By David M. Greenwald
Does anyone seriously question whether climate change is happening at this point? Maybe I will rephrase that slightly, does anyone, who is serious, question whether climate change is happening at this point?
If you want an illustration of how bad things are likely to get—you don’t have to look far. Try the Pacific Northwest. The temperature hit 121 in British Columbia in June.
The Seattle numbers are telling. The temperature hit 104, which was an all-time record. It then hit 108 the next day, obviously an all time record. But the astonishing piece of data—in the previous 126 years, Seattle had only hit 100 degrees three times. It reached that mark in three consecutive days in June.
Then there was Quillayute, Washington. A coastal town, it reached 110 degrees. That was 45 degrees above normal for the day and broke the previous hottest temperature by a mind-boggling 11 degrees.
Then there is the article this week on the Great Salt Lake in Utah. CNN reports, “Its level today is inches away from a 58-year low, state officials say, and Western drought conditions fueled by the climate crisis have exacerbated conditions.”
Worse yet—“It’s only July, and the lake historically doesn’t reach its annual low until October.”
Scientists are not only worried about the collapse of an ecosystem, but the toxic potential of the exposed lake bed.
“This lake could become one of the larger dust emission sources in North America as well,” one scientist warned. “Right now, the lake bed is protected by a fragile crust, and if that crust is disturbed or erodes over time, then this lake could start to emit a lot more (dust).”
California is in the midst of a severe drought and scientists are warning that it could get far worse.
“As temperatures climb to the triple digits, the sun will bake out what little moisture there is in the ground, worsening the West’s unprecedented drought. Scientists say heat and drought are inextricably linked in a vicious feedback loop that climate change makes even harder to break: heat exacerbates the drought, which in turn amps up the heat,” CNN reports.
“As we’re getting these very extreme heat waves, it’s just making the drought even worse, even though drought is initially caused by the lack of precipitation,” Julie Kalansky, a climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, told CNN. “But during the dry months of much of the West, these heat waves just continue this drying throughout the summer and into the fall.”
In a previous article, they warned: “Climate change is playing a key role in these compounding crises: Drought and extreme heat are fueling wildfires; reduced snowpack and the lack of substantial precipitation are exacerbating water demands for millions of people, as well as agriculture, ecosystems and deteriorating infrastructure.”
Then there’s Siberia—the symbol of the frozen wasteland, now baking in 100-degree days and forest fires.
Reports the NY York Times: “They endure the coldest winters outside Antarctica with little complaint. But in recent years, summer temperatures in the Russian Arctic have gone as high as 100 degrees, feeding enormous blazes that thaw what was once permanently frozen ground.”
The worse news: “Scientists say that the huge fires have been made possible by the extraordinary summer heat in recent years in northern Siberia, which has been warming faster than just about any other part of the world. And the impact may be felt far from Siberia. The fires may potentially accelerate climate change by releasing enormous quantities of greenhouse gases and destroying Russia’s vast boreal forests, which absorb carbon out of the atmosphere.”
Not just fires of course. We saw what happened this week in Germany and Belgium.
The NY York Times warns, “‘No One Is Safe’: Extreme Weather Batters the Wealthy World.”
They write: “Floods swept Germany, fires ravaged the American West and another heat wave loomed, driving home the reality that the world’s richest nations remain unprepared for the intensifying consequences of climate change.”
We were unprepared for the pandemic. We have had 40 years to prepare for climate change, but have wasted much of it debating over whether it was going to happen.
The consequence of that shorted-sightedness is only now coming into focus. Remember, it’s only 2021. It’s going to get worse. Those who thought that climate alarmists were overstating the problem may take solace in the fact that those alarmists may actually prove to be wrong—they may have understated the problem.
“Some of Europe’s richest countries lay in disarray this weekend, as raging rivers burst through their banks in Germany and Belgium, submerging towns, slamming parked cars against trees and leaving Europeans shellshocked at the intensity of the destruction,” the Times writes.
