from ‘just-in-time’ production and distribution which cuts down on storage costs, and has the capacity to reduce resilience in a disruption (supermarket shelves emptying in times of panic etc). If just-in-time can be abandoned, long term storage set up or local production engineered again, then maybe this would be a lesser problem, but it would drastically change patterns of cost.

Trivialising Damage from Climate Change

As Keen et al put it in their abstract:

Such relatively trivial estimates of economic damages—when these economists otherwise assume that human economic productivity will be an order of magnitude higher than today—contrast strongly with predictions made by scientists of significantly reduced human habitability from climate change.

Nonetheless, the coupled economic and climate models used to make such predictions have been influential in the international climate change debate and policy prescriptions

Keen et al 2021 Economists’ erroneous estimates of damages from climate change IDEAS Working Paper Series from RePEcrg

They continue. arguing that the models:

severely underestimate.. damages from climate change by committing several methodological errors, including neglecting tipping points, and assuming that economic sectors not exposed to the weather are insulated from climate change. Most fundamentally, the influential Integrated Assessment Model DICE is shown to be incapable of generating an economic collapse, regardless of the level of damages

ibid

Tipping points should be part of the models

Tipping points are part of current climate models and cannot be ignored in economic models of climate change. There is almost no likelihood of a completely smooth transition, and current predictions are that several tipping points will get started long before the end of the century and before the average temperature increases are greater than 2 degrees. It may be necessary to point out that completion of a tipping point may take years but will continue after it starts, so tipping points can start before they are noticed.

Keen et al point to the:

concept of “tipping cascades”, whereby passing a threshold for one system—say, a temperature above which the Greenland ice sheet irreversibly shrinks—triggers causal interactions that increase the likelihood that other tipping elements undergo qualitative transitions—in this example, freshwater input to the North Atlantic increases the risk of a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC—also referred to as the ’thermohaline circulation’).

Such causal interactions can also be mediated by global temperature changes whereby tipping one system—e.g. the loss of Arctic summer sea-ice—amplifies global warming, increasing the likelihood that other other elements undergo a qualitative transition

ibid

The intial work by Nordhaus setting up the DICE denies the possibility of tipping points and cascades completely. According to Keen et al, Lenton et al:

calculated that including tipping points in Nordhaus’s own DICE model can increase the “Social Cost of Carbon” (by which optimal carbon pricing is calculated) by a factor of greater than eight [8], and proposed 2◦C as a critical level past which “tipping cascades” could occur [9,10,15]….

inclusion of tipping point likelihoods in DICE…. leads to much higher damages [8]

ibid

The economy is safe when indoors?

Using similar models to DICE, the 2014 IPCC report stated that “Estimates agree on the size of the impact (small relative to economic growth)” with a 2.3% increase in global income for a 1 degree C increase in global temperature over pre-industrial levels.

The Report summarised that:

For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts
of other drivers (medium evidence, high agreement). Changes in population, age, income,
technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, governance, and many other aspects of
socioeconomic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic
goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change

Chapter 10 Key Economic Sectors and Services, p 662 In Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

This unlikely assumption appears to be based on another bad assumption that:

  • by far the majority of economc action is independent of ‘weather’ events, ecological destruction and resources depletion.

That is, again, that this climate economics does not consider the world the economy occurs within. It also appears to assume that air cooling technology and energy supplies will be able to cope with the extra loads. Again the models ignore the economic consequences of “potential loss of lives and livelihoods on immense scale and fundamental transformation and destruction of our natural environment” (Stern et al 2022). Not to mention agricultural collapse. While Economists apparently don’t eat, most people would recognise that the total economy is errected upon food supplies, no matter how much else goes on. Stern writes that 6 degrees increase is unlikely to give losses of 8.5% of GDP, but:

we could see deaths on a huge scale, migration of billions of people, and severe conflicts around the world, as large areas, many densely populated currently, became more or less uninhabitable as a result of submersion, desertification, storm surge and extreme weather events, or because the heat was so intense for extended periods that humans could not survive outdoors. It is profoundly implausible that numbers around 10 percent of GDP offer a sensible description of the kind of disruption and catastrophe that 6 C of warming could cause.

