
Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf] - ramonvillasante
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2018/20181206_Nutshell.pdf
======
NeedMoreTea
Climate discussion now seems to come from Yes, Prime Minister. (1986). We
appear to be at stage 3.

I don't understand US politics.. Most UK voters, of both political sides,
agree there is an issue, and want constructive solutions[0]. Some more US-like
differences at the margins, and differences in urgency, but there appears to
be a broad consensus among the public. Less so amongst politicians themselves.

Does political consensus no longer exist on any issues in the US any more? Is
all science politicised?

Sir Richard Wharton: "In stage one we say nothing is going to happen."

Sir Humphrey Appleby: "Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but
we should do nothing about it."

Sir Richard Wharton: "In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something
about it, but there's nothing we _can_ do."

Sir Humphrey Appleby: "Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could
have done, but it's too late now."

[0] [http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/the-public-
suppo...](http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/the-public-supports-uk-
climate-leadership/)

~~~
jibal
In the U.S. and apparently also in Australia, it's all politicized by the
right wing climate science deniers, who have swallowed petrol industry
propaganda, who view the embrace of basic science by anyone, regardless of
their actual place on the political spectrum, as an Obama/Clinton/"libtard"
hoax aimed at taxing their precious wallets and taking away their freedom. You
can see it in the comments here denying climate science and making false
claims about the existence of "many scientists" who disagree with the
consensus and think there are other causes of climate change, ignorant
nonsense about coming ice ages, and so on.

------
logjammin
I'm in my thirties. I don't have kids, but want them. I don't want to admit to
them that I did nothing about global warming when it counted. The thing is
that I don't know what I should do; it seems so big, so intractable.

Articles like these stir me to action, but what action? Where's the mass
movement on this? Where's the group, the party, the leadership?

~~~
cagenut
First of all, since this is a community in which many fancy themselves
engineers, ground yourself in the numbers. The main ones being:

\- number of gigatons emitted to date

\- rate of ongoing emissions

\- change in the rate of ongoing emissions

\- what total emissions numbers correspond to what PPM in the atmosphere

\- what ppm in the atmosphere correspond to what degrees of C warming (in
various timeframes)

here is a nice infographic from the latest ipcc report that shows some of
them:
[https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2018/10/SPM1...](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2018/10/SPM1_figure-
final-e1541758557589-947x1024.png) pay particularly close attention to the one
in the bottom left.

\- what degrees C warming correspond to drought, desertification and crop
failures in what areas/river-valleys (note: sea level rise won't actually be a
problem until after the famines, focus on the famines)

Once you get a feel for the numbers the "what to do" becomes a fairly obvious
"everything/panic/get-super-duper-radical". But I can't elaborate on that more
here because it ranges from "borderline communist levels of leftism" to "out
and out eco-sabotage".

DO NOT fall for the false framing that a rump dumbass 20-30% of the population
doesn't "believe" in global warming. That is smug nonsense that people use to
justify a false-framing of some kind of stalemate. No society ever convinced
everybody of the way forward. The _real_ problem is the litany of excuses and
magical thinking that the so called "believers" will come up with to do
nothing. Such as:

\- there's nothing we can do, give up, its too late

\- magically innovative technology will save us just hold your breath till it
comes along

\- teh markat will provide! if we can just do this spreadsheet game with tax
credits or something

\- i can't do that thing i should do because even though I'm one of the
richest humans on earth and that ever lived I've cast myself as a victim of
the current economic order and cannot afford to do anything.

Now, all that said as context, here are the top 5 things, IN ORDER (assuming
you're a middle class american), you can do to curtail your and your families
carbon footprint:

1.) have a negative-population-growth number of children. that means somewhere
in the <2.1 range (stupid joke about cutting parts of babies goes here).

2.) do not use a car on a daily basis. ideally don't even own one. if you
_must_ own one make it electric.

