What is happening to Earth’s climate needs attention NOW!
Two charts recently from the BBC News.
The 10 years to the end of 2019 have been confirmed as the warmest decade on record by three global agencies.
According to Nasa, Noaa and the UK Met Office, last year was the second warmest in a record dating back to 1850. The past five years were the hottest in the 170-year series, with the average of each one more than 1C warmer than pre-industrial.
The Met Office says that 2020 is likely to continue this warming trend.2016 remains the warmest year on record, when temperatures were boosted by the El Niño weather phenomenon.
This is the reality.
It affects every part of the world and it affects everyone. BUT! We, as in you and me, and everyone else, still haven’t got it.
The recent COP26 was progress and, especially, the next convention being held in a year’s time is important. But it is a long way from where we need to be. A very long way.
Patrice Ayme is someone that I follow and there have been times when I have gladly republished his posts. With his permission I should add.
Recently he published a post called Cataclysmic Seven Degree Centigrade Rise and I wanted to share it with you. Here is is:
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CATACLYSMIC SEVEN DEGREES CENTIGRADE RISE
Abstract: Expected rise of temperature in mountains correspond to a seven degree C rise. This informs global heating: in the long run, it will also be 7C. Large systems (Antarctica, Greenland) have greater thermal inertia, so their temperatures rise slower… But they will rise as much. In other words the so-called “forcing” by man-made greenhouse gases (which corresponds to 600 ppm of CO2) is universal, but the smaller the system, the faster the temperature rise…
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Geographical systems with little thermal inertia (mountain glaciers) show an accelerated rate of heating of these parts which is only compatible with a seven (7) degrees rise in Celsius by 2100… A rise the IPCC of the UN considers impossible… But INERTIA says that it IS happening. The first thing this implies is that most forests will burn… worldwide. Then the ice shelves in Antarctica will follow.
TEMPS RISING ULTRA FAST IN MOUNTAINS
Anybody familiar with mountains worldwide know that temperatures are rising extremely fast: large glaciers I used to know have completely disappeared.. As in Chacaltaya, Bolivia. Or Portage, Alaska. The closest glacier to an Alpine village I went to as a child has been replaced by a larch forest (melezes)… One reason for this is that mountains are smaller in frozen mass than immense ensembles like Greenland and Antarctica. Moreover, the mountains’ permafrost is not as cold.
From 1984 to 2017, the upper reaches of the fires in the Sierra Nevada of California rose more than 1,400 feet. Now the temperature in the lower atmosphere decreases by 7C every 1,000 meters. There are many potential factors to explain why fires go higher (although some contradict each other). To avoid paralysis by analysis, I will assume the rise in fires is all due to temperature rise. So what we have here is a 2.5C rise in 33 years.
….FROM SMALLER THERMAL INERTIA:
Mountain thermal capacity is accordingly reduced relative to those of Greenland and Antarctica. The proportionality factors are gigantic. Say the permafrost of a mountain range is of the order of 10^4 square kilometers, at a depth of one kilometer (typical of the Sierra Nevada of California or the Alps at a temp of -3C. By comparison, Antarctica is 14x 10^6 sq km at a depth of 4 kilometers of permafrost at a temp of -30C. Thinking in greater depth reveals the proportions to be even greater: individual mountains are of the order of square kilometers. This means that (using massively simplified lower bounds), Antarctica has a mass of cold which is at least 4 orders of magnitude higher than a mountain range: to bring Antarctica to seriously melt, as mountain ranges are right now, would require at least 10,000, ten thousand times, as much heat (or maybe even a million, or more, when considering individual mountains).
As it is, mountains are exposed to a heat bath which makes their permafrost unsustainable. From their small thermal inertia, mountains warm up quickly. Greenland and Antarctica, overall, are exposed to the same bath, the same “forcing”, but because they are gigantic and gigantically cold, they resist more: they warm up, but much slower (moreover as warmer air carries more snow, it snows more while Antarctica warms up).
I have looked, in details at glaciologists records, from the US to Europe… Everywhere glaciologists say the same thing: expect a rise of the permafrost line of 1,000 meters… That corresponds to a SEVEN DEGREE CENTIGRADE RISE. Basically, while glaciers were found down to 2,500 meters in the Alps (some can still be seen in caves)… Expect that, in a few decades, none will occur below 3,500 meters… Thus speak the specialists, the glaciologists…
What is happening then, when most climate scientists speak of holding the 1.5 C line (obviously completely impossible, even if humanity stopped emitting CO2 immediately)???… Or when they admit that we are on a 2.7C future in 2100? Well, those scientists have been captured by the establishment… They say what ensure their prosperous careers… At a global rise of 2.7 C, we get a migration of the permafrost line of around 500 kilometers towards the poles… Catastrophic, yes, but still, Antarctica will not obviously start to melt, big time.
