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Earth Government The Courts

Climate Change Report Actually Understates Threats (thebulletin.org) 396

Posted by EditorDavid from the pessimistic-predictions dept.
"Dire as it is, the latest IPCC report is actually too optimistic," writes Slashdot reader Dan Drollette. "It ignores the risk of self-reinforcing climate feedbacks pushing the planet into chaos beyond human control. So says a team of climate experts, including the winner of the 1995 Nobel for his work on depletion of the ozone layer." From their article: These cascading feedbacks include the loss of the Arctic's sea ice, which could disappear entirely in summer in the next 15 years. The ice serves as a shield, reflecting heat back into the atmosphere, but is increasingly being melted into water that absorbs heat instead. Losing the ice would tremendously increase the Arctic's warming, which is already at least twice the global average rate. This, in turn, would accelerate the collapse of permafrost, releasing its ancient stores of methane, a super climate pollutant 30 times more potent in causing warming than carbon dioxide.

By largely ignoring such feedbacks, the IPCC report fails to adequately warn leaders about the cluster of six similar climate tipping points that could be crossed between today's temperature and an increase to 1.5 degrees -- let alone nearly another dozen tipping points between 1.5 and 2 degrees. These wildcards could very likely push the climate system beyond human ability to control. As the UN Secretary General reminded world leaders last month, "We face an existential threat. Climate change is moving faster than we are.⦠If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences."
In related news, a court in The Hague "has upheld a historic legal order on the Dutch government to accelerate carbon emissions cuts, a day after the world's climate scientists warned that time was running out to avoid dangerous warming. Appeal court judges ruled that the severity and scope of the climate crisis demanded greenhouse gas reductions of at least 25% by 2020 -- measured against 1990 levels -- higher than the 17% drop planned by Mark Rutte's liberal administration. The ruling -- which was greeted with whoops and cheers in the courtroom -- will put wind in the sails of a raft of similar cases being planned around the world, from Norway to New Zealand and from the UK to Uganda."

Meanwhile, a new article in GQ cites estimates that more than 70 percent of global emissions come from just 100 companies, complaining that "there is no 'free market' incentive to prevent disaster."
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Climate Change Report Actually Understates Threats More

Climate Change Report Actually Understates Threats

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  • Go Poland go! (to hell) (Score:3)

    by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Saturday October 13, 2018 @08:34PM (#57473746)

    The ranking in TFA mixes companies and countries. If you look at just the latter, you see:
    1 China (Coal) 14.32%
    6 Coal India 1.87%
    8 Russia (Coal) 1.86%
    15 Poland Coal 1.16%
    So we're 4th, beaten only by [sub-]continent spanning major countries, despite ours population of mere 38.5M.

    All greenhouse gas reduction activity was not only stopped but even reversed by our glorious National Communist government: they actually open new mines and coal power plants, and made some forms of better energy generation basically illegal (like, "quiet zones" required around any new or modernised wind generators mean you can't put them pretty much anywhere).

    Getting a high place in a per-population contest isn't hard, doing "well" in absolute numbers when compared to much more populous countries is quite an accomplishment. So our "Good Change" regime did make Poland a "leading country" after all!

  • I sure hope (Score:3)

    by Kernel Kurtz ( 182424 ) on Saturday October 13, 2018 @08:46PM (#57473784)

    the runaway warming does not continue indefinitely like it did last time.

    • the runaway warming does not continue indefinitely like it did last time.

      Your logic here contradicts itself. If the runaway warming continued indefinitely last time, then it wouldn't have come down (see last ice age) and be going back up again.

      However, my problem with the topic as a whole is people expecting our planet to maintain the same temperature. It hasn't over time (without industrialization) so why would now and into the future?

      I was watching a program (Nova maybe?) not long ago that was going on about how storms are getting worse, the temps are rising, and we're all

      • They pointed out the oceans were like 5-10m higher in the past than we have now.
        Yeah, but the oceans in the past also have been 100m lower than today, so what is your point?

        Now, can man speed up some of the change? Probably so, the debate is just how much. :)
        About the current situation: there is no debate.

        • About the current situation: there is no debate.

          Right, no more debate on this. CO2 will kill us all if we don't reduce output immediately. Now that we agree on this, can we have more nuclear power? If the answer is "no" then we will have to debate which poses a greater risk, global warming from CO2 or nuclear power? We've been waiting a long time for wind and solar to replace coal and natural gas, if we keep waiting and the situation does not improve then at some point nuclear power will become the lesser evil, no?

          • You should be lobbying your congresscritters to impose a tax to support building nuclear power plants because that's the only way it's going to happen. The private sector is not willing to invest in nuclear power without government guarantees that they're not going to lose their shirts. The Vogtle plants in Georgia were projected to cost $7 billion and be on line by 2018. Now the bill is expected to be about $26 billion and they'll come on line at best in about 2022.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        Yes, all nice. However, the rate of change matters.

