What if there were a border-adjustment carbon tax? So countries that emit a lot of CO2 get taxed into oblivion? That's a thing we could do... (_will_ do: another story)
What an interesting idea. Carbon footprint adjusted import\export tariffs. Community enforceable, incentivises r&d and profiteers towards low carbon FP products.
Maybe the tariffs go into some kind of refugee trust, or disaster preparedness account
I think would your proposing would be a World-Bank type action. The world bank apparently exists to use loans as leverage to get countries to change policy. That gets close to what you're after.
The problem with using the UN for this kind of action is that the UN has never imposed a tax or tariff. This would be new territory for the UN. I'm sure countries would have some problems with sovereignty. The alternative would be that all nations would act in concert to impose these tariffs.
But then if they did that, you wouldn't have a universal refugee trust. Each nation would still have control over their own finances.
Anyway, I think through the implications of what your proposing I realize why it's been so hard to get anything to change. Any kind of action requires unprecedented worldwide coordination.
So the article is by an ACTUAL IPCC climate contributor, one of Australia's experts. Joelle has access to the newest IPCC models and is raising the flag (no pun intended) on new developments in the IPCC models.
Seems like a very important bit of information to disseminate to the public!
I'm curious about this as well. It's now #69, 5 minutes later. I seem to recall this happening quite a bit for global warming stories. Anyone from HN want to explain please? Do all 'political' stories get buried?
Dont be ridiculous. There are explanations of the ranking algorithim, and even a cursory glance explains this. Top ranked posts get a couple hundred replies and several hundred likes. This comment will be #20 at my writing, and im already 2 of the others.
More than 10% of the posts on HN, including 100% of yours, are about climate change. Could you give it a rest please? There are dedicated climate change forums that you can go to.
At least Google is doing something about the climate change. The most important people in the world (not you) are gathering in Palermo to tackle the terrible future, thanks to a Google workshop. With at least 114 private jets and yachts, we are digging our grave in a way that even looks beautiful.
> One common metric used to investigate the effects of global warming is known as “equilibrium climate sensitivity”, defined as the full amount of global surface warming that will eventually occur in response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentrations compared to pre-industrial times.
The article bases its warning on this "equilibrium climate sensitivity" metric (aka "sensitivity"). This widely-used benchmarks allows the many different lines of evidence to be used together and translated into real-world effects.
The article cites a pre-industrial CO2 measurement of 280ppm, and a current measurement of 410ppm. If current trends hold, the doubling point (560ppm CO2) will occur in 2060.
The rest of the article deals with models that are predicting much higher sensitivity than earlier models. In 2013 the estimate was 1.5 - 4.5 degrees C. The new models are predicting 2.8 - 5.8 degrees C, with eight of the (unknown total) models predicting 5 degrees or higher. These results are scheduled to be published in the 2021 IPCC report.
For comparison, the Paris Agreement seeks to limit temperature increases to no more than 2 degrees C.
What would 5 degrees C warming mean for the Earth?
> The most comprehensive summary of conditions experienced during past warm periods in the Earth’s recent history was published in June 2018 ... by 59 leading experts from 17 countries. The report concluded that warming of between 1.5 and 2°C in the past was enough to see significant shifts in climate zones, and land and aquatic ecosystems “spatially reorganize”.
> These changes triggered substantial long-term melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica, unleashing 6 to 13 metres of global sea-level rise lasting thousands of years.
To the extent that the models are right and the study of past warming incidents applies in the future, we can expect sea level rises in excess of 6 - 13 meters (lasting thousands of years) by 2060 and significant shifts in climate zones.
The ECS isn't particularly helpful for near-term predictions of temperature change. The transient climate response is essentially unchanged in these new models (1-2.5 degrees) immediately after a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere. The ECS is the equilibrium change and could take centuries to fully be felt.
To be clear, this is a report by Joëlle Gergis, an IPCC contributor, one of Australia's expert contributors to the IPCC. She is reporting on new interim developments on the IPCC's simulations across Europe, Canada, the US and other modelling centres.
Basically, the last models and sims were run in 2013 and reported in 2015. They have since been updated (and will be officially reported in 2021).
As we have updated our scientific models, it looks like the old ones were quite optimistic. Seems very newsworthy.
Oh, here we go: China and India are responsible for 90% of the climate change that we're worried about, but let's blame the Republicans in the U.S. senate for it anyway.