At 7C, the melting of the surrounding of Antarctica, including destabilization of West Antarctica, and the Aurora and Wilkes Basin can’t be avoided… They hold around 25 meters of sea level rise….
If it came to light that a seven degree centigrade rise is a real possibility, authorities would turn around and really do some things, which may destabilize the worldwide plutocratic establishment: carbon tariffs are an obvious example. Carbon tariffs could be imposed next week… and they would have a big impact of the CO2 production. So why are carbon tariffs not imposed? Carbon tariffs would destabilize the deindustrialization gravy train: by employing who are basically slaves in poor countries, plutocrats make themselves ever wealthier, while making sure there would be no insurrection at home… A trick already used in imperial Rome, by the Senatorial aristocracy/plutocracy. That would be highly effective… By the way, without saying so, of course, and maybe even unwittingly, this is basically what Trump had started to do…
The devil has these ways which the commons do not possess…
That would stop the crafty, dissembling nonsense that countries such as France are at 4.6 tons per capita of CO2 emissions per year… That’s only true when all the CO2 emitted to produce the goods the French need is NOT counted.. including deforestation in Brazil to grow soybean. With them counted, one gets to 11 tons or so, more than double… The wonderful graph of CO2 emissions collapsing in Europe is the same graph as collapsing industrial production…
The devil has these ways the commons have not even detected…
Carbon tariffs would be a way to solve two wrongs in one shot: the wrong of deindustrialization, of corrupt pseudo-leaders not putting the most advanced countries, their own countries, first… And the wrong of producing too much CO2.
Little fixes will go a long way, as long as they incorporate hefty financing fundamentally researching new energy (it does not really matter which type, as long as it is fundamental…)
Patrice Ayme
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Now this isn’t some academic treatise that doesn’t affect the likes of you and me. This is, as I have said, the harsh reality of NOW!
Here’s a photo of me and Jeannie together with Andy and Trish taken in March, 2018. On the edge of Crater Lake.
Then this is a stock photograph of Crater Lake taken in March, 2020.
Not a great deal of difference but the trees in the photo above aren’t encased in snow as is the tree in the 2018 photo.
Now there is important news to bring you from COP 26. On Sunday Boris Johnson said:
Scientists say this would limit the worst impacts of climate change.
During a Downing Street news conference, Mr Johnson said:
- “We can lobby, we can cajole, we can encourage, but we cannot force sovereign nations to do what they do not wish to do”
- “For all our disagreements, the world is undeniably heading in the right direction”
- The “tipping point has been reached in people’s attitudes” – with leaders “galvanised and propelled by their electorates”
- But “the fatal mistake now would be to think that we in any way cracked this thing”
Mr Johnson said that despite the achievements of the summit, his reaction was “tinged with disappointment”.
He said there had been a high level of ambition – especially from countries where climate change was already “a matter of life and death”.
And “while many of us were willing to go there, that wasn’t true of everybody”, he admitted. But he added the UK could not compel nations to act. “It’s ultimately their decision to make and they must stand by it.”
That point about attitudes is interesting. Who would have thought, say, five years ago, that attitudes had changed so dramatically by late-2021.
One hopes that we will come to our collective senses but I can’t see the CO2 index being returned to its normal range without machines taking the excessive CO2 out of the atmosphere. Because, as was quoted on The Conversation nearly a year ago:
On Wednesday this week, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was measured at at 415 parts per million (ppm). The level is the highest in human history, and is growing each year.
Finally, my daughter, Maija, and my son-in-law, Marius, had a child some ten years ago. He is my grandson and I left England before he was born. He is Morten and he is a bright young spark.
Morten and all the hundreds of thousands of young persons like him are going to have to deal with the world as they find it!
Learning from Dogs 
Thanks for republishing me, Paul. I view this sort of essays as public service, as I am sure you do. People do not realize how much inertia there is in the system. Civilization cannot change primary energy quickly, especially as energy usage is nearly zero in more than half of the planet, and so-called “renewables” cannot provide, or be deployed quickly. Even California, which is in the best position to do, having everything (mountains for dams, solar, wind, and income to build those up, etc.) had to revert to massive fossil fuels recently.
So we need much more research!
Patrice
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I agree wholeheartedly. But I am also bound to say that as well as the research carbon pricing or tariffs could be instigated very quickly. I don’t know enough about the US Constitution to say whether carbon tariffs would require being carried by Congress and the Senate but I suspect that it would not be required. Even a small tariff would be a great leap forward!
