Any doubts about Climate Change?

**S Landreth** · 06-11-2021, 09:47 PM

10 Reasons to Stay Hopeful About Progress

The 26^th U.N. Climate Change Conference got underway in Glasgow this week, and it already looks like a slow-motion train wreck. The leaders of three of the biggest polluting nations – Russia, Brazil, and China – aren’t there. The national pledges that have already been made to cut emissions won’t be met – and even if they were, they aren’t enough to avoid catastrophic warming. Rich nations of the world are woefully behind in their commitment to pay $100 billion a year into the Green Climate Fund to help poor nations adapt to climate impacts and transition to clean energy. The conference runs through Nov. 12 and new deals and commitments will emerge. But right now, given the scale of the crisis we face, signs of urgency, ambition, and leadership are hard to find.

As Rob Larter, a scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, put it in a tweet: “I think that in the main what’s going on is a lot of politicians from many countries are trying to work out how they can come out of it looking good without really committing themselves to doing much.”

But the climate fight is a big and complex war that’s being carried out on many fronts. Even for experienced climate warriors, it’s hard to keep the whole picture in your head at once. The apathy and self-dealing in Glasgow are obvious. What’s less obvious are signs of real progress.

Here are ten reasons for optimism:

The worst-case scenarios for climate warming have so far been averted. It’s often argued that the nearly 30 years of climate talks since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 have led to nothing. But that’s not true. A decade ago, we were heading for a world 4°C (or more) warmer by 2100, which would have been catastrophic for life as we know it. But now, with the policies that are already in place, we’re heading for just under 3°C, perhaps a little lower. With the official pledges updated last month — if successfully translated into effective policies — we would limit warming to around 2.5°C. And since then, another 25 countries have updated their pledges. 2.5 C of warming is still horrific, but it’s far less horrific than 4 C.
The price of clean energy is falling fast. A decade ago, the virtue of coal was that it was cheap and plentiful. No more. Utility-scale solar power declined in cost by 90 percent between 2009 and 2021. The cost of onshore wind power declined by 70 percent over the same period. Even in Big Coal states like Ohio, electricity from solar power will overtake coal by the end of the decade.
The Age of Accountability for Big Oil has begun. Last week, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform grilled Big Oil CEOs for knowingly spreading lies about the risks of climate change. Republicans on the committee, led by James Comer of Kentucky, trotted out 30 year-old myths about energy independence and how fossil fuels are the elixir of working families. But Democrats were merciless. Kati Porter of California used M&Ms and bags of rice to make a point about how much land the oil companies have tied up in land leases. New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was typically sharp about the dangers of life in a rapidly warming world: “Some of us have to actually live the future that you all are setting on fire for us.” The CEOs squirmed, fidgeted, and blustered. Maybe it was all theater. Or maybe it was a foreshadowing of climate accountability to come.
President Biden’s climate agenda is big, smart, and serious. It’s been downsized and cut up. It’s been ransacked and shanghaied by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. But Biden’s Build Back Better Act, which includes $500 billion for climate funding, would still be the biggest investment in clean energy and climate adaptation the U.S. has ever made. It includes investments for virtually every aspect of the economy, from clean energy transmission and storage to tax credits for electric vehicles and the production of low-carbon steel. Can Biden get it through congress? That remains to be seen, especially after the drubbing Democrats took in this week’s elections. The good news is that the U.S. is pressing forward on other fronts, including new rules to limit methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas. Thanks in part to a big push from the U.S., more than 100 nations signed a Global Methane Pledge in Glasgow, vowing to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030.
Scientists are getting their game on. Michael Mann, Katharine Hayhoe, Gavin Schmidt, Andrea Dutton and Andrew Dessler are all top climate scientists who have a knack for calling out bullshit when they see it. And they’re calling it out more and more. Mann has been particularly aggressive. “Look no further than Australia, a country that deserves better than the feckless coalition government that currently reigns,” he wrote in The Los Angeles Times last week. As Mann points out, Australia’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 26% to 28% by 2030 is half what other industrialized nations such as the U.S. and the European Union have committed to. Mann also roasted Saudi Arabia and Russia for making a mockery of the Glasgow negotiations by agreeing to “a laughably delinquent” date of 2060 for reaching net zero emissions.
The fossil fuel divestment movement is snowballing. As activist and writer Bill McKibben noted in The New York Times last week, $40 trillion in endowments and portfolios has vowed to abstain from investing in coal and gas and oil. “That’s bigger than the GDP of China and the U.S. combined,” McKibben wrote. There is still a lot of money sloshing around out there for fossil fuel development, but slowing the flow from the spigot sends a powerful signal. Here’s one sign of how well divestment campaigns are working: the West Virginia Coal Association called divestment “the dumbest movement in history.”
Increased focus on the link between the climate crisis and public health. A rapidly warming world, researchers wrote in The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, is exposing humans to searing heat and extreme weather events; increasing the transmission of infectious diseases; exacerbating food, water and financial insecurity; endangering sustainable development; and worsening global inequality. “Health is the vector for climate action,” Johan Rockstrom, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said in Glasgow. “It is what people care about, and what motivates them to take action.”
The war on coal is getting serious. China has vowed to stop funding new coal plants abroad. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg just launched a new crusade to shut down coal plants in 25 countries. Bloomberg has already waged war against coal in the US, helping to shut down 280 plants. Coal’s demise can’t happen fast enough, but it is happening.
Climate justice takes center stage. What do the rich polluters owe the poor who are suffering the worst climate impacts? This has always been an issue at previous climate talks. In Glasgow, it’s the issue. And climate justice leaders, who see their very existence at stake in these negotiations, are in no mood to play footsie with the leaders of rich nations. As Fiji’s Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama put it: “We Pacific nations have not travelled to the other end of the world to watch our future to be sacrificed at the altar of appeasement of the world’s worst emitters.”
Writers and artists are finding their voices. “Nothing will be saved without you.” That’s the first line of a poem by Yrsa Daley-Ward, a writer of mixed Nigeria-Jamaican heritage, which she read in the opening ceremony in Glasgow. If there’s a better one-sentence call to action for the climate movement, I haven’t heard it.

