2017 Climate Science Special Report

Has generated advance speculation that it might be reduced in scope or claims. That seems not to have happened.

Summary chapter here:

Executive Summary - Climate Science Special Report

With other chapters nearby. Looks unsurprising to me, with perhaps new information on weather extremes and nuisance flooding.

For years now, my concern with climate models is not that they miss recent trends but that they expect +T acceleration not yet in evidence and by feedback mechanisms not yet in evidence. Lacking those we might instead anticipate a global +T of >2 oC more, even if +CO2 is not constrained by institutional mechanisms.

Even without such accelerations, current pace of ‘events’ give us plenty to prepare for. This may be well-enough covered in Report. Yet I don’t like it in ways that may fall outside their purview (thus without blame).

First, there are no ‘Agriculture’ or ‘Health Effects’ chapters. Both areas have recent (and controversial) research that matters much for how US (within international context) navigates this century.

Second, to restate, I consider focus on individual aspects inadequate to describe possible paths through this century. In US and elsewhere, more energy is required. Some forms compete with agriculture for water. Climate as it may develop also influences agriculture. Surface-transport modes (some say) will move rapidly towards electrical storage and away from hydrocarbon liquids. What would those imply? Human health, disease vectors respond with agility to small climate changes; immune-system responses to respirable particles and more close urban living, how can we learn about that muddle?

Interrelationships among human-important processes will be central for assessments like this in 50 years; I have no doubt. At present we are going ‘single-factor’ and perhaps missing some of those. Each of those single factors also remains in dispute, at least for those whose motivations remain cloudy.

A special report like this might only be the next thing to ‘burn’. No idea when we’ll plan comprehensively for a desireable human future.

 

I liked bisco so that he might think less ill of me for bashing elsewhere where likes do not exist.

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What we ought to do is envision Human Goals on decadal scales, with those sooner being more tractable. Obviously these include health, water, food, energy and economic development. Others as others might add.

They interact. Those interactions include +T and +sea level, but for a few decades at least those degrees and centimeters will not be many. In contrast, upsetting events are already important and are very unlikely to become less so.

For some others, UN Millennium Development Goals grasp at creating unwanted global governance (and quietly, displacement of how 'getting rich' is currently done). For me those goals fall short of percieving and acting on interactions.

We have no plan. We could make a plan. In short term it might not have a whole lot to do with +CO2. Instead, all those other interacting things.

 

As I always do, yours.

 

“Cambiar el mundo, amigo Sancho, que no es locura ni utopía, sino Justicia!".
- Don Quijote

 

Cervantes' social commentary was heavily seasoned with levity. Probably a lesson can be learned from that. I think some environmental issues are serious enough, but so poorly scoped, that it is hard to levitate them.

Some of what passes for levity at PriusChat (not by any posting here) seems mere ridicule and I do not find that helpful.