Stern 2022 A Time for Action on Climate Change and a Time for Change in Economics , The Economic Journal, 132, 644: 1259–1289

Likewise:

Climate change (either regional or global) has played a role in the collapse or transformation of numerous previous societies (37) and in each of the five mass extinction events in Phanerozoic Earth history (38). The current carbon pulse is occurring at an unprecedented geological speed and, by the end of the century, may surpass thresholds that triggered previous mass extinctions (39, 40).

Kemp et al 2022 Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios PNAS

Even if you could allocate calculated risk and danger factors for events that could completely change the system, that still does not mean that an estimate of a 1% chance of collapse means collapse cannot occur.

The orthodox economists, their models and the politicians who use them, seem completely unaware that complex systems can collapse, or change very rapidly, and they depend upon the idea that free markets can always beneficially adapt to almost anything without much cost.

Importance of noting extremes, disorder and uncertainty

Kemp et al 2022 suggest that investigating the “bad-to-worst cases is vital” for improving resilience, and informing policy and emergency responses. “

First, risk management and robust decision-making under uncertainty requires knowledge of extremes. For example, the minimax criterion ranks policies by their worst outcomes (28). Such an approach is particularly appropriate for areas characterized by high uncertainties and tail risks….. Climate damages lie within the realm of “deep uncertainty”: We don’t know the probabilities attached to different outcomes, the exact chain of cause and effect that will lead to outcomes, or even the range, timing, or desirability of outcomes, (30). Uncertainty, deep or not, should motivate precaution and vigilance, not complacency

They propose 4 main questions: all of which point to the importance of considering disorder and the production of lack of resilience.

  • 1) What is the potential for climate change to drive mass extinction events?
  • 2) What are the mechanisms that could result in human mass mortality and morbidity?
  • 3) What are human societies’ vulnerabilities to climate-triggered risk cascades, such as from conflict, political instability, and systemic financial risk?
  • 4) How can these multiple strands of evidence—together with other global dangers—be usefully synthesized into an “integrated catastrophe assessment”?

“even simpler ‘compound hazard’ analyses of interacting climate hazards and drivers are underused. Yet this is how risk[/danger] unfolds in the real world. For example, a cyclone destroys electrical infrastructure, leaving a population vulnerable to an ensuing deadly heat wave”. They further suggest that IPCC reports do not spend large amounts of space analysing what will happen at 3 degrees or above warming, and have indeed shifted over time to considering 2 degrees or less which might be fine if there was evidence we will reach that target. However, the culture of climate science tends “to ‘err on the side of least drama’ (7), to not to be alarmists, which can be compounded by the consensus building processes of the IPCC.

Political and economic instability, feeds into the dangers, as does a teetering energy system, heavy illth production, technological lock-in, failure to face challenges, and a harmful (dis)information system. These are all observable current problems.

What do the models do?

The Optimism of these models, and their framing of easy social change within an unstable environment, without political opposition from anyone, is absurd.

The models seem out of touch with what we know about earth systems and social systems, they can only be seen in terms of being a defense mechanism, ideologies useful for protecting the business and political system as it is now and which actively halt adaptation and prevention measures. They help convince people that doing nothing is ok, and nothing bad can happen.

However, eco-and-climate system change changes will almost certainly spill through other systems and change almost everything, including the current market’s ability to function, and the powerful people who use these models will not be prepared for it…. and hence neither will we. They are part of a collective suicide and refusal to face challenges, which might cost some people profit.

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Degrees of climate angst

August 7, 2023

The Yale Climate review reported world wide research polling amongst facebook users, which indicates that there are six different types of climate audience or grouping.

The Alarmed are convinced climate change is happening, human-caused, and an urgent threat, and strongly support climate policies.

