Climate Criminals — A preliminary to-do list

This almost counts as a "notes to self" list, but if anyone wants help with the information, please do.

This is the first set of data needed to start a Climate Criminals project — an operation that names and publicizes who's really bringing the planet so close to climate catastrophe.

To publicize the first group of perps — carbon CEOs — I think the following is needed:

• The top ten carbon extraction companies by income
• The CEOs of those companies
• The total compensation of each CEO
• The total wealth (if available) of each CEO
• Public domain pictures of each

This would allow us to put them in some kind of order.

Click here for more on this group and what I suggest we do. These are the real bad guys.

To deal with the second set of perps — political enablers and fence-sitters — I think the following would be useful.

• A list of the five most egregious anti-climate politicians (names like Inhofe come to mind, but the list should be longer)
  
  
• A sharpened "elevator speech" that makes the urgency case for the fence-sitters
  
  
• Confirmation that the following fence-sitters are the place to start — Barack Obama (or whoever secedes him), Hillary Clinton (or whoever is Secretary of State), Bill Clinton, Harry Reid, Joe Biden.

More on the plans for this group here. The proposed way to take the fence-sitters off the fence is Keystone Pipeline approval.

For the third group of perps — media enablers and fence-sitters — it would be nice to have the following:

• A list of the five most egregious anti-climate media pimps, people like George Will. We want the worst ones for this list.
  
  
• The sharpened "elevator speech" for the fence-sitters (same as above)
  
  
• A list of the key media people to be taken off of the fence and/or educated. My first suggestions included David Gregory, followed by Chris Matthews and Chris Hayes, maybe a CNN anchor, and some entertainment people like Leno, Letterman, Colbert and John Stewart.
  
  I think we need some people who are a likely Yes (like Matthews and Hayes), and some in key positions we can put on the spot (like Gregory). The goal is to get advocates and also to apply pressure. Suggestions appreciated.

Click here to see what the plan for this group is.

For the fourth group of perp — Koch-funded denier scientists — it would be good to have the following:

• A list from the scientific community of Heartland-paid or Koch-paid (etc.) scientists who are doing the most damage with the least apparently integrity
  
  
• A list of the primary denier-funding institutions (places like Heartland)
  
  
• A list of the primary funders of those institutions, with amounts if possible

As we noted here, we would push for the scientist to reject the suspect funding in order to "clear up any confusion about their motives."

The attack is only peripherally on the "tobacco scientists" in the climate field. The real push is to publicize the financing sources and help to deactivate them.

Note the similarity to the ALEC defunding campaign that has had such great success. If taking suspect money appears to be a black mark on integrity, it will make it more difficult for these funding operations to continue.

Will some "scientists" quit the field if they can't get Koch Bros financing? If they do, that's not a problem.

The effort to unconfuse the people offers different challenges. Here we will need information culled from a number of sources and assembled in an apples-to-apples way.

The list is long, but key elements are:

• How long before 1½°C arrives?
• At the current rate of carbon-dumping, how long before 3°C arrives?
• What does a 3°C world look like?

And so on. There are a great number of good studies, but it's difficult for the layman to evaluate them relative to each other, since each uses individual scopes, methodologies, and metrics.

For more on this, click here.

That's the last for now. With this information, a Climate Criminals project could boldly take the next steps. I'm going to be working on this myself.

If you'd like to help out, feel free to send information as you wish. Put "Climate Criminals to-do" in the subject line, and wse the lists above as a guide unless you think I've missed something important. I may not be able to reply, but I appreciate all the assistance that's offered.

Thanks,

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Study: Fox and WSJ overwhelmingly wrong about climate change

Remind me again what the common denominator is again between Fox News and the Wall Street Journal?

Rupert Murdoch may have bought his way into US nationality but he certainly doesn't understand traditional American values. Believing in science and facts used to be a matter of pride in America but Murdoch's distorted view has been a radical and unhealthy addition to the American way.

This trend of promoting lies by the Murdoch empire has to change. It's hurting America, but Murdoch's mission has nothing to do with helping the country. Much like Mitt Romney, Murdoch's mission is to make money. It's sick, but for him, the best way to accomplish that goal appears to be distorting reality.

Why does Rupert Murdoch hate America?

Primetime coverage of global warming at Fox News is overwhelmingly misleading, according to a new report that finds the same is true of climate change information in the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages.

Both outlets are owned by Rupert Murdoch's media company News Corporation. The analysis by the science-policy nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) finds that 93 percent of primetime program discussions of global warming on Fox News are inaccurate, as are 81 percent of Wall Street Journal editorials on the subject.

"It's like they were writing and talking about some sort of bizarre world where climate change isn't happening," study author Aaron Huertas, a press secretary at UCS, told LiveScience.

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The Climate Criminals project: A five-pronged approach to climate solution

This falls under the heading "wouldn't it be nice." I think the proposal below, if executed, would add considerable muscle to the existing (and frustrated) climate crisis movement.

I'm calling this proposal the "Climate Criminals" project — a label for the five-pronged approach to a climate solution that I've been writing about — for example here:

Solving the climate crisis — Goals, targets and tactics (a summary)

I won't detail the project's tactics yet — this piece is already long enough — but I do want to identify the targets of those tactics, show how those targets would be approached, and set up the next few posts in this series.

First, though, two reminders — what problem are we solving, and what strategies don't seem to be working?

(To skip immediately to the project itself, click here.)

The problem, the solution, and the "ask"

Before going further, let's make sure we're on the same page — all of us solving the same problem. For example, I'm not solving this problem:

How to keep the Koch Bros rich while transitioning to alternate energy sources.

Instead, I'm solving this:

The problem — Humans continue to put carbon into the air. What's already there is too much.

Even if we stopped tomorrow, we've still created a terrible mess that we'll need to adapt to. That adaptation will not be easy. What you've seen through the past few summers is exactly half the warming we're already predestined to get. The other half is in the pipeline, just waiting to show up.

Defining the problem the way I have makes the solution-statement obvious:

The solution — Put the carbon industry out of business. Completely.

As long as the carbon industry is open for business, carbon will be added to the air. Zero new man-made carbon is the right number; any greater number is the wrong one.

Which means there's only one thing the climate crisis movement should ask for:

The right "ask" — "Stop now." Stop putting man-made carbon into the air at the most-strictly-defined earliest-possible moment.

The consequences of not stopping are far more important than the profits of a handful of super-wealthy egomaniacs.

In addition, the disruptions to us all of an abrupt stop and energy conversion, however great, will be minor compared to life in a chaotic 3°C, 4°C, or 6°C warmer world. Life in those worlds will be hell.

As noted above, we're at "only" .8°C warmer now. Any less discomfort we seek for ourselves now will come at a huge price in the years to come.

Put another way, the decision to "stop later" is the decision to make our own lives marginally less bad by pushing the disaster (including a possible "mass extinction" event) onto our children.

Some would call that victimizing the next generation. It's at least a very unfriendly act. I assume we won't be thanked for it.

What doesn't work; what isn't sufficient

Before we look at what I'm recommending, let's look at what doesn't work and why:

1. Personal behavior change — individual action — is not enough. That discussion is here. The bottom line, even if you went totally green, you'd have to get power from somewhere. And that "somewhere" is under political control, not personal control. Behavior change is critical, but not enough.
   
