I think it is really about what future we collectively choose. Perhaps alongside the hellscape, it helps to also imagine and describe that other future that is still possible if we choose it. The one where we start building renewables, rapidly and radically reducing the use of FF, the one where we all have cheap clean energy and water to drink, the one where we start rewilding farmlands no longer needed to grow soy for caged animals, where there are still live coral reefs, and we have a global ban on destructive fishing etc.
Good piece but you leave out some important issues that come with labeling what's happening on this planet a #climateemergency. They mostly relate to the "then what" aspect of such a conclusion. Should Biden declare a climate emergency? That's a formal governmental decision that comes with a heap of ramifications. Should any administration be able to label something an emergency as a way to pursue steps outside what Congress or the public would want? Trump tried this with the border, remember. I wrote on this here: https://revkin.substack.com/p/its-essential-to-act-on-climate-emergencies-22-07-22 And of course much of what folks are labeling a climate emergency is really an array of local vulnerability emergencies: https://revkin.substack.com/p/behind-global-climate-emergency-rhetoric-21-08-06
Some interesting points. Here in New Zealand we have quite formal rules around declaring states of emergency and whether they are local or national. The stats are published on our Civil Defence website and show an interesting uptick in the frequency, duration and scope of the events (excluding earthquake and fire - although fire is often the result of climate change).
Stating that adaptation could work, but the rich are simply not willing to pay for the poor is a pretty gross oversimplification. There’s lots of wealthy people who support higher taxes and the United Nations providing greater funding for developing countries to adapt. A more accurate comment is that conservative political funders are preventing appropriate, compassionate action.
You mean like the rich people who scream about climate change causing sea level rise, and then buy gorgeous beachside homes?
Or are you talking about the rich people who fly around in their private jets telling the rest of us to cut carbon emissions?
The problem is, the rich see right through your scam, and they're using it to their own benefit.
Me, I'll believe there's a climate emergency when the people lecturing me about a climate emergency begin to live as though there were a climate emergency … and so far, there's exactly no sign of that happening.
Willis, Andrew is presumably referring to the individuals and families that have grown rich by facilitating the removal of fossil carbon from geologic sequestration and its sale for all the traffic will bear, while socializing their climate-change costs. Tax filing data from 2003 to 2010 (i.e. before Citizens United v. FEC) gives a tantalizing glimpse into which wealthy family foundations gave how much money to which "non-profit" conservative and/or science-denialist disinformation organizations. In a peer-reviewed paper in Climatic Change in 2014 (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-013-1018-7), sociologist Robert Brulle was able to account for at least $900 million in annual donations to 91 organizations in what he called the "Climate Change Counter Movement". That link is paywalled, but you can find free versions if you look. Anyway, here's the abstract:
"This paper conducts an analysis of the financial resource mobilization of the organizations that make up the climate change counter-movement (CCCM) in the United States. Utilizing IRS data, total annual income is compiled for a sample of CCCM organizations (including advocacy organizations, think tanks, and trade associations). These data are coupled with IRS data on philanthropic foundation funding of these CCCM organizations contained in the Foundation Center’s data base. This results in a data sample that contains financial information for the time period 2003 to 2010 on the annual income of 91 CCCM organizations funded by 140 different foundations. An examination of these data shows that these 91 CCCM organizations have an annual income of just over $900 million, with an annual average of $64 million in identifiable foundation support. The overwhelming majority of the philanthropic support comes from conservative foundations. Additionally, there is evidence of a trend toward concealing the sources of CCCM funding through the use of donor directed philanthropies."
Sorry, Mal, but your voice got cancelled. Anyone calling someone a "denier" is a damn coward who is trying to discredit an opponent by sliming them WITHOUT dealing with their scientific claims.
The only valuable use of the term is to reliably identify people like you who anyone can ignore without remorse or error.
Heavens. I'm glad I don't have much social media presence. Similar wariness, if not cowardice (you decide, I can't stop you), has led me to use a pseudonym everywhere on the blogosphere since 2008. It's always been the same pseudonym, so when you see it, you know it's me. Judging by some of your remarks on the Internet, Willis, you'd be well-advised to be more circumspect yourself; no, I don't want to know where you live. And I'll gladly agree that anyone can ignore both of us without remorse or error, but I'm not the source of any facts I've cited. I'm no more a climate-science expert than you are (desmog.com/willis-eschenbach; skepticalscience.com/peerreviewedskeptics.php?s=166), after all. Do you not realize your own scientific claims have all been dealt with by genuine experts long since (skepticalscience.com/argument.php)? You apparently lack the scientific metaliteracy (h/t J. Nielsen-Gammon) to recognize you've been discredited by the the scientists that count in this context, namely the peer community of trained, disciplined, publishing climate specialists.
a person who says that something did not happen or that a situation does not exist, especially something that most people agree did happen or does exist:
- climate change denier "He has compared climate change deniers to people who denied the link between HIV and Aids."
- Holocaust denier "There are plenty of Holocaust deniers out there."
[END QUOTE]
Note that a denier always, implicitly or explicitly, denies a specific event or situation. I didn't use the term 'denier' in my previous comment, however, but "denialist", specifically "science-denialist". Perhaps I should have said "scientific-consensus-denialist". "Denialist" can be a synonym for "denier", but I mean by it an active practitioner, who willfully propagates climate-science denial in the public sphere. The difference is that those who keep it to themselves aren't subject to being labelled. Note that one can acknowledge that the globe is warming and humans are responsible, but effectively deny that the consequences in grief and expense are already being felt, and disproportionately by people who've contributed least to the problem.
Nor am I erecting a straw science-denialist, but referring to Brulle's "Climate Change Counter Movement": 91 "non-profit" organizations of skilled professional disinformers such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, who he found to receive over $900 million annually in funding from 140 foundations including Koch and Scaife affiliates, along with "Dunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking". The goal of these foundations is to preserve fossil-fuel profit streams, by funding public disinformation campaigns intended to delay decarbonization of the US and global economies as long as possible; the goal of the think-tanks, institutes, etc. is to sell their skillfully-crafted, bespoke deceptions to the highest bidder. "Denier" and "denialist", when preceded by "climate-science", are indeed valuable terms to identify these cynically self-interested parties specifically. Perhaps the most telling testimony is by Jerry Taylor, a former VP of the Cato Institute who changed his mind (theintercept.com/2017/04/28/how-a-professional-climate-change-denier-discovered-the-lies-and-decided-to-fight-for-science). Citing his Libertarian buddy Jonathan Adler, then at the Competitive Enterprise Institute:
"Jon wrote a very interesting paper in which he argued that even if the skeptic narratives are correct, the old narratives I was telling [weren’t] an argument against climate action. Just because the costs and the benefits are more or less going to be a wash, Jon said, that doesn’t mean that the losers in climate change are just going to have to suck it up so Exxon and Koch Industries can make a good chunk of money."
IMHO, that's far more convincing than any glibertarian denialism issuing from a CCCM stink-tank.
