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  • edited September 2016
    Yeah, and we are going to be dealing with that intensifying reality from here on in.  The other day there was a moving comment made at Hotwhopper - Dissenting view on Climate Change Action - No longer silent, but is it too little, too few, and too late? - by someone who choses to be anonymous.  He/she summed up our crisis, both of reality and spirit in a way I hadn't read yet.  I was so impressed I posted the thing over at my blog.

    Warning it's a bummer, but it's real.

    AGW awareness, but is it too little, too few, and too late?
    http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2016/09/too-little-too-few-too-late.html
    It's going to become very obvious that the posturing everyone is doing on both side of the fence is irrelevant in the end. If the goal was to waste time and money, both sides have accomplished this. But there are no "sides" in reality, it's just us ignorant humans and the millions of other life forms trying to live on this planet.

    Government, business and industry are often thought of as the problem to climate change inaction, but it goes much deeper then this. Our civilization is the problem, right down to the individual (you and me). It is intractable and immutable as long as it exists.

    Everything will be done to protect civilization and our so-called "way of life". Nothing will be done to change any of this. Every individual is responsible. Every scientist, every doctor, every mother, every father, every sister, every brother. Both by virtue of our very existence, and by our silence and by our individual obligation to a habitable future. ...

  • edited September 2016

    yes whilst I sympathise to some extent with the concerns of the anonymous post (over on the blog) 

    Nethertheless in my view it is far to nihilistic and cynical in tone, together with slight pseudo-religious undertones - "we are weak and sinful, lustful and acquisitive etc etc"

    I know it is easy to project the idiocy/ignorance/inertia one comes across when "online climatering" to a wider populace

    but actually I have much more faith in humanity and the human race to sort out the challenges that face us  - sure it is tested at times

     

  • 3C
    That is were we are heading .
    Despite the rhetoric coming from Paris I dont see any way we will not get there with our present leadership and technology.
    What we find when we get there I dont think anyone knows.
    What concerns me most is so far black swan events like the crop failures,  flooding and heat waves happening in unison magnifying the effects of the individual event .
  • This year was pretty amazing. Not just for the global average temperatures, but for the floods all over the world, all happening at around the same time. I wonder if it will show up in the sea level measurements, like it did in 2010/11. Maybe not. Most of them were flash floods. They certainly caused a heap of damage.

    The 2010/11 floods lasted a long time. In Australia there were floods across the whole country - east coast, west coast, north, south, and in the hot centre. Some of them took months to dissipate.
  • I slept on that sou and I dont think I phrased my concern concisely.

     Tamino's recent post on the lack of statistical support for a rise in the temperature trend is as always correct and any of his efforts are a must read to stay informed.

    Pure speculation that I know is as yet unsupportable.
    The peat fires in Indonesia the fires in boreal  forests and the melting permafrost all point towards an increasing rate of co2 release from nature as a feed back to our efforts. The spike in temperatures from the recent departed El Nino seems to be greater than it should be due to enzoi alone . The satellite sea level charts show quit a spike over the last two years this along with the recent paper quantified the volcanic effect suppressing sea level in the early part of the series suggest that sea level trend is rising at a faster rate. The arctic sea ice this year hit the second lowest on record despite what was an average melting season.
    Many converging hints that we may see the effect of global warming begin to accelerate.

     In the past we have seen isolated incidents like the flooding in Australia or the wheat harvest collapse in Russia in 2012. These are the black swans of what could become normal in a not far of future. As all possible extreme events from AGW begin to become more probable   the effects of individual events will be magnified by the  numbers of them happening at once or in close succession making our civilized society more unstable.

    "Any society is three square meals away from anarchy"
    Climate change is adding fuel to the fires of instability sweeping the world.
     We see a rise in the extreme right in the anglosphere with Trump  One Nation  britex all symptoms of this.
    The root of this rise is complicated but it is possible  to included climate change among the causes of the mass migration fueling the isolationist agendas . I see echos of agreement down here in NZ with these sorts of extremist positions, This alone gives apprehension for the future of our liberal democracy's and be extension the future of the west.

