Global Climate Change Science News

[aufbahrung]

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg ... n-to-fall/

Borked planet. Safer to get off world before it burns.

[Brian Peacock]

Brian
People, governments and corporations are DOING something, both now and for the future....you throwing around greenwashing accusations DOES NOTHING.

If articles like the one you posted aren't explaining the actual issues in the proper context then they're not really providing news and anylsis to inform wider public debate but providing something more akin to an entertainment product. I offered some of that context - I talked about the scale of the problem, and in light of that the need for rapid action - but you clearly find that sort context disagreeable and irratating; disturbing. We must acknowledge the facts and scale of the issue if we're going to successfully deal with the problems they present. But why does this seem to make you so angry?

YOU have not provided anything positive - just negatives. How useful is that?

I have provided ideas about how to combat global heating and ecological degredation which reflect the considerations and conclusions of the IPCC 2022 Mitigation Report: the positive pathways to addressing the issues climate change poses, and which if followed will limit global heating to well under 2°C by 2050. This is well within our grasp with the tech and solutions we already have to hand if we can convince our governments to take the kinds of action they agreed to take five years ago in Paris. So is it in what I've said that actually gets your goat? Was it...

...
... Systematic inaction from governments demands that the democratic pressure applied to policy-makers needs to be rapidly scaled up to meet the challenges we face now and into the short- to mid-term future - and this will happen only when the general public are more fully informed about the nature and scale of the issues, and the consequences thereof.

Or perhaps it was...

... A rapid decarbonisation of the global economy is the only way to secure the social, political and economic stability needed in order to successfully develop and implement the required sustainable technologies at the required scale.

Or maybe...

... So let me be unambiguous: it's not technology that will provide the solutions to the climate and ecological emergencies that we need today, and for the next generation and beyond, but pro-social political and economic reform.

Why do you consider this kind of thing 'negative'? Is it because these ideas threatens your values, or merely your comfort?

The positive effects and outcomes of rapidly addressing the climate and ecological emergencies so greatly outweigh the negative social, political and economic consequences of maintaining the prevailing business-as-usual approach as to make the case for pro-social political and economic transformation unassailable. And yet this straightforward principle seems to make your blood boil. Frankly, I think this is more of a 'you issue' than a 'me issue' tbh.

[JimC]

...it's not technology that will provide the solutions to the climate and ecological emergencies that we need today, and for the next generation and beyond, but pro-social political and economic reform...

Brian, the needed political and economic reform requires cutting-edge renewable technology to replace fossil fuel energy resources. And the political reforms can only go as fast as an informed populace will let them...

[JimC]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-23/ ... /102741650

A worrying recipe of increased vegetation combined with warm, dry weather has prompted emergency authorities to put large swathes of the country on high alert for bushfires this spring.

The Australasian Fire Authorities Council (AFAC) has large parts of a map of eastern and central Australia marked in red in its seasonal outlook released on Wednesday.

It comes as the Bureau of Meteorology tips spring to be warm and dry for much of the country, with a double-whammy of drought-linked climate drivers developing in oceans to the west and east of the country.

After years of high rainfall, it will be the first dry spring to be predicted by the bureau since 2020.

Undoubtedly we will cop it badly this summer...

[Brian Peacock]

...it's not technology that will provide the solutions to the climate and ecological emergencies that we need today, and for the next generation and beyond, but pro-social political and economic reform...

Brian, the needed political and economic reform requires cutting-edge renewable technology to replace fossil fuel energy resources. And the political reforms can only go as fast as an informed populace will let them...

We absolutely need the tech alternatives. But it also requires the social, political and economic stability to dismantle the current paradigm and roll the alternatives out at scale. We also need that stability to honestly examine our relationship with the natural world and successfully transform our approaches not only to energy production and use but virtually everything our social, political and economic structures have traditionally been based on - because it's those social, political and economic structures which are driving the emergency. Living up to, and exceeding the ambitions of the Paris Agreement and COP26 pledges offer the only viable pathways at the moment - and every country is falling well short of their Paris & COP commitments. This is why democratic, transformative public climate and sustainability education is of primary import.

G20 poured more than $1tn into fossil fuel subsidies despite Cop26 pledges – report.

[Brian Peacock]

Massive economic pain for Australia if temperature rises exceed 2C, intergenerational report predicts

Success in limiting global warming will spare Australia a sharp fall in economic activity but would see coal exports fall to a trickle by 2063 under a low-emissions scenario, according to the government’s intergenerational report.

