Tags
Abrupt Climate Change, David Spratt of Climate Code Red, Decarbonize, Dr. Kevin Anderson, Ecological Overshoot, Prof Tim Garrett, Techno-Utopians
It’s rather jarring to see an expert like Tim Garrett, whose work I have followed for many years, come out and say so bluntly that we will not do the steps needed to save ourselves. And the reason is very simple…
People will raise hell if their right to pollute and consume is severely curtailed. We see this today with people’s refusal to simply wear a damn mask and do what’s for the greater good in a global pandemic. Now can you imagine the outrage when they are told they have to drastically reduce their living standards to prevent catastrophic climate change, a threat we cannot see but which will nevertheless destroy us in the long run? The reality that humans are causing the climate to warm, with catastrophic consequences, demands radical government intervention in the market as well as collective action on an unprecedented scale. This has been known for decades and those catastrophic consequences are now coming to fruition, yet we remain a carbon-based, growth-oriented civilization.
The later the “peak” the harder the reductions, bearing in mind that it is the area under the lines (cumulative emissions) which ensures a 2°C outcome. The 2020 peak (above) indicates the “unprecedented” 10% reductions trajectory giving only a 50/50 chance of staying under 2°C.
Prof Kevin Anderson says there is no longer a non radical option, and for developed economies to play an equitable role in holding warming to 2°C (with 66% probability) emissions compared to 1990 levels would require at least a 40% reduction by 2018, 70% reduction by 2024, and 90% by 2030. This would require “in effect a Marshall plan for energy supply”. Low-carbon supply technologies cannot deliver the necessary rate of emission reductions, and they need to be complemented with rapid, deep and early reductions in energy consumption, what Anderson calls a radical emission reduction strategy. All this suggests that even holding warming to a too high 2°C limit now requires an emergency approach. Emergency action has proven fair and necessary for great social and economic challenges we have faced before. Call it the great disruption, the war economy, emergency mode, or what you like; the story is still the same, and it is now the only remaining viable path.
~ David Spratt, The Myth of Burnable Carbon, Climate Code Red, 2014.
Not only do we need to halt future CO2 emissions, but we need to magically extract CO2 already in the atmosphere with technology that does not exist. Quoting Prof Anderson from last month:
…in 2020 such technologies remain highly speculative, with a few very small laboratory/pilot schemes now operating, with other proposed technologies still in the imagination of academics and tech-entrepreneurs. This faith in utopian technology reflects a deep and systemic bias that has hugely undermined the real scale of the mitigation challenge and misinformed policy makers for many years.
Our fate is sealed.
xraymike79 said:
Posted here for discussion…
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Shodo Spring said:
The statement that “technologies do not exist” refers to machine technologies. Trees, organic soils, and other natural life does it every day. If we were to undertake a massive transformation of both agriculture and other lands (such as lawns) a great deal of carbon would be sequestered. Enough? I don’t have that level of hubris. But to say there is nothing is to deny the natural world.
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xraymike79 said:
EAARTH is no longer Earth.
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notabilia said:
This is not a new position for Tim Garrett – he’s stated on a few occasions that I’ve seen the conclusion that humanity is not giving up its fossil fuel supplies. He’s never tried to deliver senseless hopium, at least not in what I’ve come across.
Perhaps no one wanted to grapple with the starkness of his conclusions before?
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xraymike79 said:
But has he ever said it so bluntly that the public will just vote out anyone who tries to grapple with the problem?
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notabilia said:
I don’t have his exact quotes, not that it really matters, but he never equivocated about the impact of his earlier findings. He said he felt more at ease knowing that there wasn’t much question about what humans would do.
Of course, to pursue that logic, I have no idea what he’s doing on a useless corporate forum like Twitter. What is the point of publicly engaging with the overvast majority of deluded opinion-monger fantasists? At least in worpdress (sic) here there are vast canyons of silence as the backdrop.
