Links tagged “tipping points”

“This is the moment. Glasgow is the last, best opportunity that we have and the best hope that the world will come together and build on Paris,” Kerry said, referring to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. “Scientists tell us this decade, 2020 to 2030, must be the decade of action,” the former U.S. Secretary of State added.

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Kerry admits zero emissions in US wouldn’t make difference in climate change - "Biden knows Paris alone is not enough,” Kerry told reporters at a White House press briefing, referring to Biden re-entering the US in the Paris Climate Agreement in one of his first acts as president. 

Michael Mann: "A second Trump term is game over the climate--really! That is the prism through which I view the 2020 U.S. Presidential election." ... "We need a president who will not only meet our current obligation under the Paris accord but double down on them."

Mann:  I will be blunt, this is a make or break election for climate change. 

CBS News reporter: "it's simply a matter of math. It's not just opinion, its scientific calculation? 
Mann: "It is."

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Earth ‘serially doomed’: The official history of climate ‘Tipping Points’ began in 1864 – A new ‘global warming’ 12-year deadline from Rep. Ocasio-Cortez

Flashback 2013: NASA’s James Hansen Declared Obama Has One Week Left To Save The Planet! — ‘On Jan. 17, 2009 Hansen declared Obama only ‘has four years to save Earth’ — Only 7 Days left!

Marc Morano of Climate Depot has documented such huckster predictions going back to the Civil War era of the 1860’s. Bogus end-of-the-world claims failing to come true for the last 150-plus years unfortunately hasn’t stopped people from making more. Al Gore, a prominent modern-day example, has gotten wealthy by making planetary doomsday predictions for the last three decades. Mr. Biden continued this dubious tradition and his are as false today as they’ve been from the outset.

John Kerry: "Here’s a wake-up call. Until the coronavirus crisis, every major nation was on track to increase emissions this year. We have been moving backward. We will be at the “nine years left” mark to take the long-term significant steps recommended in a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change three years ago. Time is running out: less than nine years to avoid climate catastrophe.

But there’s time to act — and opportunity if we do. If the economic devastation of the coronavirus pandemic is costly today, the cost of climate inaction will match — if not exceed — our current expenditures, which is why the next administration must act with urgency on day one."

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Earth ‘serially doomed’: The official history of climate ‘Tipping Points’ began in 1864 – A new ‘global warming’ 12-year deadline from Rep. Ocasio-Cortez

2020: The Prince of Wales warns that humans have just ten years left to save planet  - 'We really do have to pull our fingers out now because the theory is we have got this decade left,' he declared.

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2019: Prince Charles at it again: Issues new 18-month climate tipping point after previous ‘100 month’ deadline expires - The Prince of Wales has warned global leaders that if we don’t tackle climate change in 18 months the human race will go extinct in a speech in London yesterday to foreign ministers from the Commonwealth. "I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival," Prince Charles said. 

Shellenberger: "I interviewed the lead author of the Nature Comment, Professor Timothy Lenton of the University of Exeter, I asked him about a verb tense I found curious. Lenton notes that the West Antarctic ice sheet “might have passed a tipping point” but goes on to say “when this sector collapses, it could destabilize the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet like toppling dominoes  — leading to about 3 metres of sea-level rise on a timescale of centuries to millennia.”

“When you say ‘when,’” I asked, “does that mean it’s an inevitability that it will collapse?”

“Well, we can’t rule out that it’s on the way out,” he said. “Any glaciologist specialist will tell you that we really want more data. Because it’s not trivial to monitor what’s going on in West Antarctica.”

“So the right word in your view is ‘when’ not ‘if’?” I asked. ...

Justin Ritchie, a researcher at the University of British Columbia, highlighted 11 conditional statements in the four paragraphs summarizing the complicated causality for a “global cascade” of tipping points.“ I might be the only one,” writes Ritchie, “but after reading it I’m actually less convinced about imminent climate tipping points. One example: if it takes 11 ‘if’ statements to support an opinion, then it’s time to revisit the opinion’s substance.” (The word “could” is used 26 times.)

Michael Shellenberger: "Part of what inspired me to write that column is that I am concerned by the rising eco-anxiety among young people. My daughter is 14 years old. While she herself is not scared, in part because I have explained the science to her, she told me many of her peers are." ...

"I wanted to know what Extinction Rebellion was basing its apocalyptic claims upon, and so I interviewed its main spokesperson, Sarah Lunnon...“It’s not Sarah Lunnon saying billions of people are going to die,” Lunnon told me. ”The science is saying we’re headed to 4 degrees warming and people like Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Center and Johan Rockström from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research are saying that such a temperature rise is incompatible with civilized life....

Has anyone, I asked, done a study of what happens to food production at 4 degrees warming? “That’s a good question,” said Rockström, who is an agronomist. “I must admit I have not seen a study. It seems like such an interesting and important question.” In fact, scientists, including two of Rockström’s colleagues at the Potsdam Institute, recently modeled food production.Their main finding was that climate change policies are more likely to hurt food production and worsen rural poverty than climate change itself, even at 4 to 5 degrees warming. The “climate policies” the authors refer to are ones that would make energy more expensive and result in more bioenergy (the burning of biofuels and biomass), which would increase land scarcity and drive up food costs..."

"In other words, the problems from sea level rise that Oppenheimer is calling “unmanageable” are situations like the ones that already occur, such as in the days following Hurricane Katrina, where societies become temporarily difficult to manage. (Katrina killed over 1,800)." ...

"But it’s clear that there is simply no science that supports claims that rising sea levels threaten civilization much less the apocalypse." ...

"Several people asked me about climate “tipping points,” such as the collapse of ice sheets from Antarctica and Greenland, the escape of methane gas from melting tundra, the slowing of circulation in the Atlantic ocean, and the drying out and burning up of the Amazon. In response I pointed out that nowhere does IPCC predict any of those things would be catastrophic to human civilization much less apocalyptic.

If the Greenland ice sheet were to completely disintegrate, sea levels would rise by seven meters, but over a 1,000-year period. Even if temperatures rose 6° Celsius, the Greenland ice sheet would lose just 10% of its volume over 400 to 500 years."

I was surprised to be asked whether some amount of exaggeration about climate change wasn’t necessary to grab people’s attention. My response was, “Not if journalists and scientists hope for any trust with the public.” I asked Jeffrey how she would answer such a question. “Raising awareness of an issue is important,” she said, “but there’s a difference between raising awareness and telling children younger than myself that they might not grow up. Climate fear-mongering has become very child-aimed. I see a lot of mental health issues and fatalism.”