      • Your logic here contradicts itself. If the runaway warming continued indefinitely last time, then it wouldn't have come down (see last ice age) and be going back up again.

        Sorry I left off the sarcasm tag. I thought it would be obvious.

  • It’s just as probable that ice-free Arctic waters would be a source of increased precipitation in the region, actually feeding land glaciers. This has been proposed as a possible ice age mechanism.

    • For that there need to be glaciers ... and there need to be snow in summer ... or more snow in winter.
      In other words: it would need to be much much colder in winter at places where glaciers are, as it was the last 10 years.

  • Ohhhh, today's popcorn article has landed! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday October 13, 2018 @09:04PM (#57473864)

    Grab a bag and pass the soda, this is gonna be great. What excuses will we hear today? How are we going to justify ignoring science and instead trust the spin of the industry this time?

    I really hope for something new, just sticking fingers into ears and going "lalala, I can't hear you" is getting old.

    • How are we going to justify ignoring science and instead trust the spin of the industry this time?

      If you're trusting anyone, you're not doing science.

  • It's 2018 and I still can't buy Soylent Green (Score:3, Informative)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Saturday October 13, 2018 @09:10PM (#57473880)

    You might recall back in the 60 that by the year 2000 the U.S. would have over 300 million people and we would be starving and eating each other ?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Well it's 2018 and a 1/3rd of the world is now Obese ( http://www.healthdata.org/news... [healthdata.org] ) Small child must be very filling.

    UN Predicts 50 Million Climate Refugees by 2010

    Six years ago, the United Nations issued a dramatic warning that the world would have to cope with 50 million climate refugees by 2010. But now that those migration flows have failed to materialize, the UN has distanced itself from the forecasts. On the contrary, populations are growing in the regions that had been identified as environmental danger zones.

            It was a dramatic prediction that was widely picked up by the world’s media. In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations University declared that 50 million people could become environmental refugees by 2010, fleeing the effects of climate change.

            But now the UN is distancing itself from the forecast: “It is not a UNEP prediction,” a UNEP spokesman told SPIEGEL ONLINE. The forecast has since been removed from UNEP’s website. —Spiegel Online

    2000 no more snow in the UK

    In March 2000, , “senior research scientist” David Viner, working at the time for the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, told the U.K. Independent that within “a few years,” snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event” in Britain. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he was quoted as claiming in the article, headlined “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.”

    1864 Father of American Environmentalism predicts imminent destruction of environment

    As early as 1864 George Perkins Marsh, sometimes said to be the father of American ecology, warned that the earth was ‘fast becoming an unfit home for its “noblest inhabitant,”’ and that unless men changed their ways it would be reduced ‘to such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the deprivation, barbarism, and perhaps even extinction of the species.’

    –Google Books Readings In Environmental Impact page 111

    • Re:It's 2018 and I still can't buy Soylent Green (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pseudonym ( 62607 ) on Saturday October 13, 2018 @10:57PM (#57474170)

      In 1968, Erich von Daniken published "Chariots of the Gods" and a lot of people read that too.

      The interesting question is what experts think in total, the consensus as well.as the spread. You don't just get to pick the sensationalist outliers at either end.

      • In 1968, Erich von Daniken published "Chariots of the Gods" and a lot of people read that too.

        The interesting question is what experts think in total, the consensus as well.as the spread. You don't just get to pick the sensationalist outliers at either end.

        I don't like liars, I especially don't like stupid, unentertaining and transparent liars.

        Fears of a "population explosion" were widespread in the 1950s and 1960s, but the book and its author brought the idea to an even wider audience

        In 1948, two widely read books were published that would inspire a "neo-Malthusian" debate on population and the environment: Fairfield Osborn’s Our Plundered Planet and William Vogt’s Road to Survival. Although, they are now much less well known than Population Bomb, they inspired many works such as the original Population Bomb pamphlet by Hugh Everett Moore in 1954 that inspired the name of Ehrlich's book, as well as some of the original societies concerned with population and environmental matters.[3] D.B. Luten has said that although the book is often seen as a seminal work in the field, the Population Bomb is actually best understood as "climaxing and in a sense terminating the debate of the 1950s and 1960s.”[14] Ehrlich has said that he traced his own Malthusian beliefs to a lecture he heard Vogt give when he was attending university in the early 1950s. For Ehrlich, these writers provided “a global framework for things he had observed as a young naturalist."[3]

        Pierre Desrochers; Christine Hoffbauer (2009). "The Post War Intellectual Roots of the Population Bomb" (PDF). The Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development. 1 (3): 73–97. Retrieved 2010-02-01.
        The phrase "population bomb", was already in use. For example, see this article. Quality Analysis and Quality Control, Canadian Medical Association Journal, June 9, 1962, vol. 86, p. 1074

        • Thomas Robert Malthus wrote about impacts of population in his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population. I think a lot of the questions raised by "scare stories" is that they don't know how future tech or knowledge will impact the "problem" and apply "now" to the future in the form of solutions

    • It's 2018 and I still can't buy Soylent Green You might recall back in the 60 that by the year 2000 the U.S. would have over 300 million people and we would be starving and eating each other ?