3.) live in a 5+ unit building. this cuts your heating/cooling/lighting
footprint roughly in half, and ties into the car thing above (mid rise apts
correlate strongly to walkable areas). no amount of solar panels and electric
cars will make suburban-sprawl a sustainable land use or energy consumption
model in your or your childs lifetime. this is the absolute hardest part for
americans to swallow, they will pitch a temper tantrum fit and write off the
messenger rather than grasp this one.

4.) fly (round trip) less than once a year

5.) don't eat red meat, or at least cows. even if you're not ready to give it
up, you could deliberately replace red meat meals with chicken fish or
vegitable alternatives more often.

However, I want to stress that viewing things through the lens of
individualized personal consumption levels is a TERRIBLE focus. This is the
the most universal problem humanity has ever faced. You want to do the 5
things above not because it will cut your footprint 10 - 20 tons per year (~50
- 80%, which it will), but because you will be contributing to building a
society in which _everyones_ footprint is cut. You want to normalize apartment
dwelling, walking, public transit, avoiding unecessary flights, and avoiding
red meat. That is how you contribute to building a sustainable future society.
You need to walk the walk not for a few tons, but to show your children and
neighbors the way forward.

~~~
rebuilder
I'm starting to wonder if telling people what they can personally change in
their lives is actually counterproductive. The gains to be had there are not
that great.

Sure it's good to minimize energy use as you outline. But where does it leave
you in terms of tonnes of CO2/year?

AFAIK the Paris accord goals (inadequate as they are) imply a target of around
1500 kg of CO2 per capita yearly. Homeless people achieve that in the west.
You won't get near those levels, hower much you try to reduce your personal
consumption.

We're not going to individual-responsibility our way out of this, and I wonder
if getting people to try will just give them a false sense of accomplishment.

~~~
cagenut
you're not wrong but careful not to fall into the internet's favorite form of
broken depressive reasoning: splitting

the way you get mass action is by getting a mass of individuals to act. there
is technically no other way. thats why I left the 'individual' stuff to the
very end and made sure to explain how its not really about your footprint as
much as its pulling your oar in the overall solution.

------
nabla9
I still remember watching TV in early 90's and seeing clips from Hansen's 1988
senate testimony and hearing first time the "Now is the last time to act on
climate change." from someone in TV.

Key numbers to get the point across.

* Starting mitigation in 2000 would have required mitigation rate 4%/year. (1.5 C goal)

* Starting mitigation in 2018 will require mitigation rate 18%/year. _18 percent!_ (1.5 C goal). There is no realistic scenario where this can happen.

* Nine years from now complete halt of all manmade CO2 emissions is too late to prevent crossing 1.5C.

* Global fossil and cement CO2 emissions keep going up, not down: [http://folk.uio.no/roberan/img/GCB2018/PNG/s09_2018_FossilFu...](http://folk.uio.no/roberan/img/GCB2018/PNG/s09_2018_FossilFuel_and_Cement_emissions_1990.png)

* CO2 mitigation curve becomes steeper and steeper. [http://folk.uio.no/roberan/img/GCB2018/PNG/s00_2018_Mitigati...](http://folk.uio.no/roberan/img/GCB2018/PNG/s00_2018_Mitigation_Curves_1.5C.png)

~~~
Brakenshire
One thing I’d be interested to read is the difference between 1.5C and, say,
2.5C of warming. Do you know of any reports (or maybe just part of the IPCC
reports) which lay out the incremental risks?

I just read for instance an editorial from nature which said that 10-30% of
coral reefs survive at 1.5C but none survive at 2C. I’d like more of that kind
of information to understand the risk profile.

~~~
nabla9
carbonbrief.org has interactive comparison between 1.5C, 2C and 3C.
[https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/impacts-climate-
change-o...](https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/impacts-climate-change-one-
point-five-degrees-two-degrees/)

~~~
Brakenshire
Perfect, sincerely thank you for the link.

------
randyrand
I've long been in the camp that we worry about climate change more than makes
rational sense.

I'm not saying we should ignore it, but we often overstate. It's worth
remembering that the effects on QoL will be completely eclipsed by
technological progress within that period and that the timescales that GW
happen over (50+ years) are long enough that most people will hardly ever
notice it. Gradual relocation will be our primary means of fighting it. Other
cities will be raised, like Chicago was in the 1850s.

FUD is not a genuine approach to invoke action - which has sadly been the main
approach of many. We should remain reasoned.