If as you falsely claim my ideas are "discredited by the the scientists that count", then why do I have papers in the scientific journals with over 200 citations to date? Why did the editors of Nature decide to publish my peer-reviewed "Brief Communications Arising"? Clearly they didn't suffer from your delusions.
And anyone who approving quotes desmogblog as if they were anything but totally biased simply isn't following the story.
Mal, please specify exactly what it is that you think I "deny", and exactly how you distinguish that from what I disagree with for valid scientific reasons.
I'll wait … but remember that if you can't specify both of those, or if you dodge or don't answer, people will know you're just calling names and making ad hominem attacks.
Yes, the 1% of humanity in the political and industrial elite who are responsible for about 25% of emissions (some of them flying in private jets going to climate conferences!) could personally significantly change things overnight. But i also see a lot of propaganda about climate emergency being targeted to middle class consumer base in the West that protects big oil and big animal ag. It falls on fertile ground because of the normal human trait of not wanting to give up things that we've become accustomed to think of as our right. This is coupled with the worst of climate change being far away in the global south (though more flooding now here in the UK).
The influence of big industry PR is not only massive, it's very clever at misleading and very good at what it does.
The subtitle reads, "In-depth interviews find some Americans consider crisis language overblown, leading to added skepticism of claims"
Another interesting subheading:
"Climate scientists are valued for their expertise, but also seen as potentially having an agenda; media outlets are not trusted sources of climate information"
It also contains the latest polling of Americans on global warming:
I’m one of those skeptics. Not of the basic science behind climate change, but in the ability of governments to respond in an effective, rational, and fair manner.
From the war on terror, to the financial crisis, to COVID, every societal emergency of the last 20 years has been characterized by; the upwards redistribution of wealth (no-bid contracts, bailouts), violations of civil liberties, targeting of disfavored groups by law enforcement and intelligence, and the imposition of ineffective/actively harmful measures based on the recommendations of “experts” (torture, lockdowns, etc), and the removal of whole categories of public policy from the democratic process.
I have no problem taking collective action to mitigate the risks of climate change, but I don’t trust that any of the relevant authorities won’t abuse an emergency declaration to enrich themselves and steamroll anyone who gets in their way.
Don't know if anyone's still following this discussion, but I largely agree with you. Distrust of politicians to undertake collective action on our behalf, is perhaps the best reason to support a US National Carbon Fee and Dividend with Border Adjustment Tariff (citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend). Not only do economists recommend direct carbon pricing over incentives or command-and-control measures generally, but CF&D is revenue-neutral: under Citizen's Climate Lobby's proposal, 100% of revenues are periodically returned to every US taxpayer as a dividend, and the whole process can be watchdogged by anyone who cares to. The money stays in consumer hands (with a slight income transfer downward, since everyone gets the same-size dividend) and available to capitalists through conventional sources, with the carbon price driving the energy market to decarbonize the US and global economies. It's like the "visible hand" of collective intervention, nudging the "invisible hand" of the otherwise-'free' market. Gotta love metaphor.
Sadly, even if any politician supports carbon fees and tariffs, AFAICT few voters will.
I have been on a personal soapbox about the lack of coverage and attention given by the MSM and climate scientists to the National Academies latest plan to get the U.S. to net-zero by 2050. The Washington Post did not highlight the release of this fairly significant work and its overall impact and importance. They chose instead to run with more sensational and controversial articles like the one above as well as highlighting a single controversial recommendation about banning new gas lines, https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/10/18/gas-lines-decarbonization-climate/ .
It used to matter what the National Academies had to say about challenges facing this country. I believe they were viewed as somewhat neutral and unbiased. Maybe that is no longer true but we at least should make the effort to let the general public know that these studies exist and summarize what they say.
I don't particularly care what word is used. There is always the problem that the word that motivates one person to favor optimum policies may discourage someone else.
Personally I prefer to think of having the opportunity to execute policies to improve the long run future of our planet and our descendants, policies that become more costly the longer we wait before executing them.
It's also good to acknowledge that the costs of climate change that we will continue to experience for decades to come will, unfortunately, be little reduced by even the best abatement policies going forward. There are ameliorative/adaptive polices that we should take in parallel with abatement polices.
The challenge with the "emergency" framing, imho, is that the effort needed to decarbonise our economy and adapt to climate change, whilst very urgent, will be expended over decades. A state of emergency can't be sustained over years and years. I say that as someone dedicating all their professional time and effort to the climate transition. Also, excessive use of "catastrophe" language, from what I've seen, leads more to anxiety and despair than agency and active optimism. Yes, the next century will have some serious climate related challenges. But it will continue to have a lot of beauty and joy and meaning.
Should have been an emergency 3 decades back, as a direct consequence of the people holding the highest Offices of trust and responsibility - the ones with duties of care - responding appropriately to the science based expert advice. Those Offices have access to a range of experts to help them understand it as well as assure them of veracity, far beyond what us ordinary folk have.
Tossing an issue of such profound significance to the future prosperity and security of their nations to the shark pool of Public Opinion and allowing - encouraging - doubt in it's veracity and making everything about it contestable seems as inappropriately irresponsible of a President or Prime Minister as handing the issue, podium and microphone to environmentalists and fringe politics, then making their policies all about opposing THEM.
Doubt, Deny, Delay politicking appears utterly amoral, with no redeeming features. That it seeks to blame what climate activism gets wrong for their rejecting everything climate science gets right - squaring the circle so that even their own denial and obstruction is blamed on unreasoning and unreasonable green-left politics - just confirms how bereft of ethics.
I'm not impressed by your latest article. Over the last 12,000 years, human ingenuity has allow us to not just survive but to grow, with longer and better lives. All of the adverse impacts of climate change can be managed in various ways, with cold becoming less of a killer as the planet warms and with technology such as seawater desalination able to provide as much freshwater as the world needs. Add to this optimism the realisation that global human population numbers will hit their peace in about 30 years, after which there will be rapid and profound falls in the number of people in most countries convinces me that, in 100 years' time, people will equate today's claims of climate catastrophe with our worries about the Year 2000 bug.
We got through the "Year 2000 bug" problem by dealing with it not by denying it.
The story of life on Earth is that life comes and goes. Homo sapiens has grossly interfered with his evolution and "ingenuity" - as displayed in society by (eg) scientists - is overwhelmed by growing incredulity.
Absolutely not true. You are repeating the mistakes of Paul Erhlick which, 50+ years ago, predicted global famine etc and he was proven totally wrong because he dismissed human inventiveness, intelligence and ingenuity. In 100 years time, global population will be much smaller than today as technology, wealth, education and personal freedom allow women to choose to have fewer children, acceleration what we are already seeing in China, Japan,Italy, Russia and a number of other countries where birthrates are below 2.1.
None of this matters in the face of ecological collapse. Food shortages are already a reality right now. Plus, an unstable climate wreaks havoc on crop yields, and water is getting more scarce. You’re massively underselling the enormity of the problems that are a reality right now. You can’t “ingenuity” your way out of a depleted aquifer. Inventiveness won’t bring back pollinator species.
