Bill McKibben's Prediction of a Nightmare Climate Future,....Unless!

Miramar, Hollywood, and Miami, FL underwater by 2035? Heat indices for the remaining non-inundated Florida cities in the high hundreds? Florida Power & Light no longer able to keep up with the demand to stay cool....leading to incessant grid crashes? People dying of heat stroke, or drowning?

No, this is not some stoner's phantasmagoria but a reality check and likely scenario of the America we will behold ca. 2035, thanks to precise mathematical forecasts, models that disclose what will transpire if we exceed 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Already we are worrying here on Colorado's Front Range. With Thanksgiving Day tomorrow the temperatures ought to be in the mid 30s with possible precip as snow, not sitting on or near 68 the past few days with nary a sign of even sleet or drizzle. If this ominous trend continues through the winter, the snow pack will be at less than 50% come Spring, and water rationing will be in force. Worse, we will likely have tinder dry brush, trees and land setting the stage for fires rivaling those of this past summer.


Enter Bill McKibben. He is the real deal. A climate scientist who does the math to prove his point, as he did on 'Up With Chris Hayes' this past Saturday morning. To say McKibben had the 'UP' panelists fastened to the edges of their seats is to put in understatement. McKibben, for the benefit of Hayes and his guests laid out the numbers and they aren't pretty, nor can one claim to be an optimist on examining them.

The issue is whether we can avoid the 2 C tipping point, beyond which lies a REAL Hell, an Earthly climate hell,  not the supernatural fantasy world dreamed up by fundagelical psychotics who have lost their meds. Or missed their ECT treatments. McKibben's mathematical limits have been carefully parsed and worked out: we have roughly 550 gigatons (gT) left of carbon we can deposit anthropogenically into the atmosphere before earthly Hell is unleashed. As rising sea waters, hellish tempertures and heat waves, prolonged droughts and dozens of superstorms like the recent 'Sandy'.

Give a current 30 gT/year deposition rate - and assuming we don't add to it, don't increase its rate - that leaves us roughly  18 years before give or take a fraction, before we end up in a likely runaway greenhouse world. It's a world you don't want to be living in, believe me.  McKibben's point was that if we are to avoid that limit everything must be done to limit the rate of carbon deposition, including pursuing alternative energy options and imposing carbon taxes to limit demand.

The problem? The energy- and fossil fuel empires that govern most of our politicos and economic system don't see it that way. McKibben cited the fact that Exxon's share price, for example, is based on a total carbon deposition of at least 2,800 gT - which also conforms to expectations set by hedge funds, et al including Peabody Global. Thus, again, oil economics is poised against the welfare of humanity and the planet.

To put it as McKibben might: Do you want to be able to drive anywhere you wish cheaply and easily, or do you want to fry in endless 'summers' that last all year long...or ...with hundreds of F5  tornadoes to deal with -not to mention new diseases like cholera, amoebic dysentery and dengue fever? A Hobson's choice? Maybe! But the only one on offer.

Meanwhile, a new report issued by the World Bank warned that, based on current climate models, the world can expect extreme heat waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise (as depicted from the U.S. Geological survey and projected for Florida, ca. 2035).


The report says today’s climate could “warm from the current global mean temperature of 0.8°C above pre-industrial levels, to as high as 4°C by 2100, even if countries fulfill current emissions-reduction pledges.”

Adding:
“A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided — we need to hold warming below 2°C,”

The report titled 'Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided.' states  that  a “below 2°C” mark is achievable and to that end urges the immediate implementation of energy-efficiency initiatives; increasing the production of renewable energy; and redistributing the $1 trillion of subsidies that currently go to fossil fuel and other industries.

The study, which was developed by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics for the World Bank, predicts that the planet’s poorest regions will feel the worst effects of climate change.

Some of the most concerning climate change effects predicted in the report include:

• Sea levels rising up to three feet or more, affecting coastal cities in Mexico, India, Bangladesh, Mozambique, Madagascar, the Philippines and Vietnam, as well as small island nations, which could become uninhabitable.

• Drought could affect 44 percent of global croplands, threatening the world’s food security.

• Water sources for humans could become scarce in northern and eastern Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

McKibben for his part observed that after having endured the hottest year in American records history, along with epic drought, enormous wildfires, and even a superstorm, it's time to throw the hammer down and ACT. That must also include terminating the ill-advised Keystone pipeline once and for all - an Obama promise, which he must be held to, no excuses.   Those who want to check out McKibben's blog can go to: www.350.org

EU Deserved Nobel Peace Prize!