**harrybarracuda** · 07-11-2021, 12:52 AM

Well the poets are involved, that will save the fucking day.

**S Landreth** · 07-11-2021, 06:27 AM

Just another helpful group bringing awareness to the climate crisis

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Writers and artists are finding their voices. “Nothing will be saved without you.” That’s the first line of a poem by Yrsa Daley-Ward, a writer of mixed Nigeria-Jamaican heritage, which she read in the opening ceremony in Glasgow. If there’s a better one-sentence call to action for the climate movement, I haven’t heard it.

**Hugh Cow** · 07-11-2021, 10:29 AM

If talk fixed the climate we'd be going through another ice age.

**S Landreth** · 07-11-2021, 10:47 AM

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Just another helpful group bringing awareness to the climate crisis

Some song writers are especially helpful

**OhOh** · 07-11-2021, 11:04 AM

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Even in Big Coal states like Ohio, electricity from solar power will overtake coal by the end of the decade

Because of what, being more economical or being legislated by its government?

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Last week, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform grilled Big Oil CEOs for knowingly spreading lies about the risks of climate change.

Europe has illustrated the "risks" of premature ejaculation. As for lies from one group, only ....

Your post's other points are pretty sound-ish.

Originally Posted by Hugh Cow

If talk fixed the climate we'd be going through another ice age.

**S Landreth** · 07-11-2021, 11:08 AM

^ repeating

Originally Posted by S Landreth

you should try to get a teaching job at a Business College. Show them the post above to convince them you know what you’re talking about.

**taxexile** · 07-11-2021, 06:17 PM

Hypocritical eco-zealots should concentrate on solutions, not moral point-scoring.

