HBS Guy wrote:I see Dame Booby put the link to another ridiculous ice age post in exactly the right place.
HBS Guy wrote:You think I don’t know about Milankovitch cycles, Sir Bobby?
Look at all the times I mention orbital perturbations as a cause of ice ages. You silly dick.
hree decades ago when serious debate on human-induced climate change began globally, a great deal of statesmanship was on display. A preparedness to recognise that this was an issue which transcended nation states, ideologies and political parties. An issue which had to be addressed proactively in the long-term interests of humanity, even if the existential nature of climate risk was far less clear cut than it is today.
Then, as global institutions were put in place to take up this challenge and the extent of change this would impose on the fossil-fuel dominated world became more obvious, the forces of resistance mobilised. Today, despite the diplomatic triumph of the Paris climate agreement, debate around climate change policy has never been more dysfunctional, indeed Orwellian, particularly in Australia.
International agreements talk of limiting global warming to 1.5–2°C, but in reality they set the world on a path of 3–5°C. Goals are reaffirmed, only to be abandoned. Coal, by definition, is “clean”. Just 1°C of warming is already dangerous, but this cannot be said. The planetary future is hostage to myopic, national self-interest. Action is delayed on the assumption that as yet unproven technologies will save the day, decades hence. The risks are existential, but it is “alarmist” to say so. A one-in-two chance of missing a goal is normalised as reasonable.
The previous norms of statesmanship and long-term thinking have long since disappeared, replaced by an obsession with short-term political and commercial advantage, particularly where climate and energy policy is concerned.
An emergency-scale transition to a post-fossil fuel world is essential to address climate change. But this is considered to be too disruptive. The orthodoxy is that there is time for an orderly economic transition within the current short-termist political paradigm. Discussion of what would be safe – less warming that we presently experience – is non-existent. And so we have a policy failure of epic proportions.
In the magical thinking of Australian policymakers, a pathway of gradual change, constructed over many decades in a growing, prosperous, coal-fired world stretches enticingly before us. The world not imagined is the one that now exists: of looming financial instability; of a global crisis of political legitimacy; of a sustainability crisis that extends far beyond climate change to include all the fundamentals of human existence, and of severe global energy sector dislocation.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the UN in 1988 and charged with regularly assessing the global consensus on climate science as a basis for policy-making. The IPCC assessment reports produced every five to six years play a critical part in the public framing of the climate narrative. The IPCC has done indispensable work in pulling together a periodic consensus of what must be the most exhaustive scientific investigation in history.
These limitations were not of overriding importance in earlier years. However, it is now clear that the risks are far greater than previously anticipated. Climate change has moved from the twilight period of much talk but limited impact; it is now turning nasty, as witnessed with Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, in South Asia, and not to forget Cyclone Debbie in Australia earlier this year.
The distinction between climate science and risk is now the critical issue, for the two are not the same. Scientific reticence, the reluctance to spell out the full risk implications of climate science in the absence of perfect information, has become a major problem, allowing politicians to ignore the real dangers we face. But waiting for perfect information means it will be too late to act, as any sensible risk manager or military leader knows only too well. Like an iceberg, there is great danger in ignoring “What lies beneath”.
The_Barnacle wrote Today at 10:08am:
So lee, do you agree with this part of the study too? Or do you just cherry pick the parts of the study that suit you?Of course I agree it is part of the study.The_Barnacle wrote Today at 10:08am:
"Our findings show that natural geologic emissions of methane -- for example, leakage from oil seeps or gas deposits in the ground -- are much smaller than previously thought," Brook said. "That means that a greater percentage of the methane in the atmosphere today is due to human activities, including oil drilling, and the extraction and transport of natural gas."
Now all they have to do is prove they have identified all the methane seeps in the ocean.
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