"World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target"

[ElaineB]

A Guardian survey of IPCC scientists shows…

Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet, an exclusive Guardian survey has revealed.

Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating above preindustrial levels, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit will be met.

None of this is real news, but this was interesting…

Younger scientists were more pessimistic, with 52% of respondents under 50 expecting a rise of at least 3C, compared with 38% of those over 50. Female scientists were also more downbeat than male scientists, with 49% thinking global temperature would rise at least 3C, compared with 38%. There was little difference between scientists from different continents.

Although...

“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the global south,” said a South African scientist, who chose not to be named. “The world’s response to date is reprehensible – we live in an age of fools.”

My fear is that no one will want to go into climate science. I know that’s a broad term and there’s lots of drilled down science, but they are suffering, those who study this.

Camille Parmesan, at the CNRS ecology centre in France, was on the point of giving up 15 years ago. “I had devoted my research life to [climate science] and it had not made a damn bit of difference,” she said. “I started feeling [like], well, I love singing, maybe I’ll become a nightclub singer.”

“All of humanity needs to come together and cooperate – this is a monumental opportunity to put differences aside and work together,” said Louis Verchot, at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia. “Unfortunately climate change has become a political wedge issue … I wonder how deep the crisis needs to become before we all start rowing in the same direction.”

I can imagine what it would take.

But it’s not all gloom and doom. While less than less than 25% of those responding to the survey still think global temperature rise will be restricted to 2C or less, IPCC vice-chair Aïda Diongue-Niang, a Senegalese meteorologist, believes “there will be more ambitious action to avoid 2.5C to 3C.”

So why are these scientists optimistic? One reason is the rapid rollout of green technologies from renewable energy to electric cars, driven by fast-falling prices and the multiple associated benefits they bring, such as cleaner air. “It is getting cheaper and cheaper to save the climate,” said Lars Nilsson, at Lund University in Sweden.

I won’t live long enough to see if the optimism is warranted, but my grand nieces and nephews will. Put me in the despair camp. We may get there, but, trust me, billions will die on the way.

 

[Brigid Barry]

I'm also in the despair camp.

 

[Introversion]

Humans are really not great at evaluating risk when it’s not imminent. We’re in a vice that’s slowly tightening. If what’s coming were abrupt and obvious, like an earthquake or tsunami, our response would be different. It’s been more like a thousand paper cuts. We say “ouch” but keep doing the things cutting us.

On the optimistic side, we are slowly — too slowly, but still — weaning ourselves away from fossil fuels.

And thanks to recent wildfires, droughts, wild weather, etc, polls suggest that more & more people are linking these events to climate change.

We can’t avoid worse damage to come, but maybe we can avoid self-genociding?

 

[Woollybear]

My optimism comes from the work that's happening. We are trying. If any other species was trying to limit their impact on the environment., I would cheer them on and celebrate their awareness.

My pessimism comes from the devastation we've already caused and the greed that's still so evident.

Someone yesterday on NPR, an expert on climate with a lot of genuinely good info, when asked what can we do about the insane heat and the likely collapse of the oceanic conveyor and such, said the answer is hard: We can't change it and must adapt.

I started screaming at my radio. Adapt? How is that actionable? How is it "hard" to say "Well, actually, we gotta just keep living. You know, 'adapt'." !! !!!!! What the hell does that even mean? How does anyone do anything with that? Show me the person who heard "We can't do anything but adapt" and immediately reduced their footprint. Show me any action that happens from "We can't do anything. Time to adapt."

There are one hell of a lot of things we can do, starting with having fewer children. Driving less, individually, in ICE. Voting. Planting trees. Carrying reusable bags. Growing our own food. Shopping local. Installing solar. Insisting on curriculum for ecology, global cycles, environmental justice, climate in our schools. The list of what we can do ... to limit ... even reverse the carbon in the atmosphere exists.

Nope, nothing we can do now. Nope. It's just really hard. We're at the "hard place" where all we can do is "adapt." /sarcasm /screaming

But in spite of screaming at this expert who is, in truth, on the right side of this battle despite saying something that triggered me, I still take heart from all the work happening. Evidently, eletric aircraft are proceeding more quickly than people thought they might. Batteries are advancing in ways people once thought impossible. Kids are choosing smaller families.

