Monday, May 11, 2015

Denial, Luckwarmers and Evasion

Well, it's pretty clear what you call those in complete denial about the muderous human induced climate change coming the world's way, denialists.  And on the other hand the denialists have a word for those who believe the IPCC, warmists, which, though kind of mealy mouthed and weak, is what they like.  No arguing with taste.

As Eli has pointed out the Idiot Tracker nailed the self styled "lukewarmers", the it ain't gonna be bad crowd, the group that Eli calls the luckwarmers, for their dreams to come true would require a great deal of getting lucky.

Here's the problem. Lukewarmism doesn't get its adherents where they want to go – because even if we accept at face value their claims, the world would still require intense efforts to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases in order to stave off disaster. . .

However, when you begin to argue that not only does science have climate sensitivity wrong but also emissions and maybe impacts to boot – well, you're going to have a hard time explaining why thousands of scientists have made not one but a series of mistakes, all supposedly exaggerating the dangers of global warming. Go down that road, and pretty soon you're right back in the tinfoil-hat camp lukewarmist rhetoric was supposed to deliver you from. If you allege not one but a whole series of gigantic mistakes by huge numbers of investigators, all tending to undermine a scientific conclusion (only rapid reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases can prevent a substantial risk of planetary disaster) to which you are avowedly hostile, the simplest conclusion is not that you are a genius and the rest of the scientific community are fools; it is that you are a partisan and you are attacking science with implications contrary to your political goals.
But there is another group which claims to accept the IPCC consensus on climate change but always finds reasons to do nothing, or next to nothing about it, often because they say there is something else that is more important, which, of course, they also do nothing about other than try and use it as a club against those who think we should be doing something about climate change. The hallmark of these types, like Bjorn Lomborg, just to name one, is to loudly proclaim that those who see the dangers of climate change and want to do something about it, care nothing for the Poors, especially the African Poors these days.  Of course, in the end the Breakthrough Institute types and other Lomborg's of the world take the money for themselves and do nothing for the Poors.

Recently, Nature published a jerimand by one of these, an Oliver Geden, saying that we must be honest, 2 C is blown, no way no how to hold the line. Richard Tol weighed in with
Geden’s point is simple. In private, there is a consensus (>97%) among climate policy analysts that the 2K target is impossible. In public, the same people pretend that it can be met. Perhaps it is time to reclaim our academic freedom and present our research findings, however unpalatable.
and, indeed this is not so far from Eli's observation that policy makers in the US Government see 3 C as the new 2C.

How to deal with this in the public discussion is no simple matter.  Eli's approach has been to point out the rhetorical nature of the full Lomborg, to challenge anybunny who takes up that cudgel to actually do something to help the poor, rather than just talk about it.  Since most of the luckwarmers and denialists are from the far right and oppose government money to help anyone but themselves, this has a certain success.

Paul Price in the comments at ATTP deals with the issue in another way
Oliver Geden is firmly in the Pielke/Hulme/Breakthrough Institute ‘climate mitigation-action delayer’ camp as his previous publications and citations amply demonstrate – just as this latest one does. Several times on Twitter, as with the BTI, I have tried to get Geden to answer the question: if not 2ºC then what temperature and related carbon budget limit target would he prefer? He always dodges while claiming to be objective and pragmatic, which is entirely evasionary. If he is suggesting a different path then he should tell us what he is suggesting and why that is better.

Yes, let’s admit that limiting to 2ºC is already very difficult but that does not mean that the pragmatic policy is to give up on 2ºC. It should mean that the alarm is ringing very loudly to say that the ‘honest brokering’ of policy advisors like Geden has entirely failed to move policy in the direction of actually achieving the emission cuts necessary. This latest article is just another attempt to evade the culpability of ‘advisors’ like himself for this ongoing policy failure. Shooting the messenger, he wants to blame climate scientists for pointing out inconvenient truths: so much for his integrity as a policy advisor. It’s hard to see Geden’s article as anything more than another prolonged effort to keep reality from intruding on his own political preferences for climate inaction.

Rather than giving up on 2ºC as a target limit we should be redoubling (trebling, ten-folding) efforts to achieve the related, future, capped global carbon budget. It may well be that this requires negative emissions (as well as massive social change) and it may well be that we don’t achieve them, but with very strong policies aiming at 2ºC we might still miss and hit 2.5ºC. Whatever your politics that’s bad but it’s a hell of a lot better than Geden’s argument, which still pretends it is pragmatic to go on until we actually hit walls at 3ºC, or 4ºC, or now if you live in Kiribati with the sea already coming in. This version of ‘pragmatism’ (aka Pielke Jr’s rusty ‘law’) is just excuse-making for continuing to do little or nothing even in the teeth of the evidence.