“The extreme weather disasters across Europe and North America have driven home two essential facts of science and history: The world as a whole is neither prepared to slow down climate change, nor live with it,” they continue. “The week’s events have now ravaged some of the world’s wealthiest nations, whose affluence has been enabled by more than a century of burning coal, oil and gas — activities that pumped the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that are warming the world.”
“I say this as a German: The idea that you could possibly die from weather is completely alien,” said Friederike Otto, a physicist at Oxford University who studies the links between extreme weather and climate change. “There’s not even a realization that adaptation is something we have to do right now. We have to save people’s lives.”
The NY Times editorial board argues: “Biden’s Made Progress on Climate, Even if Activists Can’t See It.”
The board notes that, while environmentalists were happy to see Biden replace Trump as President, most are disappointed by the limited progress.
The Times finds he has achieved more than people on the left give him credit for, “but still well short of his own hopes.
“Unlike his predecessor, Mr. Biden took seriously the scientific consensus that the world needs to keep greenhouse gas emissions from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels in order to avert irreversible planetary damage,” they write. “Mr. Biden pledged to cut America’s emissions in half by 2030, eliminate fossil fuel emissions from power plants by 2035 and zero out all greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury, which is pretty much what scientists recommend for the entire world.”
How we get there is going to be difficult. As the Times notes: “That, in turn, would require a vastly different energy landscape — massive investments in wind and solar power, a rebuilt electric grid, millions of electric vehicles.”
Can we get past this stagnation? If you are not convinced of climate change now, you probably also believe a number of other unsupported notions about the world. For the rest of us, we are running out of time.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
No, we’re doomed. Keep your eyes out for the 50 foot wall of fire crossing the Bypass.
For 10 years you have been downplaying the risks of climate change – do you still or admit you were wrong?
In case your readers don’t understand the 50 foot wall of fire reference here it is in a 2018 Vanguard article written by David:
Yes, that was a “Chicken Little” emission…
My question still stands
Who’s this “we”? If the US made all the sacrifices, paid all the costs to have no net emissions (or less) what about the other 7.4 billion people on earth?
I’ll bet there are a lot of folk in the world who would love to take up the slack, using the fossil fuels we don’t, in order to improve their quality of life… our end destiny would remain the same…
There are 3 questions: 1) Is climate change real? YES, indisputably… been true for millions of years including before when people learned about fire (and before humanoids even existed); 2) how has human activity modified that? Open to honest debate… there are also natural causes for the increase in CO2… breathing is one (we’re carbon-based organisms); 3) can anything be done by the entire US population that will alter climate change trends, absent the same behaviors world-wide? That is highly debatable… and @ what cost for de minimus effect on the results?
Open ended questions, as we have no definitive answers… only theories and speculation…
Much like, “if Davis doesn’t built a freeway-oriented, greenhouse-emitting development, some other community will.” 🙂
(Probably some place like Woodland, for that matter.)
Also, I just saw some headlines in the Sacramento Bee, regarding the additional development that Folsom has approved (despite a lack of adequate water supply, especially in the face of increasing drought).
No problem, though – they’ll just build and expand more freeways. That ought to do the trick.
Curious how you seem to have an imperative to bring local/regional housing/other development into any conversation, however obliquely… truly fascinating.
Depends upon whether you think that:
1) There’s a problem, primarily caused by modern human society. (Which you seem to doubt.)
2) The “world” will solve it, via a centralized command structure.
3) Local efforts are not even worth pursuing. In which case, you might as buy a Hummer.
“Who’s this “we”?”
Strangely you view this through the lens of we as US, whereas I was viewing we as the planet.
The Paris Accord that the US will rejoin brings in all of those nations. China just opened a emissions cap & trade program to reducing its emissions: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/02/china-launched-its-national-carbon-trading-market-yesterday/
China, the US and Europe are the majority source of GHG emissions. We emit multiples of the global average and it is very unlikely that other countries will make up that difference. In addition, there’s more discussion about border tariffs that would effect carbon taxes.