    It is one fire we have yet to attempt to contain in a significant way and the one that will place our civilization at greatest risk .     

    Or maybe like our esteemed friend citizen challenge I have read to much climate porn lately and are feeling  negativity about what is a rosy future.








  • edited September 2016
    tadaaa said:
    ...

    but actually I have much more faith in humanity and the human race to sort out the challenges that face us  - sure it is tested at times

    The catch here is that we're making the challenges worse by inaction now. Most people "want the government to do more about climate change" if asked about this in a poll, but then effectively vote for the opposite. They want "action on climate change" in much the same sense that a kid wants a pony for Christmas. It sounds good, and the thought of it makes them feel better, but they assume it shouldn't have any associated costs or inconveniences for them, and if these are pointed out they will rapidly lose interest. Their interest is low to start with, because although they say they want more action the polls also consistently rate climate change as a much lower priority than other things.

    So consequently they vote for whoever says things they like about the stuff that is "more important than climate change", because they have no real understanding of the severity of the problem.

    I think Griff is right that we're heading for 3 degrees. 1.5 is already done and dusted, right now. Most people are still frigging around and trying to pretend nothing much needs to be done, so it's fairly certain that we'll blow 2 degrees by around the middle of the century. Given that large scale BECCS seems more like a politician's fantasy than a practical option, that leaves stabilising at around 3 degrees to be the best we're likely to achieve. Which is bad. Very bad.
  • Have you watched Kevin Andersons lectures contrail chook ?
    He talks sense about what we need to do and the lack of recognition by our leadership for the size of the problem.






  • Yes I've seen most of Anderson's stuff. He certainly makes his points well.
  • tadaaa said:
    ...

    but actually I have much more faith in humanity and the human race to sort out the challenges that face us  - sure it is tested at times

    The catch here is that we're making the challenges worse by inaction now. Most people "want the government to do more about climate change" if asked about this in a poll, but then effectively vote for the opposite. They want "action on climate change" in much the same sense that a kid wants a pony for Christmas. It sounds good, and the thought of it makes them feel better, but they assume it shouldn't have any associated costs or inconveniences for them, and if these are pointed out they will rapidly lose interest. Their interest is low to start with, because although they say they want more action the polls also consistently rate climate change as a much lower priority than other things.

    So consequently they vote for whoever says things they like about the stuff that is "more important than climate change", because they have no real understanding of the severity of the problem.

    I think Griff is right that we're heading for 3 degrees. 1.5 is already done and dusted, right now. Most people are still frigging around and trying to pretend nothing much needs to be done, so it's fairly certain that we'll blow 2 degrees by around the middle of the century. Given that large scale BECCS seems more like a politician's fantasy than a practical option, that leaves stabilising at around 3 degrees to be the best we're likely to achieve. Which is bad. Very bad.


    yes I agree, in a sense quite a lot of people are in denial (and I am potentially including myself in that) - even if they fully accept science and current scientific understanding of the potential impacts

    denial about the size of the challenge, if indeed one accepts that everyone on the planet should be able to have a lifestyle approximating to the one enjoyed by US/Europe etc

    but I still think that ultimately humanity will eventually rise to the challenge

    history tells us that dramatic change both societally and technically can happen quite quickly

  • Sure, and history also tells us that dramatic change is not always for the better. The archaelogical record is full of examples where change made things decidedly worse, very rapidly. Humans may still rise to the challenge, but that may still mean they end up with a suboptimal position.
  • true - and I suppose the inherent "lag" time between our behaviour now and the observable effects is one off the biggest issues


    although I think we are seeing a tipping point in the last 1/2 years where that fact that the climate has changed and at a rate not seen in the past is beginning to hit home to all but the wilfully ignorant/delusional


    even just yesterday Lord Lawson seemed to do a reversal of the "its not happening" & "corrupted science" stance he previously held and moved slightly forward

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