      It takes a truly desperate kind of stupidity to quote the failed "predictions" of a sci-fi film as some sort of point against climate science.

      Meanwhile the actual hard predictions of global temperatures in that IPCC report have indeed come to pass. Measurements remain well within the predicted error bars.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      It matters when making comparisons that you do not compare things that are irrelevant to each other. Your argument makes as much sense as Kanye West's arguments in what's-his-name's office. Maybe you missed that, though. Your argument is of the form: In the past, people have hunted woolly mammoths, hence they will do so today.

  • The EU increased their emissions in 2017, and is set to increase them further in 2018: https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]

    How realistic is it there are going to be emission reductions by 2020? Totally unrealistic.

    • Strange that other reports simply contradict it: https://reneweconomy.com.au/ge... [reneweconomy.com.au]
      However https://energy-charts.de/energ... [energy-charts.de] confirms that Germany is still at 39% Coal in energy production.

      while emissions in Germany, the blocâ(TM)s largest economy and still dependent on coal for 40 percent of its electricity, was little changed.
      Actually it changed, the CO2 increase is due to the hard winter and house heating, transportation, not due to electricity, because even in 2017 coal got educed by another percent

      • From the article you linked to:

        One main reason for this slowdown is technical constraints: going 100% renewable (or even 50%) is not trivial. Baseload plants will have to disappear completely even as sufficient dispatchable capacity remains available. Utility umbrella group BDEW is thus calling for more new gas turbines to be constructed (in German), and companies like Uniper (formerly Eon) is currently investigating its options (in German). So are municipal utilities, such as the one in Cottbus that recently announced plans to switch from locally produced lignite to natural gas (in German). Amidst all of the reports about records with renewables and power exports, this little news item deserves more attention: a municipal utility in one of Germanyâ(TM)s three largest lignite mining areas (Lausitz) is switching to gas.

        So, Germany is not replacing nuclear and coal with wind and solar but with natural gas. Perhaps more importantly this is replacing domestic coal and uranium with imported natural gas. Much of this comes from the not so friendly Russians. I'm sure that they'll take German money for their erdgas but if Russia decides that they'd like to take over more land in the future then the first thing they'll do is turn off the heat for lots of cold Germans. I know that Germany has sto

  • ...is just a strategy to raise taxes by, this time, taxing carbon. Taxing carbon will have absolutely zero effect, as people _still_ need to burn the gasoline and diesel and other fuels to move about and heat homes and do industry to support our population levels. If we don't burn those fossil fuels then millions will be cast into poverty and a certain, higher-than-would-otherwise-occur percentage of the population will die of the effects of poverty.

    Meanwhile, what we need to do is stop injecting CO2 in

    • Maybe we could build some nuclear power plants while we figure out how to make wind and solar power work? Nuclear power is as much a "zero emissions" energy source as wind and solar. Nuclear power is already competitive in price but national energy policy puts it in an impossible situation compared to wind.

      http://www.world-nuclear.org/i... [world-nuclear.org]

      In states with deregulated electricity markets, nuclear power plant operators have found increasing difficulty with competition on two fronts: low-cost gas, particularly from shale gas developments, and subsidized wind power with priority grid access. The imposition of a price on carbon dioxide emissions would help in competition with gas and coal, but this is not expected in the short term. Single-unit plants which tend to have higher operating costs per MWh are most vulnerable. The basic problem is low natural gas prices allowing gas-fired plants to undercut power prices. A second problem is the federal production tax credit of $23/MWh paid to wind generators, coupled with their priority access to the grid. When there is oversupply, wind output is taken preferentially. Capacity payments can offset losses to some extent, but where market prices are around $35-$40/MWh, nuclear plants are struggling. According to Exelon, the main operator of merchant plants and a strong supporter of competitive wholesale electricity markets, low prices due to gas competition are survivable, but the subsidized wind is not. In 2016 the subsidy (production tax credit) is $23/MWh. Though wind is a very small part of the supply, and is limited or unavailable most of the time, its effect on electricity prices and the viability of base-load generators âoeis hugeâ.