Of course, there are many who say we shouldn’t do anything unless others do so. But they are the fools who will send us down the path towards calamity. Some believe in individualism uber alles and reject any notion of community action to accomplish these goals. That won’t get us anywhere.
And I’ve been working on climate change policy for the three decades, starting working for the climate change skeptics in opposing Big Green. I’ve seen the evidence build over that time, and it’s no longer question about whether, but rather about how much, and the evidence is building that we’ve underestimated, not overestimated, the potential threat. This article is rather stark in what science really tells us beyond the climate computer models: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/extreme-climate-change-history/617793/
No, in regard to humankind having an effect on climate. I don’t believe humankind can do anything except adapt. We just experienced the greatest suppression ever in the world economy, manufacturing, in reduction in aviation, in travel, in shipping, and it made but a small dent in humankind’s defiling of the planet and atmosphere – and we are quickly approaching full defilement-of-the-planet again.
Having studied geology, climate change is not a concept to be surprised by, nor feared (well maybe feared). Life on Earth has always adapted and changed as to the conditions on the planet. Climate change isn’t in question – the climate is always changing, always has, always will. The real question isn’t ‘is there climate change?’ it’s two questions – is this human caused? . . . and can humankind do anything about it? Some of this atmospheric change is no doubt human caused – and it’s the result of the entire industrial revolution. How different would it have been were we still pounding acorns with sticks ? I doubt the most sophisticated climate computers could answer that question. The point is, the harm has been done, and we are not going to stop industry and electricity production, nor turn how we do things on a dime. And even if the US does it, China and India and other nations that will come of age in the coming decades will continue to defile the atmosphere while we sacrifice on a team where half the team are non-team players. Could one win a football game with half the team setting off bottle rockets and dancing to disco instead of blocking the pass?
I’ve always been an environmentalist. I remember day upon day in the bay area where the air was a stagnant brown from auto exhaust in the 60’s and 70’s. The steps we’re taken since then were absolute necessities for the betterment of our air. I am absolutely for the US taking reasonable, even drastic, steps to reduce air pollutants.
It’s when the term ‘climate change’ gets introduced into the conversation that everything goes to h´ll. Then it becomes political, that’s when it becomes a justification for anything and everything. And you end up with asinine arguments like in yesterday’s article on the Yolo Food Bank making a difference in climate change. Yeah right.
A wise man taught us years ago to not look at the shiny object in front of us. When you are presented with something being ‘good for the environment’, you must take into account the entire chain of effects. Simply ‘diverting food to prevent methane’ is not a balanced equation. How much additional transportation will be involved in shipping food from multiple sites, and then out for distribution? How much will this additional transportation pollute the air? How much of the food will not be used and rot anyway, reaching the atmosphere from 1000 points instead of just the landfill? What is the opportunity cost of the dollars used for this program, that could otherwise go to fund tried and true programs to reduce air pollutants?
The point is, ‘climate change’ isn’t a box to check off on a grant application or a way to shut down every conversation with that phrase in one’s back pocket. Electric vehicles are only as clean as the overall grid; solar comes with its own damage to the environment, the degree to which depends on the paths taken. Don’t fall victim to slogans and over-simplifications.
And yes, we’re doomed.
Perhaps, but I believe you’re overlooking all of its positive impacts regarding increased diversity and social justice, etc. Much like development does.
(*Sarcasm intended*)
Plus, it helps feeds all the starving people in Africa.
Read the Atlantic article I posted. Your notion is not correct. Humankind is unlikely to survive long term if CO2 levels rise towards 1000ppm. Life has adapted but after extreme extinction events. In this case we will have done it to ourselves. This is truly existential not to be pooh-poohed.
So Europe has never had floods before? Oh that’s right, Europe has had floods since records have been kept dating back several hundreds of years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floods_in_Europe
San Joaquin Valley was a Bay until 2 million years ago (nothing in geologic time) and then a lake. Sealevel rise, schmeelevel rise.
