Essay by Eric Worrall
You naughty proletariat, instead of spanking you for failing to reign in your emissions, we’re going to give you another chance to behave.
Earth 2.0°C: How to Make Passing the 1.5°C Climate Change Threshold An Opportunity
JANUARY 22, 2024 11:06 AM EST
Solecki is a professor of geography at Hunter College, City University of New York. He was an author of the 1.5°C Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released in 2018.
Addressing the climate crisis will be difficult and demand focused attention and action. It is not a problem that will go away, and in fact a lot of new evidence shows that the world is heating and changing faster, weather-wise, than we expected just a few years ago. Many highly vulnerable populations and ecosystems already are facing the devastating impacts of climate change. While the COP28 meeting in Dubai late last year provided some glimmers of hope that the world’s countries can meaningfully respond to climate change, it is increasingly clear that the rise in global temperature will exceed the 1.5°C (2.7°F) threshold first defined as part of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Currently the earth has experienced approximately 1.15°C of heating above the 19th century baseline and will likely pass the 1.5°C level globally in the mid-2030s. The window of opportunity to forestall this event is about to close, as significant barriers including lack of financing and institutional capacity, and to say nothing of poverty, consumption, and lack of societal trust.
While the challenges to address the climate crisis are great, several valuable opportunities to advance climate solutions lie well within our grasp. It is important that we collectively work to achieve the goals of what is called “climate resilient development,” and thereby simultaneously adapt to growing climate risks and incentivize opportunities to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Together, these two aims could tackle climate change while promoting economic advancement that is both sustainable and equitable. Equity is central to the process of transition. Whether it is industries and employees retooling for a green economy, or communities fearing loss of their neighborhood to flooding or climate gentrification, the evidence is overwhelming that the more equitable and engaged the decision-making process, the more likely the climate action will be successful.
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Furthermore, we know that solutions should focus on securing the needed knowledge, financing, and decision-making capacity in advance, and being prepared to act when a window opens. Shocks like massive floods and disease outbreaks can become tipping points and bring attention to issues; but if emergent policies are to be effective and provide long-lasting solutions, they must also address underlying societal conditions, such as inequity and lack of trust in those in power due to a history of being cut out of the decision-making process.
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Read more: https://time.com/6565044/earth-2-point-0-climate-change/
Here I was thinking 1.5C was an uncrossable red line, and just like that it has now been redefined as an opportunity. No wonder there are “societal trust” issues.
I’m disgusted by the suggestion green policy advocates should be ambulance chasers. In my opinion seeing people traumatised by a major natural disaster as “windows of opportunity” for pushing green policies seems pretty low. If green ideas had any merit, proponents wouldn’t have to wait until people were too traumatised to think straight before trying to push their policy ideas.
“and incentivize opportunities” i.e. subsidise and/or coerce
“the more equitable and engaged the decision-making process” i.e. the great & the good get to take money from some to give to others, and to decide who falls into either camp.
Once they start talking about equity versus equality check your wallet.
“climate gentrification”
WT* is that ???
Climate DEI.
Modern colonialism.
From a physical and chemical point of view selecting a Tipping Point Beyond which an irreversible reaction occurs is utter nonsense. There is no chemical or physical or electronic reaction that occurs when a small fraction of a signal is fed back to a component of the same system, unless that component has its own source of power which is triggered on by the feedback much like the thermostat turning on a furnace. By speaking of tipping points they have erroneously stolen a concept from Control System Theory. However, what they failed to mention in the hopes that people who are uninformed won’t realize it is that feedback doesn’t trigger anything unless the thing is feeding back to has its own source of power. The feedback is nothing more than a modulator of the power of the device being controlled. There is no external power system that CO2 can turn on and off to suddenly make water vapor heat up more. It’s not as if CO2 turns on and off the Sun. As above, this whole Tipping Point scam is rather like believing that the thermostat in your house creates the energy to heat it. CO2 has a .04% effect on the atmosphere, the same as it’s percentage content of the atmosphere.
Positive feedback in the real world almost always leads to a runaway condition that doesn’t halt till the power supply can’t handle it. There are some theoretical situations where you can have positive feedback loops that don’t run away but I’ve never actually run into one physically.
If there were a positive feedback loop being fed by CO2 the earth would have hit run away conditions long before today – humans just aren’t adding that much CO2 and CO2 levels have been higher than today.
“If there were a positive feedback loop being fed by CO2 the earth would have hit run away conditions long before today”
And that’s the truth of the matter. CO2 levels have been a lot higher in the past (7,000ppm), and no runaway greenhouse effect occurred, so we can have confidence that none will occur now with our much lower CO2 levels (420ppm).
If we burned all available coal, oil and natural gas tomorrow, at one time, it would only raise the CO2 level to about 800ppm, so there is no danger of humans causing a runaway greenhouse effect with anything we do.
I just keep looking at the global grain harvest total each year – year after year after year of record harvests.
Where is the evidence that “global warming” is having a deleterious impact on humanity?
I understand that increased technology and farming methodologies impact this but those are not the *only* reasons for continuing record harvests. CO2 certainly has an impact and looking at grain harvests is certainly a more holistic metric (see Freeman Dyson) for global climate than the bogus “global average temperature”.
Yep. That’s the point–for runaway feedback the element getting the feedback needs its own power supply, otherwise, not much happens.
If there were any “tipping point” it was in the Little Ice Age around 200 years ago.
It has been warming with fits and starts ever since.
I stopped reading after to first sentence wherein the good professor used the term climate crisis. I presume he offered no evidence to support this terminology.
No, he didn’t offer any evidence. There is no evidence to offer. The climate alarmists just make unsubstantiated assertions and expect everyone else to accept their opinions.
