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.

Texas heat and a "hotter than a firecracker" future

At least up here in North Tex-ass, it is NOT hotter than a firecracker on the Fourth, thanks to overcast weather and pop-up showers over the past weekend.

But, it was last week, and the state is expected to be hotter than average for the rest of the summer. (Don't forget that the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration do NOT use overall historical averages for their "average temperature" on a date; it's just the average of the last 30 years, rolled upward a decade at the start of a new decade, which means the feds are making global warming the new normal.)

As Peter Holley notes, the "new normal" is not the old normal, as shown last week, and semi-legendary Texas grit, just like the "willpower" of Schopenhauer, only goes so far in dealing with this. 

The Observer talks about hospital visits in the recent heat wave. Remember Strangeabbott signing the bill killing local water breaks.

And, it's going to get worse in the future.

Environmental author Jeff Goodell, whom I've read before, and is good, has a new one out, titled straightforwardly, "The Heat Will Get You First," reviewed by the Monthly, Holley in specific. Among other things, Goodell notes, per East and Central Texas vs West Texas and beyond, that it is indeed not just the heat. And, of course, warmer air can hold more humidity. Beyond that, he says climatologists have not ruled out a 125F degree day in Austin in the future.

In the interview, Goodell says he's optimistic, though, noting how growth in renewables has grown. (This ignores, though, as non-Gang Green environmentalists know, that nationally, renewables as a portion of total US energy use have NOT grown that much, and that a fair chunk of that remains hydroelectric from dams that are often older, and that, due to climate change [Hoover and Glen Canyon dams coming immediately to mind] often generate less electricity than 20 years ago due to less of a water "load" behind them.)

Russell Gold talks about the solar power within Texas' renewables' deck of cards. He claims the Lege's war on renewables has so far "failed." He really ought to read Chris Tomlinson before saying such things. Or me. Or others. But, his reporting on energy has often been questionable for years. He also ignores what I said above about renewables as a percentage of portfolio.

And, here's another reason I'm NOT optimistic, but it's at the national level. Neoliberal Joe says he's open to geoengineering. Showing its collective values and mindset, the EU is also looking at it. Geoeingineering could well be Homo sapiens' biggest self-induced clusterfuck this side of causing a global nuclear war. It is hugely neoliberal, it is hugely in the realm of "salvific technologism," as in, thinking that the tech cavalry will always come riding over the hill, a phrase I've not used in a couple of years, and it is hugely a "solutionism" idea, per a word of Yevgeny Morozov.

Needed on #climatechange: Negative carbon emissions

If the Paris climate deal is to be anything more than the lipstick on the pig of Copenhagen 2009, as I called it, if it's going to be reality, we either need to stop ALL fossil fuels use NOW or else start extracting carbon dioxide from the air NOW.

Here's the details.

While it's tough extracting meso-level climatic variations from normal and saying how much is based on climate change, nonetheless, an unusual El Niño that has given Seattle plenty of rain, but Los Angeles and San Francisco none, while also helping the Southeast (and other places in the US) break Christmas warm-weather records, is surely tied to climate change in part.

That extractiveness could include planting more trees and other biomass. It could, on paper, include chemical methods such as seeding the ocean surface with iron to stimulate some plankton. (I say "on paper" because one trial wasn't fully promising. Also, as with most human geoengineering, it's certain to have at least one hidden trap door problem.)

And, speaking of geoengineering, there's wild-eyed ideas about sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Cutting fossil fuel use immediately, while painful, is easier. It would also, if cutting natural gas use is part of that, cut methane leaks into the atmosphere, which are themselves a growing problem, as a monster leak in Los Angeles shows.

Climate change news: EROEI and iron-eating plankton

Scientific American has a great post about just how much energy return on energy investment a modern society needs. That's EROEI for short in the Peak Oil world, though SciAm drops the second use of "energy" and calls it EROI.

The nut grafs in this Q-and-A piece are on page 2:

Is there some minimum EROI we need to have?
Since everything we make depends on energy, you can't simply pay more and more and get enough to run society. At some energy return on investment—I'm guessing 5:1 or 6:1—it doesn't work anymore.

What happens when the EROI gets too low? What’s achievable at different EROIs?
If you've got an EROI of 1.1:1, you can pump the oil out of the ground and look at it. If you've got 1.2:1, you can refine it and look at it. At 1.3:1, you can move it to where you want it and look at it. We looked at the minimum EROI you need to drive a truck, and you need at least 3:1 at the wellhead. Now, if you want to put anything in the truck, like grain, you need to have an EROI of 5:1. And that includes the depreciation for the truck. But if you want to include the depreciation for the truck driver and the oil worker and the farmer, then you've got to support the families. And then you need an EROI of 7:1. And if you want education, you need 8:1 or 9:1. And if you want health care, you need 10:1 or 11:1.