The Concerned think human-caused climate change is happening and is a serious threat, and support climate policies. However, they tend to believe that climate impacts are still distant in time and space, thus the issue remains a lower priority.

The Cautious have not yet made up their minds: Is climate change happening? Is it human-caused? Is it serious?

The Disengaged know little to nothing about climate change and rarely if ever hear about it.

The Doubtful do not think climate change is happening or believe it is just a natural cycle.

And the Dismissive are convinced climate change is not happening, human-caused, or a threat, and oppose most climate policies

slightly modified: Italics and line breaks added

I personally think, from my experiences, there are at least two other modes:

  • Anger: Climate change is happening, its no big deal, and people are trying to impose unwanted changes of life on us.
  • Doomer: Climate change is too advanced to be stopped, so we can’t do anything.

There is also the probable

  • My income is tied in with fossil fuels, so climate action is bad

But these are irrelevant to the current discussion

Yale remarks:

We find that the Alarmed are the largest group in about three-fourths (80 of the 110) of the countries and territories surveyed. In fact, half or more respondents in twenty-nine countries and territories are Alarmed: the five countries with the largest percentage of Alarmed are Chile (65%), Mexico (64%), Malawi (63%), Bolivia (62%), and Sri Lanka (61%). Czechia and Yemen have the smallest percentages of Alarmed (both 9%). In the United States, about one-third of respondents are Alarmed (34%)….

By contrast, relatively few respondents in any country or territory are Doubtful or Dismissive. Among major emitters, the United States has the largest proportion of Doubtful and Dismissive, more than one in five (22%).

The document does not gather together the data for the world. So lets gather together some figures for Alarmed and Concerned. Given the polling is of facebook users this is a restricted audience….

  • Mexico 93% of people are Alarmed or Concerned
  • Brazil 90%
  • Chile 83%
  • Spain 79%
  • Hungary 79%
  • Columbia 79%
  • Argentina 77%
  • South Africa 73%
  • Japan 72%
  • India 71%
  • Kenya 70%
  • Bangladesh 70%
  • Turkey 70%
  • Malaysia 68%
  • Singapore 68%
  • Jamaica 68%
  • Zambia 68%
  • UK 67%
  • Germany 66%
  • Canada 65%
  • Australia 63%
  • USA 59%
  • Nigeria 55%
  • Saudi Arabia 50%
  • Norway 41%
  • Yemen 26%

This indicates that there is a world wide interest in change.

So again we need to ask why there is so little movement towards change.

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Just some illos, diagrams, memes whatever////

July 29, 2023

Some people and ecosystems already face or are fast approaching “hard” limits to adaptation, where climate impacts from 1.1 degrees C of global warming are becoming so frequent and severe that no existing adaptation strategies can fully avoid losses and damages.

We are not on a path to achieve these levels of emissions reduction. Up until covid emissions were constantly increasing. Post covid they are increasing again.

We are also clearing forests so the CO2 is not drawn down.

An area the size of Switzerland was cleared from Earth’s most pristine rainforests in 2022, despite promises by world leaders to halt their destruction, new figures show… the equivalent of 11 football pitches of primary rainforest were destroyed every minute last year

Greenfield Destruction of world’s pristine rainforests soared in 2022 despite Cop26 pledge The Guardian 27 Jun 2023

Households with incomes in the top 10%, including a relatively large share in developed countries, emit upwards of 45% of the world’s GHGs, while those families earning in the bottom 50% account for 15% at most. 

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Technological innovation vs. regulation in climate policy

May 31, 2023

That technological innovation is preferable to government regulation seems a common idea.

However there are a number of problems with this idea:

Technology is not magic, it will not always eventuate because we need it or because it would be nice if it arose. It may not arrive at the right time, at the right price, be easy to use, be usable at the scale required, or not have dire climate side effects.

‘The Market’ is not magic either, whatever you are told by people who are powerful in The Market. There is no reason to assume that innovative tech will be taken up, or that the best tech will be taken up. What counts, and pretty nearly always what counts, is how the company makes extra profit from it.