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That is an excellent point, Paul! It is so true the Biden team proposed to establish CARBON TARIFFS, at some point, a couple of weeks ago, in cooperation with the European Union. The US president does not need any Congress to establish tariffs, up to 50%!Here is an extract from the Congressional Research Office:
Timeline of Changes to Presidential Trade
Agreement Proclamation Authorities
1934 Section 350(a) of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act
of 1934 authorized the President to negotiate bilateral,
reciprocal trade agreements and proclaim changes to
U.S. tariff rates of up to 50% of existing rates without
further congressional action. Renewed 11 times.
1962 Section 201 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, like
the RTAA, authorized the President to enter into trade
agreements and proclaim changes to U.S. tariff rates of
up to 50% of existing rates. Additionally, Section 201
placed no limits on presidential reductions in tariff
rates that were already less than 5%.
Sounding like something I said many times, long ago, the anti-CO2 campaign, so far, Great Thunberg said COP 26 was just “blah blah blah”. So COP 26 raised the sound level, even daring to name “fossil fuels” by their names… for the first time! Everybody is supposed to reconvene within a year…
The problem remains though, that we have NO replacement for fossil fuels at this point, meaning this decade. Even California, ideal place for so-called “renewables” is NOT on track to replace fossil fuels 100%. This situation is masked by displacing high energy manufacturing to countries like China… And that would be revealed better by imposing CARBON TARIFFS. Biden could do this today. Even 1% would be plenty enough, because it would send a message.
Instead the message is the opposite: we can emit 50% of our CO2 emissions to China… and that’s so good, no tariffs!
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To put it all into context, last night we watched a stupendously interesting programme about the Universe. Our Universe, known as the Milky Way, contains 200 billion stars. In the tremendous spiral universe, the Milky Way has a small point of light along one of the spiral arms. Our Sun. When we look out at the night sky we are looking at light that has been journeying for thousands of years.
Then the next Universe is some 200 million light-years away from the Milky Way. That is a distance that is beyond comprehension. Light travels a distance of some 3000 miles every second. Our animations here and now about this and that are really nothing compared to the bigger picture.
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I think the point about the scientists being captured by the establishment is a good one. There is a growing number of people, fuelled by social media predominantly, who believe it is all a hoax, they are bored with listening to experts and have their own views on the subject. Because something is important enough to be on our televisions each day doesnt mean you have to switch off. Large swathes of people would rather listen to what happened to pop stars and their fortunes tucked away with relatives, than something which will affect our (not mine because I am a dog) grandchildren, great grandchildren and beyond. The familiar cry of “they will adapt and survive, humanity will solve it and live with the rise in temperatures” becomes louder with each added “expert” willing to give us their ten cents. People see their “leaders” attend summits and conferences by flying about in planes, huge gas guzzling entourages, and they think to themselves “surely this is all adding to the problem so why should I do anything?” Our beloved leader arrived by plane in Glasgow, swanned into an air conditioned conference centre, produced more hot air than a field of cows produce methane and then jumped back in his private plane for the short hop down to London. Do as I say and not as I do.
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I sense your anger at our collective leaders, for the semi-hidden movers and shakers that really pull the strings of those supposedly in charge. Of course they in turn are bound to the controllers of the financial markets, and on and on it goes. We need a new form of democracy where the young, say 14 years old and upwards to the present lower limit of 18, are given the power to chose and we old guys, say 70 and above, are put out to grass, electorally speaking. Because the young are very, very angry. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a new political movement arise that is the product of millions of young people across the world that would demand and get real change.
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Each time one of the leaders says something, we all know its lies, subterfuge and nonsense. The leaders seem to have forgotten that here appears to be a significant disconnect between them and the majority of younger people around the world. And these younger people are those who will vote once our leaders are gone. In the majority the younger generations wont be voting for those who currently seek to rule. The information dissemination through the internet gives future voters a different perspective to the piffle and nonsense that we are fed through the medium of tv and radio.
There seem to be no leaders who are either honest or brave enough to actually look to 30 or 40 years in the future and see what it will be like, beyond the restrictions of the monetary handcuffs placed upon them by their pay masters. Its like this young lady Greta. Whether one agrees or disagrees with her, she seems to have done more to bring the issues surrounding global warming to the attention of the younger people than any current leader or their cohorts could ever try to. The media who support those who lead all seek to rubbish and pillory anyone who doesnt agree with their blinkered view of the world.
I may be somewhat upset.