Concentrating on the difficulties in policy is not smart or pragmatic if it just avoids stating the realities of the extraordinary global climate risk that our actions right now directly affect. We may desire to avoid driving into a brick wall but that does actually require a policy that involves *not* steering directly toward it and accelerating. Geden clearly finds the emission projections presented by climate science as “sometimes unwelcome — perspectives to the global climate-policy discourse”. It is mitigation action evaders masquerading as honest brokers who need to wake up to physical reality if they are to finally show some integrity as climate policy advisors. It would be great if they could wake up and help hit the brakes before we all run out of road.
Price has solved the problem of how to characterize the Lomborg/Pielke/Hulme/Breakthrough Institute types, they are Evasionists and the question to ask them is what level of climate change would bestir them to action.


52 comments:

Hank Roberts said...

Joel Pett answered those guys years ago, incisively:
http://www.gocomics.com/joelpett/2009/12/13/

Leapfrogging to skip the fossil fuel era straight from poverty to sustainability -- is no waste.

Hank Roberts said...

PS, shameful what Watts has done to Joel Pett's work:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwattsupwiththat.com%2F2013%2F09%2F17%2Fquote-of-the-week-the-recasting-of-the-argument-begins%2F&ei=ilhRVbmgKIyzogTGlYDoDA&bvm=bv.93112503,d.cGU&psig=AFQjCNEfNC-zDVow0iK7xTN9nGcu8GZMiQ&ust=1431480843443879

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

What a difference 5 years makes- the lede graph comparison in Idiotracker's current post ( 19 April 2015)is mighty encouraging- Chernobyl and Fukushima have not stopped nuclear power from growing fivefold in four decades, from .9 to 4.8% of theenergy pie.

One encore of the same performance, and coal will be toast come 2053 sooner if courageous greens reflect on the alternatives.

Fernando Leanme said...

I guess I'm all of the above. I have seen too much propaganda and deception laid on top of the scientific basis to believe much of what I read regarding impacts.

On top of that, I have no illusions about human nature. Those extinction papers mean very little to me because I know overpopulation is going to drive us to kill or eat everything we can find until our numbers drop because we are down to licking fungus off cave walls.

Furthermore, I see something most of you don't seem to glimpse: we are running out of resources, and oil is at the front end of the queue. This, of course, means the greenhouse gas emissions will never reach those absurd peaks you like to use so much.

And then there's the practical side of things: the alternatives being put on the table don't make sense. I recently wrote Tamsin Edwards a note suggesting she start learning about topics beyond climatology, and learn to dissect the overwhelming amount of bs we read about solutions.

Finally, as a refugee from an Orwellian communist dictatorship who left home at 14 to escape from the gulag, and who has seen the way Marxism has destroyed country after country, I will not accept any solutions which take my family back to the horror I have seen living in a communist country. In my case, better dead than red is a reality you had better start factoring into your equations.

Anonymous said...

Fernando,
So, it seems to me that your preferred method of dealing with possible risks in the future, is to ignore that they exist and insist that you won't accept any alternative to what you regard as acceptable. Fine, but what about others who would rather recognise these risks, try to make sensible decisions today, and avoid having to make even more difficult and uncomfortable decisions in the future?

To me it seems that you've accepted that the future is going to be bad (judging by what you say in your comment), but that instead of actully addressing this now, you'd rather bury your head in the sand and carry on as if there are no issues worth addressing. My comment might make it seems as though I'm interested in actually discussing this with you, but I'm not really, as your comment makes it seem that your views as so rigid and inflexible that there wouldn't be much point.

Unknown said...

"... better dead than red..." How quaint and so totally revealing of a lack of knowledge about the solutions proposed for combating climate change.

Fernando Leanme said...

ATTP, what seems to you is molded in your head by your preconceptions (I'm referring to your erroneous "it seems". I'm not ignoring the problem. Read what I wrote and tell me why you think I'm ignoring it.

I thought the post showed the typical "my way or the highway" attitude you guys like to display. I don't belong to any particular group, so I can't say my point of view is common. On the other hand you guys look and sound like gray drones in an Apple commercial. Do you all really think exactly the same or is that just a brave front?