Because people think of tech as the magic solution, unworkable tech can be used as an excuse to keep on emitting pollution, and destroying ecologies. Indeed the tech does not even have to be installed to have this affect, as with Carbon Capture and Storage.

If PR and empty hype about technology increase profit more effectively than the technology iteself, then PR and hype will be used more than the technology is. There is no reason to think that the technology will be used.

Without regulation, there is no reason for innovative tech, to stop people from doing damage, especially if the corporation is gaining more profit from continuing as it has done in the way it knows how to.

People in corporations like other people, prefer the world to be smooth and stable, and introducing disruptive technology, may disrupt profits without foreseable good consequences. Hence they will avoid it. Computers took off, because they were an obvious way of standardising behaviour, regulating workers and allowed some tasks to be done much quicker than previously. They, in theory, got more work out of workers, which is always a corporate drive. Climate tech on the whole, does not do any of that.

Climate tech, without regulation may do little. For example renewables can be used to increase the energy supply cheaply, without decreasing the amount of fossil fuels that are used. This seems to be standard in many places, and it is standard in fossil fuel company spending – in which spending on exploration and new fossil fuels is at least 15 to 20 times higher than their spending on renewable development, as shown in this graph, The grey area represents expenditure on exploration for fossil fuels.

There is nothing to guarrantee that a technology will only have the effects we want, and will not be commandeered by standard destructive practice.

All markets depend on regulation, and regulation that can be enforced by the State or through the courts. All markets have power imbalances, which affect the market and its regulation. Succesful and rich companies will team up and try and abuse their position of success to make regulations that favour them. This is normal, and makes useful, generally beneficial, regulation difficult.

Without regulation adding to the pressures, most companies will not actually (as opposed to in PR) change their pollution, dispersion or their destructive extraction and climate change will continue to get worse, irrespective of the tech we have, or the tech we might imagine is coming soon.

Technology is useful, but we should work with the tech we have now, rather than imaginary innovative tech that may happen sometime in the future, or may never come.

We should regulate to impose emissions and destruction reduction. Consequences for breaking regulations should be enforced and should affect profit. Hopefully this would give corporations more incentive to work on the problems.

We should also sponsor technological private and governmental research to get better tech rather than leave it to the corporate sector and the market. After all many tech innovations have come from public money, not private money, and are more easily made available if their are no restrictive patents or copyright issues to face.

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The World of Illusion

April 25, 2023

People can choose to live in a ‘world of illusion’ because they don’t always like to face up to challenges, particularly if they have failed to deal with challenges in the past, or they don’t want to recognise that past choices (and support) have led to them to where they are now. Sometimes realities seem too painful to face up to, and sometimes those you identify with and would like to resemble, are those causing the problems you face.

There are also mystical traditions which say that facing up to the reality of eternal bliss now, conflicts with our current ways of life and our views of our self as limited and deserving of punishment.

The point is that recognizing reality can be painful, and disorienting and threatening to our established identity

If there is a major internal, or external struggle/paradox happening then it can be less painful to decide that reality is not threatening to your identity and way of life and, that you and yours, are not creating problems for yourself and everyone.

It is much easier to sell people the idea that they don’t have to do anything, and all will be ok, than to sell them the idea that they (and others) have made bad choices in the past, and that they are likely to suffer as a result, especially if the suffering has only gradually increased.

People also often find it easier to line up to fight irrelevancies, than to struggle against the real problems.

For example:

  • It is easier to fight powerless drag queens, who have very little connection to child rape, than it is to fight people in the religions you believe in, who actually do rape children and have the power to expel you or make you an outcast.
  • It is easier to side with fossil fuel companies and denounce the ‘liberal elite’ and the ‘scientific conspiracy’ than it is to admit that your use of fossil fuels, and products using fossil fuels, is causing a problem which may lead to you losing your home, and that you need to change your whole way of life to tackle climate change. Especially given the change comes without a guide, and great uncertainty as to how you would live.
  • It is easier to say renewables will solve everything than it is to deal with the problems of renewables, or the problems of the system they are embedded in.