There is no ecological collapse, just change. Where exactly are the food shortages please? Water is not getting more scarce but freshwater resources are being over-utilised, so seawater desalination plants need to be built to meet human needs. Where are we losing pollinator species please? The claim from German researchers of a massive drop in the number of insects in their research areas has been shown to be an artifact of sloppy research.
Oh you're one of those huh. "Just build more desalination plants!" Foolishness. You think you can desalinate water and move it safely across hundreds and hundreds of miles reliably and efficiently? Maybe on a small scale, but this is not a viable solution to widespread water insecurity. I'd be happy to see proof to the contrary.
Your skepticism of anything I say suggests you're really not interested in a discussion but just in repeating your blinkered view of the world. You clearly see the glass as half empty and give no credit to the huge improvement in the human condition over the last 250 years, including reduced global population growth that is quickly leading to a less populated world by 2050 or 2060 which will ultimately lead to fewer pressures on the natural environment. Your negativity must cause you many personal problems so I'll sign off by wishing you well and hope you open your eyes and your mind sooner rather than later.
1. Do you believe there have been any homes, livelihoods or lives lost to anthropogenic global warming to date, that would not have been lost if there were no warming?
2. Do you believe that without collective (i.e. government) efforts to reduce aggregate fossil carbon emissions to zero, weather extremes will grow ever more extreme as global mean surface temperature rapidly and inexorably rises (currently at a rate of 0.21 °C/decade)?
If you answer 'no' to either question, you should think about it some more.
I fear you're missing the point. The houses lost to floods over recent years in the eastern states have mostly been built in flood plains of rivers - yes, the flooding waters may have been a result of climate change but why were houses built in flood plains in the first place and why did government not build adequate defenses against rising flood waters? Yes, lost of houses (and lives) have been lost to bushfires made worse by climate change but successive Royal Commissions have said that fuel reduction via prescribed burns is the primary action needed to protect life and limb, but governments have been negligent by not reducing fuel loads. Yes, weather extremes will worsen because governments will not sacrifice human well-being and economic growth especially in developing countries, so we'd better get used to higher temperatures and higher atmospheric CO2 levels and act accordingly - remove houses from flood plains and coastal shorelines and remove fuel loads using prescribed burns. We in Australia know what to do (and one thing we shouldn't waste our money on is net zero because our 1.3% of global CO2 emissions are irrelevant!) so governments and individuals simply need to do what needs to be done to adapt to a changing world.
I'm glad then that the Anzacs did not send troops overseas during WW2 because what was happening in Europe was none of our business, and anyway, we were too small to make any difference to that problem anyway.
Rather leadership prevailed and your life along with mine has been immeasurably better because of the leadership and sacrifice of those generations before us.
I for one, do not wish future generations to curse the selfishness of my peers.
You criticise me for not being a supporter of net zero and decarbonisation of the global economy. Pity you didn't ask me what I do support which includes:
* spending our limited Aussie funds on R&D and commercialisation of the technologies which the whole world needs to decarbonise
* as per Bjorn Lomborg's views, since China and India and most developing countries will not even try to achieve net zero much before 2050, best if we assist the developing world to adapt to climate change while growing their economies so that they can improve quality of life and standards of living for their several billion citizens, giving them the economic ability to adapt and grow.
I'm glad you mentioned the ANZACS as I view Australia's current devotion to net zero as the same blind obedience our military showed at Gallipoli for what was pretty much a waste of time and almost totally unsuccessful.
Hi Andrew -- as always I appreciate your writing on a broad range of topics at Climate Brink. I've been working on an invited article about the dangers in climate emergency thinking that I will share when forthcoming/published. This is also the topic of the topic I gave at CU-Boulder last week with the video of the talk online likely next week -- so will flag you when up.
PS the best scholarly work and argument against climate emergency declarations and thinking is Mike Hulme's most recent book -- which is outstanding: Climate Change Isn't Everything. See his discussion with Andy Revkin as a preview: https://www.youtube.com/live/uK_Hwor_xhw?si=fvJ4mQSoEdtvCbnR
Thanks for your comments, Matthew. Just to be clear, I am not arguing for a declaration (or against it), my piece is more about what I personally think (as a citizen) about climate change. It is an emergency and should be at the top of our collective priority list. Please do ping me when the video of your talk is online.
I think it's important to recognise that you can't really make any statistically significant causal claims about climate emergency thinking until you have a sample of climate emergency thinkings that is large enough for a trend to emerge. ;-)
Ken: Yes excellent point and completely agree. A few studies I am working on operationalize, measure, and track forms and trends related to climate emergency thinking. But Mike Hulme's book is the place to start conceptually as he maps out and defines the various elements of "climatism" as an emerging, spreading "thick" ideology pulling together scholarship from multiple fields etc.
Not sure, but I thing Ken's comment was a joke. Waiting until we have a sample of climate disasters sufficiently large for a trend means waiting so long we won't be able to do anything about it. Am I misunderstanding you, Ken?
Last chance dance. Biden should absolutely declare an emergency, but old school militarism and hegemony is at work. Why do you think he approved Willow? Competition for its resources as the Arctic becomes ice free. Plenty of logical explanation and backing documentation here, military sourced.
This is a dishonest framing. The terms 'climate emergency' or 'climate crisis' - popularised by a change in the Guardian editorial style guide in 2019 - are not justified with reference to a far off future hellscape, which you claim is an inevitable result of 'the science', they are justified supposedly by observed 'alarming' and unexpected increases in the severity and frequency of extreme weather and most recently by an alleged 'acceleration' in global warming (the era of global boiling) - which were NOT predicted by climate scientists years ago. This is why so called 'deniers' demand to see the scientific receipts on the alleged 'happening now' climate emergency - and the receipts are not there.
When deaths start mounting and vicious cycles are spinning out of control, we have to call the present climate situation an emergency. However, given the urgency of this emergency this comment is about moving to the next stage of climate actions in order to prevent worst case scenarios.
What few people understand is that the present course of developments would lead, in the coming decades, to rapidly increasing climate-related deaths and hundreds of millions of climate refugees attempting to get into the wealthier and less affected countries; there would most likely be major outbreaks of violence – it would be like a never-ending world war; we must respond accordingly, governments must enact radical changes now.
We must work together, present feasible comprehensive proposals, and create a cohesive movement that promotes plans for decisive actions, planning to halt and start reversing global warming within years In https://humanecivilization.org/climate-emergency/ I attempt to describe a feasible model of a sustainable future and a pathway to its rapid realization.
Specific plans are also published by Project Drawdown (drawdown.org) and by other organizations.
Carbon neutrality by 2050 is far too late for the poor, most affected areas. Only a dramatic decrease in atmospheric CO2 will halt the worsening of weather catastrophes – carbon neutrality only slows the worsening of climates. Governments must be compelled to treat global warming as the worst crisis in human history and act more decisively than during WWII - then fear led our government to halt all civilian production and industries were mandated to work on government defense contracts.
