As Expected, Enormously Large Emissions Cuts Needed To Meet Paris Climate Criteria

A new T-shirt proclaiming "Science Is Not A Liberal Conspiracy" has just gone on sale online, and none too soon as the incoming administration seeks to stack the EPA with climate change deniers. Clearly, the announcement viewed on my FB page was also meant to counter the memes spread by the deluded Libertarian members of high IQ societies such as Intertel and Mensa. These anti-intellectuals follow the line and mold of Intertel's  Kort Patterson - a computer techie and Editor of Intertel's Region 7 NL 'Port Of Call' ,  who scribbled in the June issue:

"Many people continue to believe the lies and demand that Western Industrial Civilization commit cultural suicide by adopting the crippling constraints sought by the global warming conspirators."

But global warming science as the T-shirt notes, is no "conspiracy",  nor are the scientists involved in climate research "conspirators". . AGW (anthropogenic global warming)  is based on pretty well settled science which - while it may have uncertainties as to timeline -  is very clear we are speeding toward a cataclysm for the whole species. If there is any major oversight or error it is in underestimating the intensity and emergence of the impact.

Now, a new report released Thursday from the U.N. Environmental Program,  shows this is very much the case.  In a release from Stockholm it announced the world is nowhere near on track to achieve the temperature goals adopted in the Paris Conference on Climate Change from last December.

The report dashes the PR nonsense released in that summit that lulled the world's people into false security. That is,  that the pitiful steps and "suggestions" in Paris would  avoid a burning planet. This is because the REAL steps needed to even have a chance of limiting the increase were too much to acknowledge.

UNEP has effectively called the summit's bluff, asserting that the world needs to slash annual greenhouse gas emissions by an additional 12- 14 billion metric tons by 2030 to have any remote chance to limit global mean temperature increase to 2 C. This was the putative temperature increment goal the world's nations agreed to in the  Paris pact. Putting the news into perspective,  the emissions gap is 12 times the annual emissions of the 28 nation EU transportation sector, including aviation. In other words, it's considerable.

I saw the actual gap at the time I wrote my Dec. 13, 2015 blog post, noting:

"This agreement is terrific for PR purposes and to make leaders feel like they  actually accomplished something besides more hand waving....But the sober realist knows that it won't do anything to really stem what's headed our way. We had our chances after the Rio Summit, but we just pissed it away and wasted time in useless exchanges with the deniers.."

In other words, what the Paris summit leaders proposed was literally "a day late and a dollar short".  This was based on report appearing 7 months earlier in a Guardian UK article (from May 17, 2015)  that bluntly noted:

"A paper used for guiding future business planning at the Anglo-Dutch multinational assumes that carbon dioxide emissions will fail to limit temperature increases to 2C, the internationally agreed threshold to prevent widespread flooding, famine and desertification. Instead, the New Lens Scenarios document refers to a forecast by the independent International Energy Agency (IEA) that points to a temperature rise of up to 4C in the short term, rising later to 6C."

This UNEP report reinforces that alarm by indicating the current science shows the need to move much faster. Thus, the Paris Agreement's proclaimed CO2 reductions would have attained 54-56 billion tons by 2030 leaving the world "on a path to 5.2 to 6.1 F increase" according to UNEP.  To instead get only 3.6F the total of 42 billion tons emissions would be allowed.

But since the world's leaders have little practical interest in achieving that, and the recent U.S. election alone will put climate deniers in charge of critical agencies, one must assume we are well on the way to a 4C world.  The signal for the onrushing calamity will also be intensifying. As UNEP leader Erik Solheim has warned (Denver Post, p. 9 A, Nov. 11):

"The growing numbers of climate refugees hit by hunger, poverty, illness and conflict will be a constant reminder of our failure to deliver".

That point and others will be emphasized in the U.N. Climate Conference to be held over the coming two weeks  in Marrakech, Morocco.

Also emphasized at that conference will be the extent to which the added emissions affect Arctic melting.  According to the World Bank, for example, the average American emits more than 16 metric tons of carbon each year. This translates to the melting of about 48 square meters of ice in the Arctic, enough to cover a 500 sq. foot apartment. These and other calculations appear in a new paper in Science by Dirk Notz of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.  The goal is to quantify the rate of  Arctic melting and tie it to CO2 emissions and more importantly, "makes it possible to intuitively grasp how we all contribute to global warming."