   
2. Technology alone is not going to save us. That discussion is here. New technology is critical, but again, not enough. Even if the needed technology were available now, deploying it quickly is a choice between relative discomforts, not benefits — some discomfort now forestalling huge problems later. "More discomfort now" is a very hard sell, even if the political forces weren't arrayed against us.
   
   
3. A carbon tax is not the answer. That discussion is here. First, markets don't work in an orderly way, so a market-based solution can't be counted on (for example, see here). Besides, giving people permission to emit carbon is not our goal; our goal is the opposite — forcing the end of all new atmospheric carbon. (And yes, it will take force.)
   
   
4. Mass protest and awareness movements are not going to solve the problem by themselves. They're a vital part of the effort to "unconfuse the people" (one of our goals). But raising awareness isn't enough by itself to change the behavior of politicians.
   
   Three examples should suffice: (1) Recent mass protests against the Keystone Pipeline, which only delayed approval. (2) Worldwide mass protests against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. (3) Comparison of "will of the people" polling on economic matters — e.g., Bush-Obama Tax Cuts, banker bailouts, cuts to the safety net — versus the desires and actions of our rulers.

What is the five-pronged approach?

The Climate Criminals five-pronged approach is a plan for a cadre-led movement to:

• Target the perps, the "carbon criminals"
• Catalyze leadership among on-the-fence politicians and media
• Unconfuse the people about global warming consequences

The Climate Criminals project is conceived as a supplement to current action, not a replacement. It attempts to "up the ante" on consequences to produce a more effective result and more effective messaging.

This is a U.S.–based project, under the assumption that if the U.S. can't be changed, no leveraged worldwide change is possible.

The first four prongs target four groups of perps who are blocking all attempts at climate solution and mitigation — carbon CEOs; their political enablers and retainers; their big-media enablers and retainers; their bought climate scientists (the paid "tobacco scientists" of our day).

The approach targets individuals in each group — perps in the crisis, the reason world climate is getting worse, plus key fence-sitters — for public identification as "climate criminals" and for non-violent but effective action.

The approach also attempts to recruit "climate converts" and leaders among the perps, especially within the political and media classes.

The fifth prong is aimed at the people themselves. At the moment the mass of people are terribly confused — partly because writers and communicators have not told the real story well, and partly because the four groups of perps have deliberately reinforced the confusion.

This approach attempts to change that — to unconfuse the people with clear messaging.

Now the details, target by target:

Perp 1 — Carbon CEOs. These are the main "climate criminals"— the core reason we haven't solved this problem already. The greed and megalomania of less than 100 humans is what stands between 7 billion humans and a climate solution.

Even though global warming and the greenhouse effect were identified as early as 1861, today's carbon CEOs make obscene personal profit by continuing to monetize the greenhouse chemicals under their control. They've shown by their behavior where their loyalty lies.

Carbon CEOs are the primary reason carbon is still going into the air. They control the political and media classes to make sure their wishes, and no one else's, become the public policy and message. They also control a number of paid-off scientists (the tobacco scientists of our day) who make sure the science messaging appears confused.

When the generation alive in 2100 wants to know who gave them their hot chaotic world, these criminals will head the list.

A Climate Criminals project would identify each of these people by name, starting with the top 10 or so; identify how much money each is making from global climate destruction; identify how much wealth each has extracted from the misery of future generations; and ask — probably in vain — for a conversion of conscience to help aggressively solve the problem each has caused.

Carbon CEOs need to be made the permanent face of the catastrophe. Every time bad climate news appears, the people need to see these faces as the perps.

Perp 2 — Political enablers. This group includes two types — known climate criminals like James Inhofe, whose record is clear, and supposed fence-sitters like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (who will soon get to approve — or disapprove — the Keystone Pipeline from her perch in the State Dept).

A Climate Criminals project would name important enablers like Inhofe — treating them just like the criminal CEOs — then take the important fence-sitters off the fence by putting people like Barack Obama, the Clintons, Harry Reid and others, one by one, firmly on the record.

The key to putting people like Obama on the record is the Keystone Pipeline. I would start with Obama — first by stating the climate case vis-à-vis Keystone, then by asking:

"Mr. Obama, will you swear to veto any legislation that contains any approval for the Keystone Pipeline in the United States, regardless of whatever else the legislation contains?"

A Yes makes him a Climate Protector and the project would publicize him as such (thus keeping him on the record).

A No or a waffle — either — makes him a Climate Criminal. This is entirely fair. Keystone Pipeline approval is a guarantee of 3°C or greater global warming and the mass extinction that will follow.

After Obama, similar questions should be put to the Clintons, Biden, Reid. The process could be continued as necessary. Fence-sitting senators up for election in blue states are especially interesting, as are congresstypes on environmental committees.

Perp 3 — Media enablers. The model for action is the same as for the political enablers. Again, there are two groups — the known bads like George Will and those who can be put on the record, one by one.

For the second group, I'd start with one of the primary network anchors — David Gregory comes to mind — then pick someone from MSNBC like Chris Matthews. Entertainers like Jay Leno and David Letterman should also be included. At Comedy Central I'd start with Colbert, who probably gets it, then move to Stewart, who may or may not.

The ask:

"Do you agree with the climate assessments and the timetable? If so, do you agree that every time the subject comes up, it needs to be framed in a way that correctly represents the situation — in a way that unconfuses people, not further confuses them?"

To be clear: Handling the news or the comedy is up to them. We're only asking that they not confuse people with contra-factual framing.

The goal is to seek new protectors, people who will agree and follow through with clear recognition that this is indeed a crisis. Only those like George Will who are died-in-the-wool deniers should go into the criminals group. Perhaps a third group — "climate fence-sitters" — might be useful here, especially as evidence from places like the Arctic mounts.

Perp 4 — Paid science deniers. Similar to groups 2 and 3, people should be put on the spot, then classified. Here, the question isn't about the intention behind a climate denial position — that's hard to determine — but the funding, which is easy to discover.

Starting with an empty deniers' Climate Criminals list, I'd approach any prominent researcher who takes money from Koch Industries, the Heartland Institute or a similar organization and simply ask them to reject the funding in order to clear up any confusion about their motives.

A researcher's motives are only suspect if known-denial-funding changes hands. Otherwise, they're presumed to be simply a contrarian, a perfectly fair position in science. The ask is therefore:

"Will you reject and return all funding from [denier funding org] so that your motives will not appear to be compromised?"

A researcher who agrees to reject denial funding should be presumed sincere. Paid contrarians, however, are a different beast, and should be moved from "unknown" to the Climate Criminals list.

The people. There has to be a strong program to "unconfuse the people." The goal is not to terrify, but to make people appropriately concerned — concerned enough to hug the monster and act with urgency.

This brings in the writers, filmmakers and other professional communicators. The message:

"We're facing a serious problem. These are the timelines.

"We better get our house in order because anyone who lives through most of the current century will experience the start of the climate chaos era. That means our children.

"Help us paint that picture before it's too late to act."

All five prongs work together in this part of the effort. Finding climate protectors among politicians and media would give mainstream cred to the "unconfuse" messaging. As interest mounts, people could even make money at it.

Bottom line

I've been writing for a while about the problem — we're less than a generation, perhaps less than a decade, from watching the climate start to spin out of control.