All of us do this all the time, unless we start to realize it. Its difficult to face up to the likelihood we have been choosing to live in a world of illusion.

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UN Secretary Generals video message on the Synthesis Report

March 22, 2023

This is pretty straightforwardly a reproduction of the original with a bit of abridgement and reformatting.

If there is a copyright issue please let me know in the comments, and I will remove it.

*************

Dear friends,

Humanity is on thin ice – and that ice is melting fast. 

As today’s report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) details, humans are responsible for virtually all global heating over the last 200 years. 

The rate of temperature rise in the last half century is the highest in 2,000 years.

Concentrations of carbon dioxide are at their highest in at least two million years.

The climate time-bomb is ticking. 

But today’s IPCC report is a how-to guide to defuse the climate time-bomb.

It is a survival guide for humanity. 

As it shows, the 1.5-degree limit is achievable.

But it will take a quantum leap in climate action.

This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe.

In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once. 

I have proposed to the G20 a Climate Solidarity Pact – in which all big emitters make extra efforts to cut emissions, and wealthier countries mobilize financial and technical resources to support emerging economies in a common effort to keep 1.5 degrees alive.  

Today, I am presenting a plan to super-charge efforts to achieve this Climate Solidarity Pact through an all-hands-on-deck Acceleration Agenda.

It starts with parties immediately hitting the fast-forward button on their net zero deadlines to get to global net zero by 2050 – in line with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances.
 
Specifically, leaders of developed countries must commit to reaching net zero as close as possible to 2040, the limit they should all aim to respect.
 
This can be done.  Some have already set a target as early as 2035.

Leaders in emerging economies must commit to reaching net zero as close as possible to 2050 – again, the limit they should all aim to respect.

A number have already made the 2050 commitment. 

This is the moment for all G20 members to come together in a joint effort, pooling their resources and scientific capacities as well as their proven and affordable technologies through the public and private sectors to make carbon neutrality a reality by 2050.

Every country must be part of the solution. 

Demanding others move first only ensures humanity comes last.

The Acceleration Agenda calls for a number of other actions.

Specifically:

  • No new coal and the phasing out of coal by 2030 in OECD countries and 2040 in all other countries.
  • Ending all international public and private funding of coal.
  • Ensuring net zero electricity generation by 2035 for all developed countries and 2040 for the rest of the world.
  • Ceasing all licensing or funding of new oil and gas – consistent with the findings of the International Energy Agency.
  • Stopping any expansion of existing oil and gas reserves.
  • Shifting subsidies from fossil fuels to a just energy transition.
  • Establishing a global phase down of existing oil and gas production compatible with the 2050 global net zero target.

I urge all governments to prepare energy transition plans consistent with these actions and ready for investors.

I am also calling on CEOs of all oil and gas companies to be part of the solution.

They should present credible, comprehensive and detailed transition plans in line with the recommendations of my High-Level Expert Group on net zero pledges.

These plans must clearly detail actual emission cuts for 2025 and 2030, and efforts to change business models to phase out fossil fuels and scale up renewable energy.

This acceleration has already started in some sectors, but investors now need crystal clear signals.

And all governments need the assurance that business leaders will help them deliver on extra efforts – but governments must also create an enabling policy and regulatory environment.

Shipping, aviation, steel, cement, aluminum, agriculture – every sector must be aligned with net zero by 2050 with clear plans including interim targets to get there.

At the same time, we need to seize the opportunity to invest in credible innovations that can contribute to reaching our global targets. 

We must also speed-up efforts to deliver climate justice to those on the frontlines of many crises – none of them they caused. 

We can do this by:

  • Safeguarding the most vulnerable communities, and scaling up finance and capacities for adaptation and loss and damage.
  • Promoting reforms to ensure Multilateral Development Banks provide more grants and concessional loans and fully mobilize private finance.
  • Delivering on the financial commitments made in Copenhagen, Paris and Glasgow.
  • Replenishing the Green Climate Fund this year and developing a roadmap to double adaptation finance before 2025.
  • Protecting everyone with early warning systems against natural disasters in four years.
  • Implementing the new loss and damage fund this year.