The key I want you to focus on us that a) you are losing credibility by exaggerating and overdramatizing, b) by ignoring the fact that the prescribed "cure" kills the patient you are running into a huge headwind. The technology issues, once you move out of the climate physics, are a black box for most people.

But it gets worse, we got that brain dead editor at Sci Am and other publications publishing garbage about Tesla batteries and Hawaii passing a law to go 100 % renewables, pumping people up as if the problem were that easy to solve; and then there's the endless conspiracy theories about oil companies.

You, as a community, tend to be smart. Start studying the problems rather than glossing them over. If you want stupid conspiracy theories go read the crappy satire I write in my blog.

And please don't use the common escape hatch (we can't justify the proposal so let's use Soviet economic principles, ignore reality, silence objections, put them in mental hospitals, and march on until the whole world turns into 1984).

EliRabett said...


That Fernando is a card carrying evader has always been clear. Accepting responsibility, as with the others of his ilk, was never his thing.

Aaron said...

Getting out of this with a viable human population is going to require more than just reducing CO2 emissions.

At this point, Earth is our life boat, and we cannot depend on some alien life form sending a rescue cruiser if our raft starts to sink.

We need to make some ethical and moral decisions. These are harder than the technical and financial decisions needed to reduce CO2 emissions.

Must our survival be an "all or none" attempt? Or, can we allow "stragglers" to perish? Or, do we plan and cull the population?


Without advocating for it, I suggest that the "plan and cull" option actually results in the fewest human deaths. On the other hand, it is morally reprehensible.

I have not heard such discussions in a long, long time. Why is that? Was because the problems went away?

Hank Roberts said...

I was looking for some help weighing the "INDCs - Intended Nationally Determined Contributions"

https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3AINDC+climate

-- these folks have a draft that's already helpful. Worth perusing to get an idea of and which of the many and varied groups offer a carbon calculation that can be relied on as far as it goes, even if it doesn't go far enough.

(For "far enough" meaning some equity, fairness, burden-sharing -- since the "low hanging fruit" improvement opportunities are mostly in the poorest countries that need help making them happen.)


http://www.ecoequity.org/2015/04/a-pre-paris-pledge-and-assessment-meta-document/

"Assessing the National Pledges – the state of the debate
Version 3.2 of April 10, 2015

"This is only a quick overview to the current range of INDC tracking and assessment initiatives, which is to say, initiatives that are designed to help us make sense of the national pledges of climate action. Its focus is on the emerging art of equity assessment. In other words, what countries are doing, or proposing to do, their fair shares? Which countries are doing more than others? How do you even think about such comparisons when countries are at different levels of development?

"Also, this is not intended to be comprehensive.... the focus here is and will remain on pledge assessment projects, frameworks and systems...."

Barton Paul Levenson said...

FL: we are running out of resources, and oil is at the front end of the queue. This, of course, means the greenhouse gas emissions will never reach those absurd peaks you like to use so much.

BPL: We have coal to last 500 years at least, and CO2 emissions are still increasing, not decreasing.

FL: as a refugee from an Orwellian communist dictatorship who left home at 14 to escape from the gulag, and who has seen the way Marxism has destroyed country after country, I will not accept any solutions which take my family back to the horror I have seen living in a communist country. In my case, better dead than red is a reality you had better start factoring into your equations.

BPL: I lost relatives in the actual GULAG, so I don't take kindly to being called a Communist. Nobody is advocating Marxism. A tax on CO2 emissions or a cap-and-trade scheme is not socialism, and it is ignorant and foolish to say it is.

Barton Paul Levenson said...

FL: there's the endless conspiracy theories about oil companies.

BPL: They aren't theories when they've been verified by investigation. The ICE was put together by a coalition of fossil fuel interests. Fossil fuel companies have poured half a billion dollars into climate denial since 1990. Them's the facts, Jack. The industry and allied industries (cars, power) made $9 trillion last year (not my estimate, but that of the IMF). Do you really think they wouldn't lie a little to hold onto that kind of money?

Barton Paul Levenson said...

FL: let's use Soviet economic principles

BPL: NO ONE HERE has advocated using "Soviet economic principles." Can you even define what "Soviet economic principles" were? Shove the straw man arguments up your tailpipe.

Tom said...

Instead of demanding that your opponents choose some target for either temperature or CO2 that would not be based on science, as science does not indicate an optimum value for either, you warmist/alarmist/bad luck Charlies should do the world a favor.