Why does increased melting of Arctic sea ice matter? According to Walt Meier, a sea ice specialist at NASA:

"When you're changing the Arctic you certainly expect it to have ramifications outside the Arctic.  The climate system is interconnected . What happens in the Arctic doesn't  necessarily stay in the Arctic."

This dovetails with the Arctic heat emphasis exposed in the zonal temperature map shown above. and what is called "Arctic amplification".

It also means we have much to fear in terms of climatic-based catastrophes. For example, a much warmer Arctic means a much more unstable polar region with more frequent intrusions of the polar vortex.

Further, the Arctic heat anomaly detected in January was accompanied by a new record-low level for Arctic sea ice extent. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center more than 400,000 square miles of the region were below average  for the month. This in turn was closely tied to warmer Arctic air temperatures.

Prof. Gunter Weller, a former climate scientist at the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, had predicted much of this with his ground breaking research on Arctic warming in the 1980s. But most of us thought at the time humans would soon come to their senses. Even Prof. Weller expressed cautious optimism to me in one conversation in April, 1986. That hope now appears to be dashed as reality sets in on how far we really need to go - all the while battling a new administration that regards the science as a "hoax" . Not to mention a phalanx of pseudo-intellectuals who are convinced that climate researchers are "global warming conspirators".

Stay tuned!

Pope Francis Calls Out Greedheads and Power Mongers At UN - Is Anyone Paying Attention?

Pope Francis called out world leaders at the UN yesterday  morning, calling for an end to the "selfish and boundless thirst for power ...fueling poverty, inequality and destruction of the environment". He nailed it but one had to wonder how many of these leaders were really paying attention or merely pretending to, in an act of formal respect.

He added that: "The unfettered pursuit of money rules and leads to the misuse of natural resources and the exclusion of the weak. . Once capital becomes an idol and guides people's decisions, and greed for money presides over the entire socio-economic system, the service of the common good is left behind."

The Pope particularly referenced the "financial agencies and the groups or mechanisms specifically created to deal with economic crises" a potent reference to the IMF, the World Bank and others, In case people may have forgotten, all of these agencies are dedicated to the Neoliberal imperative whose prime directive is to remove security for people worldwide. As Francis noted:

"And these agencies should not subject countries to oppressive lending systems. Far from promoting progress, these subject people to greater poverty, inequality and dependence."

Thus, the agencies' yen to cut pensions in Greece as well as social supports, and to privatize pensions in Barbados and to push for currency devaluation in many other less developed nations (such as already been done in Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad).

The Pope, let's make no mistake, hit one of the prime targets (along with religious fanaticism) for what's wrong with this world.

Francis also referred to "World War III" going on right now,  yet most of us are somnolent, or better, comatose under the haze of Neoliberal puppet media propaganda - especially economic. The barrage on the nightly news has been so effective, that the poorly informed are left with their mouths agape  while those of us who know a thing or two are left to battle newly minted Zombies and attempt to get their brains liberated from the dross.

And, of course, like the Pope we are often attacked for our stance and arguing for a saner world where inequality and financial manipulation are finally wiped out. No surprise there, or that the Neoliberal media - which tolerates no efforts at others competing - viciously attacks Jeremy Corbin in the UK and Sen. Bernie Sanders in the U.S. for their efforts to upend the imperative.

No surprise then that like the brainwashed denizens of Oceania - in the scene where the Über villain Emmanuel Goldstein is depicted on the giant theater screen - the stooges of the Neoliberal state likewise go nuts clamoring for blood and action. Hence, the jubilation of the Tea Party nuts after Boehner resigned, so they believe they can now tear into Obama's legislation even more.   Having lost the ability to critically and logically think, thanks to the bastardized vocabulary of Neolib Newspeak, the brains of these pawns have now been colonized by "Big Brother" to his own ends. Those of us who inveigh against it are the new "Emmanuel Goldsteins".

The people of Oceania were no longer authentic beings in their own right but mere extensions of Big Brother and his will to power, to keep grinding their bodies and state resources up in a never-ending war to attain global domination. So it is with the "Neoliberal Frankenstein" and how it now seeks to grind nation after nation into more fodder for its misbegotten global ends. Ends which elevate and reify a global elite but which denigrate everyone else - offering only "gigs" for jobs. This is exactly what Francis condemned.