 

[lizmonster]

Kids are choosing smaller families.

This is where voting comes into it. Time and again, it's been shown that worldwide, women who can control when/if they have children have fewer children.

In the US, of course, all the headlines scream in panic about declining birth rates. And honestly, when I see some of these super-large religious families, I wish my secular self had managed to produce a few more offspring.

I appreciate your optimism, Woollybear. I too am not yet at the point where I want to throw my hands up and surrender, even knowing I'll never see the end of the battle.

 

[ElaineB]

There are one hell of a lot of things we can do, starting with having fewer children. Driving less, individually, in ICE. Voting. Planting trees. Carrying reusable bags. Growing our own food. Shopping local. Installing solar. Insisting on curriculum for ecology, global cycles, environmental justice, climate in our schools. The list of what we can do ... to limit ... even reverse the carbon in the atmosphere exists.

What's not on this list are politicians having the guts to regulate the fossil fuel industry out of business, something we could have done 40 years ago and that would have helped. A lot.

And because we now know the industry knew all along the future was doomed because of them, they could have made a transition to other energy sources and become, you know, energy companies, not just oil or gas companies. It's called diversifying, people, and they knew it but they took the money and ran. Same thing with plastics and pharmaceuticals and healthcare and...well, you name it. If it involves greed, it's good. And the thing is, they were willing to make changes if they were forced to. If they all had to, it could have worked.

I don't see people foregoing airplane flights or cruises or big cars. You know, the easy stuff. I've reused bags for 30 years now, my bitty Prius toddles along, I can't bring myself to fly or cruise. I think about trail maintenance, when people go off trail and think it's no big deal because they did it only once. Well, the White Mountain National Forest has 7 million visitors a year. What if all 7 million did that? Think there'd be anything left?

 

[Introversion]

What's not on this list are politicians having the guts to regulate the fossil fuel industry out of business, something we could have done 40 years ago and that would have helped.

It’d take an entire party, when it’s in control of both Congress & the White House, all of them in agreement, to do that. And they’d be booted from office in the next election, because most people want painless or no changes, and the other party would promise them that.

I don't see people foregoing airplane flights or cruises or big cars.

I suspect that if people really understand the scope of the problem, they’ll give up. And, figure they might as well gobble as much of the “good things” (flights, cruises, stupid cars, tuna, etc) as long as they’re still an option? Because if you’re going to hell, might as well go in a posh handbasket.

My hope is that the changes already in motion (transition away from carbon-burning, more efficient cars, flights getting more expensive & less convenient, etc) happen faster than we slide towards hell, and we stop short of “everyone dies”. As hopes go it’s weak tea, but it’s all I’ve got.

 

[Alessandra Kelley]

In the US, of course, all the headlines scream in panic about declining birth rates.

This is something I, as a person who has been around for some decades, find boggling.

For nearly a century, since the end of the Second World War, all the panic and screaming was about overpopulation.

Sci-fi was chock full of cautionary tales about the overcrowded Earth of the future, choking us all to death in a rising tide of (cough brown, poor) people.

I saw a short story from the '50s raging that an Earth of 3 billion people would be choked to death and at permanent war for scarce resources (Earth reached a population of 3 billion by 1960). Harry Harrison's infamous 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! about a future dystopia where an Earth with 7 billion people is too crowded for anyone to have any privacy or space (note: Current world population is almost 8 billion) was made in 1973 into the memetic film "Soylent Green" where people were eating each other because there were too many people and not enough resources.

Through my childhood and young adulthood it was all overpopulation, overpopulation, overpopulation and resources, resources, resources. Fictional futures were crowded and poor (unless we managed to escape to outer space, to colonize and exlpoit other planets -- Even "Schoolhouse Rock", of all seemingly benign educational television, sang perkily about "Elbow Room" in one of its more horrific songs). Serious, sober news journals debated how to stop brown people in poor countries from reproducing and how to make sure that white people in rich countries continued to have access to resources.