The report, to be released in full on Thursday, will provide much greater detail on the range of impacts and their scale in a warming world than the five previous intergenerational reports.

Should temperature increases exceed 2C above pre-industrial times – the upper limit of the Paris climate accord – Australia would face “significant real, tangible and direct impacts” across a range of sectors.

Productivity will fall because of the hotter conditions, sapping the economy of between $135bn and $423bn in today’s dollars, the report said, according to an extract released by the treasurer, Jim Chalmers. Should temperature increases reach 3C, the cost to GDP could rise a further $155bn, with 16-41m additional hours of work lost.

“In the absence of adaptation measures Australian crop yields could be up to 4% lower by 2063 in a scenario where global mitigation does not keep temperature increases below 3C this century,” it said, adding yield reductions could be largely avoided if temperatures rises were kept below 2C...

[pErvinalia]

Labor government opening new gas fields and coal mines.

[Sean Hayden]

Brian —all else remaining the same? When does that ever happen?

Of course we shouldn’t excuse bad decisions because things often work out anyway.

—//—

[Brian Peacock]

Fossil fuels being subsidised at rate of $13m a minute, says IMF.

[Brian Peacock]

Brian —all else remaining the same? When does that ever happen?

Of course we shouldn’t excuse bad decisions because things often work out anyway.

—//—

Not sure I understand the questions Sean.

[Sean Hayden]

—just a bit of lazy bullshitting

I was wondering how reliable a prediction about Australia’s economy could be if it was analyzing today’s economy against a future climate? The economy will change as well during that time.

[pErvinalia]

One of the economic journalists made the point that it's almost impossible to predict the economy 4 years out, let alone 40.

[Brian Peacock]

One of the economic journalists made the point that it's almost impossible to predict the economy 4 years out, let alone 40.

Yeah, economic trends are pretty clear - in retrospect. I remember some people predicting the subprime crash, but at that time the trend was up - right up until it wasn't. The game is to keep blowing until just before the bubble bursts.

Economies are complex, dynamic systems prone to exogenous factors and confounding variables, but they are also structures underpinned by in/formal social relationships (values/attitudes, traditions, agreements, laws) and sets of material conditions (raw materials/commodities, infrastructure/supply/demand, access to money/debt). Although they're often talked about as if they occur spontaneously, or as if they're natural forces or the writ of god, economies are designed things structured towards particular ends.

However, if we just take 'The Economy' as a brute fact then we can predict - to some extent at least - how the features of an increasingly chaotic climate (disruptions to the water cycle/extreme weather events/mass migration/mass extinction) could impact it. People can no longer live here because of rising sea levels, crops will no longer grow there because of persistent drought, getting stuff from A-2-B disrupted by damaged infrastructure from an extended typhoon season somewhere else, ecological and seasonal shifts favour invasive species or increase the risks from infectious diseases etc. Any of this can severely impact economies as we have traditionally structured them.

And if we take at face value the idea that you can't predict an economy 4 years ahead let alone 40 years ahead, then in the face of global heating arguments claiming that local, national and international measures to mitigate and adapt to the effects of changing climate are 'bad for the economy' simply blow away on the wind.

By my lights this makes refactoring 'The Economy' towards more resilient and sustainable ends a global imperative.

[macdoc]

economics and science is a non-sequitor.
What a joke, they want to be considered a science....might as well roll 16 sided dice.

[Brian Peacock]

economics and science is a non-sequitor.
What a joke, they want to be considered a science....might as well roll 16 sided dice.

Well yeah. If/when it's a science then it's a social science, but imo it's important to think about economies, rather than a single, discrete thing called The Economy, and to acknowledge how economics also isn't a discrete thing but encompasses disparate and diverse fields of interest and study.

The kind of economics we're most frequently exposed to is the overtly political stuff that stands more in the realms moral philosophy that in the domain of empirical evidence, sound methodologies, reproducibility and testable predictions, so I feel it's unhelpful to apply the justified cynicism we might have for the self-serving political version of economics to the entire field as a whole - particularly given that those things we call Economies are probably the most important feature of our societies: how we provide ourselves with the means to live and care for one another.

Economies are not merely systems for generating profit, as the politician and businessman would generally have us believe, but dynamic, culturally contingent systems of social organisation and social relations. Therefore Economics is (or imo should primarily be focused towards) studying the interplay between how we organise our societies and how we relate to and exist within social ecologies that are structured in this-or-that way.

When that guy said, "It's the economy stupid!" they were absolutely correct, just not in the way they thought they were.