Once 3°C — 5½°F — is inevitable, the only option left will be to mitigate and survive. And a decade or two after that, when 3°C does arrive, it will bring degrees and levels of chaos that will make global coordination impossible. At least in my view.

So the time to act is now, before 3°C is inevitable. Is current effort going to be enough? In my opinion, no. Ultimately, nothing but force will budge the CEOs and their paid politicians. Time to add (completely non-violent) force into the equation.

A Climate Criminals project, or something similar, would be one way to up the pressure. A project like this would highlight the true perps, make them the face of the crisis, and allow all kinds of other actions to take place around that understanding.

It would also put politicians and media on the record — and on the spot — in a way that isn't happening now.

Again, my proposed Climate Criminals project is a plan for a cadre-led movement to:

• Target the perps, the "carbon criminals"
• Catalyze leadership among on-the-fence politicians and media
• Unconfuse the people about global warming consequences

I hope, if it gains momentum, you give it your support. The next posts will include a to-do list and some examples of using force that, under the right circumstances, could very well work.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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More on Arctic methane—Vast kilometer-wide methane "plumes" seen in Arctic ocean as sea ice retreats

Via commenter eggroll_jr, in response to this post —

"We're in a planetary emergency" thanks to Arctic ice melt and Greenland permafrost

— we find this article about the appearance of "methane plumes" now rising through the newly warmed Arctic ocean.

From The Independent last December:

Vast methane 'plumes' seen in Arctic ocean as sea ice retreats

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane - a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide - have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

We talked about methane here (scroll down) in reference to the methane trapped in Greenland permafrost and sealed from the atmosphere by now-disappearing ice sheets.

This story is about methane shooting up through the Arctic ocean itself in vast torch-like plumes and headed straight for the surface and the atmosphere.

The scale of the phenomenon — as usual — is the big surprise:

"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said.

"I was most impressed by the sheer scale and the high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them," he said.

One thousand meters is a kilometer, folks — more than half a mile. These are high-density methane columns, compressed tight by the high pressure of the ocean itself, many wider than a kilometer. And they think there are thousands of them.

Add methane from the ocean depths, methane from the Greenland permafrost, and methane from the Siberian permafrost to the air, and we have unleashed a monster.

How big a monster? This big:

Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tons of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf.

And this big:

The total amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the overall quantity of carbon locked up in global coal reserves[.]

I want to send you to the article for the rest; it's fascinating in a data-rich way.

There's even a discussion about why methane is so dangerous, and why those estimates of its effect relative to CO2 move around — from 20 to 25 times more damaging — depending on who provides them.

Time to get cracking. My personal climate estimate, 2022, may sadly be on target [EDIT: or way to optimistic]. The next post will focus on solutions. Stay tuned.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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"We're in a planetary emergency" thanks to Arctic ice melt and Greenland permafrost

UPDATE: A complete list of climate series pieces is available here:
The Climate series: a reference post.
________

This is an Arctic ice story with a twist. It takes you under the ice to the Greenland permafrost, and brings a second greenhouse gas — methane — into the spotlight. (Chris's earlier ice story is here.)

Thanks to Raw Story (via Twitter friend MiroCollas) and Agence France Presse for this article. A few snippets will do make my point; the whole is strongly recommended however.

First, on the scale of the problem (my emphasis throughout):

Experts warned of a “planetary emergency” due to the unforeseen global consequences of Arctic ice melt, including methane gas released from permafrost regions currently under ice.

Columbia University and the environmental activist group Greenpeace held separate events Wednesday to discuss US government data showing that the Arctic sea ice has shrunk to its smallest surface area since record-keeping began in 1979. ...

“If this trend continues we will not have sea ice by the end of this decade,” said [oceanographer Wieslaw] Maslowski. ...

“We are in a planetary emergency,” said [NASA climate expert James] Hansen, decrying “the gap between what is understood by scientific community and what is known by the public.”

What's the scale and timeline for that "planetary emergency"?

If nothing changes, my personal estimate says we'll know by roughly 2022 if James Hansen's "mass extinction" event is inevitable. Hansen is the man quoted above; the reasoning behind my estimate is here.

The current "in the pipeline" number is 1½°C (see below for explanation). When 3°C — 5½°F — is in the pipeline, it's "game over" according to Hansen.

Next, a definition — why gases like carbon are called "greenhouse gases" in the first place, for those who've forgotten:

Scientists say the earth’s climate has been warming because carbon dioxide and other human-produced gases hinder the planet’s reflection of the sun’s heat back into space, creating a greenhouse effect.

Then another reminder that getting to a certain temperature globally has consequences that push the thermometer to a higher leveling-off point. In other words, even if we stop right now, there's a certain amount of global warming yet to come, as a consequence of what we've already done to the ecosystem.

I've been calling that "in the pipeline" — as in, "we have .8°C warming now, and another .8°C is in the pipeline, inevitable." The following illustrates this perfectly:

Another result is the likely release of large amounts of methane — a greenhouse gas — trapped in the permafrost under Greenland’s ice cap, the remains of the region’s organic plant and animal life that were trapped in sediment and later covered by ice sheets in the last Ice Age.

And finally, hello methane, and a fact you may want to stash away:

Methane is 25 times more efficient at trapping solar heat than carbon dioxide, and the released gases could in turn add to global warming, which in turn would free up more locked-up carbon.

And that's your global climate report for today. Still to come — a review of our five-pronged approach to a solution and a preliminary to-do list.

It's not over; just urgent, which is the reason I'm writing about it.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
 

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Arctic sea ice breaks earlier record low

The new ice season is just starting, but the results of the 2012 ice melting season ought to be a major concern for everyone. Dismissing climate change as a liberal conspiracy is not going to cut it any longer.

"We are now in uncharted territory," Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said in a statement announcing the record low of 1.32 million square miles -- nearly half the average extent from 1979 to 2010. The extent has been tracked by satellite since 1979.

"While we’ve long known that as the planet warms up, changes would be seen first and be most pronounced in the Arctic," he added, "few of us were prepared for how rapidly the changes would actually occur."

Many experts expect the Arctic to be free of sea ice in summer at some point between 2015 and 2050.

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Arctic sea ice to collapse by 2016

It's a serious problem yet one political party in the US continues to think it's a joke. This is what happens when a party is taken over by extremists who prefer religious texts over scientific experts. As Gaius mentioned recently, the climate predictions are consistently wrong to the slow side.

The news from Cambridge University professor Peter Wadhams is not encouraging. Ignoring the problem is not an option. The Guardian:

In an email to the Guardian he says: "Climate change is no longer something we can aim to do something about in a few decades' time, and that we must not only urgently reduce CO2 emissions but must urgently examine other ways of slowing global warming, such as the various geoengineering ideas that have been put forward."

These include reflecting the sun's rays back into space, making clouds whiter and seeding the ocean with minerals to absorb more CO2.

Wadhams has spent many years collecting ice thickness data from submarines passing below the arctic ocean. He predicted the imminent break-up of sea ice in summer months in 2007, when the previous lowest extent of 4.17 million square kilometres was set. This year, it has unexpectedly plunged a further 500,000 sq km to less than 3.5m sq km. "I have been predicting [the collapse of sea ice in summer months] for many years. The main cause is simply global warming: as the climate has warmed there has been less ice growth during the winter and more ice melt during the summer.