Final note. Since we live in a world where the only discernable bad actors are ground level foils, we have little recourse than to try to do politics and discredit the foils. We can’t step out of our dependency on those who control the centralized global markets and the information capital without becoming hungry hermits. So all that is left is to yap on blogs because all opportunity for a real backlash is impossible. So we focus on politicians and all the political bantering hoping it will help. Whether or not you liked or voted for the previous president, one thing is clear, few politicians will be able to use the office to hold back the global tide of power grabbing. Even education won’t help because of the utter dependency which characterizes our age.
J.G. Machen ” I cherish within my soul a vague yet glorious hope of a time when material achievements, instead of making man a victim of his machines, may be used for the expression of some wonderful thought. There may come a time when God will send the world the fire of genius, which he has taken from it in our time; a time when he will send something far greater—- a humble heart finding in his worship the highest use of all knowledge and power”.
From the article: “Currently the earth has experienced approximately 1.15°C of heating above the 19th century baseline and will likely pass the 1.5°C level globally in the mid-2030s.”
Pure Speculation. Not science.
The 19th-century baseline was the Little Ice Age when millions died from famines caused by crop failures due to the cold weather. That is what they want to return us to?
From the article: “climate gentrification”
Well, that’s a new one on me. What is climate gentrification?
These lefties are nuts!
Gentrification is the new thing for people to oppose. As an area attracts wealthier residents or existing residents become wealthier, residents are unable to afford house prices or rents and wealthier groups move in, displacing established residents. What they fail to understand is that this is generally an improvement of a usually run-down area for the benefit of all residents, not a negative thing at all. When an area attracts wealthier residents that gentrify a run-down area because it’s got nicer weather, on average, then this becomes ‘climate gentrification.’ The usual leftist thing of taking a net positive and portraying it as a net negative.
I guess I should have done a search for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_gentrification
More class-warfare gobbledygook from the climate alarmists.
Like I said, lefties are nuts, and this climate gentrification is just another example of that nuttiness.
It’s not about climate, it’s about dividing people up into groups and pitting them against each other. In other words, Maxism/Socialism.
Two-thirds of the Republicans under 30 agree with the so-called “climate change” agenda.
You’re putting a lot of faith in one poll.
Trump says, “drill, baby, drill” and got 70 percent of the Republican conservative vote in the last election (New Hampshire).
“a lot of faith in one poll.”
A zealot like FIXATION.. for sure !!
The CAGW crowd are losers. They are demanding we give up fossil fuels, accept wind and solar to save the planet from catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
How is that supposed to work you ask? By moving away from fossil fuels we can reduce the accumulation of anthropogenic CO2. Even if you accept their premise you must conclude that it is a failure. We have wasted trillions of dollars in an effort to lower CO2 concentrations and failed big time. You don’t score the success or failure of their efforts by reporting weather events. You score it by how much the CO2 concentration has come down after all that is the reason for moving away from fossil fuels. So how did they do?
They get an F. CO2 concentrations are rising at the same rate they were before we wasted all our money. But it is worse than that. We are poorer, we have unreliable electricity, sometimes no electricity, interference with the fossil fuel supply, interference with fossil fuel operations, unwanted products pushed on us, the unwanted products don’t work, some businesses downsizing or closing or moving overseas but most importantly a downward trend to our way of life.
This has been a lose lose any way you figure it.
Great comment.
“CO2 concentrations are rising at the same rate they were before we wasted all our money.”
Actually, looks like the rate of increase, is increasing.
Does make it a double FAIL !! ?
Where human CO2 emissions were cut by 6 percent in 2020 as a result of the pandemic global CO2 kept rising at the same rate.
Oops, When human…
For years they have been telling us that all kinds of nasty things were going to happen if the Earth crossed the magical 1.5C line. Now that we either have, or are about to cross that line, and nothing bad is happening, they have to memory hole their earlier claims and replace them with new ones.
It’s a safe bet that the 1.5 threshold will be gradually bumped upward as the years pass , and the alarmists will concede it’s unattainable. They will not abandon some limits entirely because to do so will admit they are powerless to stop whatever temperature increases occur and will recognize that we are a long way from finding any reliable replacements for fossil fuels. So they’ll simply go with the flow and concoct new doomsday scenarios that will be ignored just as the old ones have been.
Geography is an antiquated pursuit like alchemy that they won’t give a respectable burial. We don’t use them to make maps anymore. This is an automated satellite imagery tech.
Yeah, yeah they teach us coffee grows in Brazil, but this bit has been snapped up by economists, and business studies folk which give a quantified, detailed and more useful dimension to it. Geography is a refuge for those who cant handle technical earth sciences. The idle hands and minds of geographers eagerly mop up useful idiot campaigns to fill their empty vessels.
Willie is a typical brain dead academic indoctrinated to push DEI ignorant of the fact that it is totally contrary to human development and potential. The idea that the most dysfunctional putting out the least effort and making the worst choices should have advantages as a result creates a race to the bottom where the worse of humanity wins.
Democrats want a dependent class relying on handouts for votes because their ridiculous beliefs can’t survive critical examination.
Why do you think they are ignorant? It seems to be the entire point of the exercise.
Keeping people ignorant is the purpose of indoctrination.
1.5 degrees C above what? It seems to me that we are still below the medieval optimum.
If you want to prove me wrong:
People routinely did that 1,000 years ago. Not that they _all_ survived, but most did,
Or… hunt crocodiles in Black Sea basin, up to the middle of Dnieper or so. In that there were mentions in the old records about aquatic reptiles bothering the locals enough that warriors would go take a stab at the problem.
Not a single blackboard statistician that makes up the majority of climate science will understand a word you posted here. To them food grows on the supermarket shelves, not in the cold ground.