Bad Crow Review Says "Wipeout!"

Things could've gone either way for a second

'Ehukai Beach (photo ©2020 Weldon Berger)

Links are collected at the end of the post.

The guy went down sufficiently hard that the Ocean Rescue guys zoomed over to see if he was okay, which he more or less was. Done for the day, though.

We, humans, sadly do not have cosmic Ocean Rescue guys.

A friend pointed us toward a David Wallace-Wells op-ed piece¹ in this morning’s New York Times, which was described as pointing out that our climate change apocalypse prospects are less dire than previously thought.

It doesn’t, though: what it points out is a future in which if humans do everything possible, we might keep global warming to three degrees or less by the end of this century, and if we do everything possible, we might — somehow; no one is clear on this — rescue the global south from a future in which where they live becomes unlivable and they traipse our way. Catastrophic, in other words, rather than terminal.

Two degrees is not inevitable; both better and worse outcomes are possible. Most recent analyses project paths forward from current policy about half a degree warmer, meaning much more must be done to meet that goal, and even more to keep the world below the two-degree threshold — as was promised under the Paris agreement. (Even the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] scenarios designed to limit warming to that level now predict we’ll trespass it as soon as next decade.) And because decarbonization might stall and the climate may prove more sensitive than expected, temperatures above three degrees, though less likely than they recently seemed, remain possible, too.

That’s peak optimism among the people Wallace-Wells spoke with. It’s all hands on deck optimism, doing everything developed countries can for the global south, to the tune of hundreds of billions (which we’ve 100% reneged on to this point) and soon, a trillion or more annually, in what those countries see as reparations — because we, the U.S. more than anyone, caused this problem — optimism, and spending trillions more annually on our own plight, optimism.

Here’s the World Meteorological Organization on what we’re looking at this decade, according to their models.²

Global temperatures are likely to increase in the five-year period 2022-2026 and stay well above the 1991-2020 reference (Figure 4). Annual mean global near-surface temperature for each year in this five-year period is predicted to be between 1.1°C and 1.7°C (range of 90% confidence intervals) higher than preindustrial levels, which is defined as the average over the period 1850 to 1900. The difference between preindustrial and the 1991-2020 reference is estimated as 0.88°C, but this difference cannot be accurately estimated due to the incomplete observational network in the 19th century.

Using this estimate of the difference, the chance of the annual mean global near-surface temperature for at least one year exceeding 1.5°C above preindustrial levels is 48% and is increasing with time (brown histogram and right-hand axis in Figure 4). There is a small chance (10%) of the five-year mean exceeding this threshold. Note that the Paris Agreement level of 1.5°C refers to the long-term warming, but temporary exceedances are expected to occur with increasing frequency as global temperatures approach the long-term threshold.

The chance of at least one year exceeding the warmest year on record, 2016, in the next five years is 93%. The chance of the five-year mean for 2022-2026 being higher than the last five years is also 93%.

So, 50-50 that we’ll hit the 1.5°above pre-industrial temperature threshold at least once during the next four years (five years, when the report was written).

(We chose this report because it’s the only we found comprehensible on short notice.)

Also in The Times this morning is a reported piece by Max Bearak, describing the global consequences should the developed nations manage to do enough to hold global warming between 2°-3° by the end of the century.

Without drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the report said, the planet is on track to warm by an average of 2.1 to 2.9 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels, by 2100.

That’s far higher than the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) set by the landmark Paris agreement in 2015, and it crosses the threshold beyond which scientists say the likelihood of catastrophic climate impacts significantly increases.

With each fraction of a degree of warming, tens of millions more people worldwide would be exposed to life-threatening heat waves, food and water scarcity, and coastal flooding while millions more mammals, insects, birds and plants would disappear.

This is to say that the best-case scenario, one in which we only see a 1° increase between now and 2100, or even a half-degree, which is hallucinatorily good, is really bad.

Another friend has noted elsewhere that even if they haven’t broadly shared the results, everybody with any power has likely gamed out the social impacts of what’s coming, and how they can adapt to it. (You and we will be raw material in those scenarios, or detritus if we’re old enough or insufficiently hardy). Wallace-Wells mentioned moving agriculture north, which if necessary, which everybody thinks it will be, means moving the U.S. and other temperate countries north, which, Canada please say hello to your new benevolent overlords.

Ah well. We had no intention of writing about this stuff, but it came our way so we did. If you can access the Wallace-Wells piece, it’s worth reading if only for the “ifs.” Who knows, maybe an Ocean Rescue scheme is buried in it; I didn’t have time to read it closely enough to unearth one if it’s there.

Vote for whomever you please but please threaten the motherfuckers, preferably with Socialism!, and give a thought to threatening their patrons too.

What we intended to write about, in connection with what we wrote about yesterday,³ is the explosion of private equity ownership of medical providers, as in doctors. One can’t necessarily say that private equity owns doctors, but the firms control a lot of what doctors do with respect to patients and insurers, both public and private.

Other related things too, but that’s where we were starting.

That would-have-been joint, to which we’ll return tomorrow if nothing shiny goes galloping by, was inspired by this NY Times column by Danielle Carr,⁴ about reification, which she describes as the reframing of a problem in a way that “conveniently abracadabras questions like “Who caused this thing?” and “Who benefits?” out of sight,” which are good questions in many circumstances.

While you’re here, go away and read this,⁵ from a couple of weeks ago, also one of our things, on the subject of climate change.

Carr's column was also pointed out to me by a reader. Hurrah, readers! Thanks.

Kai Winding and J.J. Johnson, “The Great Kai and J.J.” Trombonists: who’d a thunk? This is great music. These guys were splendid. We are therefore listening to another album of theirs, “Jay and Kai,” which features among others, Charles Mingus. Just lovely.

That, comrades, is all we got. Take care, be well.

1. David Wallace-Wells describing catastrophe in the most optimistic possible terms

2. World Meteorological Organization on near term global warming trends

3. What we wrote about yesterday

4. Danielle Carr writing on avoiding the point while addressing mental health crises

5. Us on Bill McKibben on global warming