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Thoughts on climate crisis speed — Polar ice "retreated faster than anyone expected, record smashed to smithereens"

UPDATE: A complete list of climate series pieces is available here:
The Climate series: a reference post.
________

This post is not about the Arctic, but it starts there. The Guardian (my emphasis and paragraphing):

[Arne] Sorensen has sailed deep into ice at both poles for 30 years, but this voyage is different, he says. The edge of the Arctic ice cap is usually far south of where we are now at the very end of the melt season.

More than 600,000 square kilometres (sq km) more ice has melted in 2012 than was ever recorded by satellites before. ...

"This is the new minimum extent of the ice cap," he says, the "frontline of climate change".

"It is sad. I am not doubting this is related to emitting fossil fuels to a large extent. It's sad to observe that we are capable of changing the planet to such a degree."

But that's not my main point. This is closer:

The vast polar ice cap, which regulates the Earth's temperature and has been a permanent fixture in our understanding of how the world works, has this year retreated further and faster than anyone expected.

Here's what that means, ice-wise:

The previous record, set in 2007, was officially broken on 27 August when satellite images averaged over five days showed the ice then extended 4.11 million sq km, a reduction of nearly 50% compared to just 40 years ago.

But since 27 August, the ice just kept melting – at nearly 40,000 sq km a day until a few days ago. Satellite pictures this weekend showed the cap covering only 3.49m sq km. This year, 11.7m sq km of ice melted, 22% more than the long-term average of 9.18m sq km. The record minimum extent is now likely to be formally called on Monday by the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in Colorado.

The record hasn't just been broken, it's been smashed to smithereens, adding weight to predictions that the Arctic may be ice-free in summer months within 20 years, say British, Italian and American-based scientists on board the Arctic Sunrise. They are shocked at the speed and extent of the ice loss.

If you're hearing a theme, it's that things are happening faster than anyone anticipated. That's my main point. All of our models are wrong in the same direction — the bad one.

Climate predictions are consistently wrong to the slow side

Nearly all recent predictions of global warming speed have been wrong to the slow side. The crisis is proceeding faster than expectations, and that should scare the whole of humanity.

Scientists are conservative by nature, so their predictions are near the conservative end of their data. Paid deniers — the "tobacco scientists" of our day — have relentlessly attacked the honest investigators, making them even more conservative than usual.

But every story we've gotten lately has been about speed — how the speed and extremity surprises everyone. Look again at Figure 1 from the Copenhagen Diagnosis (pdf) document prepared by the world's climate scientists for the December 2009 Copenhagen climate conference:

The predictions were made in 2000 or so. The data was laid in later, through 2009. Wrong to the slow side.

At what point should we, you and I, start building unexpected speed into our personal models and expectations?

My personal climate model

My personal climate model goes like this:

■ Based on Figure 21 from the Copenhagen Diagnosis (pdf; click for high-res version), I put 1½°C arriving shortly after 2020. Call it 2022 for a clean decade from now.

Note: All science in this field is done in °C. For the same in Farenheit, see the end of this post. The conversion is 5:9 — 1°C = slightly less than 2°F.

■ We're at .8°C now with 1½°C in the pipeline. When we get to 1½°C, will 3°C (the start of "mass extinction") also be in the pipeline? If that 1:2 ratio (0.8°C now : 1.5°C coming) holds, I'd say Yes.

■ If true, we'll know in a decade if the "mass extinction" scenario is inevitable.

Would I love to be wrong? Of course; I plan to be alive in a decade. But should we plan on having more time than a decade to dither and coddle the rich?

You pick — choices are Yes and No.

■ Using Figure 21 again, when does 3°C actually arrive? The most aggressive scenario gives us actual 3°C between 2050–2060.

■ If so, that's all she wrote. In 2055, say, when 3°C shows up, I'll bet all I own that 6°C is in the pipeline. 2055 will mark the start of a new geological era.

Even if I'm off by, say, twenty years, it's still our children's lifetime we're talking about. I'm going to check this carefully, but I don't think I am off. Remember, recent predictions have been consistently wrong to the slow side. That's what this post is about.

Note: Geologic eras are very large divisions. The Mesozoic ("middle life" or large reptiles) Era sits between two mass extinctions, the one that opened the door for big dinosaurs (about 250 million years ago) and the one that closed it (about 65 million years ago). That's 185 million years by my math.

We're now in the Cenozoic ("new life" or large mammals) Era. That started 65 million years ago and is still going on.

But a mass extinction on the order of either of the previous two would close that door and open another. Do we end the "era of large mammals" at that point?

Either way, we've triggered a world-historical event — assuming we're around to record it.

Bottom line

If I'm right (and everyone playing this game has been wrong to the slow side), mark your calendars. Sometime in the next 10 years or so, we'll know if we've pulled back from the brink or leaped over it.

By that I mean: If I'm right and we reach 1½°C by 2025 — the U.S. has just 35 years to pack its bags and move to Canada, a country that will still be able to grow things and maintain a national electrical grid.

Ready for the near-term geopolitical question of the century? What are the odds the Canadian government will let us all in? (Me, I place that at zero, but that's just a guess. Some people think we're universally loved.)

The next climate post will review the five-pronged approach I think is needed to put the current effort into a higher gear, and then we'll press on from there.

Stay tuned. This is not over; just urgent. And this time the planet is helping to make the case.

[Help for the Centigrade-disabled: .8°C = 1½°F; 1½°C = 3°F;
3°C = 5½°F; 6°C = you don't want to live there (more or less)]

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Energy Conservation no longer on GOP platform

Why would conserving energy be dropped? Shouldn't that be a conservative principle? Once again, anything that the Democrats support has to be shut down by the Republicans. Just because. Bloomberg:

The Republican Party platform for 2012 contains no mention of energy efficiency, leading some observers to conclude that the issue of energy conservation--long considered bipartisan—is becoming increasingly politicized.

The omission is “a little bit surprising” given support from previous Republican platforms and from Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney himself during his time as governor of Massachusetts, said Andrew Goldberg, chief lobbyist for the American Institute of Architects, a group that supports energy-efficient buildings.

Conserving energy is good all around, including good for the wallets of average Americans. Why or how it has become politicized by the GOP is hard to answer. Read the rest of this post...

2012 the hottest year on record so far in US

Queue the dingbat GOP/Fox News denier who will talk about the day is snowed somewhere on a particular day. "It ain't hot here today, duh huh, duh huh."

At what point did the Republican party stop believing in science and choose stories from a book to explain everything?

The first eight months of 2012 have been the warmest of any year on record in the contiguous United States, and this has been the third-hottest summer since record-keeping began in 1895, the U.S. National Climate Data Center said on Monday.

Each of the last 15 months has seen above-average temperatures, something that has never happened before in the 117 years of the U.S. record, said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at the data center.

Winter, spring and summer 2012 have all been among the top-five hottest for their respective seasons, Crouch said by telephone, and that too is unique in the U.S. record. There has never been a warmer September-through-August period than in 2011-2012, he said.

Read the rest of this post...

Caribbean coral reefs on verge of collapse

This is definitely not good news. It's bad news for the environment and it's bad news for everyone who depends on the reefs for business. The culprit? It's the usual problem of over fishing, pollution and climate change.

Why are the right wingers unable to see even the economic problems this creates? Just setting aside the environmental issues, the economic aspects are enormous. The Guardian:

Caribbean coral reefs – which make up one of the world's most colourful, vivid and productive ecosystems – are on the verge of collapse, with less than 10% of the reef area showing live coral cover.