The longer we wait on any of these crucial issues, the harder it will become.

…..

The transition must cover the entire economy.

Partial pledges won’t cut it….

We have never been better equipped to solve the climate challenge – but we must move into warp speed climate action now.

We don’t have a moment to lose.

Thank you.

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IPCC: Summary of 2023 Synthesis Report

March 21, 2023

Most of this is quotations from The Synthesis Report Summary.

Optimism

Deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would lead to a discernible slowdown in global warming within around two decades, and also to discernible changes in atmospheric composition within a few years (high confidence).

The rate of growth in emissions between 2010 and 2019 (1.3% year) was lower than that between 2000 and 2009 (2.1% year).

Maintaining emission-intensive systems may, in some regions and sectors, be more expensive than transitioning to low emission systems [however the question for business is, which is the most profitable on the whole, and which loses the least already made capital investment?]

The Situation with GHG Emissions

Global net anthropogenic GHG emissions have been estimated to be 59±6.6 GtCO2-eq in 2019

In 2019, atmospheric CO2 concentrations (410 parts per million) were higher than at any time in at least 2 million years (high confidence), and concentrations of methane (1866 parts per billion) and nitrous oxide (332 parts per billion) were higher than at any time in at least 800,000 years (very high confidence). [we are headed towards a non-human world.

Emissions reductions in CO2-FFI [from fossil-fuel combustion and industrial] due to improvements in energy intensity of GDP and carbon intensity of energy, have been less than emissions increases from rising global activity levels in industry, energy supply, transport, agriculture and buildings.

If the annual CO2 emissions between 2020–2030 stayed, on average, at the same level as 2019, the resulting cumulative emissions would almost exhaust the remaining carbon budget for 1.5°C (50%), and deplete more than a third of the remaining carbon budget for 2°C (67%). Estimates of future CO2 emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructures without additional abatement already exceed the remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5°C (50%) (high confidence). [It is logical to assume that no new gas and oil sources are needed]

[Bad news is that at current rates of reduction ie policy failure we are locked-in for between 2 and 4 degrees increase. The higher ends of that is catastrophic.]

Some Effects

In all regions increases in extreme heat events have resulted in human mortality and morbidity (very high confidence). The occurrence of climate-related food-borne and water-borne diseases (very high confidence) and the incidence of vector-borne diseases (high confidence) have increased. In assessed regions, some mental health challenges are associated with increasing temperatures (high confidence), trauma from extreme events (very high confidence), and loss of livelihoods and culture (high confidence).

Economic damages from climate change have been detected in climate-exposed sectors, such as agriculture, forestry, fishery, energy, and tourism. Individual livelihoods have been affected through, for example, destruction of homes and infrastructure, and loss of property and income, human health and food security, with adverse effects on gender and social equity.(high confidence).

In urban areas, observed climate change has caused adverse impacts on human health, livelihoods and key infrastructure. Hot extremes have intensified in cities. Urban infrastructure, including transportation, water, sanitation and energy systems have been compromised by extreme and slow-onset events, with resulting economic losses, disruptions of services and negative impacts to well-being. Observed adverse impacts are concentrated amongst economically and socially marginalised urban residents.

[increasing drought, fires, infectious diseases, floods, displacement, glacier retreat, ocean acidification]

Challenges

There are widening disparities between the estimated costs of adaptation and the finance allocated to adaptation.

Climate finance growth has slowed since 2018

The IPCC still thinks Carbon Capture & Storage is required. which basically blows any optimism for me.

[However they recognise this problem]: Implementation of CCS currently faces technological, economic, institutional, ecological, environmental and socio-cultural barriers. Currently, global rates of CCS deployment are far below those in modelled pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C to 2°C.