~~~
Brakenshire
If the world was composed of countries living at the quality of life of
Western Europe or America and with that level of technical and economic
expertise this would I think be reasonable, but in fact billions of people are
living hand to mouth. Look at the effect that Syrian migration to Europe or
indeed Mexican migration to the USA has had on Western politics. Now imagine
instead of 5 million people from Syria 100 million or 500 million are on the
move? Is the population of Bangladesh going to gradually relocate, and if so
where to? Its nuclear armed neighbour on one side, with their own hundred
million to be displaced from subsistence agriculture, or the country
conducting ethnic cleansing on the other? You have assumed a greater degree of
stablity than is reasonable.

~~~
randyrand
People will primarily move more inland within their own countries. Some cities
will be raised. Neighboring countries will absorb some. Small border shifts
may happen, as have happened for centuries.

~~~
mr_overalls
You have no reason to believe this.

From: [https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a25422366/trump-
ambass...](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a25422366/trump-ambassador-
to-canada-climate-change-scientists/)

"The fourth and latest National Climate Assessment put together by 300
scientists from 13 agencies of the U.S. government and released last month
found that climate change is real, man-made, and will cost the U.S. 10 percent
of its economy by 2100. Midwestern farmers will lose 75 percent of their crop
yields, and trillions of dollars in coastal real estate will be at risk. The
wildfires out west, already unprecedented in their destruction, will get
worse. Hurricanes and typhoons will grow more ferocious. Epidemic diseases
will flourish."

And that's just for the US. Large portions of Africa and the Middle East are
predicted to become uninhabitable. The threat to human life on a time-scale of
100 years or more is gargantuan.

~~~
drorh
Wow, by 2100 it will cost the US 10% of its economy? You mean a small size
recession? And you all are such a fuss about? And for that you want to deprive
3rd world people from gaining the same benefits you get from energy?

This is alarmism on the grandest scale and a horrifying hypocritical at that.
There is nothing we can do about CO2 right now. We can just continue to work
on safer and cleaner ways to generate electricity (atomic mainly, fusion
hopefully, solar for the local homes, etc.)

~~~
Brakenshire
The predicted costs of tackling it are significantly lower, so why not just
tackle it and avoid the recession.

Also, a permanent loss of 10% is not a small recession, most recessions lead
to no permanent loss, just a demand shock which is made up afterwards. A
permanent loss of 10% is more like the financial crisis, and I’d rather avoid
that if I can. One brought Trump and Brexit, I’d rather not add another to the
mix.

------
rapjr9
Some constructive criticism: I think this document is written backwards and
does not contain what CEO's are interested in. The disastrous effects should
come first and preceding that should be forecasts of the effect on the bottom
line (profits). The business implications of climate change are what might
capture their attention. Market disruptions for example, trends in adoption of
EV cars, growth in solar and wind, tech industry use of alternative energy,
costs for pollution being added to government and other plans, current
problems with changes in forests and their effects on industry, plans to deal
with coastal changes. Changes in behavior from industry and government are
more likely to sway them. They attempt to control those, but a list of
existing trends that are outside their control could be persuasive. They have
hired scientists to confuse the issue, so they are not going to be swayed by a
scientific argument. Leave that as an appendix for their subordinates to read.
It's unfortunate, but I think you have to speak their language.

~~~
sgt101
My experience is that CEO's don't need persuading on this issue, they are
convinced but their fiduciary duties limit the scope of their actions. What
they would like is sharp, clear regulation that provided a level playing
field. The people who need persuading are voters.