With so little growth left, the reefs are in danger of utter devastation unless urgent action is taken, conservationists warned. They said the drastic loss was the result of severe environmental problems, including over-exploitation, pollution from agricultural run-off and other sources, and climate change.

The decline of the reefs has been rapid: in the 1970s, more than 50% showed live coral cover, compared with 8% in the newly completed survey. The scientists who carried it out warned there was no sign of the rate of coral death slowing.

As this recent Harvard Business Review article says, you cannot deny climate change and be pro-business. Read the rest of this post...

Climate report: "Almost no chance" of less than 3½°F (2°C) rise; 50-50 chance of 5½°F (3°C); headed for 9°F

Housekeeping note: I'm on vacation at the moment. Posting will be intermittent (or worse) for the next week or so. I'll return to regular writing next week.

UPDATE: A complete list of climate series pieces is available here:
The Climate series: a reference post.
________

This is an update on the global warming "floor," currently sits at 1½°C — 3°F.

Just to remind you:

• Current global warming is .8°C — 1½°F. It plays out differently in different places.
  
  
• There's more in the pipeline that can't be stopped. This gives us a current "floor" of 1½°C — 3°F. (When does that arrive? I'm working to find out; stay tuned.)
  
  
• If we keep dumping carbon — and lining the pockets of the carbon CEOs — that floor will be the magic 2°C — 3½°F. World leaders, minus Barack Obama, would like to stop there.
  
  
• At some point the new floor will be James Hansen's "game over" 3°C — 5½°F. That will be a different world, the start of mass extinctions.
  
  
• If the warming runs to its natural end, by whatever means, we get 7°C — 12½°F — assuming there's a "we" to get anything by that time.

Keep your eye on that "floor" — it's moving as we speak.

Which brings me to this news via Channel 4 in the U.K. (my emphasis and paragraphing):

The planet could be facing a catastrophic 5 degree [centigrade; 9°F] temperature rise, and we are losing time to address the threat of climate change, one of the government's leading scientists tells Channel 4 News.

Speaking before he steps down as chief scientist at the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, Sir Bob Watson also warned that governments couldn't afford to do nothing about greenhouse gas emissions despite the economic downturn, writes Channel 4 News Science Editor Tom Clarke [the interviewer in the video below].

At global climate summits like in Copenhagen in 2009 it was agreed to try and limit global warming to two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial temperatures [note again that 1800 is the standard baseline].

"There is really almost no chance now of meeting that [2°C] political target," said Dr Watson, who also served chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"If we continue the way we are we've got a 50-50 shot of a 3 degree [warmer] world and I would not rule out a 5 degree world."

Here's the video; he says more than noted above:



Watch this not just for the scientist's replies, but also for the questioner's positioning. For example, at :30 he frames a question about countries not wanting to act as "understandable, given the fact that they're trying to get their economies back off the floor..."

And again at 1:32 he asks if "some of the alarmism" and "extreme viewpoints" and the message about "making people feel guilty about their behavior" is the wrong approach.

As he spoke, I thought, "Ah, conventional wisdom. All the reasons for not acting, and not telling people they should act soon."

I also caught his assumption that changing people's behavior was the answer. Ah, no — my neighbors aren't digging up carbon to put into the air; they're not the ones whose behavior needs to change.

Still, Mr. Clarke hosted the interview, it's a good one, and I thank him for that.

For the record, the "how to stimulate the economy" problem is for me not a valid offset to "how to keep the planet from going mainly pre-industrial" (6:10 in the clip).

In my mind, we may not get all good things into balance; we may have to choose between (ahem) greater evils and lesser ones. The lesser evil may just be the deprivation now that forestalls devastation later. I clearly don't think he's being aggressive enough in his list of solutions — asking isn't going to get results as I see it.

And besides, if you really want to do both, save the economy and save the planet ... well, there's plenty of money amongst the people who are the real perps. The carbon companies and CEOs are loaded, bathing in it. Just saying.

I'll have more on that moving floor, including some timelines if I can find them.

If I read this chart correctly, "game over" 3°C — 5½°F — arrives as early as the 2030s. That means it's "in the pipeline" a whole lot sooner. (Figure 21 in this pdf; zoom to 100%.)

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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"Niallism" — This is what defrocking an academic looks like (climate scientists, take note)

This is a follow-up to this post about kicking intellectually dishonest academics out of their (former) profession.

The post had two parts:

• The first half, in which Krugman takes "Niall Ferguson the political operative" (my phrase) to task for being, well, more or less a dishonest political actor.
  
  
• The second half, in which I recommend doing same to Koch-fueled climate "scientists" who have traded integrity for a career as an operative, but kept their lab coats anyway.

For those who've been spared the pleasure, Niall Ferguson is the "economic historian" who has turned up seemingly everywhere these days defending austerity and ridiculing anyone who proposes solutions not endorsed by the world's elites.

PBS has created shows around his views; respected magazines often host his opinions; and most recently Newsweek has used his byline to trash Obama with obvious lies in a blatantly political cover story. (Yes, lies. And Ferguson, trading on his academic brand, was the delivery boy.)

Now via Krugman, we're led to this by Matthew O'Brien in The Atlantic. Here's what defrocking and de-labcoating an academic looks like. Climate guys, take note (my emphasis and paragraphing):

The Age of Niallism:
Ferguson and the Post-Fact World
Bluster cannot make untruths true

People who believe facts are nothing think you'll fall for anything. Call it Niallism.

This is my last word (well, last words) on Niall Ferguson, whose Newsweek cover story arguing that Obama doesn't deserve a second-term has drawn deserved criticism for its mendacity from Paul Krugman, Andrew Sullivan, Ezra Klein, Noah Smith, my colleagues James Fallows and Ta-Nehisi Coates and myself.

The problem isn't Ferguson's conclusion, but how Ferguson reaches his conclusion. He either presents inaccurate facts or presents facts inaccurately. The result is a tendentious mess that just maintains a patina of factuality -- all, of course, so Ferguson can create plausible deniability about his own dishonesty.

Then he gets specific:

Exhibit A is Ferguson's big lie that Obamacare would increase the deficit. This is not true. Just look at the CBO report Ferguson himself cites. ...

And then gets even more specific than that. After much dissection of the indefensible and dishonest, O'Brien concludes:

Of course, it's not just Ferguson. There is an epidemic of Niallism -- which Seamus McKiernan of the Huffington Post defined as not believing in anything factual. It's the idea that bluster can make untruths true through mere repetition. We expect this from our politicians, not our professors.

In the end, O'Brien contrasts the academic Ferguson was with what he has become, a blustering liar unworthy of his frock and his credentials. A sad, ironic side-by-side.

I'd have gone one step further. I'd have not only taken his frock; I'd have burned it in the public square. But that's me.

O'Brien does the next best thing — he names the essence of dishonesty after the man:

Niallist: One who believe facts are nothing.

"Niallism" has a great ring to it, and if god is just, it will follow the man to the grave. A fitting monument, given the human suffering Ferguson helps cause. After all, he's an eager and well-worked lackey for the Billionaire Bankers Club, and those folks are doing real damage.

Climate scientists, take note. Taking away the lab coat is an option.