We consider the following to be first priorities
More people must learn how terrifying and cruel present plans and proposals are:
Present approaches, “business-as-usual-with-incentives” would lead to weather catastrophes becoming more frequent and much more deadly for decades. Compounding vicious cycles will keep speeding up global warming. As many densely populated areas become unlivable, there would be unimaginable suffering, ‘adaptation’ would in most areas not be possible. There would also be a dramatic decrease in biodiversity.
But people must also learn about feasible, highly effective alternate paths for our future:
We, our government, must halt waste and consumerism and save energy and resources in every way possible. We need ultra-light electric vehicles and trains, not Teslas and planes; wood and bamboo, in place of concrete and steel; cooling white paint, not more air conditioning; trees, not cattle; etc.
Government-funded public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises (PPPNE) are needed to restructure industries and land management. Governments must restrict bank lending to curb consumerism, inflation, and all the serious emotional problems caused by indebtedness. Governments must issue guaranteed incomes and create comprehensive safety nets.
Most people sense that we will be healthier and happier with much less consumerism, living more simply with more interpersonal connectedness.
Andrew, you are TOTALLY misrepresenting what the IPCC says. In Table 12.12 of Chapter 12, WGI, the IPCC states that there is NO signal of global warming visible in:
Frost
Mean precipitation
River flood
Heavy precipitation
Pluvial flood
Aridity
Hydrological drought
Agricultural drought
Ecological drought
Fire weather
Mean wind speed
Severe wind storm
Tropical cyclone
Sandstorm
Dust storm
Snow, glacier, and ice sheet
Heavy snowfall and ice storm
Hail
Snow avalanche
Relative sea level
Coastal flood
Coastal erosion
Marine heatwave
Ocean acidity
Air pollution weather
Radiation at surface.
NONE OF THOSE show any sign of being affected by global warming, much less any bogus "emergency".
In other words, to misquote Mark Twain, "The claims of the death of the climate have been greatly exaggerated".
So you are free to continue to hyperventilate and scream "THE SKY IS FALLING! EVERYONE PANIC!"
And we're free to point out that you are totally misrepresenting both the facts and the IPCC's conclusions, both of which show that there is no climate emergency.
Willard: did you even read the piece? It starts 'The term “emergency” is not a scientific one. There is no laboratory test or scientific calculation that will yield the result that climate change is an “emergency” or “catastrophe” or any similar word. Rather, the decision whether it’s an emergency is a mix of the scientific evidence combined with personal judgment.' Thus, your argument that the "IPCC science doesn't support it" means you simply didn't understand my argument. Overall, your comments are so dumb that I'm going to block you unless the comments improve. So be warned: your next comment may be your last.
Andrew, I gave you a list of where the IPCC says not only is there no emergency however you define it, there is no sign of any global warming signal. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada.
The list covers storms, tornadoes, cyclones, floods, droughts, sea level rise, and lots more, almost every phenomenon except the warming itself. See my comment above, and the underlying IPCC Table 12.12.
I fail to see how this is "dumb". I get that you don't like it. Why should you? It's a list of IPCC-backed scientific facts that contradict your claim of an emergency. But that's how science works.
Your argument seems to be "I don't care what the IPCC says, I, Andrew Dressler, think it is an emergency".
Which is fine, and as you point out, you're free to say an emergency exists.
However, since I've pointed out all the phenomena where the IPCC says not only no emergency but no sign of global warming affecting the phenomenon at all, perhaps you'd be so kind as to point out exactly which phenomena constitute your emergency?
As to your warning of censorship if I don't fall in line, I'm not surprised that you don't want to hear any disagreement, particularly scientific disagreement backed by the IPCC.
And sadly, I'm also not surprised that your go-to response is to threaten to censor my views. It is a response that is far too common among mainstream climate scientists when their holy writ is questioned.
In closing, you say "Rather, the decision whether it’s an emergency is a mix of the scientific evidence combined with personal judgment."
So, if you'd like to back up your "emergency" claim with the scientific evidence you allude to above, that would be great.
For example, you state flatly that it was predicted that our actions "would result in sea-level rise, ocean acidification, and more frequent extreme weather events, such as heat waves and extreme precipitation. We now have enough data that we can see these predictions coming true."
But as I just pointed out, the IPCC itself says that those predictions are NOT coming true, that in fact despite half a century of warnings such as yours there's no sign of changes in most of those things.
So … what do you know that the IPCC folks don't know?
I'll refer you again to the following compendium of scientific evidence backing up the IPCC's claims. I've posted this all over the web. Nobody has found one untruth in it to date. Here's why the claims of an "emergency" are simply not borne out by the facts.
I really don't understand why you cannot figure this out: I look at the evidence out there (e.g., more extreme temperatures, more extreme precip events, sea level rise, ocean acidification) and conclude "this is an emergency". Someone else, perhaps someone who's spent the last 20 years trying to downplay the risk of climate and doesn't want to admit they're wrong, will say "that's not an emergency." Your conclusion is based on your values.
So perhaps you can understand my perplexity. Just where is this "emergency" you speak of?
And are you claiming that the IPCC is wrong? Because they sure don't agree with you. Where you say "global warming emergency", they say "no scientific evidence of that".
Let me just say your reading of the IPCC report is wrong. Also, it's very very irritating that you're still trying to argue scientific facts for a value judgment — that's the entire point of this post. This argument is over. Walk away. If you respond, you're banned.
I think it is really about what future we collectively choose. Perhaps alongside the hellscape, it helps to also imagine and describe that other future that is still possible if we choose it. The one where we start building renewables, rapidly and radically reducing the use of FF, the one where we all have cheap clean energy and water to drink, the one where we start rewilding farmlands no longer needed to grow soy for caged animals, where there are still live coral reefs, and we have a global ban on destructive fishing etc.
Good piece but you leave out some important issues that come with labeling what's happening on this planet a #climateemergency. They mostly relate to the "then what" aspect of such a conclusion. Should Biden declare a climate emergency? That's a formal governmental decision that comes with a heap of ramifications. Should any administration be able to label something an emergency as a way to pursue steps outside what Congress or the public would want? Trump tried this with the border, remember. I wrote on this here: https://revkin.substack.com/p/its-essential-to-act-on-climate-emergencies-22-07-22 And of course much of what folks are labeling a climate emergency is really an array of local vulnerability emergencies: https://revkin.substack.com/p/behind-global-climate-emergency-rhetoric-21-08-06
Some interesting points. Here in New Zealand we have quite formal rules around declaring states of emergency and whether they are local or national. The stats are published on our Civil Defence website and show an interesting uptick in the frequency, duration and scope of the events (excluding earthquake and fire - although fire is often the result of climate change).
Some research that I have seen that compels me to see an emergency.
Our present predicamant.
What the world was like the last CO2 levels were this high.
https://mashable.com/article/carbon-dioxide-earth-co2
Our future, if present trends continue.
We are a few generations away from another PETM.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018PA003379
"The majority of extinction events occur in the CO2 concentration range of 700–1,100 ppmv."
