Earth Day 2026: And?

As I noted on Shitter, and in comment to a good piece of snark on Substack by friend Lyle Lewis?

Earth Day is the day when pseudoenvironmentalists and environmentalists lite pretend to deeply care about environmental issues. 

But, it's true?

Look at Jared Huffman, claiming to be an environmentalist, except when it comes to letting cows continue to shit in Point Reyes. Result? Cows drive away tule elk. Ravens eat plover eggs when they run out of worms in cow shit. Park Service ignores the former and ropes off a section of Drake's Beach as critical nesting habitat for the latter rather than addressing the actual problem.

Per a piece I heard on NPR this morning, asking listeners what they saw as the biggest problem?

For me, No. 1 is the climate crisis. And, we're past "climate change." The Colorado River is drying up and will continue to do so the rest of this century. We're on target for 4°C, maybe 5°C, of increased heat from pre-industrial times within 100 years. That's 7-9°F. That latter faces neoliberal climate change Obamiacs like Michael Mann, perhaps worse at times for the cause than climate change deniers.

That said, the climate change deniers don't help. And, in the western US, that means increased wildfires, like the KNP Complex Fire in Sequoia five years ago:

Or the Dixie Fire blowing up in Lassen the same year. I was there the day it blew up.

No. 2 is the Sixth Mass Extinction. Besides megafauna and lesser fauna, globalization and related issues threatens a lot of flora. So does mass monocrop agriculture. The chemicals behind that threaten many birds.

No. 3, as Lyle talks about in that piece and elsewhere, is "overshoot," the overextraction of vital resources. Beyond petroleum, water is an obvious one. Overusing the Colorado River is a clear example. Another, as I said in calling out Suzanne Bellsnyder over Proposition 4, is groundwater — in her case, the Ogallala Aquifer.

No. 4 is what's behind all of this — neoliberal capitalism. That's the bottom line.

So, with Earth Day now 56 years old, we can celebrate accomplishments, like the Endangered Species Act in the US, while at the same time note failures, such as US politicians of both duopoly parties, not just Republicans, undercutting it and other environmental issues when they get in the way of capitalist economics. We can globally note Dear Leader conspiring with Xi Jinping to keep the Paris climate accords entirely voluntary. And, we can note climate change Obamiac scientists overselling Paris in the past.

Don't be fooled again. 

That said, a side note or two, riffing on my Earth Day 2016 piece.

National parks not only can get loved to death, they do. This has gotten worse in our COVID and post-COVID world, abetted not only by Trump slashes to federal nature funding, but death by a thousand paper cuts or stasis from Obama and Biden.

Second, Earth Day was founded about urban environmentalism. The record there since 1970 isn't perfect either. But, to be better? Start at home. In cities and towns, pick up trash. Homeowners, businesses and apartment complex owners? Stop overwatering and overfertilizing lawns. Plant native plants. Stop using petroleum-wasting Amazon so much.

Third, lets note that "wilderness" areas don't stay wilderness without management, and at least since not the development of agriculture, but organized pastoral nomads and even large-scale hunter-gatherers, "natural" environments have been managed by humans. Stop calling American Indians "Roussellian noble savages." It tain't so. 

Am I perfect on this? No. I just took a big old jet airplane on vacation, per the Sequoia photo. But, I have a reasonable amount of striving. I boycott a few companies over environmental issues, just like others over Israel. I fight the temptation to use artificial intelligence, and its electricity consumption, beyond already being here on the Net. I stay attuned to local nature. 

Global warming may actually be speeding up

No sugarcoating this reporting from Popular Mechanics:

What [Stefan] Rahmstorf, along with fellow co-author and U.S. statistician Grant Foster, discovered was that the world warmed an average rate of 0.35 degrees Celsius in the past decade, a significant increase from the 0.2 degrees Celsius increases typically recorded since 1970. This is obviously worrying, since not only is the planet warming, but the rate at which it’s warming may be accelerating, complicating the timeline for addressing the climate crisis.

Ouch.

The authors explain how they got to this point: 

The new finding was made by stripping away natural influences, such as El Niño events, volcanic eruptions, and solar activity, to analyze the underlying rate of warming.

That said, this would further backstop James Hansen's late-2023 findings, viciously attacked by Michael Mann. It would further backstop Peter Brannen's new book.

Per both of them, we have a "good" chance of hitting 5°C within a century. 

Is this too high? 

PM notes that other scientists have found accelerated warming, but at "just" 0.27 degrees.

Do the math. That's 2.7°C in a century, plus the 1.5 currently, for a total of 4.2. (The 3.5 would get us to 5C.) 

Neoliberal California climate change environmentalism in action

Shock me that the state governed by the former Mayor Pothole is doing toothless state carbon offsets by funding "renewable" natural gas plants in North Carolina, extracting and purifying the methane out of hog shit. And yes, per the piece, California FUNDS something that is not really environmental, is neoliberal greenwashing, involves cheating within that and also has environmental justice problems.

