First, if you think China is blazing great guns on fighting climate change in a way the US is not, you need to think again. China has increased GHG emissions 4.7 percent from 2017. India even more.
Land use reforms to fight climate change? A laugh. And, as long as neoliberal capitalism is the end game, who can blame Brazil, Columbia, Indonesia or Congo for paving over traditional forests with soybeans, palm oil trees or whatever.
That all said, we may be FAR more screwed than previously reported.
New computer simulations say that, in a century or so, if business as usual (which it seems to be) puts the world at 1200 ppm on carbon dioxide (at which point we will be at 7 degrees Fahrenheit, or 4C, of warming), we could SO destroy cloud cover, and the reflectivity that will help us, as to add an ADDITIONAL 15 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT on top of that 7F/4C!
Picture our planet, for Merika that still can't use metric measurements, TWENTY DEGREES HOTTER than it is today.
Red-state Texas? UNinhabitable. Period and end of story.
And, the authors of the simulations story are writing as if all of that additional 15/8 degrees will happen at the end. Isn't it just possible that bits of that cloud decimation happen on the way to 1200 ppm/7F? In other words, let's say that by 2060, we've added the second full degree C, to switch back to the scientific numbers. Isn't it possible that we've already affected clouds enough to add another 2/10ths C on top of the 2C by that point? That's not much, but ... it is an extra 1/3 degree F.
And, it also would cook a little more feedback into feedback loops.
Per the first link?
I'll offer 50-50 odds the world hits 1200 ppm within 100 years. Fortunately, I won't be alive then to see if I win the bet.
That's because, at least among Merikans viewed on social media, Pacific Standard reports on a sort of "weather becomes climate" version of Kahneman's fast thinking, or short-term emphasizing vs long-term discounting or similar. Wiki has the entry of "shifting baseline" with more details. Beyond such discounting, of course, humans just turn up the heat or AC, as well.
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Some climatologists are suggesting that "geoengineering-lite" can deliver most of the expected benefits of full-on geoeingeering and few of the headaches. Color me skeptical.
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Carl Beijer, whom I still find puzzling at times, claims that leftist types who worry that touting geoengineering will encourage the moral hazard of more carbon dioxide emissions, are simply wrong.
Instead, I think he's wrong, so wrong that I'll eat my fucking hat — and his — if he's ever proven right.
Most of Merika is morally lazy in general, first. Second, per the third tag here, most of Merika — including both right AND left neoliberals as well as various shades of rightists, with a few exceptions — believes in "salvific technologism," that is, the idea that the technology cavalry will always come running over the hill to save us.
The combination of both in a Venn diagram intersect on geoengineering is a big deal. Related to that, Beijer is putting the cart before the horse. He does offer the handwaving caveats of we don't know if some types of geoengineering might not be either safe or effective, although without noting that some might be positively unsafe in having backfire effects. BUT, he doesn't extrapolate from there to say that a good precautionary principle tied with moral hazard issues says that we shouldn't tout geoengineering until some version of it POSITIVELY PANS OUT.
The moral laziness will otherwise ride in the saddle.
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