Yes, you an cherry pick your anecdotes, but when you collect the data you see that the combination of extreme events are unprecedented. Come back with a data analysis not what you just happened to stumble upon.
So David pointing out the current floods in Europe is not cherrypicking but when I point out that floods have been occurring in Europe since like forever that’s somehow anecdotal cherrypicking?
Yeah right…
Your comment suggests you don’t understand the difference between a valid anecdote, backed by data, and an anecdotal fallacy. Which leads one to believe that you either don’t know what you are talking about or are spitballing.
Hmmm, “anecdotal fallacy”, where have I heard that on here before and who said it? Maybe a Google search is in order?
My anecdote was backed by facts, do a little reading next time before you spout spitballs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floods_in_Europe
Wait for it, wait for it…
I always figured that humans would adapt (and move north – to where the temperature “only” reaches 121 degrees), but sounds like you know more about this issue.
In any case, humans will have colonized Mars by then – with Elon Musk’s help. 🙂
And not to worry, as he’s going to require everyone to drive Teslas, there. (Actually, there’s already one in space somewhere – seriously.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk%27s_Tesla_Roadster
But it might cost you a lot more than $250K, setting up the plot for a Twilight Zone-type dilemma.
Actually, they “need” global warming on Mars, hence Mr. Musk’s proposal to nuke the poles (not polls). In any case, bring your Hummers, after all.
https://www.space.com/elon-musk-nuke-mars-terraforming.html
I stand corrected:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mars_program
Sounds like a bargain, and that the price is already “set”.
And you all thought that the great “toilet paper shortage of 2020” was a catastrophe. 🙂
The City of Davis is going through another round of Climate Adaptation and Action Planing – required by the state. Better that there is some planning. It’s not nearly enough as climate change has been recognizable for more than 50 years. We were past the point of permanent destabilization about 5-10 years ago.
The reason we are scratching our heads and writing “what if” articles so late in the game is that we (particularly we in the US) have bought into the narrative that we can’t take care of each other. Taking care of each other is socialism or taking care of each other is the antichrist in disguise or some other demonization of attempts to raise up democratic universal dignity.
The above commenters are mostly cynical and the harder work of caring for people might not work, but it’s the only way forward.
Yolo County has passed the Climate Emergency Declaration and the Yolo County Climate Action Commission aims to re-up the County’s (hopefully in joint power with cities) goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2030.
We are definitely not ready for the climate change that’s here or the discontinuous changes that are coming next. Do you let people hole up with their AR15s or do you lean in and share, do with less and build something different?
Aware? For 50 years? I dunno, when I was growing up in the 70’s and into the 80’s, all we heard was about the cooling of the planet and how pollutants might trigger an ice age. So we were aware before, but had it backwards? Not sure if that’s the same ‘aware’.
As I said, we’re doomed.
If we’ve bought into it, we can’t.
China has communism and coal fired power plants. They take care of each other 😐
Like I said, we’re doomed.
At what cost? And at what ‘cost’ ?
The discontinuous changes are definitely scarier than the continuous ones. What are those exactly?
How are you going to stop them? With military force?
My doing with less will save the planet! yay!
Some of your responses reminded me of an old poster… “things to do in the event of a nuclear attack…”… #6 & 7 were, “spread legs, bend way over, and kiss your @$$ goodbye”…
“For 10 years you have been downplaying the risks of climate change – do you still or admit you were wrong?”
For ten years you knew that Measure R was bad policy but you still refuse to admit it and supported Measure D. So when other people are obstinately opposed to facing reality you call them out but when you are obstinately opposed to facing reality you keep on keeping on.
There are some people who are ‘obstinately opposed to facing reality’ that Measure D won. Instead of keep on keeping on maybe it’s time for them to move on.
I think this comment is spot on. I like Ron Glick. I think Ron Glick is a really smart guy. But at some point he has to realize he is not helping himself or his cause with this.