The report also says over-reliance tree planting and biomass crops paired with CCS, can have adverse socio-economic and environmental impacts, including on biodiversity, food and water security, local livelihoods and the rights of Indigenous Peoples, especially if implemented at large scales and where land tenure is insecure.

Net zero CO2 energy systems entail: a substantial reduction in overall fossil fuel use, minimal use of unabated fossil fuels, and use of carbon capture and storage in the remaining fossil fuel systems; electricity systems that emit no net CO2; widespread electrification; alternative energy carriers in applications less amenable to electrification; energy conservation and efficiency; and greater integration across the energy system (high confidence).

The press release also states: The pace and scale of what has been done so far, and current plans, are insufficient to tackle climate change.

Consequences of not acting now

The higher the magnitude and the longer the duration of overshoot, the more ecosystems and societies are exposed to greater and more widespread changes in climatic impact-drivers, increasing risks for many natural and human systems…. Overshooting 1.5°C will result in irreversible adverse impacts on certain ecosystems with low resilience, such as polar, mountain, and coastal ecosystems, impacted by ice-sheet, glacier melt, or by accelerating and higher committed sea level rise

The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years (high confidence).

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Climate change and new paradigms

January 3, 2023

‘Paradigms’ are typical patterns of thought, acceptance of thought, together with research practices. They provide guides for people. In his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which gave the term its current common meaning, Kuhn defined scientific paradigms as: “universally recognized scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners”.

One question that arises quite often is whether climate change is simply a paradigm that will be abandoned, or whether it will be stable. The basic theory that CO2 and other greenhouse gases can act as a blanket (or greenhouse) holding in heat, and causing warming, has stood for well over 100 years. The observations indicating global warming have been going on for about 50-70 years, so climate change is as well established as a fact as any science can be. Almost certainly the paradigm and the interpretation of global warming will change and grow with more research and modelling, but that does not mean it is wrong, or that it has not contributed shifts to thought, producing new paradigms, already.

In my opinion, a major paradigm shift has happened over the last 40 years largely due to climate studies.

Many people nowadays understand weather, climate and ecologies (and societies) as complex/chaotic systems, which have particular properties, which were previously unexpected.

For example, while these systems normally function under an unstable equilibrium, changes and stress in the system can build up, so that the systems can rapidly change state, even in human terms. In retrospect we call these places which begin the rapid change ‘tipping points’. We can predict that there will be tipping points in climate change when methane is released from the ocean, or the currently frozen tundras or the ice caps melt. Other tipping points may emerge when forests turn into net carbon emitters and so on.

While previously we thought significant climate change (without a massive accident such as meteorite collision) happened slowly in human terms, now we know it can happen quickly. We also know more about the conditions of ‘great extinctions’ and ‘ocean death’ and so are aware that we are building the conditions towards these kinds of events.

We also know that it is extremely difficult and perhaps impossible to predict the state of a complex system in the future. The further into the future the less likely we can predict its state. Consequently all we can predict is increasing climate turmoil, droughts, massive bush fires, storms, flooding, changes in temperature and so on. It is hard to tell people in, say, London, they will experience this kind of weather, this kind of temperature change etc. The gulf stream may drop away due to global heating, and the weather may get colder in London. All we can really and truthfully predict is that the change will hurt people more, and cause social instability.

This lack of accuracy in prediction is something that is often used to deny climate change, (“they said it would get hotter and dryer, but its flooding”). However, it’s hard to predict the weather 3 or 4 weeks in advance, and we are now dealing with constantly changing weather patterns, moving into situations we have not encountered before, so prediction gets more difficult – and the more the system departs from its previous equilibrium states, the worse this will get.

People have also been looking more at the social dynamics of climate change, as that is a major factor in what will happen. So far we can say, governments and businesses are nearly all failing dismally to deal with the problem, and have been since the 1990s. This is probably because of the amount of propaganda issued by powerful corporations and their hangers on, telling us the science is uncertain, or that remedies are too costly.