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022EF003336
We're halfway there. (with apologies to Bon Jovi)
We should apply the brakes, before we hit the wall.
Stating that adaptation could work, but the rich are simply not willing to pay for the poor is a pretty gross oversimplification. There’s lots of wealthy people who support higher taxes and the United Nations providing greater funding for developing countries to adapt. A more accurate comment is that conservative political funders are preventing appropriate, compassionate action.
Yes, thanks for pointing that out. You're right, the problem is really with a subset of the rich who wield enormous political power.
You mean like the rich people who scream about climate change causing sea level rise, and then buy gorgeous beachside homes?
Or are you talking about the rich people who fly around in their private jets telling the rest of us to cut carbon emissions?
The problem is, the rich see right through your scam, and they're using it to their own benefit.
Me, I'll believe there's a climate emergency when the people lecturing me about a climate emergency begin to live as though there were a climate emergency … and so far, there's exactly no sign of that happening.
w.
Willis, Andrew is presumably referring to the individuals and families that have grown rich by facilitating the removal of fossil carbon from geologic sequestration and its sale for all the traffic will bear, while socializing their climate-change costs. Tax filing data from 2003 to 2010 (i.e. before Citizens United v. FEC) gives a tantalizing glimpse into which wealthy family foundations gave how much money to which "non-profit" conservative and/or science-denialist disinformation organizations. In a peer-reviewed paper in Climatic Change in 2014 (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-013-1018-7), sociologist Robert Brulle was able to account for at least $900 million in annual donations to 91 organizations in what he called the "Climate Change Counter Movement". That link is paywalled, but you can find free versions if you look. Anyway, here's the abstract:
"This paper conducts an analysis of the financial resource mobilization of the organizations that make up the climate change counter-movement (CCCM) in the United States. Utilizing IRS data, total annual income is compiled for a sample of CCCM organizations (including advocacy organizations, think tanks, and trade associations). These data are coupled with IRS data on philanthropic foundation funding of these CCCM organizations contained in the Foundation Center’s data base. This results in a data sample that contains financial information for the time period 2003 to 2010 on the annual income of 91 CCCM organizations funded by 140 different foundations. An examination of these data shows that these 91 CCCM organizations have an annual income of just over $900 million, with an annual average of $64 million in identifiable foundation support. The overwhelming majority of the philanthropic support comes from conservative foundations. Additionally, there is evidence of a trend toward concealing the sources of CCCM funding through the use of donor directed philanthropies."
Brulle is still publishing research on the denialist disinformation campaign, including a 2021 follow-up to his 2014 article (https://cssn.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Brulle2021_Article_ObstructingActionFoundationFun.pdf). That one's open access!
Sorry, Mal, but your voice got cancelled. Anyone calling someone a "denier" is a damn coward who is trying to discredit an opponent by sliming them WITHOUT dealing with their scientific claims.
The only valuable use of the term is to reliably identify people like you who anyone can ignore without remorse or error.
w.
Heavens. I'm glad I don't have much social media presence. Similar wariness, if not cowardice (you decide, I can't stop you), has led me to use a pseudonym everywhere on the blogosphere since 2008. It's always been the same pseudonym, so when you see it, you know it's me. Judging by some of your remarks on the Internet, Willis, you'd be well-advised to be more circumspect yourself; no, I don't want to know where you live. And I'll gladly agree that anyone can ignore both of us without remorse or error, but I'm not the source of any facts I've cited. I'm no more a climate-science expert than you are (desmog.com/willis-eschenbach; skepticalscience.com/peerreviewedskeptics.php?s=166), after all. Do you not realize your own scientific claims have all been dealt with by genuine experts long since (skepticalscience.com/argument.php)? You apparently lack the scientific metaliteracy (h/t J. Nielsen-Gammon) to recognize you've been discredited by the the scientists that count in this context, namely the peer community of trained, disciplined, publishing climate specialists.
Anyway, "denier" is a well-understood word in the English language (dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/denier) :
[BEGIN QUOTE]
Meaning of denier in English
denier
noun [ C ]
US /dɪˈnaɪ.ɚ/ UK /dɪˈnaɪ.ər/
denier noun [C] (PERSON)
a person who says that something did not happen or that a situation does not exist, especially something that most people agree did happen or does exist:
- climate change denier "He has compared climate change deniers to people who denied the link between HIV and Aids."
- Holocaust denier "There are plenty of Holocaust deniers out there."
[END QUOTE]
Note that a denier always, implicitly or explicitly, denies a specific event or situation. I didn't use the term 'denier' in my previous comment, however, but "denialist", specifically "science-denialist". Perhaps I should have said "scientific-consensus-denialist". "Denialist" can be a synonym for "denier", but I mean by it an active practitioner, who willfully propagates climate-science denial in the public sphere. The difference is that those who keep it to themselves aren't subject to being labelled. Note that one can acknowledge that the globe is warming and humans are responsible, but effectively deny that the consequences in grief and expense are already being felt, and disproportionately by people who've contributed least to the problem.
Nor am I erecting a straw science-denialist, but referring to Brulle's "Climate Change Counter Movement": 91 "non-profit" organizations of skilled professional disinformers such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, who he found to receive over $900 million annually in funding from 140 foundations including Koch and Scaife affiliates, along with "Dunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking". The goal of these foundations is to preserve fossil-fuel profit streams, by funding public disinformation campaigns intended to delay decarbonization of the US and global economies as long as possible; the goal of the think-tanks, institutes, etc. is to sell their skillfully-crafted, bespoke deceptions to the highest bidder. "Denier" and "denialist", when preceded by "climate-science", are indeed valuable terms to identify these cynically self-interested parties specifically. Perhaps the most telling testimony is by Jerry Taylor, a former VP of the Cato Institute who changed his mind (theintercept.com/2017/04/28/how-a-professional-climate-change-denier-discovered-the-lies-and-decided-to-fight-for-science). Citing his Libertarian buddy Jonathan Adler, then at the Competitive Enterprise Institute:
"Jon wrote a very interesting paper in which he argued that even if the skeptic narratives are correct, the old narratives I was telling [weren’t] an argument against climate action. Just because the costs and the benefits are more or less going to be a wash, Jon said, that doesn’t mean that the losers in climate change are just going to have to suck it up so Exxon and Koch Industries can make a good chunk of money."
IMHO, that's far more convincing than any glibertarian denialism issuing from a CCCM stink-tank.
If as you falsely claim my ideas are "discredited by the the scientists that count", then why do I have papers in the scientific journals with over 200 citations to date? Why did the editors of Nature decide to publish my peer-reviewed "Brief Communications Arising"? Clearly they didn't suffer from your delusions.
And anyone who approving quotes desmogblog as if they were anything but totally biased simply isn't following the story.
w.
Mal, please specify exactly what it is that you think I "deny", and exactly how you distinguish that from what I disagree with for valid scientific reasons.
I'll wait … but remember that if you can't specify both of those, or if you dodge or don't answer, people will know you're just calling names and making ad hominem attacks.
w.