Not helping my cause? LOL.
What is there to do? Wait for Sacramento or the courts to act or until 2030? You will never admit you are wrong yet you challenge someone else for failure to recognize that they have been wrong for ten years about global warming. I’m simply pointing out that you are also guilty of the same obstinance you accuse others of practicing.
I’m not in denial that Measure D won. I’m pointing out that David is wrong for supporting it.
By the way David, which do you think is going to have a greater impact on Davis over the next decade, global warming or measure D?
That’s an interesting question. I suppose it will depend on how drastically global warming impacts Davis in terms of climate, fires, water availability, etc.
Ron G:
David:
We can very readily answer those questions with respect to the next decade. Measure D will have far, far more impact. In the next decade global warming will have basically no effect on our water supply overall, no impact on local fires, and no impact on our local climate that will make significant difference to how people live.
Measure D will continue to obstruct the development of normal housing.
Will building new business parks and adding untold amounts of housing while cementing over farmland help with global warming?
Depends on what you do with them. If you use them to foster better technology for food production, cleaner energy, the small amount of land paved over may make for huge advances in the cause of climate change.
That’s the “spin” anyway. Maybe the one in planning for Davis can develop and manufacture stratospheric aerosol injection and save the world?
I do think there is a danger in attempting to assess a global impact from a local project. I do find it weird that you would oppose an economic development strategy when the alternative is an economic slowdown.
“Think globally, act locally”, hmmm, where have I heard that before?
Since the “United Federation of Worldwide Governments” is already fixing this problem, Davis can probably abandon this (if hasn’t already done so):
https://www.cityofdavis.org/sustainability/2020-climate-action-and-adaptation-plan-caap
To quote Alfred E. Neuman, “What, me worry”?
So far, Measure D has prevented the development of a peripheral freeway-oriented development with thousands of parking spaces which will create a housing shortage, along with more greenhouse gasses from commuters.
Those are facts, not opinions.
Like Yolo Food Bank did a couple of days ago?
First, this analogy is so far afield as to be irrelevant. Climate change is about a physical process being measured scientifically and quantitatively while local growth measures are political decisions that we directly influence. Trying to claim that Measure D is as immutable as climate change is to completely ignore what happened with segregation in the 1960s and gay marriage in the last decade, both of which seemed immutable for centuries.
Second, how did this comment even get into this discussion? Perhaps the moderator can keep us on topic.
Nobody credible can deny it, it’s an idiot identification test at this point. The real the question is always going to be “WHO has to make the sacrifice to stop it”
And I think that the inevitable impasse on THAT question is what dooms us… but it does t have to.
I think it’s well past time to start implementing geoengineering solutions as part of the mix. Stratospheric dispersion of aerosols like hydrogen sulfide can be an effective approach to mimic the cooling effect that volcanic eruptions have had in the past. And it has been studied enough to be both technically and financially feasible.
what it’s more, there is a simple way to fund it: a tax on carbon emissions… set at a value such that 10 years of the tax will wipe out 40 years of warming. Countries get to collect this tax on their own people, to pay into the dispersal program, and if any country does not, we agree to tariff the non-complying countries into de-facto compliance.
why the politicians aren’t talking about this is beyond me. I think it’s because the eco purists want to insist that we can de-carbonize our way out of this, and that if we just engineer our way out of it, it will undercut those programs…. but the same logical fallacies befell the recycling industry as well, and THAT ended up in a very predictable place.
there are cool climate engineering ideas involving diatoms too.. I say we start trying them all.. except for the bonkers ones, like orbiting a cloud of mirrors halfway between the earth and sun… that one is dumb :P…
Geoengineering has so many potential pitfalls, along with the energy costs of getting the material into the atmosphere. Other examples of the “successful” geoengineering solutions that haven’t turned out so well: Central Valley and State Water Projects, nuclear power plants, interstate highways. There are no apparently easy solutions. However we can get to almost zero carbon emissions in this country in about a decade at little if any additional costs if we electrify the building and transportation sectors among other measures. (There’s a spate of studies showing the feasibility of this.) Identifying the problem is simple, which are the resistance of the existing fossil fuel stakeholders and the apparent cost of retrofitting buildings. With regard to the latter though it is probably more cost effective to retrofit than to replace existing gas lines as they age.