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xraymike79 said:
Funny to see it stated by him in such mundane terms. Basically, we don’t have the collective will to even scratch the surface of the problem. And even if we did, it would not work…
“It is counter-intuitive, but comparing two scenarios with very low resilience to climate change, energy consumption rates rise about twice as fast with rapid decarbonization as with no decarbonization. The reason is that decarbonization aids society health by limiting global warming. Better health means greater energy consumption, which then leads to a partial offset of any environmental gains that came from decarbonizing in the first place.”
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David Higham said:
Jevons’ Paradox revisited
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Lidia17 said:
The people won’t vote anyone out… they don’t control the voting machines.
The votes are being purchased by the globalist “great reset” people, they of the flying cars and waffle irons delivered by drone.
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xraymike79 said:
🙀
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notabilia said:
What’s a “globalist”?
I like the one globe we have. I like people from around the world.
I don’t like xenophobic ignoramuses perpetuating mass murder.
Does that make me a “globalist”?
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xraymike79 said:
Dito!👍🏻
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xraymike79 said:
To put this decarbonization process into some sort of perspective, in the first half of this year when lockdowns went into effect, we had an 8.8% reduction in global GHG emissions which then rose after economies reopened. To meet these climate goals discussed above, we would have to have a sustained reduction like what I described in the beginning of the pandemic, but this reduction would have to be constant for decades until we reached some sort of decarbonized nirvana which would then have to remain in perpetuity.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18922-7
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Lidia17 said:
Indeed. Some WHO guy just came out and said we need to keep doing masks and ‘social distancing’ for AT LEAST two more years. They don’t intend for “the covid” ever to end. It’s really quite ingenious as a controlled demolition of society.
“None of us will be safe until the whole world is safe.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/who-envoy-life-wont-return-normal-least-2-years
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FamousDrScanlon said:
For over 30 years it’s been nothing but talk & empty promises/policy.
What’s to admit? The humans are Maximum Power Principle
puppets. Blame the universe because the humans are not in control of anything.
Below, Robert Hunziker makes a compelling case that totalling ignoring climate change, no conferences or books, etc would have resulted in less emissions today.
November 20, 2020
Expert IPCC Reviewer Speaks Out
“The upcoming 26th COP (Conference of the Parties) to be held November 2021 in Glasgow is on the docket for scientists and bureaucrats, as well as big moneyed interests, to knock heads in a formal setting to discuss the state of the planet. If all goes according to plan, like past COPs, powerful economic interests will sabotage what would otherwise be a rather dim forecast of a planet in various stages of collapse, some terminal.
We’ve seen this act (COP) repeat over and over, ever since COP1 in Berlin in 1995, as each successive COP-ending-ceremony finds the Parties congratulating each other, slaps on the back, for one more successful climate conference of 20,000-30,000 able-bodied professionals wiped-out from overconsumption of Beluga caviar and Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, but subsequently carbon emissions increase the following year, and every following year thereafter. What’s to congratulate?
More to the point, the annualized CO2 emissions rate is +60% since COP1, not decreasing, not going down, not once. After 25 years of the same identical pattern, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the take-home-work from all 25 COPs mysteriously turns into the antithesis of the mission statement of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/11/20/expert-ipcc-reviewer-speaks-out/
That’s just the COP-out conferences. What about all the other conferences & conventions & big enviro NGO’s & Government paperwork & employees jetting the planet to tell each other lies about how were going to adhere to our climate policies this time? No really we mean it this time! Fuck off. Year after year for decades. Only a fucking child would continue to believe this bullshit. I bet half a fucking forest has been mowed down just for all their paper handouts at conferences over the decades.
I’m well schooled in the psychology of denial & all evolutionary explanations for it, but we’re well past that & I don’t need Garrett to tell me what I knew over a decade ago.
If it was up to me I’d de-fund all climate talks, lay-off dead weight government ‘climate policy’ bureaucrats, outlaw environmental NGO’s & cancel ‘the science’ too, because it’s not needed either.
We’ve done nothing to curb – went the other way, Yeah Globalisation!- nor will we ever intentionally slow down.
Hopium spewers are as full of shit as political-economic climate deniers & twice as irritating. Fuck them too.