We are discovering the truth of many previous theories of social collapse – basically the dominating classes want to hang on to their habits, riches and power and the only way they think they can respond is by continuing the situation which has brought them riches and power – to hell with everyone else. As a result society is stuck with solutions to old problems. These old solutions cannot deal with the new problems and make those new problems worse. Societies can be maladaptive systems – however it is also possible that changes in the base (amongst ordinary people) could change social trajectories.

That represents a bit of a change in social theory, which tended to think that the dominant classes were clever and adapted to new situations, and that societies could structure ‘nature’ indefinitely in ways they required.

So global warming is already changing our paradigms, and that changes the data we look for, and all of that data (that I’m aware of) is pretty much pointing to more extreme weather, and more difficult living conditions. It would be sensible to take these new paradigms seriously, and do what you can at a local level as well as a State or business level.

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Technology and markets

November 26, 2022

It is often suggested that a ‘free market,’ or lots of investment (say within a developmentalist framework), will produce the technologies we need. To me, this seems like baseless propaganda which is harmful to our future.

Technology is not a whim

Firstly, Technology does not come along simply because we need it, would like it, or there is a market for it. There are physical limits to what can be achieved, at a certain level of technical development, at a feasible cost, and within a relatively short time frame. There are plenty of technologies which we need and which there would be a market for, that we don’t have: for example fusion energy or Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) which works at a level which makes a difference.

CCS is a perfect example of this, as we need it, it would lower the levels of emissions from fossil fuels, and enable drawdown and storage of CO2 from the atmosphere. There is a market for it, as it would make Fossil fuel companies happy as they would not have to face competition from renewables, it would make governments happy as they don’t have to do anything or fight powerful corporations, and it would allow everyone to keep on doing what they are doing now. The trouble with CCS is that despite 50 years or so of corporate and government investment, it basically does not work, at the levels we need it to work, and there is no evidence of any breakthroughs.

Despite recent minor breakthroughs fusion energy also seems to be a long way off being useful. It cannot be relied upon to save us in the time frame we need it to be available.

Markets are political

Secondly, any market, or form of development, involves politics and the likelihood of capture by existing power bases. Fossil Fuel companies will keep providing fossil fuels until it get uneconomic to provide them. To make them economic they will obstruct attempts to move out of fossil fuels: they will buy politicians, they will buy regulations, they will buy think-tanks to justify the use of fossil fuels and attack action on climate change. This is how markets work. Paradoxically, the ‘freer’ the market the more it seems to get constrained by those who are successful in the market, and the more society becomes plutocratic. So a capitalist free market (which is what people usually mean by ‘free markets’) is likely to be a destructive market, as NOT offloading costs from poisoning, pollution and eco-destruction involves a reduction of profit, and that is bad.

Finitude is important

Thirdly, the world is a relatively closed system for humans, with the exception of energy coming from the sun. We simply cannot keep extracting, over-extracting and polluting for ever without facing severe challenges, whether this extraction comes from business or from state controlled development. Sure we may get planetary colonies in the next 50 years, but that will not save most (or even many) people. and off-planetary environments will be even more hostile to humans than destroyed planetary ecologies. Space colonies will not save the world if we keep on destroying it in order to build them. Capitalist free markets, and development, seem to require growth, increasing extraction, increasing energy, and increasing profits to keep functioning. If this is the case, then capitalism and developmentalism will eventually destroy nearly everything, because of the effective closure of the system, even if they did produce useful technology that delayed the end point.

Conclusion

These factors, along with the idea that the market will produce whatever technology we need, seems to be why capitalist and developmentalist states have spent the last 30 years talking about climate change, and doing nothing.

The ideology has helped the capitalist elites to win, at the cost of you and your children’s future.

This means that if we want to survive,

  • We have to act locally where we have input; local renewable energy now. Preferably controlled by communities looking out for the communities, and providing local resilience for when climate change damage hits.
  • We have to campaign nationally and support climate action and ending eco-destruction, and phaseout of fossil fuels despite the problems that will generate
  • We have to realise that, as they are now, capitalism and developmentalism are not our steadfast friends. Those systems need changing.

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