Come up with a detailed plan of how to reduce emissions. What happens after those at the Paris conference emerge triumphant with plans from every country?

What is the global fuel portfolio going to be and how will we finance, build and connect the necessary new components? How will we disassemble, recycle and reimburse the owners of legacy systems that we order to close?

Fernando is not an evader. You lot are.

EliRabett said...


Tom - IPCC WGIII

Been there done that

Barton Paul Levenson said...

Tom: you warmist/alarmist/bad luck Charlies...

BPL: As opposed to you people who want most of humanity to starve to death when this civilization collapses?

Tom: Come up with a detailed plan of how to reduce emissions.

BPL: Put a tax of $120 on every ton of CO2 emitted. Increase the tax $10 or so per year. Build wide-area smart grids everywhere. Build up solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, wave, tidal, and if needed, advanced nuclear. Promote cogeneration and insulate buildings. Favor railroads and mass transit over cars.

We might need to build massive industrial plants to take carbon out of the air. We also need to reduce deforestation. The use of biochar is a good thing to encourage.

That detailed enough for you, or do you want regional details? All these things have already been proposed, often in concerted plans (e.g. in Scientific American a couple of years ago).

llewelly said...

It seems Fernando's sources are Chrichton's State of Fear and recent news articles like this: http://www.theonion.com/video/in-the-know-coal-lobby-warns-wind-farms-may-blow-e-20876

I am not sure there is any value in arguing with people who are not aware that the cold war ended in 1991 and has been irrelevant ever since.

Hank Roberts said...

http://jensorensen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/scienceforsale600.png

Mal Adapted said...

Tom:

"...you warmist/alarmist/bad luck Charlies should do the world a favor. Come up with a detailed plan of how to reduce emissions."

I'll be yo' huckleberry. As a market-oriented warmist, I favor eliminating subsidies for fossil fuel production and consumption first, to make renewables more price-competitive.

Once that's accomplished, at least a fraction of the costs of climate change should be internalized in FF prices. In the US, that means a revenue-neutral carbon tax, proportional to the carbon emitted per unit of energy, charged to FF producers at the source. "Revenue-neutral" means no additional tax burden on the US economy. A Border Tax Adjustment would help US manufacturers stay competitive, and encourage our trade partners to impose their own carbon price.

Making renewable energy price-competitive with FFs would immediately provide incentives for R&D and infrastructure build-out. The details can be left to the market.

Now, Tom, please propose a way to overcome the influence of fossil-fuel $billions on US politics, so subsidies can be eliminated and a carbon price enacted.

Tom said...

BPL your strategy looks to me like it will cost on the order of $45 trillion. (8.5 for smart grid, the rest for buildout of renewables.

Spread out over 85 years I'll sign up for that. In fact I along with most lukewarmers (not the late adopters who are just tired of being insulted as deniers) already have.

Concentrated in a 20-year timespan would be pretty disastrous.

For five years I have been proposing a revenue neutral carbon tax starting at a low level and re-evaluated every decade based on performance metrics of the climate system.

Mal Adapted, I have also called for the discontinuation of all fossil fuel subsidies. However, as so much of them are in the form of price limits on petrol in countries like Iran and Venezuela, aid organizations need to be cognizant of the effects.

Fossil fuel lobbying has been overcome repeatedly in the U.S. legislature--or have you forgotten the ethanol story and the adoption of CAFE standards? It just takes work and spending of money.

Barton Paul Levenson said...

Well, Tom, by my estimate we have exactly 13 years. Which would be more disastrous--spending a lot of money to fix things, or letting agriculture collapse worldwide and human civilization with it? The numerical answer is left as an exercise for the student.

Barton Paul Levenson said...

To be honest, I should point out the six-year error bars on my estimate. Collapse could come as late as 2034. Or as early as 2022, for that matter.

Tom said...

Okay Barton, that's 3.3 trillion a year to accelerate takeup of needed technologies.

As developing countries have explicitly said they have no intention of lowering energy consumption, our alternatives are:

The aforementioned $3.3 trillion a year to convert to emissions free generation

Gunboat diplomacy

Perhaps you can think of another alternative. If not, which do you choose?

Barton Paul Levenson said...

The Third World can develop on renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. New energy infrastructure is put in every year to the tune of trillions. They don't need to spend a whole lot on explicit "conversion," just build renewable generation and new grids and retire the fossil fuel plants as fast as possible.

Anonymous said...