First, of course, some of that methane goes into making fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides for the food that feeds the hogs that produce .... methane and shit. It's "renewable" but in just the opposite way from Gavin Newsom's idea. 

And, as said Devon Hall, an environmental justice organizer who founded the Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help (REACH) in Warsaw, North Carolina, about fifteen minutes down the road from the facility:

“Communities have been suffering with the swine CAFOs for many years,” said Hall. “Whenever you begin to talk about biogas, then it just further embeds the problem.”

There you are. 

The hypocrisy is compounded because Newsom signed into law a bill from the Cal Lege banning eggs from states that don't give chicken minimum room to roam but won't ban pork from CAFO farms.

Meanwhile, the biogas technology, a greenwashing effort by the Big Hog industry, doesn't actually solve the problem anyway:

The United States Department of Agriculture warns that the methane capture process can exacerbate certain water quality issues by increasing the water-solubility of nitrogen in livestock waste. That raises the risk of nitrate contamination of drinking water which is linked to miscarriages and infant mortality and is a particular concern in an area where most residents draw their water from wells.

Again, there you are. 

The story goes on to note that, back in Newsom's own state, biogas for dairy farms doesn't get the carbon reductions Newsom's state credits it for.

Worse yet? Newsom's California cheats:

Even more egregious, they say, is the fact that the program allows farms in Wisconsin, Texas, New York, Missouri and several other states to sell biogas credits into the California market for fuel that never makes it into California pipelines.

Cheats.

Go read more. I'm just halfway into the piece with that quote. 

No, there's more. California's hypocritical even compared to North Carolina! Yes:

Years before the LCFS existed, utilities in North Carolina were required by a 2007 state law to source some of their power from renewable sources, including 0.2 percent from swine biogas by 2018. It’s the only state in the country that mandates sourcing electricity from animal waste.

Again, there you are. The "only state that mandates" means no California. (That said, the mandate targets in NC aren't close to being reached.)

That all said, the story notes other environmental problems with the whole biogas idea. It also notes a shitload of environmental justice ideas. 

And people wonder why I don't vote Democrat, not only not for president, but also not for U.S. Senator nor any statewide state office. 

Climate realism or climate cynicism?

The New Republic transitions quickly from calling it the former to calling it the latter, businesses and think tanks ditching the baseline idea of the Paris accords and accepting that we're not just going to hit 2C, we're going to hit 3C or more.

It's all about capitalism, even more than TNR shows.

First, Paris was always just aspirational Jell-O, as I wrote at the time. And, two people made sure it would be just that — Xi Jinping and .... Merikkka's Dear Leader. Why? Capitalism.

What does this mean?

First, banksters, hedge funds and others, pivoting from backing decarbonization, which they never really backed, and carbon offsets and other such kabuki theater pretendianism on fighting climate change, to touting investments in air conditioning and other such businesses.

Second, especially as more and more countries eye a selective isolationism or increased efforts at autarky, it means upping the ramparts against climate destruction from outside the doors. And, TNR notes that think tanks as "venerable" as the Council on Foreign Relations are signing off on at least some of this.

This:

The brand of climate cynicism being voiced by the Council on Foreign Relations is more novel. In an essay outlining the founding principles of the Climate Realism Initiative, Varun Sivarum—the program’s director and a former top aide to Biden-era U.S. climate envoy John Kerry—describes a zero-sum, catastrophically climate-changed world where “other countries will single-mindedly prioritize their own interests” and the United States should do the same. Facing climate-fueled mass migration “of at least hundreds of millions of climate refugees [that] could upend the international order, and increasingly grisly natural disasters,” the U.S. “should provide the support it can, cooperate with countries on building resilience capabilities, and protect its borders,” as well as “prepare for global competition for resources and military positioning that is intensifying in the melting Arctic.”

As emissions continue to rise from emerging economies, Sivarum calls on policymakers to treat climate change as a “top national security priority—on the level of averting nuclear war and engaging in great-power competition with China,” working with allies to penalize countries whose emissions continue to rise. Acknowledging that such an approach is “fundamentally unfair,” Sivarum makes the case for an America First climate policy. “Nevertheless, the fact is that foreign emissions are endangering the American homeland,” he argues. “Every tool of the U.S. and allies’ arsenals, spanning diplomatic and economic coercion to military might, should be on the table.”

Donald Trump and his top allies don’t seem to think climate change is real, or that it’s a bad thing. But as the White House threatens to invade Greenland for its minerals and disappears people into Salvadoran prisons, it’s helping to build precisely the kinds of climate resilience that the Council on Foreign Relations—with its roster of Biden and Obama White House alumni—seems to be championing. Bleak as warming projections are, a planet where governments and businesses fight to the death for their own profitable share of a hotter, more chaotic planet is bleaker still.