Yes, the 1% of humanity in the political and industrial elite who are responsible for about 25% of emissions (some of them flying in private jets going to climate conferences!) could personally significantly change things overnight. But i also see a lot of propaganda about climate emergency being targeted to middle class consumer base in the West that protects big oil and big animal ag. It falls on fertile ground because of the normal human trait of not wanting to give up things that we've become accustomed to think of as our right. This is coupled with the worst of climate change being far away in the global south (though more flooding now here in the UK).
The influence of big industry PR is not only massive, it's very clever at misleading and very good at what it does.
As has been alluded to by some commenters, the use of crisis language can lead to added skepticism by those who are skeptical in the first place. Here is a recent, detailed article by Pew Research Center that explores this issue in detail, https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/08/09/why-some-americans-do-not-see-urgency-on-climate-change/
The subtitle reads, "In-depth interviews find some Americans consider crisis language overblown, leading to added skepticism of claims"
Another interesting subheading:
"Climate scientists are valued for their expertise, but also seen as potentially having an agenda; media outlets are not trusted sources of climate information"
It also contains the latest polling of Americans on global warming:
No solid evidence 14%
Mostly due to natural patterns: 26%
Mostly due to human activity: 46%
Not sure:14%
I’m one of those skeptics. Not of the basic science behind climate change, but in the ability of governments to respond in an effective, rational, and fair manner.
From the war on terror, to the financial crisis, to COVID, every societal emergency of the last 20 years has been characterized by; the upwards redistribution of wealth (no-bid contracts, bailouts), violations of civil liberties, targeting of disfavored groups by law enforcement and intelligence, and the imposition of ineffective/actively harmful measures based on the recommendations of “experts” (torture, lockdowns, etc), and the removal of whole categories of public policy from the democratic process.
I have no problem taking collective action to mitigate the risks of climate change, but I don’t trust that any of the relevant authorities won’t abuse an emergency declaration to enrich themselves and steamroll anyone who gets in their way.
Don't know if anyone's still following this discussion, but I largely agree with you. Distrust of politicians to undertake collective action on our behalf, is perhaps the best reason to support a US National Carbon Fee and Dividend with Border Adjustment Tariff (citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend). Not only do economists recommend direct carbon pricing over incentives or command-and-control measures generally, but CF&D is revenue-neutral: under Citizen's Climate Lobby's proposal, 100% of revenues are periodically returned to every US taxpayer as a dividend, and the whole process can be watchdogged by anyone who cares to. The money stays in consumer hands (with a slight income transfer downward, since everyone gets the same-size dividend) and available to capitalists through conventional sources, with the carbon price driving the energy market to decarbonize the US and global economies. It's like the "visible hand" of collective intervention, nudging the "invisible hand" of the otherwise-'free' market. Gotta love metaphor.
Sadly, even if any politician supports carbon fees and tariffs, AFAICT few voters will.
I have been on a personal soapbox about the lack of coverage and attention given by the MSM and climate scientists to the National Academies latest plan to get the U.S. to net-zero by 2050. The Washington Post did not highlight the release of this fairly significant work and its overall impact and importance. They chose instead to run with more sensational and controversial articles like the one above as well as highlighting a single controversial recommendation about banning new gas lines, https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/10/18/gas-lines-decarbonization-climate/ .
It used to matter what the National Academies had to say about challenges facing this country. I believe they were viewed as somewhat neutral and unbiased. Maybe that is no longer true but we at least should make the effort to let the general public know that these studies exist and summarize what they say.
I don't particularly care what word is used. There is always the problem that the word that motivates one person to favor optimum policies may discourage someone else.
Personally I prefer to think of having the opportunity to execute policies to improve the long run future of our planet and our descendants, policies that become more costly the longer we wait before executing them.
It's also good to acknowledge that the costs of climate change that we will continue to experience for decades to come will, unfortunately, be little reduced by even the best abatement policies going forward. There are ameliorative/adaptive polices that we should take in parallel with abatement polices.
The challenge with the "emergency" framing, imho, is that the effort needed to decarbonise our economy and adapt to climate change, whilst very urgent, will be expended over decades. A state of emergency can't be sustained over years and years. I say that as someone dedicating all their professional time and effort to the climate transition. Also, excessive use of "catastrophe" language, from what I've seen, leads more to anxiety and despair than agency and active optimism. Yes, the next century will have some serious climate related challenges. But it will continue to have a lot of beauty and joy and meaning.
Should have been an emergency 3 decades back, as a direct consequence of the people holding the highest Offices of trust and responsibility - the ones with duties of care - responding appropriately to the science based expert advice. Those Offices have access to a range of experts to help them understand it as well as assure them of veracity, far beyond what us ordinary folk have.
Tossing an issue of such profound significance to the future prosperity and security of their nations to the shark pool of Public Opinion and allowing - encouraging - doubt in it's veracity and making everything about it contestable seems as inappropriately irresponsible of a President or Prime Minister as handing the issue, podium and microphone to environmentalists and fringe politics, then making their policies all about opposing THEM.
Doubt, Deny, Delay politicking appears utterly amoral, with no redeeming features. That it seeks to blame what climate activism gets wrong for their rejecting everything climate science gets right - squaring the circle so that even their own denial and obstruction is blamed on unreasoning and unreasonable green-left politics - just confirms how bereft of ethics.
I'm not impressed by your latest article. Over the last 12,000 years, human ingenuity has allow us to not just survive but to grow, with longer and better lives. All of the adverse impacts of climate change can be managed in various ways, with cold becoming less of a killer as the planet warms and with technology such as seawater desalination able to provide as much freshwater as the world needs. Add to this optimism the realisation that global human population numbers will hit their peace in about 30 years, after which there will be rapid and profound falls in the number of people in most countries convinces me that, in 100 years' time, people will equate today's claims of climate catastrophe with our worries about the Year 2000 bug.
We got through the "Year 2000 bug" problem by dealing with it not by denying it.
The story of life on Earth is that life comes and goes. Homo sapiens has grossly interfered with his evolution and "ingenuity" - as displayed in society by (eg) scientists - is overwhelmed by growing incredulity.
Best wishes, D
In 100 years time, billions will have starved to death. You've truly got no clue how complex and interconnected our planet is.
Absolutely not true. You are repeating the mistakes of Paul Erhlick which, 50+ years ago, predicted global famine etc and he was proven totally wrong because he dismissed human inventiveness, intelligence and ingenuity. In 100 years time, global population will be much smaller than today as technology, wealth, education and personal freedom allow women to choose to have fewer children, acceleration what we are already seeing in China, Japan,Italy, Russia and a number of other countries where birthrates are below 2.1.
None of this matters in the face of ecological collapse. Food shortages are already a reality right now. Plus, an unstable climate wreaks havoc on crop yields, and water is getting more scarce. You’re massively underselling the enormity of the problems that are a reality right now. You can’t “ingenuity” your way out of a depleted aquifer. Inventiveness won’t bring back pollinator species.
