[FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

[glen]

I feel like individual actions (like sorting recycling, buying/using EVs, etc.) are a tiny drop in the bucket compared to institutional actions. For example, the NIH recently held a meeting in Maryland explicitly stating a *preference* for in person attendance. This seemed egregious to me. I mean, I know they're not a department of ecology or biology ... or climate science or whatever. But surely ... shirley they know that institutional pressure to fly around the earth is a part of the problem, right? Like, how are we supposed to compete for federal funds ... social network wise, when all the flesh-pressing rich people fly around pressing the flesh in meatspace?

Similarly, ALife is in Copenhagen. Very cool. I've always wanted to go there. Luckily, IACAP (RussA mentioned) is in Eugene. I can take the train there. Maybe if we change your "life is at stake" to "career is at stake", we could make some interim progress. Anyone who flies to a conference is immediately spray-painted with a scarlet letter. But, really. It's not about us. It's about Amazon, Microsoft, P&G, Maybelline <https://www.beatthemicrobead.org/11-makeup-brands-exposed-with-the-use-of-microplastics/>, Dupont, etc. ... and maybe even the NIH. We should make it about their "corporate life is at stake" and execute the bad actors.

Speaking of the death penalty for corporations:
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/politics/2024/01/29/taking-away-trump-s-business-empire-would-stand-alone-under-new-york-fraud-law

"An Associated Press analysis of nearly 70 years of civil cases under the law showed that such a penalty has only been imposed a dozen previous times, and Trump’s case stands apart in a significant way: It’s the only big business found that was threatened with a shutdown without a showing of obvious victims and major losses."

Freewill? Agency? Pffft. The real touchstone is "identify the victim".

On 1/29/24 14:41, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> I saw this article mentioned by Eliot Jacobson on his X/Twitter profile which argues that our actions will most likely not be enough until there is a big shock which motivates real change. It also uses the Covid pandemic to illustrate that people are able to change if they are convinced their lives are at stake
> https://time.com/6565499/apocalyptic-optimism-climate-change/
> 
> It fits to my own observations here in Europe: there are more and more EVs and charging stations, but not enough. There are more heat pumps replacing gas heatings, but not enough. There is more use of renewable energy but not enough. I fear people will only start to change fundamentally if they feel their life is at stake. Will it be too late then? I don't know. Let's be optimistic. "Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you"
> https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/03/05/sunshine/
> 
> -J.
> 
> 
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com>
> Date: 1/28/24 8:16 PM (GMT+01:00)
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate
> 
> I love me a good dose of Sabine... her flat-delivery of equally serious and glib lines is killer IMO... and for the most part I feel compelled to defer to her facts and analyses (almost) without reserve. (/around 13:30 she said "so mind-f#%#%ingly stupid" /). I'm surprised she didn't actually invoke the biblical "four horsemen"!  Her closing statement with the "stop gluing yourself to things" sorta made Sabine the anti-Greta?  Both of those made me choke on my coffee <grin>.
> 
> The whole North-Atlantic circulation thing (AMOC tipping point) threatening to undermine the British Isles and Scandinavia's relatively mild winters (moderated by oceanic heat transport from the equator) is one of the things I expect to crash a lot of expectations (and economies and ???) around the industrial north.   New England is also implicated in a major/abrupt local climate change from this as well.
> 
> I did a short stint with a pre-climate (atmospheric-ocean model coupling) modeling team at LANL in the 90s and what I enjoyed most was the cognitive dissonance amongst the researchers who on one hand felt they couldn't predict *anything* confidently but recognized the incredibly high stakes and the emerging awareness of the implications of dynamical systems theory on the domain... how many bifurcation points likely surrounded the relatively linear "basin" the climate has been wandering in since the Younger Dryas.
> 
> Without exception, every scientist I worked with then privately declared "we have a problem!" even though they didn't feel they had anywhere near the evidence to say anything that strongly in their publications.
> 
> Anecdotally, I've been experiencing a fairly steady winter-warming at my high-desert location 20 miles outside Santa Fe at about 5400ft where I catch the cold-air flow off of both the Sangre de Christo and the Jemez mtns.   Winters have gotten drier for the most part and while the lows still maintain (see above), the highs during the winter (and dead of summer) have risen consistently for the last 20 years I've lived at this location.
> 
> The climate and long-range weather forecasts for the area that I've checked out are somewhat mutually contradictory and my half-full/half-empty biases lead me to smug satisfaction when my fruit trees promise to do better than historically, even if my tomatoes freeze on Oct 1 no matter what (I've tossed plastic film over them and had them keep on growing/ripening until Thanksgiving a few years when I've bothered)...  root vegetables can now stay in the ground until I dig to eat and winter squash on the vine outside longer and longer.
> 
> On the half-empty side, surface water is becoming more and more dear here, my AC-free summers are getting more uncomfortable and it is likely enough that all of this is a minor perturbation compared to what might hit this region in the next few decades as various major tipping points tip.
> 
> <virtue signal>
> 
>     If I were younger, I'd probably be more (personally) worried. I tell my 40-something progeny that they should plan on the possibility that they might live forever and their children are even more likely to.  Me, I'm just happy that when my hand-carved wooden chompers get too slimy and splintery to use that the folks with drills and novacaine can make me a "screw-in set" like Nicks!
> 
>     Meanwhile the only thing I can think to do is keep lowering my own personal footprint and readying my home(stead) for another generation to pick up wherever I leave off with an equally lowered (residence-induced) footprint.  I'm not vegan (yet) but I try to buy my eggs from local home-raised sources and keep my agri-industry consumption of milk/cheese/butter down to a fraction of my former appetite.
> 
>     I've lowered my heating demand (via wood-burning) to near net-zero, burning (almost) only the prunings and trimmings from my own (1.5 acre high desert) property (and some from neighbors who CBB).   PV tech is mature enough that *used* gear on the order of $10k investment can probably allow me to quit spinning the hydro-turbines up the river (Abiqui Lake) and spewing coal-smoke out of the 4-corners plant my co-op draws primarily from.   A couple of mini-split heat-pumps might give me both relief from the worst summer heat and displace yet-more of the cellulose I (grow) and burn.   A little more PV and I can displace the 20lb propane cylinder I burn for cooking in the summer into induction cooking?
> 
>     Nevertheless, I'm still a big "part of the problem" just by being a member of the first-world economy...   even if I quit burning any transportation fuel (jet or train or private auto) entirely and eat mostly plants (not too much as M. Pollan recommends).
> 
> </virtue signal>
> 
> 
> On 1/27/24 1:59 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
>> I apologize for this relatively mass email. It was prompted by a video <https://youtu.be/4S9sDyooxf4?si=_A767WzYTxriYGdl> by Sabine Hossenfelder, Sabine is a theoretical physicist who has spent much of her recent life as a popular science writer and video maker. See her Wikipedia page <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder>.
>>
>> The video linked to above talks about climate models. The bottom line is that it appears that most of the current models have underestimated how quickly earth will warm. The consequences are frightening.
>> _


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