What it really means is that, as income inequality looks to rise even more in both developed and upper-tier developing nations, is that, within countries, the poor and the precariat will get screwed even more, while being exploited in the name of economic nationalism.

What it means for me personally as far as political activism, is that this remains, or increases, as another reason to say "fuck the Democrats" as well as "fuck the Republicans."

Science news: Climate change cheating at Paris, atmospheric red flags — important as COP29 approaches

Not that this will actually affect anything undertaken at COP29, starting with the hypocrisy of it once again being held in a petrostate, this time, Baku Azerbaijan. (Yale Climate Connections notes that countries of the world need a "quantum leap" just on meeting current, and currently unfulfilled, commitments from past climate "accords.")

==

The cheating at Paris? I'm talking about the Paris round of climate change "accord" talks, which I have long ago called "Jell-O" that was made such by two people: Dear Leader Obama and Xi Jinping.

Now, more evidence in that general direction? Two Swedish academics talk about what was essentially game-rigging on trying to stay below 1.5°C, which we of course have broken already.

(S)oon, the ambitious Paris agreement limit turned out to be not much of a limit at all. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC, the world’s foremost body of climate experts) lent its authority to the 1.5°C temperature target with its 2018 special report, something odd transpired.

Nearly all modelled pathways for limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels involved temporarily transgressing this target. Each still arrived back at 1.5°C eventually (the deadline being the random end point of 2100), but not before first shooting past it.

OK ....

They then spell this out:

De facto, what they said was this: staying below a temperature limit is the same as first crossing it and then, a few decades hence, using methods of removing carbon from the atmosphere to dial temperatures back down again.

From some corners of the scientific literature came the assertion that this was nothing more than fantasy. A new study published in Nature has now confirmed this critique. It found that humanity’s ability to restore Earth’s temperature below 1.5°C of warming, after overshooting it, cannot be guaranteed

Fantasy! Many of us have already faulted the IPCC for being overly conservative. Now, per further items in the piece, it appears that this overt conservativism (contra climate change Obamiacs like Michael Mann and Katharine Hayhoe, with Mann even attacking James Hansen) was deliberate for political reasons.

Read on, MacDuff: 

If reversal cannot be guaranteed, then clearly it is irresponsible to sanction a supposedly temporary overshoot of the Paris targets. And yet this is exactly what scientists have done. What compelled them to go down this dangerous route?

Our own book on this topic (Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown, published last week by Verso) offers a history and critique of the idea.

When overshoot scenarios were summoned into being in the early 2000s, the single most important reason was economics. Rapid, near-term emissions cuts were deemed prohibitively costly and so unpalatable. Cost optimisation mandated that they be pushed into the future to the extent possible.

Politics! Also note the phrase "Climate Breakdown," in the book.

Politics!

(B)ecause modellers could not imagine transgressing the deeply conservative constraints that they worked within, something else had to be transgressed.

One team stumbled upon the idea that large-scale removal of carbon might be possible in the future, and so help reverse climate change. The EU and then the IPCC picked up on it, and before long, overshoot scenarios had colonised the expert literature. Deference to mainstream economics yielded a defence of the political status quo. This in turn translated into reckless experimentation with the climate system. Conservatism or fatalism about society’s capacity for change flipped into extreme adventurism about nature.

There we are.

And read that Nature study. (I'll be trying to find that book!) It notes the real cost is that of carbon removal. IF possible. It also goes into more detail about how climate change feedbacks that are likely already being cooked into the system can't necessarily be undone by negative human GHG emissions.

Update, Nov. 25: Grist takes a further look at "Overshoot," the book by the academics, Andreas Malm and Wim Carton.

“Overshoot is here not a fate passively acquiesced to,” Carton and Malm, both professors at Lund University in Sweden, write in the book’s introduction. “It is an actively championed programme for how to deal with the rush into catastrophe: let it continue for the time being, and then we shall sort things out towards the end of this century.”

And, this is part one of a two-part book set, reportedly.

AND? They're reportedly Marxists. If that's behind callouts like this of Nordhaus:

One of the first examples of overshoot thinking in the mainstream was an influential 1991 paper by the economist William Nordhaus, referred to by Carton and Malm as “the Genghis Khan of bourgeois climate economics.” The article, titled “To Slow or Not to Slow: The Economics of the Greenhouse Effect,” asked what an optimal economic policy would be for dealing with climate change. Nordhaus concluded that a rapid transition away from fossil fuels would carry a steep cost for the economy and that the task should be put off for future generations. Fossil fuels will help the world develop faster, he reasoned, making societies richer and better equipped to deal with climate fallout. (Despite experts flagging a number of errors with this logic, Nordhaus won a Nobel Prize for his life’s work in 2018.)