From the Greta Thunbergs of the world to Extinction Rebellion, all modern ‘activists’ want to do is virtue-signal and berate humanity

ZOE STRIMPEL
7 November 2021 • 9:00am

Greta Thunberg refers to climate change not even as a ‘crisis’ but as ‘the climate betrayal’ CREDIT: REUTERS/Yves Herman
My primary school was a magnet for horrible teachers. Their goal did not seem to be the successful imparting of knowledge: on the contrary, they repeatedly opted for tactics that would stand in the way of learning, preferring to humiliate us, mock us and attack our confidence. They actually kind of seemed to hate us and we became well-versed in the psychology of people who want to punish rather than help.

It is amazingly easy to spot the same psychology in the climate activism movement sweeping the world. Whether the utterly pointless beration and futile yet grandiose promises of world leaders at Cop26, or the relentless and violent obstruction of our lives practised by Extinction Rebellion and their outlandish, counterproductive offshoot Insulate Britain, the aim is to denigrate, not cure. Hypocrisy naturally accompanies all this and it was once again on full display last week as noisily green bigwigs from Boris to Jeff Bezos jetted in to Cop26 on private planes.

Nobody wants Miami or dozens of other coastal cities sunk without a trace. If emissions remain at their current rates and the globe warms by two degrees celsius rather than 1.5C, the tipping point spelled out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), then forecasts predict that two billion people would be exposed to severe heatwaves, 420 million to extreme heatwaves and 65 million more to deadly heat. No coral reefs would remain. This is not a good picture.

But one can want to avert the consequences of rapid global warming without hating humanity. The truth is – and this has been clear since that worryingly pale zealot Greta Thunberg became the Pope of environmentalism – that the climate activist brigade are far keener on hair-shirtism than on actually getting on with solving the problem. No wonder the actual Pope praised Thunberg in messianic terms as “the great witness” of the Church’s environmental teaching.

Climate activists are just that – activists, in the modern sense. This means that they don’t want to avert climate change, they want to berate, denigrate and control humanity, beating their chests, showing their virtue, wailing at the moon and – crucially – ruining things for everyone else, from the commute to work to the ability to board an affordable plane to go on holiday. More fundamentally, as the birthstriker movement shows (birthstrikers believe having even just one child is morally wrong because it is bad for the environment), the new climate hairshirters seem to want to save the planet for the sake of everything on it besides human beings.

Look at the rhetoric of the movement. Thunberg refers to climate change not even as a “crisis” but as “the climate betrayal” – betrayal of the trees and animals by horrible, culpable humans. Extinction Rebellion – the global movement founded by three British eco-zealots – demands the end, or radical curtailment, of things in moral terms. “We have a moral duty to take action” is its top line and its very first demand is that we “tell the truth”. Sound familiar? Yup. This is about owning up to your sin, if you want to avoid hell.

XR’s second demand is to “reduce greenhouse emissions” – fair enough – but the third, like the first, shows how little this movement is interested in practical attempts to solve the problem. Instead, it’s more about chaos, lawlessness and the weakening of elected power: hence the demand for governments to be led not by their elected leaders, but by the decisions of a Handmaid’s Tale-esque “citizens’ assembly on climate and ecological justice”. I for one certainly wouldn’t want this ragbag of extremists deciding what counts as justice.

Indeed their real motives are all too clear in the wholesale rejection of persuasion and persistence, the bread and butter of liberal democracies. “Traditional strategies like petitioning, lobbying, voting and protest have not worked due to the rooted interests of political and economic forces,” they intone, concluding that all these have failed. Really? Voting has failed and is useless? This is mad and scary stuff.