In a slashing salon.com piece last year Patrick Smith correctly asserted  that "Neoliberalism is our Frankenstein" and also noted:  "it is profoundly undemocratic, never mind that the English and American variants of democracy are the mulch from which it arises." He also added:  "It is also unrelentingly absolutist because it is intimately related to the myth of America’s providential exception, neoliberalism can tolerate no alternative".  His definition (formal) starts out:

"Neoliberalism denotes the revival since the 1970s, plus or minus, of English liberalism as expounded by Locke in the 17th century and numerous others in the 18th—Adam Smith and his “invisible hand,” most famously. John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian, are notable among 19th century apostles."

But then went into a lengthy discourse comparing early and 18th century forms of  liberalism to the neo-mutant. Let's just cut to the chase here and give Smith's core definition:

"Classical liberalism in its 'neo'  phase denotes not thought but belief, ideological conviction. It is the ideology of radical deregulation, radical corporatization, radical privatization—prisons? water? kindergartens? human health?—maximal profit without regard to consequences, and the radical devaluation of any serious consciousness of the communities in which all individuals are suspended."

I would add to this columnist Jay Bookman's insight from a 1998 Baltimore Sun piece ('The New World Disorder Evident Here, Abroad'):

“The global economy has been constructed on the premise that government guarantees of security and protection must be avoided at all costs, because they discourage personal initiative."

And there is Henry Giroux's insight on Neoliberalism:

"As an ideology, it casts all dimensions of life in terms of market rationality, construes profit-making as the arbiter and essence of democracy, consuming as the only operable form of citizenship, and upholds the irrational belief that the market can both solve all problems and serve as a model for structuring all social relations. "

Thus we see where the yen to cut social insurance arises, and why profit and enormous wealth is amplified for the richest, and  also how  the wealthier nations  especially benefit by placing desperate or unstable ones in regimes of adversely structured debt. This is exactly why the West's Neolibs are determined to make Ukraine part of the Neoliberal imperative and orbit. And also why they've arrogantly refused thus far to cooperate with Putin and Russia (as well as Assad)  to rein in the radical jihadi rebels and ISIS vermin seeking to wreck the rest of that forlorn country and send its remaining 11.5 million into permanent refugee flight.

 It follows from this that the true liberal must inveigh against this mission and that means siding with Russia and Putin (who will be giving a '60 Minutes' interview Sunday that I advise everyone to watch for a great example of a rational man). "Siding" at least to the extent that we agree the Ukraine outcome ends essentially in a draw - translated to mean neither in the West's orbit or Russia's but a separate buffer state. (This was advocated by Ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson two years ago.)

It further means that we agree Syria be returned to stability and a stable government - even if we may not like that government. Tough shit! In our history we have tolerated tyrants before - think of Papa Doc Duvalier in Haiti, or Manuel Noriega in Panama, or Fulgencio Batista in Cuba - and we can do so now if it means lessening the refugee chaos and migrant crisis.

But this may be difficult given as Smith writes:

"I was astonished many times as a correspondent to see how readily foreign leaders and their finance ministries drank the Anglo-American Kool-Aid. Here I single out Continental Europe as especially disappointing. A long social-democratic tradition notwithstanding, almost all European leaders—and every last technocrat in Brussels—went down like sticks of butter when neoliberals at State, Treasury and in the think tanks launched the post-Berlin Wall campaign."

Thus, the Europeans have now become puppets of the U.S. which let's face it, is the primary force bearer - the 'cop of the world' - enjoined to enforce Neolib standards. Hence, the threat to send lethal weapons to the Ukrainians - just as they have kept arming the jihadis in Syria seeking to overthrow Assad. But which any sober realist will assure you can never happen - and also never lead to an alternative rebel governance. For more on this please do read the FT article below (sign up for the free limited access if you have to!):

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/96bf7e48-6041-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.html#axzz3mSz73FXD

Again, what it's about is the Neoliberal imperative,  to convert nations into dependent debt slavery states and their citizens into slaves for the Neoliberals.  How accomplished? Well, via the draconian conditions required by the World Bank and the IMF: the privatization of numerous state-held assets, including airports, rails and even pensions. Also,  divestment of the most profitable of these first.  Leaving the governments impecunious, essentially beggars beholden to the Neoliberal empire.

If you consider yourself to have any skin at all in this ongoing war, you need to back Vladimir Putin and Russia as bulwarks against Neoliberal advance. If not, then you are part of the problem not the solution and if the whole world turns into a slave state for the richest, you must share the blame for the "boundless thirst for power and money" that the Pope vehemently condemned.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/64016/the-pope-says-greed-is-not-good

And:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f7cd3f4c-6472-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2.html#axzz3mtG3qQGY