You could spend your lives engaging with your bought denier "colleagues" — who would frankly like nothing better. Or you could dispatch them more quickly, as O'Brien has done, with strong "uncollegial" strokes, and move on to the next big job.

I personally like the latter choice; there should be a price for academic dishonesty in matters this important. But that's me.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Obama crosses John Cusack's "line of conscience"

The "Line of Conscience" phrase in the headline is mine. I wrote here, in the start of a series I will still complete:

Group 1 in the "Can't vote for Obama" crowd — no matter the other reasons for pulling that trigger — are those whose lines of conscience have been crossed.

I aim this at the people who say, "But President Santorum would take marching orders from Koch Bros Central." That's true; President Santorum would rule from Wichita (via its Wisconsin field office).

But there are those whose consciences are so offended (that's a war crimes link) that they cannot let themselves do one good thing for the perpetrator. Not one.

Unlike phony "consciences", these genuine cries of integrity must be honored, in my view, even if you tactically disagreed. You can fight a war, in other words, and still respect the Quakers.

There are other reasons for not voting for Obama, and many for voting for him as well. That's the point of the series — identify the reasons for and against that make sense, and sort out the ones that make no sense at all.

But back to this one — crossing lines of conscience. At what point does a generally good office-holder lose your support? What if they*:

• Stole from the office lotto pool?
• Had sex with a colleague in the back room?
• Had sex with an intern in the back room?
• Tortured frogs?
• Hit a spouse?
• Committed murder?

At the lesser "crimes" you overlook the bad for the good. But at some point in that list, if your candidate were guilty, you would not be able to support them*. He or she has crossed your "line of conscience."

Back to Obama. I've written many times:

Barack Obama is crossing lines of conscience, one Democrat at a time.

It's obvious, true on its face. And whether your line has been crossed or not, he seems to be testing us all, one step at a time. FISA betrayal? No? Bush tax cuts? Not yet? NDAA perhaps? No? Let's try this one then...

Nevertheless, as I've also said, the next Republican president will be a wrecking ball — he'll use the radical Republican governors as a template.

What are the Republican governors doing, if they can get away with it? Constitutional coup at the state level, with the goal of permanent one-party rule. It's almost impossible to say that any other way.

But this piece is not about your vote. It's about Barack Obama, lines of conscience, and John Cusack.

Here's Cusack writing at Shannyn Moore's site (my emphasis, paragraphing and asterisks; yes, plural):

[T]here are certain Rubicon lines, as constitutional law professor Jon Turley calls them, that Obama has crossed. ...

Three markers — the Nobel prize acceptance speech, the escalation speech at West Point, and the recent speech by Eric Holder — crossed that Rubicon line for me…

Mr. Obama, the Christian president with the Muslim-sounding name, would heed the admonitions of neither religion’s prophets about making war and do what no empire or leader, including Alexander the Great, could do: he would, he assured us “get the job done in Afghanistan.”

And so we have our democratic president receiving the Nobel Peace Prize as he sends 30,000 more troops to a ten-year-old conflict in a country that’s been war-torn for 5,000 years.

We can’t have it both ways. Hope means endless war? ... Why? We’ll never fully know. Instead, we got a speech that was stone bullsh*t and an insult to the very idea of peace. ...

To sum it up: more war. So thousands die or are maimed [but] he and his satellites get their four more years.

Cusack concludes:

One is forced to ask ... Is the President just another Ivy League Assh*le shredding civil liberties and due process and sending people to die in some sh*thole for purely political reasons?

You really should click over if this interests you. The article continues with a terrific interchange between Cusack and constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley, of whom we've written much. It's well worth your time.

This election has turned into a Rorschach test for Dems, with clusters of answers and all of them about you, not the candidates.

Romney and the Koch-couped Republicans are a solid known. ("Power please, and no, you may not have it back.") Obama is also a known. ("Look out Lame Duck; you could be Dead Duck in December. Keystone, you're next.")

But what about you? The choices define your care-line. Is drone-killing babies a bridge too far? Or do you think Republicans are doing even worse? Do you prefer the slow death of Social Security to the fast? How much new carbon before Obama is a criminal too?

How about the genuine victory of electing the first Black president, offset by the fact that he too won't help the "undeserving" — "moochers" in Repub-speak; "not-bankers" in Obama-world. Talk about an ironic choice.

Fascinating stuff, I have to admit. If I didn't care about the outcome, this would make a lively and ghoulish family drama, an aching Long Day's Journey into Night for the American people and their unguarded dying democracy.

Obama or Romney? Really. How did average Americans get shoved into this box? (Oh that's right; their addiction to hating the "undeserving" and a last little straw called Bush v Gore, which passed by majority vote of an unprotesting people.)

But I do care, and I don't want to watch a friend choose which drug to die from. Trouble is, he's doing it in front of me. Cusack is another who's noticed, as has Turley. The piece is quite a find. (Interesting thought; I'll bet Cusack has acted in Long Day's Journey. Wonder if he's thinking of it now.)

* Grammar note for fans: "They" and "them" are slowly gaining the singular meaning "he or she" ("him or her") in addition to their plural meanings. Note that they, them and their are already both singular and plural in speech — "everyone has their book."

As a talk-around for the "he or she" problem, this has become my preferred solution, far less clunky than any of the others. (Fair warning — this is deliberate. In thirty years, no one will notice.)

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Your Climate Crisis elevator speech

UPDATE: A complete list of climate series pieces is available here:
The Climate series: a reference post.

UPDATE 2: If you want my personal smallest-footprint boiled-to-bones version, I added it as a comment here.
________

For those not steeped in corporate culture, an "elevator speech" is what you say to the CEO who gets into the elevator with you and asks, "So Mary, how's it going in your department?"

You get four or five floors to either say what you're thinking — succinctly — or say, "Fine; and in yours?"

Most people with important work issues to solve prepare an elevator speech, ten or so sentences that tell the story they want to tell. And then they state the "ask" — the part that says, "Maybe you could help; here's how."

With that in mind, here's my version of your Climate Crisis Elevator Speech. I've given this in radio interviews from time to time (for example here).

You can use it on your right-wing cousin. (Though careful; if you meet resistance, walk away. Time is too valuable to waste on the unteachable.)

The current print version, using both Celsius and Fahrenheit, appears below. If you want to stick with just one measurement, leave the other one out.

Two notes: (1) You don't need the charts to make this point. Just describe the "hockey stick," skip the second chart, give the numbers and the bottom line. It goes pretty fast if you practice. I given this in less than two minutes when I had to.

(2) This converts Bill McKibben's parts-per-million (ppm) metric into temperatures. I don't find ppm numbers to be compelling. People get temperatures right away, so I don't use ppm at all.

---

Climate Crisis
The Numbers & the Bottom Line

Take a look at the chart below. It's a version of the Michael Mann "hockey stick" diagram showing average global temperature from 500 AD to today, plus various predictions through 2100.

Global warming (Fig 21 from The Copenhagen Diagnosis)

The black line near the right edge of the chart shows global warming measurements. This is global warming — starting from 1900 it never stops climbing.

(Note: If you really are in an elevator, just use your hands. Everyone knows what a hockey stick looks like.)

Where are we headed?

All you need to know in four numbers:

  ■ We get 1½°C — 3°F — by 2100 regardless, even if we Stop Now. We've gotten half already (that's where the black line stops). The rest is in the pipeline.