There is no ecological collapse, just change. Where exactly are the food shortages please? Water is not getting more scarce but freshwater resources are being over-utilised, so seawater desalination plants need to be built to meet human needs. Where are we losing pollinator species please? The claim from German researchers of a massive drop in the number of insects in their research areas has been shown to be an artifact of sloppy research.
Oh you're one of those huh. "Just build more desalination plants!" Foolishness. You think you can desalinate water and move it safely across hundreds and hundreds of miles reliably and efficiently? Maybe on a small scale, but this is not a viable solution to widespread water insecurity. I'd be happy to see proof to the contrary.
Your skepticism of anything I say suggests you're really not interested in a discussion but just in repeating your blinkered view of the world. You clearly see the glass as half empty and give no credit to the huge improvement in the human condition over the last 250 years, including reduced global population growth that is quickly leading to a less populated world by 2050 or 2060 which will ultimately lead to fewer pressures on the natural environment. Your negativity must cause you many personal problems so I'll sign off by wishing you well and hope you open your eyes and your mind sooner rather than later.
Bernie,
1. Do you believe there have been any homes, livelihoods or lives lost to anthropogenic global warming to date, that would not have been lost if there were no warming?
2. Do you believe that without collective (i.e. government) efforts to reduce aggregate fossil carbon emissions to zero, weather extremes will grow ever more extreme as global mean surface temperature rapidly and inexorably rises (currently at a rate of 0.21 °C/decade)?
If you answer 'no' to either question, you should think about it some more.
I fear you're missing the point. The houses lost to floods over recent years in the eastern states have mostly been built in flood plains of rivers - yes, the flooding waters may have been a result of climate change but why were houses built in flood plains in the first place and why did government not build adequate defenses against rising flood waters? Yes, lost of houses (and lives) have been lost to bushfires made worse by climate change but successive Royal Commissions have said that fuel reduction via prescribed burns is the primary action needed to protect life and limb, but governments have been negligent by not reducing fuel loads. Yes, weather extremes will worsen because governments will not sacrifice human well-being and economic growth especially in developing countries, so we'd better get used to higher temperatures and higher atmospheric CO2 levels and act accordingly - remove houses from flood plains and coastal shorelines and remove fuel loads using prescribed burns. We in Australia know what to do (and one thing we shouldn't waste our money on is net zero because our 1.3% of global CO2 emissions are irrelevant!) so governments and individuals simply need to do what needs to be done to adapt to a changing world.
I'm glad then that the Anzacs did not send troops overseas during WW2 because what was happening in Europe was none of our business, and anyway, we were too small to make any difference to that problem anyway.
Rather leadership prevailed and your life along with mine has been immeasurably better because of the leadership and sacrifice of those generations before us.
I for one, do not wish future generations to curse the selfishness of my peers.
You criticise me for not being a supporter of net zero and decarbonisation of the global economy. Pity you didn't ask me what I do support which includes:
* spending our limited Aussie funds on R&D and commercialisation of the technologies which the whole world needs to decarbonise
* as per Bjorn Lomborg's views, since China and India and most developing countries will not even try to achieve net zero much before 2050, best if we assist the developing world to adapt to climate change while growing their economies so that they can improve quality of life and standards of living for their several billion citizens, giving them the economic ability to adapt and grow.
I'm glad you mentioned the ANZACS as I view Australia's current devotion to net zero as the same blind obedience our military showed at Gallipoli for what was pretty much a waste of time and almost totally unsuccessful.
PEAK, not peace! Sorry.
Hi Andrew -- as always I appreciate your writing on a broad range of topics at Climate Brink. I've been working on an invited article about the dangers in climate emergency thinking that I will share when forthcoming/published. This is also the topic of the topic I gave at CU-Boulder last week with the video of the talk online likely next week -- so will flag you when up.
PS the best scholarly work and argument against climate emergency declarations and thinking is Mike Hulme's most recent book -- which is outstanding: Climate Change Isn't Everything. See his discussion with Andy Revkin as a preview: https://www.youtube.com/live/uK_Hwor_xhw?si=fvJ4mQSoEdtvCbnR
Thanks for your comments, Matthew. Just to be clear, I am not arguing for a declaration (or against it), my piece is more about what I personally think (as a citizen) about climate change. It is an emergency and should be at the top of our collective priority list. Please do ping me when the video of your talk is online.
I understood that -- apologies for not making that clear. Will definitely ping you.
I think it's important to recognise that you can't really make any statistically significant causal claims about climate emergency thinking until you have a sample of climate emergency thinkings that is large enough for a trend to emerge. ;-)
Ken: Yes excellent point and completely agree. A few studies I am working on operationalize, measure, and track forms and trends related to climate emergency thinking. But Mike Hulme's book is the place to start conceptually as he maps out and defines the various elements of "climatism" as an emerging, spreading "thick" ideology pulling together scholarship from multiple fields etc.
Not sure, but I thing Ken's comment was a joke. Waiting until we have a sample of climate disasters sufficiently large for a trend means waiting so long we won't be able to do anything about it. Am I misunderstanding you, Ken?
Hi Ken,
I don't remember seeing you comment here before.
Cheers,
Dean
I think Ken is auditioning to be the blog’s “honest broker”
Ouch!
These actuaries agree:
https://actuaries.org.uk/media/g1qevrfa/climate-scorpion.pdf
Wally Broecker himself was unstinting in his description of the future, while speaking to an audience at Columbia University in 2012:
https://bwog.com/2012/11/lecturehop-apocalypse-now-a-conversation-with-wallace-broecker/
Last chance dance. Biden should absolutely declare an emergency, but old school militarism and hegemony is at work. Why do you think he approved Willow? Competition for its resources as the Arctic becomes ice free. Plenty of logical explanation and backing documentation here, military sourced.
https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/massive-alaska-willow-drilling-project
This is a dishonest framing. The terms 'climate emergency' or 'climate crisis' - popularised by a change in the Guardian editorial style guide in 2019 - are not justified with reference to a far off future hellscape, which you claim is an inevitable result of 'the science', they are justified supposedly by observed 'alarming' and unexpected increases in the severity and frequency of extreme weather and most recently by an alleged 'acceleration' in global warming (the era of global boiling) - which were NOT predicted by climate scientists years ago. This is why so called 'deniers' demand to see the scientific receipts on the alleged 'happening now' climate emergency - and the receipts are not there.
When deaths start mounting and vicious cycles are spinning out of control, we have to call the present climate situation an emergency. However, given the urgency of this emergency this comment is about moving to the next stage of climate actions in order to prevent worst case scenarios.
What few people understand is that the present course of developments would lead, in the coming decades, to rapidly increasing climate-related deaths and hundreds of millions of climate refugees attempting to get into the wealthier and less affected countries; there would most likely be major outbreaks of violence – it would be like a never-ending world war; we must respond accordingly, governments must enact radical changes now.
We must work together, present feasible comprehensive proposals, and create a cohesive movement that promotes plans for decisive actions, planning to halt and start reversing global warming within years In https://humanecivilization.org/climate-emergency/ I attempt to describe a feasible model of a sustainable future and a pathway to its rapid realization.