Anybody who's followed the issue knows that Canada's tar sands are on the borderline of that 6:1 at best. It's more than global warming/climate change issues of this relatively dirty oil that's the problem. It's the amount of energy needed to extract them, and what sources are used for that energy, and then, how does THAT affect climate change as a sidebar.

But, it's more than "just" climate change. Author Mason Inman, in those nut grafs, also ties it to quality of life, and somewhat, if you will, to quantity of life.

On some things, increased efficiency will continue to help. But, recycling, like when that truck breaks down? That takes energy itself.

===

Meanwhile, in news more directly related to climate change greens have long touted the possibility of oceanic phytoplankton "eating" a fair share of our burgeoning carbon dioxide emissions.

Climate-related geoengineers then came up with the idea of seeding patches of ocean with microscopic iron to stimulate phytoplankton growth.

Then, nature provided a ready-made experiment.

Ash from the recently erupted Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull provided enough iron to stimulate 2010 plankton growth in the North Atlantic the size of France or Texas.

But, the effect was short-lived and for a specific reason.

Unfortunately or fortunately, perhaps, the specificity of the reason could lead to further experimentation elsewhere.

The reason why it was short-lived is that the additional plankton quickly gobbled up oceanic nitrates.

So, the reason an experiment could be tried elsewhere is that our Big Ag produces a nitrate-laden "dead zone" every year just beyond the mouth of the Mississippi. On the other hand, what if this works and a huge  bloom causes other problems? What if some of the plankton evolve into freshwater forms and start colonizing the river?

And, in the Southern Ocean, phytoplankton have reached their limits, it seems.

Geoengineer against climate change? Eff you

A conference on climate geoengineering underscores one of the biggest reasons I oppose the idea — who makes the decisions on big-ticket geoengineering items?

Painting rooftops white, as the conference discussed, is one thing. (That said, I wouldn't call it "geoengineering." In the past, that word has been reserved for big-ticket items like seeding the atmosphere with aerosols, and this blog post will take it that way.)

Who makes the decisions what we're going to do, in terms of what substances or materials we use? Who makes the decisions as to who pays how much to fund this? If politicians override scientists, who holds them accountable, especially to swaths of conservative Americans who have shown themselves ready to be bamboozled by pseudoscience on so many issues in the past already?

Here's an American attendee, emphasizing the research need:

If climate engineering research isn't done now, climatologists say, the world will face grim choices in an emergency. "If we don't understand the implications and we reach a crisis point and deploy geoengineering with only a modicum of information, we really will be playing Russian roulette," said Steven Hamburg, a U.S. Environmental Defense Fund scientist.

But, that still doesn't answer all the questions above. And, if research is going to be just about the technology, and not paralleled by discussing the decision-making and the cost/payment issues, it's kind of senseless.

The first and second weren't addressed in the conference. As to the third?

Well, that leads to the issue of what I have called "salvific technologism," namely, the idea that technological advances are ALWAYS going to be the "cavalry" ready to ride over the hill in the nick of time. In the developed world, I think it's far and away the strongest in the U.S. That, in turn is because it dovetails so well with American exceptionalism. After all, Americans did Hoover Dam, the Manhattan Project, yada, yada, yada.

But, a look at previous U.S. attempts to "engineer" our ecology, on a smaller scale, show it's often been a big fat flop.

Tamarisk in the Southwest and kudzu in the Southeast are the two most glaring examples of that in terms of plant-based engineering.

Finally, "geoengineering" is a "tomorrow" solution to global warming and climate change. We don't have the specifics ironed out today? "No problem; we'll get to that tomorrow."

And, the conference DID, to its credit, address that:

Many here worried that someone, some group, some government would decide on its own to conduct large-scale atmospheric experiments, raising global concerns — and resentment if it's the U.S. that acts, since it has done the least among industrial nations to cut greenhouse emissions. They fear some in America might push for going straight to "Plan B," rather than doing the hard work of emissions reductions.

Here's the problem with geoengineering, in that way —

It doesn't require America, like the old Fram commercial, to pay up front now; it doesn't require Americans to face the cost of climate change and global warming. Beyond the "who's in charge" and "possible catastrophe" issues, that's the third reason to oppose geoengineering – it's a seductive mistress speaking honeyed words full of formlessness and void, to riff on the opening of Judeo-Christian scripture.