Reading the XR website, and listening to the impassioned speeches of the growing celebrity crop of global youth activists, one hears a lot about what “the science” says but little about what “the science” can do. Solving the climate crisis would clearly involve huge-scale reversal, requiring massive investment in human ingenuity and geo-engineering. If this bunch of crusaders were keen on solutions, we’d be hearing a lot less about “ecological justice”, the evils of voting and “the rooted interests of political and economic forces” and much more about chemical scrubbers that dissolve CO and pump it underground, carbon-chomping micro-organisms, flocks of radiation-deflecting mirrors in space, CO2-sequestering power stations burning biomass, and throwing everything and more at cheap advanced nuclear fission which would enable the substitution of clean energy for fossil fuels.

But we hear almost nothing about that, either from the Thunbergs of the world or [at]– far more worryingly – from its governments, CEOs or all the people who could actually spur investment in these things and make a real difference. Instead the pull of religious fervour, with all its rules, punishments, avowals and moral point-scoring, has once more triumphed, causing still more delay to the increasingly urgent end-goal: an actual solution.

Hypocritical eco-zealots should concentrate on solutions, not moral point-scoring

**S Landreth** · 07-11-2021, 06:34 PM

^An opinion piece from,…… Zoe Strimpel (born 8 July 1982) is a British journalist, academic historian, author, and commentator on gender and relationships. She is a columnist for The Sunday Telegraph where she writes a weekly column, commenting on gender, feminism, dating, relationships and identity politics.

**bsnub** · 07-11-2021, 06:53 PM

Originally Posted by S Landreth

She is a columnist for The Sunday Telegraph

A rag with a history of science denial as well as publishing anti-vax nonsense.

**taxexile** · 07-11-2021, 07:13 PM

this thread is about doubts on climate change.

"doubts" implies that a variety of opinions will be expressed.

if you disagree with the content of the article then argue it rather than slagging off the writer or the publication.

if you are not happy with that then i suggest you ask the mods to re name the thread "thread for blinkered eco zealots to have their say unopposed"

**bsnub** · 07-11-2021, 07:18 PM

Originally Posted by taxexile

f you disagree with the content of the article then argue it rather than slagging off the writer or the publication.

The source is an important starting point. If they are rehashing debunked talking points. Then they are not worth responding to.

**harrybarracuda** · 07-11-2021, 07:22 PM

Originally Posted by taxexile

this thread is about doubts on climate change.

"doubts" implies that a variety of opinions will be expressed.

if you disagree with the content of the article then argue it rather than slagging off the writer or the publication.

if you are not happy with that then i suggest you ask the mods to re name the thread "thread for blinkered eco zealots to have their say unopposed"

It's well known certain right wing rags follow the right wing line in climate change denial.

Opinions are not science.

**malmomike77** · 07-11-2021, 07:27 PM

Originally Posted by S Landreth

They all must be shivering in their boots

Thin end of the wedge dear boy but you are missing the point in your rush to join the Kumbaya choir, the point is that the resources they are soaking up through litigation are the same ones that would otherwise be used to fund fighting climate change in third world countries.

**S Landreth** · 07-11-2021, 07:58 PM

^They all must be shivering in their boots

**bsnub** · 07-11-2021, 08:01 PM

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Opinions are not science.

So tiring to have to deal with this time and again.

**malmomike77** · 07-11-2021, 08:12 PM

Originally Posted by S Landreth

^They all must be shivering in their boots

You have a strange MO when you have nothing cogent to say on the subject, you just repeat the same thing over and over, like a child

**harrybarracuda** · 07-11-2021, 11:43 PM

Originally Posted by malmomike77

I have a strange MO when I have nothing cogent to say on the subject, I just repeat the same thing over and over, like a child

FTFY.

**malmomike77** · 08-11-2021, 12:47 AM

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

FTFY.

Are you two related or is it a coincidence you both have threads where you seem to spend most of the time posting and replying to yourselves

lets have some pics of how many fingers you have.

**OhOh** · 08-11-2021, 01:07 AM

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

I have a strange MO when I have nothing cogent to say on the subject, I just repeat the same thing over and over, like a child

Pot calling the kettle black.