  ■ The political elites — G8, Copenhagen conference, etc. — want to stop 2°C — 3½°F. But no one wants to do anything.

  ■ At 3°C — 5½°F — we have James Hansen's mass extinction scenario ("game over" he says). 20–50% of species will disappear.

  ■ What are we on track for? 6–7°C — a whopping 11–12½°F. This is Stop Never, the carbon industry plan.

Short form — We get 1½°C regardless and we're only halfway there. 2°C is where elites want to stop, but won't. 3°C is a mass extinction scenario. And we're on track for 7°C by 2100.

(Optional) How do we know we're on track for 7°C?

Go back to the chart above and look at the projection labeled A1F1 (the red line). It takes us to 6°–7°C by 2100.

Now look at the chart below. It zooms in on the time 1980–2010. The projections start at 2000. The measurements keep going through summer 2008. See for yourself:

Where we are relative to projections (Fig 1)

We're doing what was predicted. Stop Never is taking us to 7°C by 2100. Our grandchildren will see the result. You and I will live through the early stages.

What does "stop" mean?

We can Stop Now or Stop Never; there's no middle choice. Stop Later is the same as not stopping.

Stop Now means aggressively pursuing — as a action, not an aspiration — "zero new carbon into the air." Permitting new carbon means not stopping.

Why does Stop Never level off at 7°C?

It's obvious. (1) All the real science says this is man-made. (2) Global warming stops a few decades after man stops using carbon — after everything in the pipeline plays out.

There's only two ways to stop — voluntarily, or after we're pre-industrial. If we never stop, global warming will level off a few decades after industrial society collapses. Projections of the "do nothing" (Stop Never) scenario put that around 2100.

Remember, the "mass extinction" temperature is only halfway to the worst-case (Stop Never) level-off point. We get to the first on the way to the second.

The bottom line

Even if we put on the brakes immediately, today's global warming "floor" is 1½°C — 3°F. This is inevitable, in the pipeline.

If we don't stop soon, the new floor will be 3°C — 5½°F.

If "do nothing" gives us 3°C in the 2030s or 2040s, it will be in the pipeline sooner than that. (Check the first chart for when 3°C shows up in the worst-case scenario.)

Our children and grandchildren will watch this.

The "ask"

It's pretty stark, but it's not hopeless if we act now. If we really do stop, we could deal with today's floor. That won't be true of tomorrow's floor.

Your call, folks:

1. When should we stop?
2. How slow should we go?
3. How much are you willing to do?

Look at your children while you think this through.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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It's official: Arctic ice caps smallest on record

Scientists expected it to happen soon and now, it's happened. The climate change deniers (also called the Republican Party) will come up with excuses, just as they will come up with silly stories about how natural disasters are messages from god. They're anti-science, anti-learning and as Bill Nye said, they're dangerous for the youth of America.

In the modern industrialized world, it's the US that stands alone in ignorance thanks to the GOP. This has to change. The Independent:

The news that came yesterday should be, environmental campaigners said, a global wake-up call. The ice cap covering the top of the world is now smaller than it has been at any point since scientists started to measure it precisely from space.

Satellite data released last night show that the sea ice floating on the Arctic Ocean has reached a record low, retreating further than it has done since detailed records began more than 30 years ago.

The US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado said that the 2007 record was broken on Sunday with two or three weeks of the melt season still remaining, suggesting that this year's sea ice will retreat substantially further than at any time in the satellite era. The snow and ice centre said that the surface area of the Arctic Ocean covered by floating sea ice fell to 4.10 million square kilometres (1.58m square miles), which was 70,000 square kilometres below the previous record minimum of 4.17 square kilometres set in September 2007.

Read the rest of this post...

Krugman on extracting a price for intellectual dishonesty (climate scientists, take note)

Just a small point, but with it I want to make a larger one.

■ The small point is about Paul Krugman and his slow path to calling out his professional fellows who ... lie. Used to be, professional courtesy seemed to quiet his tongue, making him assert his "disagreement" even as he says the facts are in another direction.

Let's say that differently. In the past, when fellow credentialed economists and related professionals misused their credentials to mislead — when they acted like lying right-wing operatives with an agenda — he would point out their errors but not their obvious motives.

That's been changing, however, and in "state of the Krugman" posts I've been taking note. Here's one of those posts from 2011:

In addition, [Krugman has been] getting to the point ... where he sees "Republican-leaning economists" as not just confused, but actual bad actors who "lend their credibility" to the party's delusions, and by extension, to the party's bad-faith ... political behavior.

That's quite an admission for a professional academic — to accuse your peers of intellectual dishonesty, not just idiotic (but forgivable) disagreement.

At that point Krugman wasn't ready to kick these people out of the profession, but he was getting close, sneaking up on it.

This week he got even closer in his discussion of Niall Ferguson's lies in the Newsweek cover-story take-down of Barack Obama (my emphases):

We’re not talking about [Ferguson's] ideology or even economic analysis here — just a plain misrepresentation of the facts, with an august publication letting itself be used to misinform readers.

And:

[M]aking false claims about readily checkable facts ... was unethical on his part[.]

"Unethical" is a strong accusation, PhD-to-PhD.

But Ferguson lent his professional cred to Newsweek to further a lying and cynical political hit. "Unethical" is a mild world for that; "hackish" would be closer.

The next step would be to kick Ferguson out of the profession so you don't have to keep debunking him, time after painful time. How do you accomplish that? By removing the one thing he needs to do cloaked operative work — his professional reputation.

If he's no longer in the profession, simply say so (it's not a crime; I'm no longer in many professions). Then just say what profession he is in.

My fun version goes like this:

"For a while now, Niall Ferguson has been making counter-factual assertions, all of which tend to produce political results, not intellectual ones.

"I can only conclude that he's decided to leave the academic profession under which he writes and enter another — that of 'Say-Anything Political Operative.'

I honor that change and wish him well in his new career. He is no longer a member of mine."

Following this, all references by me to Ferguson would be accompanied by a standard Homeric epithet. Instead of "grey-eyed Athena" he'd be "Ferguson the political operative." For example:

"I see that Ferguson the political operative has published another factless diatribe in The Economist. I counted seven attempts to mislead. Have I missed one?

"In other news, zombie-eyed Paul Ryan has cited Ferguson the political operative in support of raising taxes on kittens and dogs. How nice."

I joke, of course, but it's really pretty simple. If a so-called "professional" won't act like one, say so. It's only the truth, which is more than you're getting from them.

■ Which leads me to fact-challenged climate-denial "scientists" on the take. Why should they not get the same treatment I would give Ferguson (above)?

It's one thing to constantly debunk them; this is happening now. But that pretends they're honest actors. Why not just say, in words of your choosing:

"You're not a professional scientist; you've become something else. The discussion no longer includes you."

If the grown-ups in the climate profession take this advice, they'll get two benefits. One, they'll clear the fog from the room, allowing for honest scientific debate. How helpful is that?

And two, they will hasten work that needs to be done before a life-changing deadline occurs — 12°F baked-in warming and no way back. It will be a whole lot easier to "unconfuse the people" about their choices without all that faux-science noise.

The way to remove that noise (I'm using the term in a "signal-to-noise ratio" sense) is to discredit them professionally, marginalize them, within the community and in the media they so depend on to do their damage.

