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Less warming than previously thought already "baked in" to the system

Environment
#1

Some actually hopeful news from the latest round of studies

The root cause of global warming is the contradiction between civilization and the natural world. More simply, our relationship with nature is broken. This root cause must be addressed if we wish to solve the ecological crisis. This research shows what we have long known to be true: global warming should not be our focus. Rather, we should focus on halting the destruction of the natural world. If we do this successfully, the climate will heal.

Wise words. A total system change is needed, not a “climate fix”

#2

For some time now, I’ve been forced on to the fence about the whole subject of global warming.

Is the climate changing? Er - has there ever been a time in the geological record when it hasn’t been? Is our current population-overshoot, with added locust-like hunger for ever more stuff, having some impact on the Earth, and on our view of the future? Does the Pope shit in the woods? Have I, over the course of eighty years, actually observed personally things getting - just a bit - warmer? An unequivocal ‘Yes!’… just a bit.

But…

Can we little human farties, who can’t even predict the weather with any certain accuracy more than a week or so ahead, be sure of being able to predict what a huge subtle, multi-pathway, ultra-complex system like the global ecosphere, not to mention our ever-cycling relationship with the Sun (the great star, not the Murdoch shit-rag), is going to do years, let alone decades, ahead?

Well, ask Neil Ferguson. The GIGO-monster haunts us all, not just him. I look at the Pripyat since Chernobyl was emptied of humans and all human activity stopped there, allowing Gaia to commence her perennial healing work unhampered by human interference. I note many other rapid-recoveries of the life-web, once given a fighting chance, such as those mentioned by Jim Kunstler and Derrick Jensen in that conversation of theirs to which I linked today, just below this thread.

Perhaps equally to the point, my (equal-weight) alternative insight source - the intuitive pathway - has been whispering for some time: ‘The climate-shift thing isn’t as baked-in, cut-and-dried inevitable and apocalyptically disastrous as the idle-and-bored bourgeois Chicken Littles de jour have been amusing themselves with…’ Actually, that’s definitely equally to the point, in reality. Though of course, since the intuitive pathway specifically eschews logical ratiocination as a mode d’emploi, I can’t offer mathematical chapter and verse for that intuition.

Doesn’t hurt, of course, that other balanced-practitioners of both rational and intuitive seeing, including impressive ones like JMGreer, take an equally measured response to the crisis: Yes there really is one; a whole set of them, in fact, all synergising. But does it mean TEOTWAWKI? Well yes, to the point that things hereafter are going to be drastically different from the way we’ve known them recently. But, the end of the world…? Er - don’t think so. Not if The Tough Bitch has anything to do with it.

I find it specially heartening that there is an increasing cavalcade of passing straws in the wind which all quietly hint that hom-sap is starting to cotton that things have to change, because we just can’t go on like this. We just must show a lot more respect, not to say worshipful adoration, of Mam Gaia and her glorious life-web. And as the crises start kicking us about ever more forcefully - and that is definitely scheduled to continue pro tem - a steady trickle of diverse people are waking up to the imperatives we face. It only takes a critical mass, folks, not even a majority, and that can arrive with unexpected suddenness, when things get hairy.

Our just-in-time attitude of ‘sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof’, together with the evils thereof getting steadily more in-yer-face in our time, seems to mean that we will wake up more and more, and become ever more widely willing to take sober but drastic action - such as the widespread regenerative agriculture that’s now getting popular, for example. Stand that increasing willingness to face reality alongside Gaia’s astonishing speed and competence when it comes to repair and healing work, and I feel that hom-sap is still in with a chance. We may yet learn how to live in reverent harmony with our great mother and all her other children. I think we will.

#3

Hi @RhisiartGwilym

There’s a lot of wisdom to unpack in what you say there my friend. I always enjoy reading your thoughts on this subject, and I think your steadfast belief that whatever we do, the Earth will continue to thrive with or without us, is spot on. I agree it’s always wise to be sceptical of all mathematical models that get built to try and model anything in the real world. It’s worth being humble in the face of unknowns, especially when talking about such a complex system, with such an important impact on all our lives. The map, after all, is never the territory.

The best a scientist or modeller can do, is make a stab at a model to explain what’s going on, and then continuously test and update the model with new data, as new data comes in. This is why (if it turns out to be true) this article above is a hopeful one for me. It could help to refine and improve the existing models and nudge us all towards a more accurate view of what’s going on.

It’s worth thinking about what uncertainty means in models, too. We’ve had this discussion before, but it is an important one. Uncertainly in the model doesn’t mean that all outcomes are suddenly equally likely. One can be pretty damn sure what the broad trend is, without needing to get all the details right. That’s one big difference between climate and weather, right? We can be extremely sure that, for example, the climate is definitely warming beyond anything that we have seen before. The chance that there is zero global warming is, well, zero percent probability at this point. The same point applies to the causes of the warming. That we don’t know for certain all the details, doesn’t mean that all causes are equally likely. It seems pretty sure that human activity is a much more likely explanation of what’s currently going on than, say, natural climate cycles. Not certain, mind you, but more likely. This is important when considering how (un)likely actual extinction is. On this subject, I align more with Roger Hallam than I do with the JM Greer. It seems only rational that as soon as actual extinction appears on the board as an actual possible future - no matter that it’s still unlikely - it’s worth doing everything we can to avoid it. To keep saying “oh, but it’s so unlikely” is to invite Providence to prove you wrong!

Leaving models aside, I completely agree with you on the importance of intuition in all this. In fact, I would say that one of the causes of our current predicament is the abandoning of intuitive wisdom, which has been carried for thousands of generations in the hearts and minds of people all over the planet who have been collectively plugged in to Mam Gaia all this time. They have been pointing to the literal insanity of our current way of life for ages now, and they are 100% correct.

The problems, as you have said before, go well beyond carbon and our modelling of it or not. Our entire civilisation is the problem. The spirit destroying rapacious global corporate capitalism is the problem. “Fixing” carbon doesn’t fix anything. The more aware of the groups coming to terms with our current situation - the Deep Adaptation folks, the Deep Green Resistance people, the more switched on (read the Roger Hallam faction) of XR are also getting there. Did you watch the Planet of the Humans documentary? They were making exactly the same points there. As you so eloquently put it,

Cheers for your thoughts. A joy to read, as always

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