~~~
rapjr9
Hansen does say in the document "My target is the level of a Chief Justice or
a fossil fuel industry CEO", so I was thinking of fossil fuel industry CEO's
(who probably have never experienced a level playing field). Voters need
someone already persuaded to vote for; I think polls show the voters
themselves weigh on the convinced side. Fiduciary duties are only part of what
a CEO should be concerned about, but certainly major changes in what other
industries are doing should be part of fiduciary duty. Like VW saying they are
going to drop internal combustion engines in the near future, forest blight
affecting logging, Apple and Google going solar, real estate trends in coastal
areas, cities creating climate change plans, and more.

------
strict9
Skimmed through this, but I can't make it all the way. It's so jarring and too
depressing.

I lump climate change deniers into the same category as flat-earthers.
Although I have more respect for the latter, as at least they aren't blindly
swallowing self-serving nonsense spewed by ignorant politicians and certain
news outlets.

~~~
ilove_banh_mi
I don't think there are scientists who _deny_ past or present climate change.
Do you mean to disparage the many scientists who research the causes of past
climate change, and who hypothesize that the current changes are, like all
past changes, caused by other factors than the man-made, industrial-age rise
in atmospheric carbon dioxide?

~~~
jimjansen1
There is overwhelming consensus that the current rate of climate change, which
by the way is totally unprecedented in history, can be from no other source
than anthropogenic CO2. You can read the research and see how thoroughly and
completely every possible confounding variable was accounted for.

The scientists who claim "current changes are, like all past changes, caused
by other factors than the man-made" are not taken seriously by the mainstream,
form an unimaginably slim minority and frankly are dangerously wrong.

[https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/)

~~~
umvi
Let them be wrong then. But science is not a democracy. You can have
overwhelming expert consensus and still be completely wrong. You can get
experts to hold a vote and agree some new idea is complete garbage but that
vote does not change immutable truth. It's happened countless times in
history.

For example, Ignaz Semmelweis (from wiki):

> Despite various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality
> to below 1%, Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established
> scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by
> the medical community. Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific
> explanation for his findings, and some doctors were offended at the
> suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it. In 1865,
> Semmelweis suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum,
> where he died at age 47 of pyaemia

------
vladimirralev
I invite everybody to watch this
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaiZ5BHaUMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaiZ5BHaUMY)

A calm, collected, scientific representation of both sides.

~~~
Comevius
_There are literally no 2 sides_. There is a ~97% scientific consensus, then
there are these people:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_who_disagre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_who_disagree_with_the_scientific_consensus_on_global_warming).

John Christy (the other side in your video) represents the ~3%. His research
was shown to be wrong over and over again. Most recently in 2017:
[https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0121...](https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0121.1).
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-
consensus-97...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-
consensus-97-per-cent/2017/may/11/more-errors-identified-in-contrarian-
climate-scientists-temperature-estimates)

~~~
yters
Check out this wikipedia page that casts scientific consensus in a slightly
different light:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_scientific_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_scientific_theory)

~~~
Symmetry
"John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people
thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that
thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is
flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together"

[https://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.ht...](https://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm)

~~~
yters
A bit over half a century ago, the scientific consensus in Germany was that
Jews were subhuman. They also believed in a mystical ice planet orbiting the
earth that possessed all sorts of wonders, the knowledge of which was
suppressed by the anti-Arian cabal. Consensus bears a funny sort of
relationship with the truth.

~~~
seren
The scientific consensus in a single country is very different bar than a
scientific consensus for the whole world.

I am pretty sure that if you looked at North Korea today, you could find some
weird scientific national consensus, which obviously does not mean anything.

~~~
yters
Is it true this is the consensus of the whole world?

It seems to be the consensus of a portion of the scientific establishment,
which is certainly not representative of the whole world.

And, if, for sake of argument, we grant this scientific consensus represents
the perspective of the world, it still does not follow this somehow precludes
faulty reasoning and groupthink. "Science" is not a magic wand that
automatically eliminates the normal sources of human bias, especially as
recent news illustrates the rampant fraud and unreproducible results in the
scientific establishment.

------
ilove_banh_mi
After solving global warming, should we be more concerned by the approaching
end of the current interglacial period? The next glacial period of the current
Ice Age is going to be terrible for our stage of technology and civilization.

If we are serious about the current issues of climate change, and about
potential asteroid impacts, why should we not also be planning for the mid- to
long-term risk of the return to an Ice Age?