All the better.

And, per that Jell-O I mentioned up top?

This:

“If there was equality in Paris, it came in the form of a shared unaccountability: the agreement required that no one was required to act at any certain level,” Carton and Malm wrote. “Now what do you get when a seemingly strict target is combined with such lax rules? You get overshoot.”

Is so true. 

Finally, the authors tackle the issue of stranded assets, and note how much of an obstacle they will continue to be.

Sadly, nobody will be listening.

==

The atmospheric red flags connect. A new study shows that global methane emissions continue to rise. And, guess who's one of the worst offenders of a 2021 global methane emissions agreement? China is also in the top five, as are the rest of the BRICS countries not named South Africa.

==

And, a friendly reminder — it's not fundagelicals vs the liberally religious that's the big divide on taking climate change seriously, as a climate crisis. It's secularists/non-metaphysicians/atheists vs everybody else AND that "everybody else" includes the so-called Nones or religiously unaffiliated.

Climate scientists in despair

As we should all be, per this Guardian piece.

And, the piece was written before the latest sweltering in Mexico. 

This:

“I think 3C is being hopeful and conservative. 1.5C is already bad, but I don’t think there is any way we are going to stick to that. There is not any clear sign from any government that we are actually going to stay under 1.5C.”

Is your entree nutgraf.

It's true. Much of the second half of the piece talks about how 1.5C is a political game. Only about 25 percent of surveyed scientists think the world will hold there. I'm on record as saying that I think James Hansen is right and there's a good chance we hit 4C by the end of this century.

What I find most interesting, is one biggie, with two subparts.

Not a single United States scientist is cited, and definitely not the Climate Change Obamiacs like Michael Mann and Katharine Hayhoe. That's because they're part of the socio-political hackery on this issue.

Otherwise, those who think we can hold the line below 2.5C, even? They seem to expect too much from what I call salvific technologism or what Yevgeny Morozov calls solutionism.

More EVs? Will be partially offset by more data centers.

Replacements for concrete will be slow and very partial.

Most of the developed world cutting its meat eating by 70 percent rather than holding out hope for vaccinating cows against belching and farting so much (and with what currently unknown side effects?) is not likely.

This:

“The good news is the worst-case scenario is avoidable,” said Michael Meredith, at the British Antarctic Survey. “We still have it in our hands to build a future that is much more benign climatically than the one we are currently on track for.” But he also expects “our societies will be forced to change and the suffering and damage to lives and livelihoods will be severe”.

Is at least halfway realistic. But, would a Mann or Hayhoe even say it right now?

And, don't look, but as we see that cleaner marine diesel may be a contributor to warmer ocean waters, the push for geoengineering will likely increase.

Jeff Goodell hits a bit of a foul ball on handling the high Heat

I wound up being somewhat disappointed by Jeff Goodell's new-of-2023 book "The Heat Will Kill You First."

I'd read "Big Coal" years ago and thought it was great. I'd heard some good reviews about "Heat."

The reality, in precís form, before an expanded version of my Goodreads review?

The anecdotal parts of the book, about individual people struggling with, and sometimes dying in and from, the heat? Great.

The actual science? The sea level rise was mainstream. The effect of heatwaves was mainstream.

But, the biggie of "where are we headed"? To take 2100 as a break point, is it 2.5C? 3C? 4C? Even higher? Goodell makes no projection of his own, nor does he ask any climate scientist to make one.

Then, the what do we do? part is half nothingburger, half non-reality.

The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet by Jeff Goodell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

OK, first the best.

The best part on the science side is the chapter on Friedericke Otto and extreme event attribution. Personalized stories, such as the migrant dead at the Willamette Valley nursery, are a solid second, and first on the narrative.

Back to the "where are we headed"? Is it 2.5C or so (we're using the metric here, contra the book), like "climate change neoliberals" such as Michael Mann and Katharine Hayhoe? (I think that's where they'd sit if you forced them to pick a number, but, to be honest, I think they'd do their damndest to avoid picking a number in the first place.) Or 4C by the end of this century, as James Hansen said recently, if you do his math, and with whom I very much agree? See how easy that was, Jeff?

Goodell pulls punches and won't tell us anything.

To put it another way, in terms of the different temperature possibilities per the above?

Is he a Michael Mann/Katharine Hayhoe climate change Obamiac? Is he Hansen? Is he James Kunstler or beyond, if you think 5C or even a "runaway" is possible?

He gives every appearance of being a climate change Obamiac.

Then, the what do we do? part is half nothingburger, half non-reality.

