Climate change is happening much faster than predicted by the InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but Governments refuse to take effective action to reverse runaway climate change. They are fooling themselves that we are not headed for uncontrollable overshoot of current climate targets. Their confusion results from both bad science embedded in IPCC assumptions, which ignore many critical feedback mechanisms and tipping points, and falsely optimistic assumptions about climate change by political leaders, whose climate policies are dictated by fossil fuel-based energy industries eager to continue business as usual. This article by leading climate scientists exposes the false assumptions and bad science behind UNFCCC negotiations that are driving the entire planet over the precipice.
Abstract
Although the 2015 Paris Agreement climate targets seem certain to be missed, only a few experts are questioning the adequacy of the current approach to limiting climate change and suggesting that additional approaches are needed to avoid unacceptable catastrophes. This article posits that selective science communication and unrealistically optimistic assumptions are obscuring the reality that greenhouse gas emissions reduction and carbon dioxide removal will not curtail climate change in the 21st Century. It also explains how overly pessimistic and speculative criticisms are behind opposition to considering potential climate cooling interventions as a complementary approach for mitigating dangerous warming. There is little evidence supporting assertions that: current greenhouse gas emissions reduction and removal methods can and will be ramped up in time to prevent dangerous climate change; overshoot of Paris Agreement targets will be temporary; net zero emissions will produce a safe, stable climate; the impacts of overshoot can be managed and reversed; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change models and assessments capture the full scope of prospective disastrous impacts; and the risks of climate interventions are greater than the risks of inaction. These largely unsupported presumptions distort risk assessments and discount the urgent need to develop a viable mitigation strategy. Due to political pressures, many critical scientific concerns are ignored or preemptively dismissed in international negotiations. As a result, the present and growing crisis and the level of effort and time that will be required to control and rebalance the climate are severely underestimated.In conclusion, the paper outlines the key elements of a realistic policy approach that would augment current efforts to constrain dangerous warming by supplementing current mitigation approaches with climate cooling interventions.
Bad Scienceand Good Intentions is a tour de force of essential perspective and solid information on humanity’s most challenging days ahead, and what to do about it. Read it, study it, share it, it’s an extremely valuable resource.Bad Science and Good Intentions is a tour de force of essential perspective and solid information on humanity’s most challenging days ahead, and what to do about it. Read it, study it, share it, it’s an extremely valuable resource.
A crucial paper preprint was just released by Peter Wadham’s and his colleagues making a very strong case for the vital, absolute necessity of studying, scaling, and deployment of Solar Radiation Management (SRM).The IPCC and the policymakers and governments around the world have left it too long, and climate catastrophe is now upon us.Slashing fossil fuels, and deploying and scaling Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) is absolutely necessary, but no longer sufficient to avoid climate catastrophe.It is now imperative that we add SRM at scale to our climate mitigation toolkit.The paper refers to SRM as climate cooling interventions, or just interventions, but really it is referring to what many people call Solar Radiation Management.We simply have no other choice.We either perish on this planet from abrupt climate system mayhem, or study the heck out of and throw vast amounts of money into scientifically assessing and then deploying all the possible SRM ideas in order to preserve human society on this planet.We have no other options, at this stage. Climate change warming and disruption is accelerating “like a bat out of hell”.