Oh, the irony of Tom complaining that we don't have time now to implement a clean energy infrastructure.

Might we have had time if we had started working to solve this problem back in the 1980s when the science was incontrovertible?

Tom said...

snarkrates, you'll have to point me to the part of this thread where I complained we don't have time, as I don't see it in any of my comments.

BPL, Okay, where do you intend to get $3.3 trillion every year?

Barton Paul Levenson said...

Tim: BPL, Okay, where do you intend to get $3.3 trillion every year?

BPL: I don't know if your figure is correct, but let's assume it is. What is worldwide government + private investment in energy infrastructure every year?

Anonymous said...

Tom, you have been one of the foremost proponents of delay. The longer we delay, the more investment per year is needed. Clear, or should I do the math for you?

Tom said...

snarkrates, please point to one thing, one statement, one rhetorical question, one snide comeback that I have written at any time any where that can be even implied by someone who despises my existence on this planet as suggesting, hinting, demanding or implying that we should wait before acting on mitigation now.

Just one.

Tom said...

BPL, total expenditure on primary energy was estimated at $5 trillion in 2010 by someone doing research for the Rockefeller Foundations and growth was estimated at about 3% per year. As it happens I think growth is a bit above that.

Barton Paul Levenson said...

Tom: BPL, total expenditure on primary energy was estimated at $5 trillion in 2010 by someone doing research for the Rockefeller Foundations and growth was estimated at about 3% per year. As it happens I think growth is a bit above that.

BPL: Fine, then. Don't spend any more of that on new coal mines or plants or infrastructure, ditto oil or gas. Don't spend any more on old-style grids. Spend it all, every year, on solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, tidal, wave, and advanced nuclear, and smart grids. Spend some of it on biochar to take CO2 out of the air.

Tom said...

I'm fine with no new coal investments in the developed world. China is currently building 363 of them. Are you going to tell them to stop? If they politely say they'd rather continue, what is your Plan B?

Tom said...

By 'them' of course I'm referring to coal fired power plants. As for the number, Greenpeace puts it this way: "On top of this, Greenpeace East Asia’s coal power plants database estimates that 570 new coal power plants (Table 1, Chart 2), with a total installed capacity of 650GW, are proposed, commissioned or under construction in China."

Obviously, not everything proposed or planned gets built. But I can't remember where I found the 363 number for under construction, so...

Barton Paul Levenson said...

Tom: I'm fine with no new coal investments in the developed world. China is currently building 363 of them. Are you going to tell them to stop? If they politely say they'd rather continue, what is your Plan B?

BPL: It Only Took Four Months For China To Achieve A Jaw-Dropping Reduction In Carbon Emissions
BY ARI PHILLIPS POSTED ON MAY 15, 2015 AT 11:45 AM

China is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, so small decreases in its emissions seem like monumental feats when compared to other countries. According to a new analysis, in the first four months of 2015, China’s coal use fell almost 8 percent compared to the same period last year — a reduction in emissions that’s approximately equal to the total carbon dioxide emissions of the U.K. over the same period...

BPL: Plan B would be to impose a carbon tariff on imports from regions that continue to use coal, based on how much coal use went into the product.

Tom said...

So we export our manufacturing to them and then charge them for the privilege? I like your style, BPL. Don't think small.

Barton Paul Levenson said...

What's your alternative, Tom? Let civilization collapse? Because that's what happens if we don't act, on a massive scale, very soon. How many deaths from starvation and the resulting plagues and wars would be acceptable to you?

Anonymous said...

T. Fuller: " The most important thing the poor need is access to cheap energy, which will serve to worsen CO2 emissions. But I have to say their need is so pressing that we should address it first."

Really, Tom, you shouldn't make this so easy. And before you accuse me of throwing the third world under the bus, let me tell you that I have done development work. To say that it is either climate change mitigation OR development is a false dichotomy. Building a new energy infrastructure means building a new energy infrastructure for everyone.

Tom said...

snarkrates, I fail to see anything in what you've quoted me saying as indicating that I do not favor mitigation now. I do favor it. I just think it will have to be in other areas than reducing energy consumption in the developing world.

I have nothing against fuel substitution. I have nothing against increased energy efficiency. I have nothing against a carbon tax. I have nothing against elimination of black soot. I have nothing against reversing deforestation. I have nothing against moving to cement production that does not emit CO2.

I just don't think that measures guaranteed to kill poor people should be at the top of the list.

Tom said...