The non-reality part is the issue of how much, or how little, can we really "harden" cities that are already in hot climates. Goodell listens to a person from Phoenix, Mark Hartman, the city's "chief sustainability officer," but neither in the interview, nor on his own afterward, does he say that the correct answer is: "move away." Just like "move away" rather than blow money on it is the right answer for the Salton Sea. (I said a dozen years ago that, rather than HARP, HAMP and all the other subprime bubble-bursting reinflation, Dear Leader should have told the recent moves to Phoenix that their in arrears mortgages would be ripped up if they'd move back to Cleveland, Des Moines or whatever. He would also have told developers and mortgage originators that they would be made whole IF IF IF they cut their home building and home sales in Phoenix by 10-20 percent for the next decade, otherwise, no Fannie or Freddie help on future mortgages.)

The nothingburger? Since he won't plump for a 2100 temperature point, he won't tell us about carbon taxes and tariffs or other actions we should be taking. No bueno. 

Related? Those "vaunted" Paris accords? You mean the totally voluntary Jell-O, made so by Dear Leader Obama and Xi Jinping? The accords that stayed voluntary at the 2019 global climate summit and the just-completed one in 2023? And, no, Goodell tells you none of that, Dear Reader.

(This is also a good spot for a reminder that the real, true divide on taking climate change seriously is not between Republicans and Democrats, nor is it between fundagelicals and more liberal Christians, but it's between secularists and everybody else.)

I felt Goodell had a chance for more outreach, and fell short. (And so, contra others, I did NOT think this was "doom porn." If only it hit people that much over the head.) If you think we're going to be at 2.5C at the end of the century, then this book is OK. If 4C, then it's not. Those polar bears are doomed to death, zoos or inbreeding with grizz. The pikas are trapped. Etc., etc.

Where's it not so good otherwise?

Couple of science errors, first.

There are four normal jet streams, two in each of the northern and southern hemispheres, not “the jet stream.”

Great Barrier Reef is 1,400 miles long, not 14,000. That one was glaring.

More to the point?

Narrative issues, maybe?

Lesser ones first.

I don't think the A/C chapter was totally off point, because Goodell talks about how it has killed off, or nearly so, in many parts of the world, old-style ways of constructing buildings to keep them cooler. Other than the carbon-boosting energy costs, if AC is not powered by renewables, there's the added issue of CFC leaks from refrigerant lines and pumps. And, these CFCs, differing among themselves, are also greenhouse gases.

The Arctic and Antarctic visits, though? Both interesting. Both certainly connected to climate change and to the global warming part of them. But, Goodell doesn't really tie either one into global warming that much, especially not the Arctic visit. For instance, we're not told how much sea ice has decreased in the last 30 years. 

Also, like another 3-star reviewer, I noted that (outside of AUS/NZ) there's little Global South here, especially on urban adaptations. Pakistan does get play in the non-developed Global North, but because of the extremes it faces. And, as far as solutions, the Global North is asking the Global South to suck it. So far, low-carbon developmental help has been all hat on promises, no cattle on actual help. Goodell doesn't discuss that, either.

Finally, on the personal side, he says that getting outside more in hot weather (while being smart about it, of course) increases one's adaptability to the heat, and thus lessens the need for AC. I'm not sure how much he practices what he preaches. I'm not in Austin, but I am in North Tex-ass, and I exercise by powerwalking in 100°F or hotter temperature.

View all my reviews

Climate crisis: One straight year over 1.5C

THAT is the bigger reality than just a record-setting January.

Yes, the neoliberal wing of climate change scientists, or climate change Obamiacs as I call them, the Michael Manns and Katharine Hayhoes, will downplay the seriousness of this. Hayhoe probably as an evangelical Christian will do so for that reason alone; survey says, no joking about the phrase, that secularists are FAR more likely to think that climate change is a very major issue than either fundagelical OR liberal-minded people not just of Christianity or any other world religion.

Before the January climate story, I already saw people spinning the record-setting 2023 as "well, maybe we'll hit 2C but no more than that," or words to that effect.

Reality? Per the likes of James Hansen, we've surely baked in 2.5C and almost surely 3C into what will wind up as the new stasis point. As I said in discussing that, and in saying that I would take Hansen over Mann any time on climate assessments, 4C by 2100 would not surprise me. Even 5C would not incredibly surprise me.

And, per it being referenced in Reuters? The Paris accords are Jell-O, and two people wanted that: Dear Leader Obama and Xi Jinping.

Meanwhile, other climate scientists warn that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation is closer to a tipping point. That's the point where meltwater from the Arctic and Greenland could overwhelm the Gulf Stream at its northerly reaches and affect the climate of Western Europe. How much, we really don't know.

I'll take James Hansen over Michael Mann any time as 4C looms (Update: 5C?)

And even more over Katharine Hayhoe.

The last person is not mentioned in a piece by Bob Henson, formerly of Weather Underground, now of Yale Climate Connections, over a battle between Hanson and Mann and others like Hayhoe who I have called "Climate change Obamiacs" in the past and whom, to Henson on Twitter, I called the similar "climate change neoliberals."