      Wind power gets all the breaks on making money. This is pushing up energy prices and forcing nuclear power plants out of business. This means more natural gas plants

      • After that misguided verdict * in the Netherlands, I would have laughed my balls off if the government would have told the environmentalists: "In order to comply with this court order and further reduce CO2 emissions, we will order 5 new nuclear power plants from France"
        *) Misguided because a judge has no business ordering policy.
      • "Maybe we could build more wind and solar power plants while we figure out how to make nuclear power be safe when disaster happens and when it needs decommissioning? Nuclear power is as much a "zero emissions" energy source as wind and solar but it does produce a lot of nasty waste during power creation. Nuclear power is already competitive in price due to subsidies but national energy policy puts it in an competitive situation with wind." - fixed that for you.

    • Taxing carbon will have absolutely zero effect

      Look around in Europe were gasoline has traditionally been taxed much higher than in the US. Compare the size of the cars, and tell me again that high prices don't have an effect.

    • saving the planet is not going to come from a political adventure such as a new tax, its going to come out of a laboratory.

      Well, laboratories and engineers' drawing boards. And maybe also taxes, or at least fiscal policy. Take wind power. I suppose that the policy of subsidizing wind power has done a lot to drive installation of wind mills (it has over here), which in turn sped up further development. Existing installations have taught us a lot about building better ones that generate more power and can keep running in storms, and how to install and maintain them efficiently. The price per kWh is coming down to a point wh

  • we continue to allow additional coal plants to be built. Worse, in the west, we are shutting down Nuclear power plants and what is Germany replacing them with? COAL. What is California going to replace their's with? NAT GAS.

    IOW, they are moving to FUCKING FOSSIL FUEL.

    • You are not only misinformed but a lier
      I pointed now out dozens of times, particularly to you in persons: " we are shutting down Nuclear power plants and what is Germany replacing them with? COAL. this is wrong. As you perfectly know that it is wrong. you are a lier.

      https://reneweconomy.com.au/ge... [reneweconomy.com.au]

      On the graphs you can clearly see that coal power is continuously declining and that both nuclear power and coal power is replaced by renewables. Asshole!

  • I heard of people talking on the radio of a new mall going up in Miami, IIRC, supposedly the largest in the nation. If Miami is supposed to be underwater in 10 years then how did anyone get funding for this? How did this get approved by the city? How did this mall get insurance? These people talking on the radio were mocking all the global warming alarmists. If enough people believed that CO2 was such a potential harm then they would be able to raise enough money to fix the problem. Instead they put m

    • If Miami is supposed to be underwater in 10 years
      Why should that be the case?

      I'm guessing it's because we've been hearing about how coastal cities will be underwater in 10 years for 40 years now.
      If you hear that, you must not only be a blindseer but also a deafhearer ... I never heard about such "rumors" ...

      • Tell me something, "angel", what is a greater threat to humanity? Global warming or nuclear power? The answer cannot be "both" or "neither" as something must be of greater concern, if only by a small margin.

        If global warming is the greater threat then we should be building more nuclear power plants instead of shutting down the ones we have. If nuclear power is the greater threat then it gets back to my point of no one believing the threats. People are building nuclear power plants and they are building

        • As I said above if you want more nuclear power to be built then you should be lobbying your congresscritters to impose a tax to subsidize it. In the private sector it's much to risky to invest in it under the current conditions. The only nuclear plants under construction in the US right now went from a budgeted cost of about $7 billion to around $26 billion currently.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by raind ( 174356 )
          AGW is a greater, so act now.
    • Nuclear would okay of you could
      1. Build it cheaply, safely and on time and not pass costs onto the public purse i.e. make the utility company pay.
      2. Make it so it never needs refuelling
      3. Make it not need to be shutdown when the water that is needed to keep it cool is too hot because of outside temperatures.
      4. When its reached end of life, the ground is not contaminated.
      5. Make it cheap decommission and not pass costs onto the public purse i.e. make the utility company pay.
      6. Make the spent fuel iner
    • Exactly. And if the EU believes that climate change is going to happen why did they increase their emissions in 2017 and further in 2018?

      https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-carbon-climatechange/eu-carbon-emissions-rose-in-2017-eurostat-idUSKBN1I50YU

      I mean they signed the Paris accords.

  • The problem with tragedies of the commons is that it's trivially easy to say "I didn't do it, not my fault, someone else was responsible" and the vast majority of businessmen/politicians/industrialists are going to do this in the case of climate change. More specifically "it wasn't solely my fault" therefore won't be held responsible which is the only thing they care about. The ones causing the problem will be dead and/or have beachfront property in Appalachia that's worth WAY more than it was before the fl

  • https://ourworldindata.org/how... [ourworldindata.org]

    If we aggressively pursue all of the low-cost abatement opportunities currently available, the total global economic cost would be â200-350 billion per year by 2030. This is less than one percent of the forecasted global GDP in 2030.

    That is according to goals of Paris agreement.

    From the other hand, damage from global climate change is predicted to be
    https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]

    As a result, the worldâ(TM)s gross domestic product would fall by $21 trillion by

  • Just a another taste of the future. I read people talking about rebuilding on the beachfront. Good luck with that.

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