~~~
yters
This is an interesting question. Haven't there been much warmer periods in our
planet's history that were followed by an ice age?

It is hard to sort out exactly what climate change means.

~~~
Comevius
Those warming periods are either local, are much, much slower and they are not
supposed to be in sync with human activities either.

This one is much faster. Not everyone sees it of course. Change blindness is
what they call it.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/b...](https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/big-
fish-stories-getting-littler?t=1531204154500&t=1537827635100&t=1544136887700)

~~~
ilove_banh_mi
This is not a correct description of past climate changes. The glacial and
interglacial periods of the last 2.5 million years have been global and
swinging temperatures by 6-9°C in either direction, with periods between
40-100k years.

During the last interglacial (Eemian, ca. 129–116k years ago) sea level was
6-9 meters higher than today; Scandinavia was an island. The water temperature
of the North Sea was about 2°C higher than at present; hippos lived as far
North as the Rhine and the Thames. The onset of the Eemian took just a few
centuries, during which global temperatures shot up >5°C.

~~~
Comevius
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05314-1#ref-
CR8](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05314-1#ref-CR8)

The Eemian was caused by reduced North Atlantic ocean circulation, a courtesy
of the previous Saale glaciacion period, too much fresh water, and continued
transfer of heat from the south.

It produced abrupt effects localized to high altitude areas. Most of what you
described occured in the later stages of this 15000 year long period.

The Eemian cannot be really compared to the current global warming, a
potential AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) instability is
just one out of the thousand problems we are facing.

------
apo
The problem with many discussions around global warming is not scientific, but
cultural. Advocates of change often take a sanctimonious attitude toward
anyone expressing the slightest doubt.

Have a look at the episodes of the Netflix series "Bill Nye Saves the World"
on climate change. If you can watch without cringing, congratulations. I
can't. Or take this interview Nye did with Tucker Carlsen:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN5L2q6hfWo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN5L2q6hfWo)

Nye, and those who share his intolerant attitude toward justified skepticism
do their cause more harm than good.

 _Every_ hypothesis should be questioned. The more sweeping the claims, the
more pointed the questioning should be. Science is not immune to groupthink.
The problem is magnified when a scientific hypothesis takes on a political
dimension.

Take this quote from the article:

 _Climate has always been changing, but humans are now the principal drive for
climate change, overwhelming natural climate variability._

I challenge any reader of the article to find a clear, logical, undeniable
chain of evidence from hypothesis to the conclusion that humans are
responsible for rising planet temperatures.

~~~
Comevius
Challenge accepted. Proof that humans are responsible for rising planet
temperatures:
[https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/](https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/).
Follow the references.

"every hypothesis should be questioned."

It is, constantly, literally on a daily basis. That's how we know.

What does pop culture (Bill Nye) has anything to do with this.

Also many of us are a bit beyond just theoretical discussions. It's 2018. We
are increasingly affected by climate change to the point that many of us are
packing, because the shit already hit the fan. What's a fun theoretical
discussion for you (at the moment) is actually life and death for many.

~~~
apo
Thanks for the link and response, but I was talking about evidence in the OP
article. Like far too many pieces, it fails to highlight the evidence between
human activity and rising temps, taking it instead as an article of faith.

Even the link you gave fails to enumerate the evidence for a human cause, and
itself links to another article.

I realize that some have made up their minds, but the extraordinary claim of a
mainly human cause requires extraordinary evidence. And that evidence is
hardly discussed, nor are alternative hypotheses given their due.

This is the problem I'm trying to highlight. The discussion has veered from
scientific to religious.