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False Progress said:
Carbon credits are an obvious ruse, hinting at the corrupt nature of “100% renewable energy” claims. It’s a lie to say you’re not using fossil fuels just because you’re rich enough to shuffle their impact around on spreadsheets, e.g. Apple and Google.
The main thing that irritates me is excuses made for energy sprawl and the ruin of so much open space we hoped would stay wild, or at least look natural. Far more acreage is needed for wind & solar than its energy-dense fossil fuel backbone. You can’t replace something by building and supporting it with the very thing it claims to replace!
Incoming President Joe Biden is buying that ruse and seems to have no clue how much land it will take. https://falseprogress.home.blog/2020/11/12/hey-joe-biden-where-you-gonna-put-60000-more-wind-turbines/
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David Higham said:
Ernst Mayr : ‘Intelligence is a lethal mutation’. Our intelligence has certainly been lethal
for innumerable species,and probably ours as well.
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Kevin Hester said:
We really need to question anyone who is implying that 2C is either safe or achievable, neither is true. John Doyle, Peter Wasdell, Guy McPherson, Sam Carana and I all think 10C is baked in.
The Cognitive Dissonance is a mind fuck at the edge of extinction.
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mike k said:
This human world is going extinct soon. Invest in the spirit dimension of unconditional Love — that is not going to disappear. The irony of our existence is that when it’s false promises fall through, another door into something far better opens. That door has always been here and open for us, but our illusions blind us to it.
And they asked him, “Where is this kingdom you speak of, and when will it come here?” And he said, “Even now it is here all around you and within you, but you do not see it,”
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Rich Diana said:
I live in the woods of my rewilded acreage and have seen the insects disappear, the reptiles disappear and am expecting us to disappear. We blew our chance at sustainability and now at that’s left is to watch the greatest show on Earth, Extinction.I accept it without reservation, for our collective fate is as guaranteed as the sun running out of fuel. There’s nothing to be done so I’m doing as little as possible, a gesture to the inalterable forces approaching. Good luck to all.
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Dredd said:
I agree with xrayMike79 …
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Pasander said:
I disagree. We will decarbonize. How many of “we” are left after that is the question.
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TR said:
I’m a racist! I hate the human race!
Face the problem,look into a mirror. 😉
“Humanity has killed 75% of all wildlife. Like a tumor that becomes metastatic and spreads through the body, so to do humans pervade through every rock and crevice on earth.”
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False Progress said:
“I’m a racist! I hate the human race!”
That’s simple yet brilliant. There’s been far too much talk lately of only one race being capable of racism, specifically as it applies to dumb thugs resisting arrest.
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Anthony William O'brien said:
You forgot the “but we are different”, “now is different” escape clauses. A peak of any critical input will crash a civilization, we are facing peak everything, “but we are different. In earlier ice age cycles 300 ppm CO2 was enough to get 2 degrees above pre industrial so one would assume at 415 ppm we are already committed to hotter, “but now is different”. No dominant species has ever survived a mass extinction event, we are in a mass extinction event, “but we are different” and so on.
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TR said:
The clever apes new theme song.
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TR said:
This is real collapse. Your pee pee went flaccid.
https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19s-link-to-erectile-dysfunction/a-55862989
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xraymike79 said:
😂🤣😅
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TR said:
Let’s fire up those synapses & get some critical thinking going.
“Well, I know it wasn’t you who held me down
Heaven knows it wasn’t you who set me free
So oftentimes it happens that we live our lives in chains
That we never even know we have the key” – Jack Tempchin and Robb Strandlund
How dare anyone hint I’m responsible for my situation. 😉
To quote one of our great elected political philosophers, “I don’t take responsibility at all.”
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dex3703 said:
I finally realized and accepted this simple truth a few years ago. People are “concerned” about climate change, and want to “do something”.
Watch that concern disappear the moment they’re told no more flying, driving, meat, vacations, on and on. The rich countries will never give up these things, and everyone in a poor country wants them, too.
There really is no way out.
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TR said:
Shit is hitting the fan.
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