The issue, which Henson presents in New York Times style "he said, she said" journalism, is whether Hansen's right that we've permanently popped 1.5C on climate change already. Henson links to a longer piece at Inside Climate News where Hanson spells out his reasoning in detail, which in turn links to an academic study where he is a co-author.. He notes the decrease in aerosols pollution — think phasing out of coal for power plants and also cleaner emissions standards, especially here in the US, for diesel fuel — as a primary reason for his pessimism, and it makes sense.

It's not just the U.S. climate change Obamiacs who get blasted. It's also the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Anybody who knows anything knows that Hanson is right about this as well. The IPCC is deliberately conservative in its assessments as a form of kowtowing to its nation-state masters. It's also bureaucratic enough to be lumbering in gathering and analyzing data, with that kowtowing then getting baked in. And, operating on a four-year assessment cycle, whatever it spits out is behind the curve for that reason alone.

Henson (and his co-author and WU collaborator Jeff Masters) should know this; if not, they're part of the climate change Obamiacs problem.

Hansen was sounding the alarm before this co-authored research paper. Back in May, before the eye-popping summer of 2023, he already said we would hit 2C by 2050. He's right. That draft paper, a preview to the final joint study piece, notes that he had warned about the effect of the decline of sulfur-based aerosols back in 2021. He predicts a climb of 0.3C per decade. Do the math.

That's 4C by 2100. I think he's right.

And, no, Mann, he's NOT "hyperventilating."

“I’m frustrated by the hyperventilating going on over this. It’s frustrating that so many continue to miscommunicate about that and mislead the public as to where we are. The truth is bad enough.”

The truth is a lot worse than you and other climate change Obamiacs want to admit, for whatever reasons you don't want to admit it.

This is nothing new for Mann, who, as shown in 2020, simply doesn't want to accept studies that confront his Goldilocks idea that we have "some" climate change, too much for total comfort, but not enough for real alarm.

We may not need James Kunstler levels of alarm, but we need something halfway close to that level of radicalism.

Besides, even the IPCC which Hansen rightly challenges said last year that, barring strong action, we're facing at least 3C. Not quite Hansen's 4C, but yet.

UPDATE, Feb. 12, 2025: I think even Hansen may be lowballing. I think there's a 50-50 chance of 5°C by the end of this century. I said that way back in 2019. Having run 12 months straight of 1.5°C a year ago, and generally continuing at that level or beyond? Seeing that methane emissions both natural and human have been underestimated? We're in trouble.

Remember: The Paris Accords are toothless Jell-O, because Dear Leader Obama and Xi Jinping wanted it that way.

And, per WHY I said Hayhoe was wrong four years ago, as well as how? Mann, as well as her, need to read some David Hume.

Oh, and unless he's had some big new revelation, #BernAnon sheepdogger David Sirota is still a hypocrite on this.

UPDATE, March 11, 2026: Per Peter Brannen's excellent new book on CO2, while I may be a bit high on the 2025 update, he expects 5°C within a century from now.

IPCC confirms we're facing climate change shit creek

Yes, that's the most straightforward way to describe the latest quadrennial report on climate change by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Here's your nutgraf, up front, emphasis mine at the end:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Monday released its latest report, which found that nations are falling short of their pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to avert catastrophic climate change. While the technology exists to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) of average global temperature increase — the goal that virtually every nation agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate agreement and reaffirmed last year in the Glasgow Climate Pact — current policies put the world on a trajectory toward at least twice as much warming.

Again, let's note that "current policies put the world on a trajectory toward at least twice as much warming."

Within that, let's further zero in on "at least twice as much." In other words, 3C may not be the stopping point above 1.5C. Could be 3.5C or 4C.

That's climate change shit creek and no other way to describe it.

Despite the angst by ruling class Democrats when Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Accords, and the same #BlueAnon huzzahs when Biden put us back in, the bottom line remains the same, and that is that:

The Paris Accords are toothless Jell-O.

And, with that, we need to start taking seriously the possibility that climate change Obamiacs like Katharine Hayhoe, Michael Mann and Bob Kopp are not only wrong, they're actually at Not.Even.Wrong, and that alarmists like James Kunstler just might be right. At a minimum, until the BlueAnon tech-neolib capitalists accept that Paris is toothless Jell-O, Kunstler will be more right than wrong. And, given the way the Glasgow round of climate talks went last fall, Team Democrat will continue to pretend to act and team MSM media will continue to pretend to take this seriously. That includes both the Monthly AND the Observer in Texas, in one of those instances that made Bernard Rapoport turn in his grave, in all likelihood. And also, Texas Observer, I haven't forgotten that it was YOU, not the Monthly, that spin-cycled Hayhoe, about whom I have a special climate change Obamiac animus. All of the above also goes for Sunrise Movement, really the youth wing of Sierra Club. (Does it hate Palestinians like Sierra?)