Specific plans are also published by Project Drawdown (drawdown.org) and by other organizations.
Carbon neutrality by 2050 is far too late for the poor, most affected areas. Only a dramatic decrease in atmospheric CO2 will halt the worsening of weather catastrophes – carbon neutrality only slows the worsening of climates. Governments must be compelled to treat global warming as the worst crisis in human history and act more decisively than during WWII - then fear led our government to halt all civilian production and industries were mandated to work on government defense contracts.
We consider the following to be first priorities
More people must learn how terrifying and cruel present plans and proposals are:
Present approaches, “business-as-usual-with-incentives” would lead to weather catastrophes becoming more frequent and much more deadly for decades. Compounding vicious cycles will keep speeding up global warming. As many densely populated areas become unlivable, there would be unimaginable suffering, ‘adaptation’ would in most areas not be possible. There would also be a dramatic decrease in biodiversity.
But people must also learn about feasible, highly effective alternate paths for our future:
We, our government, must halt waste and consumerism and save energy and resources in every way possible. We need ultra-light electric vehicles and trains, not Teslas and planes; wood and bamboo, in place of concrete and steel; cooling white paint, not more air conditioning; trees, not cattle; etc.
Government-funded public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises (PPPNE) are needed to restructure industries and land management. Governments must restrict bank lending to curb consumerism, inflation, and all the serious emotional problems caused by indebtedness. Governments must issue guaranteed incomes and create comprehensive safety nets.
Most people sense that we will be healthier and happier with much less consumerism, living more simply with more interpersonal connectedness.
Heinz Aeschbach, MD, president of Humane Civilization Worldwide, humanecivilization.org
Andrew, you are TOTALLY misrepresenting what the IPCC says. In Table 12.12 of Chapter 12, WGI, the IPCC states that there is NO signal of global warming visible in:
Frost
Mean precipitation
River flood
Heavy precipitation
Pluvial flood
Aridity
Hydrological drought
Agricultural drought
Ecological drought
Fire weather
Mean wind speed
Severe wind storm
Tropical cyclone
Sandstorm
Dust storm
Snow, glacier, and ice sheet
Heavy snowfall and ice storm
Hail
Snow avalanche
Relative sea level
Coastal flood
Coastal erosion
Marine heatwave
Ocean acidity
Air pollution weather
Radiation at surface.
NONE OF THOSE show any sign of being affected by global warming, much less any bogus "emergency".
In other words, to misquote Mark Twain, "The claims of the death of the climate have been greatly exaggerated".
I cover all of this and more in my post
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/25/wheres-the-emergency/
So you are free to continue to hyperventilate and scream "THE SKY IS FALLING! EVERYONE PANIC!"
And we're free to point out that you are totally misrepresenting both the facts and the IPCC's conclusions, both of which show that there is no climate emergency.
My best to all,
w.
Still waiting for Andrew or anyone to acknowledge the truth, that the IPCC scientists aren't buying Andrew's hysteria …
w.
Willard: did you even read the piece? It starts 'The term “emergency” is not a scientific one. There is no laboratory test or scientific calculation that will yield the result that climate change is an “emergency” or “catastrophe” or any similar word. Rather, the decision whether it’s an emergency is a mix of the scientific evidence combined with personal judgment.' Thus, your argument that the "IPCC science doesn't support it" means you simply didn't understand my argument. Overall, your comments are so dumb that I'm going to block you unless the comments improve. So be warned: your next comment may be your last.
Andrew, I gave you a list of where the IPCC says not only is there no emergency however you define it, there is no sign of any global warming signal. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada.
The list covers storms, tornadoes, cyclones, floods, droughts, sea level rise, and lots more, almost every phenomenon except the warming itself. See my comment above, and the underlying IPCC Table 12.12.
I fail to see how this is "dumb". I get that you don't like it. Why should you? It's a list of IPCC-backed scientific facts that contradict your claim of an emergency. But that's how science works.
Your argument seems to be "I don't care what the IPCC says, I, Andrew Dressler, think it is an emergency".
Which is fine, and as you point out, you're free to say an emergency exists.
However, since I've pointed out all the phenomena where the IPCC says not only no emergency but no sign of global warming affecting the phenomenon at all, perhaps you'd be so kind as to point out exactly which phenomena constitute your emergency?
As to your warning of censorship if I don't fall in line, I'm not surprised that you don't want to hear any disagreement, particularly scientific disagreement backed by the IPCC.
And sadly, I'm also not surprised that your go-to response is to threaten to censor my views. It is a response that is far too common among mainstream climate scientists when their holy writ is questioned.
In closing, you say "Rather, the decision whether it’s an emergency is a mix of the scientific evidence combined with personal judgment."
So, if you'd like to back up your "emergency" claim with the scientific evidence you allude to above, that would be great.
For example, you state flatly that it was predicted that our actions "would result in sea-level rise, ocean acidification, and more frequent extreme weather events, such as heat waves and extreme precipitation. We now have enough data that we can see these predictions coming true."
But as I just pointed out, the IPCC itself says that those predictions are NOT coming true, that in fact despite half a century of warnings such as yours there's no sign of changes in most of those things.
So … what do you know that the IPCC folks don't know?
I'll refer you again to the following compendium of scientific evidence backing up the IPCC's claims. I've posted this all over the web. Nobody has found one untruth in it to date. Here's why the claims of an "emergency" are simply not borne out by the facts.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/25/wheres-the-emergency/
My best to you and yours,
w.
I really don't understand why you cannot figure this out: I look at the evidence out there (e.g., more extreme temperatures, more extreme precip events, sea level rise, ocean acidification) and conclude "this is an emergency". Someone else, perhaps someone who's spent the last 20 years trying to downplay the risk of climate and doesn't want to admit they're wrong, will say "that's not an emergency." Your conclusion is based on your values.
Thanks for your reply, Andrew. You say there are "more extreme precip events, sea level rise, ocean acidification".
The IPCC, in Table 12.12, AR6, WGI, says there is NO sign of global warming affecting sea level rise. None. Here's the table.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ajhl5by10f3lad7c8c1es/ipcc-table-12.12-CIDs-drivers.png?rlkey=f5ufqbxdbhai4a4n8yfg4jp5u&dl=0
Or you can see it in context at the link below:
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Chapter12.pdf
It also says there is NO sign of global warming affecting extreme precipitation.
And it says there is NO sign of global warming affecting the alkalinity of the ocean (so-called "acidification").
And my own exhaustive list of scientific data in my post bear this out.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/25/wheres-the-emergency/
So perhaps you can understand my perplexity. Just where is this "emergency" you speak of?
And are you claiming that the IPCC is wrong? Because they sure don't agree with you. Where you say "global warming emergency", they say "no scientific evidence of that".
My best to you and yours,
w.
Let me just say your reading of the IPCC report is wrong. Also, it's very very irritating that you're still trying to argue scientific facts for a value judgment — that's the entire point of this post. This argument is over. Walk away. If you respond, you're banned.