BPL, what happens if China just says okay, we'll live with a carbon tariff, take you to court and let them decide and rebalance our trade to send more stuff to Russia et al?

Tom said...

BPL, just a quick question--why do you think civilization will collapse if we don't follow your policy prescriptions with regards to climate change?

Stern didn't think civilization would collapse. The IPCC doesn't think civilization will collapse.

Why do you think it will?

Barton Paul Levenson said...

T: I just don't think that measures guaranteed to kill poor people should be at the top of the list.

BPL: Which proposed measures are "guaranteed to kill poor people?" Please be specific.

T: BPL, what happens if China just says okay, we'll live with a carbon tariff, take you to court and let them decide and rebalance our trade to send more stuff to Russia et al?

BPL: We stick to our guns. BTW, did you miss the fact that China is, in fact, cutting its CO2 emissions?

T: BPL, just a quick question--why do you think civilization will collapse if we don't follow your policy prescriptions with regards to climate change?

BPL: That's what my research on global warming and drought indicates.

Tom said...

BPL, could you be more specific? How will climate change and drought end our civilization?

cRR Kampen said...

"How will climate change and drought end our civilization?"

Just look around a bit. At regions suffering like a 40% reduction of annual rainfall e.g. the Fertile Crescent where past couple of years areas have been abandoned that were in agrarian use for at least double as long as writing exists.

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00059.1

Basically what happens is society falls into a situation where individual day to day survival is all there is. People will do that. Sao Paulo is next. Californian families MUST plan migration to the northeast NOW.

Barton Paul Levenson said...

I took the Dai et al. database of PDSI as modified by NOAA to use the Penman-Monteith equation for evapotranspiration. The earlier version used the Thornthwaite equation, which is less reliable. From the grid data, I created a measure, F, of the fraction of Earth's land surface in severe drought (PDSI-PM <= -3.0).

I found that it began rising significantly about 1970 and has doubled since then. I linked it to past drought and present temperatures, and showed that Granger causality exists both ways. Heat aggravates drought, and drought aggravates heat (by decreasing evapotranspiration which cools the surface).

Extrapolating the effect--a dangerous procedure, admittedly, outside the area of observation--I found that drought goes out of control in 13 +/- 6 years. We can't have 100% of land area in drought, because rain moves to the coastlines, and coastlines get soaked. But that doesn't help crops either.

This may leave an area between the desert and the swamp where we can still raise crops. But it won't be as many as we can raise now. And population is growing, albeit more slowly than it used to. One way or another, you will have famine on a grand scale. This will aggravate diseases. Countries, some of them nuclear-armed, will fight over resources. For instance, India, Pakistan, and China all want the fresh water from the diminishing Siachen glacier region.

Governments do not, traditionally, handle crises well. I foresee disaster. Feel free to disagree.

Tom said...

BPL, you are aware that climate change is projected to increase global precipitation by 5%, are you not?

And are you aware of Sherwood's paper stating that global drought conditions have been essentially unchanged for the past 60 years?

Tom said...

BPL, you are aware that climate change is projected to increase global precipitation by 5%, are you not?

And are you aware of Sherwood's paper stating that global drought conditions have been essentially unchanged for the past 60 years?

cRR Kampen said...

How nice, of course those 5% would be spread evenly over the globe :)

"And are you aware of Sherwood's paper stating that global drought conditions have been essentially unchanged for the past 60 years?" - nah, we do reality.

Bernard J. said...

Here's a pub question: in the future will drought brought on by climate change be the (or perhaps a primary) trigger for a nascent Latino state splintering California and surrounds away from the Union?

Illustrate with coloured maps and graphs on beer coasters, and refer to political, demographic, and social factors as appropriate. And remember not to speak when you have a mouthful of beer nuts.

Tom said...

CRR Kampen "nah, we do reality".

I see.

cRR Kampen said...

't Was Sheffield et al, not 'Sherwood', but not to worry.
A review: http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2012/11/counting-drought/

Anonymous said...

So, Tom, does this mean that you repudiate your former advocacy of supplying "cheap energy" to the poor even at the cost of increased CO2 emissions?

And my experience has been that while the poor have many needs, cheap energy is way, way down the list. Improved transport, yes. But even before that, clean drinking water and truly efficient, sustainable agriculture. Most of the truly poor couldn't afford energy no matter how cheap it was.

Tom said...

No, snarkrates. As I wrote, I believe in mitigation now. But not at the expense of the poor.