China's per-capita emissions are also unsustainably high (~ 7t/year and citizen) but Americans emit about 2.3 times per year and capita. Saving the same, absolute, amount of emissions will certainly be easier when it is a lower fraction of the total emissions (i.e. it's easier to avoid e.g. 1/16th ~= 6% of your emissions than 1/7th ~= 14% (that's 1 ton saved per capita and year in both cases, the former in the US, the latter in China)).
You are overlooking that emissions accumulate, so you need to look to emissions over time, not just year to year, when determining how responsible each country is.
The US is around 29% of cumulative emissions, followed by the EU at around 26%. Russia is around 8%, and China a little behind that. India is around 2%.
When the IPCC’s fifth assessment report was published in 2013, it estimated that such a doubling of CO2 was likely to produce warming within the range of 1.5 to 4.5°C as the Earth reaches a new equilibrium. However, preliminary estimates calculated from the latest global climate models (being used in the current IPCC assessment, due out in 2021) are far higher than with the previous generation of models. Early reports are predicting that a doubling of CO2 may in fact produce between 2.8 and 5.8°C of warming. Incredibly, at least eight of the latest models produced by leading research centres in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and France are showing climate sensitivity of 5°C or warmer.
...
Even achieving the most ambitious goal of 1.5°C will see the further destruction of between 70 and 90 per cent of reef-building corals compared to today, according to the IPCC’s “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C”, released last October. With 2°C of warming, a staggering 99 per cent of tropical coral reefs disappear. An entire component of the Earth’s biosphere – our planetary life support system – would be eliminated. The knock-on effects on the 25 per cent of all marine life that depends on coral reefs would be profound and immeasurable.
...
But these days my grief is rapidly being superseded by rage. Volcanically explosive rage. Because in the very same IPCC report that outlines the details of the impending apocalypse, the climate science community clearly stated that limiting warming to 1.5°C is geophysically possible.
Past emissions alone are unlikely to raise global average temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The IPCC report states that any further warming beyond the 1°C already recorded would likely be less than 0.5°C over the next 20 to 30 years, if all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions were reduced to zero immediately. That is, if we act urgently, it is technically feasible to turn things around. The only thing missing is strong global policy.
I live literally on top of an old coral reef. In the desert. This area was under an ocean 10's of millions of years ago.
As the earth warms won't coral simple colonize along the new coastline? Why will they suddenly be gone? (there may be an answer... I just don't know what it would be).
So what is currently happening with the climate is that increased CO2 and heat is being absorbed by the ocean. This is changing the ocean's PH balance, making it more acidic. THIS is what is causing the coral reef die-off.
So unlikely that they will simply move. What is more terrifying is that as warming increases and acidity goes up, not only will the coral structures bleach and die out (50% complete), they will begin to actually dissolve, hampering any recovery. This would make the situation irreversible.
I can see acidification being an issue for sure. And CO2 is supposed to increase acidification.
But many geological reef formations are very old, 10's or even hundreds of millions of years old.
At the time these reefs were formed, CO2 levels were much much higher than they are predicted to be any time soon.
Yet somehow the reefs were constructed anyway and corals as a species pulled through. In spite of CO2 levels (per Wikipedia) '''between 200 and 150 million years ago of over 3,000 ppm, and between 600 and 400 million years ago of over 6,000 ppm''' (what are we at today? like 400ppm?)
The reef I live on incidentally is thought to have been formed like 265 million years ago. At which time CO2 levels were possibly an order of magnitude higher than today.
I'm almost as alarmist as they come when it comes to climate change, but I'm skeptical of the higher ECS values coming out of the newer models (as are the scientists developing them). In AR5 there was a noted divergence in the ECS values predicted by general circulation models and energy balance models. As computer-minded folk we should appreciate that when attempting a new approach in software one is bound to break things- like perhaps the way aerosols or clouds are being handled which seems to be supercharging the warming in these new models.
> if all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions were reduced to zero immediately.
Bluntly, do you know how many people that would kill? Kill by lack of air conditioning, and lack of transportation for food, at a minimum. Lack of growing food, too, given how mechanized agriculture is now. It's not just a matter of needing "strong global policy". You need a way of making that transition without the transition killing large numbers of people.
Direct this rage in a productive manner. There is environmental progress in reform, but it will not change the core power dynamic. The police kill and enslave with impunity, corporations will destroy the lands and waters we rely on for food and sustenance. How can we eat if our lands are destroyed for profit? Revolution will bring our societies together and halt the destruction of our planet.
> Direct this rage in a productive manner. There is environmental progress in reform, but it will not change the core power dynamic. The police kill and enslave with impunity, corporations will destroy the lands and waters we rely on for food and sustenance. How can we eat if our lands are destroyed for profit? Revolution will bring our societies together and halt the destruction of our planet.