**S Landreth** · 08-11-2021, 07:48 AM

Dr. Zeke Hausfather - We focus a lot on global targets, but no one lives in the global average (which is mostly ocean).

Land area where we all live will warm 50% faster. A 2C (3.6F) world is one where the global land warm by 3C (5.4F). Good piece in @mashable pointing this out: https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1457447218416275458

A world warmed by 2 degrees is way hotter than it sounds

Some things are not what they appear.

At a giant climate summit, global nations are meeting for the 26th time (COP26) to find ways to limit Earth's overall warming this century to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-Industrial Revolution temperatures. This ambitious warming target is certainly much lower than where civilization is currently headed — to an extreme 3 C (5.4 F) or so.

Yet 2 C, an average global temperature, would not actually be a low or small level of warming. Crucially, the amounts of warming where people live will be much greater, and the impacts in the ocean will be significant and long-lasting. These momentous effects are often overshadowed by a single, slight number.

"We really need to avoid the trap of emphasizing the global average," said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and the director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center.

Earth scientists continually emphasize that humanity isn't inescapably doomed by the coming, inevitable disruptions to the climate. It's just the opposite. Society still has an extraordinary amount of influence in the matter: The more warming, the worse the impacts. But Earth's inhabitants should be aware that a 2 C world has extreme effects. It's all the more reason to avoid any warming above 2 C.

Heating the land

Since the late 19th century, humanity has warmed Earth's total surface by 1.2 C, or a little over 2 F. This number is deceiving, because the phenomenally absorbent oceans soak up bounties of heat, which lowers the global average. But on land, significantly more warming has occurred, around 1.9 C, or some 3.5 F, Hausfather explained.

In other words, humanity will blow through the 2 C warming target in places people live and experience environmental extremes like severe heat, wildfires, drought, and beyond.

Climate change boosts the odds for record-breaking or more frequent extreme events. "It pushes the envelope of what is possible higher," emphasized Hausfather. "What really affects people is the extremes."

To illustrate, higher overall temperatures:

amp the odds for record-breaking heat waves.
make severe wildfires more frequent, because a warmer atmosphere dries out the vegetation and trees, which more easily burn. ("It takes just a little bit of warming to lead to a lot more burning.")
melt some of Earth's largest ice sheets, like on Greenland. This raises sea levels, and will contribute to sea level rise for centuries.
make droughts more severe, like the prolonged Southwestern megadrought. Historically, droughts have significantly decreased crop yields.
increase the chances for more pummeling, extreme downpours and floods, because a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor. (This happens over oceans and land.)

A recent, potent example of boosted odds for extremes was the record-shattering heat wave in the Pacific Northwest and parts of Canada in June 2021. Temperatures hit 116 F in Portland, breaking the previous record by a whopping nine degrees.

"In a world without climate change, that would have been essentially impossible," said Hausfather, citing research that found the heat wave would have been a 1-in-150,000-year event.

But in a 2 C world, the researchers found such an event would occur "roughly every 5 to 10 years."

____________

Extra.........

Dr. Zeke Hausfather does not write a weekly column, commenting on gender, feminism, dating and relationships

**spliff** · 08-11-2021, 11:19 AM

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Dr. Zeke Hausfather does not write a weekly column, commenting on gender, feminism, dating and relationships

Hear that.... Hell, nuff right there.

**harrybarracuda** · 08-11-2021, 11:42 AM

Originally Posted by OhOh

I'm a complete tosser who posts nothing but chinky and russian government nonsense

We know, Hoohoo, we know.

**OhOh** · 08-11-2021, 01:05 PM

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Quote Originally Posted by OhOh View Post
I'm a complete tosser who posts nothing but chinky and russian government nonsense
We know, Hoohoo, we know.

Faking posts is your answer, it appears time after time.

Pathetic.

**harrybarracuda** · 08-11-2021, 03:05 PM

Originally Posted by OhOh

Faking posts is your answer, it appears time after time.

Pathetic.

Didn't have to fake your post when you and Putin were lying, did I?

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