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Dear Paul:
I don’t think it’s about age. It is about mentality. The young can, and all too often, is, mentally contaminated, by the powers that be. Biden started to conduct a youth-applauded policy… Politicians often do plenty of polling. Guess what? Turns out it is an increasing mess. Worse, for Biden, what happened to Putin may happen to him. In Russia, many “youth” are making a U turn, and ideas, and their great leader, Putin, which were a must a few years ago are now viewed with disfavor… Youth is turning spectacularly against Putin in Russia… after being very much for him a long time… (But now he has a security apparatus in place…)
We cannot say, out with the 70+. Then why not out with the 50+? Nazism, when it came to power in 1933, was pretty much an out with the 50+ movement. All the Nazis in power were young.
What we need to do is talk thoroughly with vested interest. Why should I keep on giving money to the Sierra Club, as they make money from the closing of the last nuclear power plant in California, and the Sierra is dying? Yes, you read that right, complicated contracts have rendered phasing out nuclear in California a source of… profit. So an actor as the Sierra Club and other “charities” PROFIT from that…
Amusingly, if one goes back 50 years, youth were very angry, at least in Europe, against nuclear… Since then, according to the UN, and evidence, fossil fuels have killed (yes, killed) several hundred million people (at least 200, maybe more). Many youth are still angry against nuclear… Not knowing, AT ALL, that’s fossil fuel propaganda…
So youth have to be angry correctly. Are they? Just riling against fossil fuels is not enough, it’s self immolation. What youth should ask for, to be correct on climate, is to ask for much more research. Biden was supposed to add ten billion in research… That was finally reduced to less than a billion… nothing. But there are subsidies for his investor friends…
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You are right, Patrice, of course.
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Thanks Rescuedogdexter, for your appreciation and contribution, and my Rescuedogtazan, thanks you too.
The IPCC, in its latest estimate, recognizes that warming by 2100 could be up to 5C (around 10F)… But then add that’s very unlikely… But then forget to remind us that they ignore many feedback loops that they recognize potentially exist, or even certainly exist… But they refuse to use them in computation as they claim they can’t be made precisely…
Now this “precision” attitude is incoherent, because the IPCC, and most governments (especially now China), integrate in their climate “scenarios” the existence of CC (Carbon Capture)…
HOWEVER, economically viable CC does NOT exist (it can work locally as in Iceland, because of plenty of heat, energy and the correct rocks below… basalt). Nuclear power does exist and extremely safe and economically viable (even against PV solar) 4th generation nuclear energy basically exists: it’s not science fiction. CC is science fiction in the sense that I do not see how coal plants in Poland can use CC… having no basalt, to start with…
Reuters (owned by billionaires since the 19C) wrote a whole article to mislead people into NOT believing that more than 400 jets carried world “leaders” to the Glasgow COP26… The trick they used is that they, and Twitter, found mislabeled pictures showing instead private jets flying into LA for the Superbowl in 2013… and claiming 400 jets (actually more!) flew into Glasgow… This is typical of the tricks the plutocratically owned media uses… Some people will shrug… They get their news from… The Internet? Twitter? Twitter exert strict censorship, even on female breast anatomy… Twitter labelled the 400+ jet statement as “media presented out of context”… Or maybe people get their knowledge from plutocratically owned academia (as all the top academia is…)… I taught at Stanford and Berkeley, BTW, so I am no enemy of academia… Just of increasingly biased academia…
This general hypocrisy distorts the cognitive process, worldwide… In favor of the few… The few owners, from Xi, Putin, to our galaxy of oligarchs… often in cahoots with Putin and especially Xi, who is mostly US financed, BTW… And his daughter went to Harvard, of course…
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‘CCS’ (carbon capture and storage) is total nonsense, because
a) the technology is in its infancy and will take many decades to mature – time we simply do not have
b) the mere idea of building machines to remove carbon from the atmosphere is ludicrous in the extreme, as it will require vast amounts of energy… and thus carbon emissions
‘Nuclear power’ is also a nonsense, because
a) it takes decades to build these monsters (again, time we don’t have)
b) the installations themselves are nowhere near ‘carbon free’; apart from anything else, enormous volumes of concrete are required (a massive carbon source)
c) the problem of dealing with their toxic effluent has yet to be solved
d) they are often built near the coast – and thus will be inundated by sea level rise
Technology is not the answer. The answer is in the title of your post here, Paul.
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I am not sure about your conclusions, Mr. P., because I would need to do much research to verify your thoughts. Perhaps Patrice would help me out? But your message is very plain. We do not have much time left for radical change in our behaviors. I thought I would be dead by the time these changes really took hold but now I am less sure.
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