I also tweeted to the Observer if they wanted to edit the worst of that turd-polishing, where Hayhoe claimed, a year before Winter Storm Uri, that the Texas electric grid was "resilient." AND, good neoliberal, said that this was because it's independent of the rest of the nation's electric grid. Seriously. This is the person that Texas librulz hold up as a Texas exceptionalist exemplar of what Texas could really do on climate change.

And, as I type this, Status Quo Joe wants to expand LNG port termnails, cuz, you know, exporting natural gas and wrecking the climate will "own the Russians" or something.

Glasgow: Sound and fury on climate change, signifying nothing

First, here is the actual agreement, all 10 pages.  You'll see lots of "urges." No "agree that they will" or anything like that, of course. So, with that, let's dig in.

1. John Kerry is turd-polishing the Glasgow climate deal. Tells us non #BlueAnon folks all we need to know. A deal with no enforcement got even worse to kowtow to India on coal.

2. Tree planting climate offsets were already full of both loopholes and bullshit. Pledges at Glasgow only doubled that. So does the larger idea of getting to "net zero" with an offsets-first approach. Indigenous people are right that this is a new form of colonialism. Greta Thunberg is right that this is greenwashing. (In turn, that undermines Wrong Type of Green if it still claims she's under the thumb of corporate neoliberal minders.)

3. If carbon markets are like carbon cap-and-trade was in the EU, they're bullshit, too.

4. Gizmodo nails it; the US has been a bit of a bully in the past (but China has hid behind our skirts).

Bottom line? This will be Jell-O, just like Paris.

5. Therefore, it's no surprise that a mainstream climate science neoliberal like Michael Mann is scribbling for the LA Times, avidly stanning for the "deal" at Glasgow. In fact, this shite is exactly why I've called the likes of him and Texas' #BlueAnon national climate change treasure Katharine Hayhoe climate change neoliberals, or actually, from the blog, not from memory, "climate change Obamiacs," for years. Focusing on Hayhoe and fellow travelers of hers, I talked about this four years ago. I most recently tackled her in a piece late this summer, kind of a warning shot about Glasgow, and another one about the mainstream media on climate issues.

Let's break out how much BS he has, starting here:

COVID-related restrictions made it difficult for climate activists to participate in the proceedings.

Uhh, wrong! The rich nation-states organizing Glasgow had more to do with this than COVID. DeSmog Blog and other sites have written about this. Even you admit the overwhelming presence of fossil fuel execs, but can't, or won't, tie this to activist exclusion.

Then, this:

Meanwhile, the leaders of the world’s largest carbon emitter, China, and petrostates Saudi Arabia and Russia were AWOL. Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia was shunned for his woefully inadequate climate commitments. Yes, there were pledges aplenty, but the “implementation gap” seemed ever more yawning. A leaked draft of the COP26 decision text lacked any mention of a fossil fuel phaseout.

Uhh, China sent officials. Just not Xi Jinping, who hasn't left China since the start of COVID and, if recent internal indications are any worry, is concerned about a new round of COVID. (He probably didn't want to face even a suggestion of hostile questioning from either world leaders or world press.) Shameful? Per the Paris Jell-O link above? The US has also been shameful. As for attendance? Biden did go, didn't stay that long, and barked up the wrong tree. Nor did many other world leaders. Mann having a "we" in a following paragraph comes off as American tribalism, even if not meant that way.

And, the capper on the bullshit? This:

But the biggest breakthrough was unexpected. On Wednesday, China and the U.S. — the world’s two largest climate polluters — said they would commit to “enhanced climate actions” to keep global warming to the limits set in the Paris agreement. Most critically, the statement included a commitment to phase down coal. And while we can’t yet quantify the impacts of this development, it presumably moves us closer to the 1.5 Celsius goal. This level of U.S.-China cooperation quickly shifted the entire COP26 narrative and outlook. 

It is noteworthy that a similar bilateral agreement in 2014 brokered by the same two lead negotiators — China’s top climate envoy Xie Zhenhua and then-Secretary of State John F. Kerry — laid the groundwork for the Paris agreement a year later. This week’s agreement might prove even more important. Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Biden will meet virtually on Monday to discuss further actions.

EXACTLY like how Paris ended. A joint communique full of purely voluntary items. (Mann either knows this about Paris and is being mendacious, and does not, and is an idiot. I'm taking 5-1 odds, minimum, on the former.)

Until either the US or China passes a carbon tax PLUS carbon tariff, the likes of Michael Mann should STFU. Right now, per Greta Thunberg, he's full of "blah, blah, blah."