The EU (European Union) has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by its Committee. The award (like so many in the past, including for Martin Luther King Jr., Jimmy Carter, and Obama) hasn't gone down well among the media babblers, especially on the Right. In his Saturday morning program 'Up With Chris Hayes',  Hayes remarked: "The occasion triggered a whole lot of snark”. Which is an understatement.

Some of the examples cited by Chris:

Jeff Goldberg of the WaPo tweeted:  “Next Year let’s award the Peace Prize to puppies”

Moron Dave Weigel tweeted: “You know who else deserves a Nobel for not committing genocide? ME!”

Fox & Friends babbled:

“Really? Let Sports writers do it – they’re good at picking Cy Young!”

This led off a "special comment" by Chris that was memorable and not only included putting the EU jabs in perspective but the recurring laments over the "negativity" of the current U.S. presidential campaign.

Chris said:

"But to mock the EU is to lose sight of what a monumental accomplishment it has been: a small patch of earth that was the site of some of the most horrifying war, violence, brutality, sadism and genocide ever seen in the history of human life on the planet. At the end of six years at least 40 million people perished on Europe’s soil. And the EU was constructed as a means of bringing peace and stability to a continent that hitherto had known only war.”


Chris went on to point out the EU hasn’t a whole lot of defenders at this point, but this is understandable given that Americans haven’t had to face the level of bloodshed and slaughter on THEIR land that the Europeans have. Also, Americans are more worried about their portfolio (stock, 401k) balances and the impact EU monetary moves might have than that the continent has attained a kind of relatively peaceful political stability under its organization. Even the former German Wehrmacht soldiers I met in 1985 (while on a visit for the 40th anniversary of the end of WWII- See my blog from Sept. 30, 2010) agreed that the best step Europe could take to avoid another calamitous war on the scale of WWII is to unify – preferably both politically and economically.


Interestingly, Chris Hayes connected the ridicule of the EU Nobel Peace award to another complaint that bears on our own election’s perceived “negativity”:


“The mockery of the EU rests on the same impulse we see in the laments on the nastiness of the presidential campaign and the huffing and puffing about the inadequacy of Iran diplomacy”,  he said.


This, of course, was tied in to another of Radditz’s questions when she brought up “a decorated military vet” who bemoaned all the negative ads and asked the debaters whether they felt ashamed.”

Hayes goes on:

“In each case, the process may be ugly, messy and torturous but it’s almost always better than the alternative. Conflict is part of the human condition – there are limited resources, there are different interests, cultures and tribes and value systems with different conceptions of the good, with vastly different priorities and first principles.

Democracy is a system we’ve come up with to resolve those inevitable conflicts but there’s no such thing as a placid equilibrium in which those conflicts somehow disappear or are only articulate in the gentlest of fashions. THAT is the point: conflict is the underlying constant of human society. The question is what we do with it.

It’s only a slight exaggeration to say we either have people killing each other in the streets like dogs, or we have people running attack ads against each other. Bureaucracy, parliamentary procedure, multilateral talks, the back and forth of campaign ads are largely glory-less enterprises. In the grand sweep of history they are beautiful, sublime achievements that represent unthinkable progress and point the way towards a future a full human flourishing.”


Chris’ take is spot on, and I wish that when people wince or tune out the ads, they try to understand what the alternative would be. If they also see bloggers attacking each other the same way, well, it’s better than shooting each other in the streets. Or...emulating what transpired in the Congo not very long ago, when tribal passions were unleashed with nothing to keep them in check.

This is the point the Wehrmacht soldiers came to understand, and if they were alive today they’d be screaming it to the rooftops at all the snarky idiot Americans trying to disparage the EU and its much deserved Nobel Peace Prize! They'd likely reply: "So you have a problem with the EU? Would you prefer Europe return to genocidal warfare and drag you into it again, dumpkopfen!"

Oh, one final note: the Cuban Missile Crisis - for which we're commemorating the 50th anniversary this month- was a triumph of back scene diplomacy not mano-a-mano,  macho brinksmanship. It wasn't that Khrushchev and the Russkies backed down at the 11th hour, it was that JFK secretly negotiated a deal that allowed Moscow to 'win' even as it lost face at the superficial level with its missile-bearing tankers being turned back. The secretly hatched deal implemented the withdrawal, removal of all the U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey some 6 months after the main event.  It was THIS part of the deal that enabled the Russkies to have faith in JFK, and made them cooperate and turn their ships back.

It was also, in hindsight, plausibly one more nail in JFK's coffin when the Joint Chiefs (especially Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay) already saw him as an "appeaser" for not going into Cuba and bombing it into the Stone Age.