This executes prong four of our five-pronged solution. They keep their money from Heartland, but you take away their lab coat, their place at the table.

After all, it was their choice to leave the profession for better pay; all the reputable scientists need do is ... say so.

UPDATE: A complete list of climate series pieces is available here:
The Climate series: a reference post.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Arctic cap set for record melt due to warming

Brace yourself for the "climate change isn't real" week in Tampa. This is where we will have the opportunity to listen to people discuss the benefits of rape, talk about the world being created in seven days and ignoring science. The Republican Convention ought to be another mind numbing event. AFP:

The Arctic ice cap is melting at a startlingly rapid rate and may shrink to its smallest-ever level within weeks as the planet's temperatures rise, US scientists said Tuesday.

Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder said that the summer ice in the Arctic was already nearing its lowest level recorded, even though the summer melt season is not yet over.

"The numbers are coming in and we are looking at them with a sense of amazement," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the university.

"If the melt were to just suddenly stop today, we would be at the third lowest in the satellite record. We've still got another two weeks of melt to go, so I think we're very likely to set a new record," he told AFP.

Also brace yourself for keynote speaker Chris Christie as he talks about the benefits of austerity days after his state reported the worst unemployment levels in thirty five years. Read the rest of this post...

Solving the climate crisis: How to paint the possible futures

UPDATE: A complete list of climate series pieces is available here:
The Climate series: a reference post.
________

[This post has been temporarily withdrawn for revision. Please check back later. Thanks.]


GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Solving the climate crisis — Goals, targets and tactics (a summary)

UPDATE: A complete list of climate series pieces is available here:
The Climate series: a reference post.
________

This post is the summary that's missing from the end of our most recent "solutions" piece:

• Solving the climate crisis — Picking goals, targets and tactics

That post listed five pieces of the "climate solution" puzzle:

As I see it, the climate-solution puzzle has these pieces:

• Defining the problem correctly.
  
  
• Identifying the umbrella solution — what high-level goal will solve the problem?
  
  
• Choosing the right "ask" — making sure we don't ramp up our forces, for example, and then ask for something that won't be a solution (a surprisingly common mistake).
  
  
• Identifying the targets of action.
  
  
• Choosing effective tactics and acting aggressively.

Each section above ("piece of the puzzle") was discussed at some length and then bottom-lined. Here briefly are those discussions.

1. Defining the problem correctly

The problem has been characterized throughout this series, and recapped at the top of this post. From a solutions standpoint though, only these numbers matter:

• If we stop now, global warming will reach 1½°C (3°F).
• We're currently on track for 6–7°C (11–12½°F).

Stopping at "only" 3°C is as difficult as stopping at 2°C, 4°C or even 5°C. No one in power wants to stop at all. Yet all added carbon is a problem.

Bottom line — What's the real problem?

Slowing isn't the problem. Stopping is the problem. No more man-made carbon should go into the air. We also need to characterize and prepare for the 1½°C scenario because it's inevitable.

The full discussion of this point is here.

2. What's the umbrella solution?

We mentioned that near the top of the longer post, and we discussed it at length here. To repeat:

Put the carbon industry out of business.

The goal of the carbon CEO class is to make as much money as possible by putting carbon into the air. Our goal is to stop them. The only way to stop them is to put them out of business.

Bottom line — How do we solve the problem?

If the problem is putting no more carbon into the air, the solution is to put the carbon industry out of business. If we don't do that, we're toast. All "solutions" that include adding carbon to the air add to the problem.

The full discussion of this point is here.

3. What should we ask for?

History is filled with good movements that asked for the wrong thing and got it. We should ask for what we really want.

All of the climate crisis scenarios — from the inevitable 1½°C (3°F) scenario to any higher number — involve increasing levels of crisis. We want the absolute-least level of crisis. Therefore, the "ask" of the climate solutions movement should be:

Stop Now.
Stop at the earliest possible second.

Our "Now" will either come sometime or never. Asking to "Stop later" (which Obama has recently done) always benefits the resistance.

"Stop later" is the same as "Stop never." Stop Now has the added advantage of being the only moral request.

Bottom line — What should we ask for?

The only way to stay under 6–7°C is by asking to Stop Now. "Stop later" is the same as "Stop never."

The full discussion of this point is here.

4. Who are the movement's targets?

The goal is to apply leverage to people whose actions matter. This includes the four groups of perps and the people. The perps are responsible for the problem. The people are needed for the solution.

• Target the perps to change their behavior.
• Unconfuse the people.

This means:

  1. The carbon CEO class should be painted as responsible, shamed wherever they go. These are the main beneficiaries of crisis and its chief causes. Make them the face of climate catastrophe. They are.

  2. Carbon enablers in the political class are also responsible. They do the will of the CEOs. Incentivize a change in behavior by taking away what they want. Some should be painted as responsible. Others, like Barack Obama, should be put on the record. Just Say No to Keystone, Mr. Obama. In or out.

  3. Carbon-enabling in Big Media is why people are confused. Some Media Bigs should be put on the record, forced to side either with or against the deniers. Others, like George Will, should be treated like the CEOs. The goal is to change their messaging.

  4. Important denier "scientists" (the paid obstructionists) should be targeted professionally — discredited as "whores" the way tobacco "scientists" are discredited. This means a serious campaign to take away the professional reputation of any climate denier who will not honestly confront the data.

  5. The people should be unconfused, not punished. Right-wing rubes will never be "unconfused" but thanks to the politicians and the media, most people are genuinely perplexed. They should be helped to understand.

An education campaign — "the data is in" and "here's what's coming" — should be combined with the four targeting efforts above. If some in Big Media, for example, start saying "the crisis is real," our efforts are multiplied.

Bottom line — Who are our targets?

The perps and the people. Make the perps responsible as individuals; aggressively incentivize change of behavior. Perps include:

• Carbon CEOs
• Carbon-enabling politicians
• Big Media
• Denier "scientists"

Unconfuse the people with easy-to-grasp explanations. Don't apologize, don't speak to deniers, and don't stop. Combine this campaign with the anti-perps effort.

The full discussion of this point is here.

5. Tactics and action

Some tactics are implied above; other suggestions will follow. Regular readers know my thinking:

• Use leverage and timing.
• Consume few resources.
• Be aggressive and courageous.
• Reject violence.
• Use incentives to force change in behavior. Threaten to take away what the target wants most.
• Follow the rules for effective coalitions.

Using incentives to change behavior is especially important. If Obama thought his legacy were at risk, his behavior would change. If a "liberal" politician's brand as a populist were threatened, his or her funding would dry up; this would also force a change of behavior.

There are examples of leveraged tactics in this post. Read about Color of Change and ALEC, then read about Joe Sudbay and Barack Obama. I don't think a movement based solely on mass demonstrations will get the job done.

The full discussion of this point is here.

Summary

What the above adds to:

• Problem: Stop putting carbon in the air.
  
  
• Umbrella solution: Put the carbon industry out of business.
  
  
• The "ask": "Stop Now" not later.
  
  
• Targets of action: The perps and the people. Paint the perps as responsible. Unconfuse the people with clear messages.
  
  
• Tactics: Asymmetrical, leveraged, well-timed actions that need few resources. Incentivize the perps to change behavior. Tell the people the "data is in." Tell them what's coming.

The post that discusses these topics in detail is here.

Thanks for caring about this critical issue.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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