Except more of that in days and weeks ahead from Hayhoe herself and the fellow travelers like Bob Kopp, as well as the climate change Obamiac mainstream environmentalists like Audubon and even the AOC-touted (and AOC-queenmaking) Sunrise Movement. They've done it before, too, in the case of Audubon; see the "late this summer" for Sunrise.

6. So, in summary, I agree with Vox that it was a "tiny step." I agree that Dear Leader Obama is a hypocrite. (Right, climate change Obamiacs?) I disagree that this provides any sort of international political lever.

7. Finally, where am I at on the realities on the ground, using the measuring stick of global warming? As for my degree of alarmism? I'm not quite James Kunstler, but I'm far more than Mann or Hayhoe.

I think if we do EVERYTHING we can right now, reasonably, with mandates, not voluntary unenforceable agreements, 2C is still cooked in the books and hits by 2100.

I think if the current actual reality continues? About a 50 percent chance of 2C by 2050. I think a 10 percent chance of 3C by 2050, 30 percent by 2075 and more than 50 percent by 2100. I think a 10 percent chance of **4C** by 2100, and if that happens, there’s the possibility of “runaway Earth” tipping points. Mother Jones thinks the world will hit 2.4C, and apparently that's it. THAT is too low.

Update 1 and confirming that? The Independent Media Institute, Richard Wolff-affiliated org, in discussing the "climate chinwag," says that even if all pledges at Glasgow were met, it still wouldn't get us to Paris targets. It also notes that most consumers in advanced nations, above all but not limited to the US, aren't really ready to change their lifestyles much. It adds that many don't know what the best things are to do, anyway. 

Update 2? It was noted at Glasgow that rich countries have missed the targets for money for a climate mobilization fund to assist poor countries. Per Quartz, there's an even bigger problem. Nobody knows what's been done with the. money that HAS been raised.

This corner of Texas Progressives tackles Texas media on the new IPCC report and climate change

Both the Observer and the Monthly got stuff incomplete and pulled punches last week, on the issue of the IPCC's newest climate change report. Sad, but true. Not surprising with either one. Simply true on that with the Monthly, but another sad but true with the Observer.

With that, let's dig in.

Charlie Daniels' "it don't get hot in El Paso" was of course purely rhetorical.

The new IPCC report, as conservative as it is, means more problems for the El Paso area, as part of the Southwest (and "really," part of New Mexico, not Texas). The Texas Observer has more, but its story is incomplete by covering in detail only temperature, not the changes in rainfall that are part of actual full climate change and not "just" global warming.

The Observer also decided to fellate the Sunrise Movement. (Ms. Ahmed has kind of done this before.) They've been rebuked from my past blogging. (I know "carbon tax + carbon tariff" is by no means a single-measure solution. It IS, though, a useful paired set of tools. It' s also, to me, a benchmark. If you can't or won't support them, or if, like High Country News, you conflate a carbon tax with cap and trade, you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.)

The Monthly doesn't do a lot better on the big picture, interviewing climate change neoliberal hopey-dopey Katharine Hayhoe. For my takes on her, go here, here, more here and especially here. Hayhoe knows the report is from the IPCC, which due to various constraints is always somewhat "behind the cycle" and is also too beholden to national governments. Yet, like Yale Climate, she stresses the hopey-dopey in the report.

 

The actual reality, as Jeff St. Clair notes, is that the IPCC report has PLENTY of new alarmism. One biggie? It says that the rate of temperature increase on global warming in the 2015-2040 period will DOUBLE that of 1970-2015. Ms. Hopey-Dopey didn't tell you and Texas Monthly that, did she now? (Sadly, St. Clair partially undermines himself by linking to Nordhaus-Shellenberger / Obamiac climate change reporter John Fleck. He is, very much.)

On renewables and energy in general? No, the boulder is NOT at the top of the hill. Not if we want to find enough renewables to power all the electric-only cars vehicle makers say they'll exclusively sell in no more than 15 years (if true).

She also fails to distinguish within Texas, between east and west, on likely rainfall pattern changes. (See above.) Not much worse than a nice, polite Canadian moved to Texas, eh? The actual IPCC report is here.

We're past naivete on the likes of her, and Michael Mann and others I've labeled "climate change Obamiacs." We're at the point of wishful thinking on their part. (That is, if we're not at the point, or getting close to it, of plain lying, albeit, like Saint Anthony of Fauci, surely Platonic Noble Lies from their point of view.)

I also know, from Twitter experience, that these climate change Obamiacs have one direct similarity to Dear Leader himself. They do NOT like to be pushed, pulled, kicked or challenged from the left. (Unlike Obama, they haven't ever done a rhetorical head fake of claiming to welcome that.)

That said, at least she's not a hypocrite, unlike David Sirota.

 

General sidebar to all of the above: Cap and trade is NOT THE ANSWER.