I disagree with basically every point you made, but i wonder if extremist lunacy like this might be a necessary evil to punch through the inertia keeping us driving off a cliff, together and and globally.
If the rule we followed brought us here, of what use was the rule?
It's not extremist nor lunacy if your people are being killed and your own backyard is being poisoned. It is standing up for your rights as a human being. Revolution has time and time again been the way our societies evolve. If the American Revolution taught us anything, it's that our people can rise against their rulers and succeed.
It's by Joëlle Gergis, one of Australia's climate experts who contributes to the IPCC reports.
She is reporting on recent developments in IPCC model simulations that are being run, and her perspective on this new information and how it should change our understanding of climate change.
I'm convinced it's not a problem with the guidelines or source. I would assume it was killed because it was flagged by users. Maybe someone is brigading this topic?
I guess you can only wait and see if the mods reverse the decision.
Someone above claimed it was "off-topic". Any idea how to get it unflagged or bring it to mod attention?
This seems like a very important article. Just as a point of comparison, tree planting is great and all, but something like ~100 entities are responsibly for 71% of all emissions.
I asked the mods via email and the flags looked normal to them. It seems like it has been the one too many climate change post recently and that some people got annoyed and flagged it because of that. What a pity.
Accepting the fact that we're just like any other animal on this planet, merely along for the ride until the day we're done, will help curb the rage and grief felt towards the planet's reformation.
This is just what happens here. Species rise and fall, lands rise and sink, yet the Earth spins on until some other shit starts to happen on the surface. We just happened to fuck it up for ourselves faster. Humans have been good at that since day one.
And yet the terrible truth of the Methane Hydrate - Permafrost feedback loop is still being ignored. The arctic is already burning, exploding in some areas.
After reading the 2018 IPCC report for policymakers [1] the major thing I took from it was this:
The stated impacts of further warming aren't grave enough to justify nations taking the steps needed to mitigate them.
For example, the more immediate and impactful conclusions from the report are these:
In urban areas climate change is projected to increase risks for people, assets, economies and ecosystems, including risks from heat stress, storms and extreme precipitation, inland and coastal flooding, landslides, air pollution, drought, water scarcity, sea level rise and storm surges (very high confidence).
Climate change can indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts by amplifying well-documented drivers of these conflicts such as poverty and economic shocks (medium confidence)
To which most readers would more or less shrug and move on because it's not tangible what these general impacts look like and unclear why they couldn't be mitigated or absorbed at the time of event.
Said another way, it would take a MASSIVE and unprecedented shift to the average, and an increasing portion of the global populations way of living, to slow warming significantly.
Namely, "to restrict global warming to 1.5°C, global ambition needs to increase fivefold." That implies that the current state of the global economy would effectively ground to a halt.
So what people hear is: We must completely change our lifestyles to prevent some chaos somewhere unknown down the line. I think all of social science tells us that humans are bad at this kind of long term planning.
The challenge here is that there is a huge gap between what is meant by climate scientists with statements such as "the very foundation of human civilisation is at stake" and what people can "touch and feel" making the sense urgency seem overblown.
Even things like "Cyclone Tracy is a warning" fall flat because "there have always been storms" and the causal relationship isn't direct - it's statistical and that's not something that politicians and the public generally can grok.
Contrast that with something like WWII which the US was staying largely removed from, until Pearl Harbor happened. That was a direct, causally linked, explicit and objective event that pushed an entire nation to change their behavior - but it was also time limited.
I'm not sure what needs to happen, but my guess is that until there is a "Pearl Harbor" for climate change, which I don't think is really possible, very little substantial will be done.
As Australia's "left wing" shift further right after their recent election loss, and the most popular newpapers reflect a right wing Murdoch perspective that seems to sell well, one which frequently decries any green party in Australia as unreasonable, and the majority of political violence being enacted by the right (e.g. the Australian shooter who flew to New Zealand and killed 49 that was quickly moved on from, vs the "left" being repeatedly berated for dumping milkshakes on politicians), is it reasonable to say that we live in a deeply suicidal age? The will of the majority appears to me to be deeply right-wing, and power, both through violence and politics, seems to be permitted only if it is appropriately right-wing. Are we headed towards the end of the human era due to a continued slide rightwards?
China draws 70 percent of its electricity from coal and is building 300-500 new coal plants by 2030[0][1]. Nothing we do can offset this new CO2.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29/716347646/why-is-china-placin...
[1] https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2019/03/28/china-new-coal-p...