Comment on NYT "Climate Doom Is Out. ‘Apocalyptic Optimism’ Is In."

In re: climactic optimism:  as seen in the  NYTimes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/21/arts/television/climate-change-apocalypse-optimism.html

Take a look a the book "I Want a Better Catastrophe" by Andrew Boyd. If you think we are not going to surpass +1.5°C , well, the sine qua non of that, i.e. ACTUALLY surpassing +1.5°C in the last 12 months, each of which has been the hottest of that particular month ever, has already happened. 

Also: the oceans are radically warmer. Really, every climate metric you examine is going the wrong way. 

The solutions are stunningly simple, of course. Shut down all oil production now, and stop all petroleum powered vehicles when their tanks empty. Stop war - the destruction and prep for it, and logistics for it are a major source of atmospheric carbon. Getting rid of petroleum traffic will go a long way toward dropping consumption, and the waste of all sorts that that produces. Stop eating meat. You don't need to eat meat. Get food that doesn't need refrigeration or air travel. 

There's really no tech fix that can replace these wasteful, carboniferous practices in a timeline fast enough to avoid the even worse consequences than the economic downfall these actions will produce.

The 14th Amendment

 As they say, I am not a Supreme Court Justice, but states in fact do not elect presidents in a presidential election. They elect state-based electors, which cast their votes for president. There are no federal administrators of elections: these powers are indeed reserved to the states. 

The 14th Amendment is not about the election process, it's about who can hold office. For example, it's pretty clear that legislators violating their oaths on Jan 6th forfeited their right to serve in Congress or any other federal office. They need not be indicted or tried for insurrection, their participation is as straightforward a disqualification as the age and nativity qualifications. A number of them should be booted right now.

That said, nothing about the 14th Amendment constrains who can be on the ballot; it merely disqualifies any insurrectionist from being seated, absurd as that sounds. You can vote for anyone - whether they are qualified or not.  The timeline is irrelevant, so if there are FURTHER insurrection attempts between now and Jan 2025, those restrictions still apply to other insurrectionists running for federal offices. That's right, I'm accounting for yet another insurrection in the hot summer of '24. 

So the question remains: which authority enforces these restrictions? It probably should be whomever is administering the oath. Should Trump actually select a Vice President who was not an insurrectionist, then by the order of succession, that person would become president. If not, so on through the presidential line of succession.

Aerosols to the rescue?

[comment to ars technica https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/11/former-head-of-nasas-climate-group-issues-dire-warning-on-warming/ ]

We're now getting the kind of disaster that wipes out entire cities as a time. Just a few right now, but that's clearly going to accelerate, and not even be in places already acknowledged as vulnerable (that is, poor people and the global south). Temperatures that stay high evaporate more water, and there's going to be more water available anyway. 

We're used to storms destroying places, but having time to rebuild, sometimes even rebuild with the future in mind (e.g., not rebuilding in a flood plain), but whole new secondary effects are now getting enabled with the temperature rise: things like permafrost melting, fire tornados, and soon, large areas with wet bulb temperatures for extended periods of time that humans can't live in, any more than they can live under water. 

Oh, and it's not just humans, navel gazers, it's all the other plants and animals. 

Photosynthesis becomes less efficient at high temperatures, making the only at scale natural carbon sink less reliable. Aerosols may be increasing albedo, or lowering it, depending on the aerosol. Apparently, there's a lot of microplastic already in the air. Also: any geo-engineering without pumping up the carbon volume is kind of a pipe dream at this point.

Why anyone thinks any semblance of resilience and adaptability will be possible after around 2030 is a mystery to me. P.S.: hot wars are just about the most carboniferous activity people can participate in.

Geriatric candidates on the run!

 More NYT commentary, this time on the handwringing over Biden's age, which for some reason is never handwringing about Trump's already obvious mental decline.

Jhh Lowengard | Kingston, NY
In the past, former presidents and legislators stayed on the scene after leaving office, either by running for a different office or just being one of the smoky voices in the smoke filled room. You can actually see this in the non-governing power of Trump. Part of that power is that the GOP literally has no platform except what Trump says. What he seeks, on the record, is more time to grift, and possibly pardon himself and people who still are loyal to him, and to vengefully persecute his opponents.