(Somehow all the blame always went to the brown poor people having babies, not the rich white people gobbling up the lion's share of global resources, but never mind.)

This ... omnipresent, universally agreed-upon philosophy led to appalling abuses like China's "One Child Policy" which led to mass murder, forced abortions, and because of cultural demands for boy children, a surplus of unwanted abandoned girl babies for international adoption (those lucky girl babies who were not just infanticided at birth). It has been estimated that China has 60 million "missing" women in this generation owing to the One Child Policy leading to abortions and infanticides that favored boys. And now China has a crisis of men who cannot find women to marry.

And then ... and then

All of a sudden, with no intermediate stage, everything turned on a dime.

Apparently we succeeded at slowing population growth. Yay?

Nope.

Suddenly it was all "How will we fund pensions?" and "Not enough young workers!" and "Humanity will go extinct!"

Surely there should have been one moment, one pause of relief to say whew, we succeeded? One wipe of the brow to say ah, the doom we have shrieked about for seventy years is averted? One day of happiness?

Hah.

All the same sources that had been howling about too many births, too many babies, too much population, reversed course instantly.

And all of a sudden, it was howling about too few births, too few babies, not enough population!!!!11!!

I, who had spent the first four decades of my life hearing the constant drumbeat of nnnnoooooo-overpoulationnnnnn!!!! wondered what the heck was going on.

And why no one remembered that this was the goal they all said we were aiming for.

(I will leave aside discussions of how much and how fast global populations outside of wealthy nations are still rising. The "crisis" of reduced birth rates is, to my view, nothing of the sort, provided that wealthy nations which think they have too few babies will take in immigrants who will provide all the workers and youth they claim they want and need -- unless of course it was always about racism all along...)

And honestly, when I see some of these super-large religious families, I wish my secular self had managed to produce a few more offspring.

This is not exactly fair. Birth is not destiny and there is no guarantee that children born into super-religious families will grow up super-religious. See, for example, the phenomenon of "Exvangelicals".

Humans are too marvelously chaotic to be a simple matter of like parent-like child. Loving the ones we have is what matters, and doing what we can personally to make the world better for the people in it, whether our descendants or not.

 

[lizmonster]

This is not exactly fair. Birth is not destiny and there is no guarantee that children born into super-religious families will grow up super-religious. See, for example, the phenomenon of "Exvangelicals".

Oh, I know. It just makes me think sometimes.

Especially since I suspect most of the panic about declining birthrates in the US is about religion, no matter what else people say.

 

[Lime-Yay]

RE adaptation, there’s a lot of things to be done. Climate change is now. Extreme weather events with alarming frequency? That’s now. It will get worse, it’s just a matter of how much more. Die is cast from our past actions.

Example: aging dam infrastructure + extreme storms + people living downstream? No bueno. We can take actionable steps to save lives.

Same with flooding generally. We’re designing with bigger storms in mind, utilizing more sophisticated models, and getting more stringent with regulations. Buyouts are big. Got to get people out of harm’s way the best we can.

Actually, just got an email from FEMA (US federal agency). 147 mil for drought and water supply resiliency. 9 mil for replacing diesel equipment and reduce emissions in tribal territories. 25 mil for tribes to move folks out of the floodplain. Training for future conservation and climate leaders. Dam safety grants coming out soon. All really important adaptation and mitigation things. These things are happening on a daily basis.

I have lots of hot tips on what Average Joe might do besides vote, but deleted my rant because, as you might have picked up, I have a very strong bias towards flood risk.

 

[Comradedima1]

What's interesting is that it's been known for decades that affluent nations where women have access to birth control/decent healthcare, the birthrate almost always stabilizes at about 2 births per family. We've known about this for decades, and yet there has been no real plans to mitigate the effects of this in the countries whose birthrates are below replacement.

I agree that the best thing that we can do now is to take any and all actions possible to mitigate the effects of global warming that we can't avoid, and combat the effects that we can avoid.

 

[Introversion]

At least the world is moving away from getting electricity from carbon.

Electricity from clean sources reaches 30% of global total