What? Chemtrails in the sky? Art Bell was right. What could possibly go wrong?
Chemtrails revealed
https://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/chemtrails-revealed/
I think we are seeing “what can go wrong” on the ground right now…
Here is a quote from the Wikipedia article on the topic. The cost of a program to do aerosol injection is pretty damn good:
This solves only one part of the problem. The other of perhaps equal consequence is the acidification of the ocean that can lead to collapse of the food chain: https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-coasts/ocean-acidification
Sure it will help… will likely increase it (global warming)… incrementally, de minimus, likely…
But the problem isn’t global warming… that may be a symptom, not a cause… the issue is climate change… the problem is not drought, wildfires, killer hurricanes, flooding… those are symptoms of weather… what climate change is about is increasing the changes and areal occurrence in severe weather, be it drought or flood, hyperthermia or hypothermia… assigning 70-100% reason for climate change to man-made CO2 levels is shaky, at best… our current CA drought might be followed by weeks/months of record wet weather…
Assigning 70-100% reason for climate change to man-made CO2 levels is shaky, at best… correlation is not always causation… there are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our current science or philosophy… doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ‘hedge our bets’ by reducing CO2 emissions. We don’t know what we don’t know…
The IPCC believes that 100 percent of the changes in the climate since the industrial revolution is human caused. What expertise do you have to argue that that claim is “shaky at best”?
Did you look at their bias going into most of the studies? Their ‘hypotheses’ as they gathered their data, which ended up supporting their hypotheses’?
They have a theory… backed by data they used, collected based on their hypotheses… do you believe they have “proof”? What expertise do you have to argue that ‘findings’ is “proof”?
I know enough about climate change is that there were times the earth went from ice age to almost universal semi-tropical… CO2 levels shot up right before then, based on geologic/palentelogical (sp?) evidence… led to the ‘age of the dinosaurs’… few, if any mammals, none humanoid…
So, IPPC “believes” [i.e., “has not proven”, or “proved”?] 100% of the changes in the climate since the industrial revolution is human caused… so. that implies/stipulates/states a ‘fact’ that there is not even a scintilla of natural causes involved… yeah, right. And the Great Smoky Mountains (a source of naturally occurring ‘smog’) is all due to the early settlers first describing it well before the Industrial Revolution… yeah, right. What about all the wood and peat that were burned as fuel in the millenia before the IR… that had no effect? What about all the droughts, floods, other major climate disturbances described going back ~ 4,000 years?
Will say again, climate change is real and has always been so… saying 100% of what is occurring is due from human activities since the Industrial Revolution and you’re taking that as “Gospel Truth”? Not me… having studied physics, history, air quality, scientific method, etc. … but have to admit, only took one PoliSci class and 1 Rhetoric one… I assume you have me well bested on the last two…
The Role of Human Activity
In its Fifth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 1,300 independent scientific experts from countries all over the world under the auspices of the United Nations, concluded there’s a more than 95 percent probability that human activities over the past 50 years have warmed our planet.
The industrial activities that our modern civilization depends upon have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from 280 parts per million to 416 parts per million in the last 150 years. The panel also concluded there’s a better than 95 percent probability that human-produced greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have caused much of the observed increase in Earth’s temperatures over the past 50 years.
The panel’s full Summary for Policymakers report is online at https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers.pdf.
“Second, how did this comment even get into this discussion? Perhaps the moderator can keep us on topic.”
I asked it is how. My hope is that Measure D has a greater impact. I fear global warming might have a greater impact.
It is sort of an apples to oranges comparison but I thought it made for an interesting discussion. Sorry if you don’t think so.