Comparing Trump's mental acuity to Biden's is the real comparison, and in the race to get to the end of a sentence, Trump is clearly the loser.

But there's a non-zero possibility that neither of these oldsters will make it to election day 2024. This is what both parties should prepare for. The primaries are set up to emphasize differences between candidates, but the process of running should also clarify how there is continuity of political purpose between leaders and their possible successors.

There's even a possibility that climate disaster issues could finally step in to move aside issues driving politics today to issues like "how can we rebuild", "Where can we move", "How can we help others who have to relocate". Remember: 2023, the hottest year in recorded history, will likely be one of the coolest of the foreseeable future .

Start by stopping carbon mining and consumption.

 My latest NYT comment, on using iron in the ocean as a geo engineering carbon capture solutions:

The idea here is that "We (tech fixers) alone can fix the Climate catastrophe" . Well, we can! Stop producing and using carbon emissions now, worldwide. We can do this in an orderly way, starting with stopping drilling, then stopping mining. Industries reliant on this will be shut down in a similarly orderly fashion, and paid off with money, which is a fiction, so we can make as much as necessary.

You can't geo-engineer out of an ever increasing supply of carbon, especially when the geo-engineering itself would necessarily itself be a huge source of carbon emissions. 

Shutting down fuels would be a tremendous hit to the economy and culture. But guess what? It would be cheaper than a 2+ degree C future, which is what we bought with all that fuel.
Do you have the budget to put the methane back in the permafrost and somehow regrow the glaciers and polar ice?

We're now at the state where small cities are wiped out in single weather events. When the frequency and scope of these events exceeds the means to recover from them, the time for any action will be taken up in emigration, fanciful and ineffective prepping, and faith-based solutions of dubious efficacy.

Forests aren't Our Friends...

[Reply to an article in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/opinion/columnists/forest-fires-climate-change.html ]

 What forests aren't are a source of permission to continue spewing carbon in the atmosphere. For one thing, the amount to capture is still increasing every year. For another thing, the climate change itself is impeding the capacity for forests to do that sequestration, due to how that process responds to heat. For another thing, we're also either intentionally removing these natural carbons sinks en masse, or sitting by as they die of thirst, are eaten by bugs that aren't killed in winter anymore, burn, releasing even more sunk carbon into the air and water. 

Here's a depressing article to fill you in on some of this:

https://knowablemagazine.org/article/food-environment/2023/dead-trees-shocking-scientists

The right way to act is to do everything possible, and the most effective is to stop with oil/gas extraction, stop with subsidizing those extractions, and get off carbon addiction. If there's less to remove, removing it will be easier. 

We can do this work in an orderly way, shutting down carbon sources while compensating those who lose out on their carbon fueled lives, and relocating them as best we can, or we can let the climate decide for us, and take out ecosystems and civilizations without any human direction. 

"But this will be more expensive than any other previous world project!"  To this I say: we and 8 generations before us have incurred that debt, and we not only have to pay the interest in terms of positive feedback loops, but the massive principle.

Decarbonizing

 You'll be surprised how well the economy will work without burning carbon. 

We can have a gentle decarbonization, first by stopping exploration and opening new sources now, before they start. Then, by shutting down pipelines and refineries one by one, randomly. Removing fossil fuel subsidies, which are artificially depressing the fuel prices.  We can do this, and it needs to be done internationally.  As this happens, we can cut down consumption, find alternatives, not fast enough at first, but faster as the technologies mature. 

Or, we can let the true ruler of the earth, the climate, do it for us, more cruelly, more suddenly, more capriciously. Vulnerable populations will be hurt more at first, forcing migrations to the unwilling not-yet affected areas, but it's only a matter of time - a short time - before smugly secure places are also affected and also made uninhabitable. The lifeboats in this chaotic sea will be the communities that are sustainable - that pay their debt to the earth. But it will not have the flexibility of response that a controlled shutdown would allow. 

The collapse of non-human ecosystems and geological process like ocean steams, jets streams, glaciers, which underlie all economies, no matter which system, will collapse them. You can't claim that working to stop carbon pollution is too expensive. Its expense is pitifully small compared to the collapse of everything underlying value, worldwide.

We know of no processes that can pull the carbon out of the atmosphere as rapidly as we put it in, at scale. So we have to start by not making the problem worse.