Net Zero Delusion

James Dyke, Robert Watson, and Wolfgang Knorr argue that the idea of combining emissions reductions with carbon removal technologies is dangerously misguided.

We have arrived at the painful realisation that the idea of net zero has licensed a recklessly cavalier “burn now, pay later” approach which has seen carbon emissions continue to soar.

By including carbon sinks in climate-economic models, a Pandora’s box had been opened. ... [T]he mere prospect of carbon capture and storage gave policy makers a way out of making the much needed cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead of confronting our doubts, we scientists decided to construct ever more elaborate fantasy worlds in which we would be safe. The price to pay for our cowardice: having to keep our mouths shut about the ever growing absurdity of the required planetary-scale carbon dioxide removal.

It should now be getting clear where the journey is heading. As the mirage of each magical technical solution disappears, another equally unworkable alternative [such as geoengineering] pops up to take its place.

[T]here will be some small role for a number of different carbon dioxide removal approaches. The problems come when it is assumed that these can be deployed at vast scale. This effectively serves as a blank cheque for the continued burning of fossil fuels and the acceleration of habitat destruction.

The only way to keep humanity safe is the immediate and sustained radical cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in a socially just way. ... That is the very simple acid test that must be applied to all climate policies. The time for wishful thinking is over.

Emboldening the Liar

"Cancel culture" at its finest:

Republicans voted during an internal party meeting on Wednesday morning to remove [Representative Liz] Cheney from her position as House Republican Conference chair, the third-highest rank among Republicans in the House of Representatives. They removed her via voice vote soon after the meeting commenced, meaning no member went on the record.

She got in trouble for accepting reality and expressing the truth.

Today, we face a threat America has never seen before. A former president who provoked a violent attack on this Capitol in an effort to steal the election has resumed his aggressive effort to convince Americans that the election was stolen from him. He risks inciting further violence.

To be sure, Cheney is no friend of democracy, yet only a handful in the party can resist the Big Lie. Hopefully voters are paying attention and John Stoehr says the strategy risks blowing up in their face.

Now that Biden is president, the Republicans expect 2022 to be their year. But this dynamic depends on the incredibly short memories of voters. It depends on voters not comparing presidents but instead judging them in isolation. The Republicans, by going all-in on [Dear Leader], are threatening that dynamic entirely.

Stoehr argues Republicans are essentially at war against democracy.

[People] hear what leaders like Liz Cheney are saying, and the message is, I think, pretty simple. There is something profoundly rotten at the core of the Republican Party. There is something about the Republican Party that's against America itself.

An Urgent Call for Action

From a statement inspired by the 2021 Nobel Prize Summit and published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine:

We need to reinvent our relationship with planet Earth. The future of all life on this planet, humans and our societies included, requires us to become effective stewards of the global commons — the climate, ice, land, ocean, freshwater, forests, soils, and rich diversity of life that regulate the state of the planet, and combine to create a unique and harmonious life-support system. There is now an existential need to build economies and societies that support Earth system harmony rather than disrupt it.

Update (July 1):  A draft of next year's IPCC report was leaked to Agence France-Presse. Fiona Harvey describes a key point.

The draft warns of a series of thresholds beyond which recovery from climate breakdown may become impossible. It warns: "Life on Earth can recover from a drastic climate shift by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems … humans cannot."

Al Jazeera adds:

Species extinction, more widespread disease, unliveable heat, ecosystem collapse, cities menaced by rising seas – these and other devastating climate effects are accelerating and are bound to become painfully obvious before a child born today turns 30.

Missed Target

A report from the Climate Action Tracker finds that the non-binding pledges to reduce emissions under the Paris Agreement will fail to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Antarctic Tipping Point

Robert Hunziker reports on research into the stability of the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers. He quotes an article published in The Cryosphere.

Mass loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet is the main source of uncertainty in projections of future sea-level rise, with important implications for coastal regions worldwide. Central to ongoing and future changes is the marine ice sheet instability: once a critical threshold, or tipping point, is crossed, ice internal dynamics can drive a self-sustaining retreat committing a glacier to irreversible, rapid and substantial ice loss.

Thwaites' "pinning points" are being undermined by warm currents. It's collapse threatens the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet and could lead to a 3 meter sea level rise.

Update (June 13):  A study published in Science Advances finds the breakup of the ice shelf protecting the Pine Island glacier is accelerating.

[Our] data show a >12% speedup over the past 3 years, coincident with a 19-km retreat of the ice shelf. We use an ice-flow model to simulate this loss, finding that accelerated calving can explain the recent speedup, independent of the grounding-line, melt-driven processes responsible for past speedups. If the ice shelf’s rapid retreat continues, it could further destabilize the glacier far sooner than would be expected due to surface- or ocean-melting processes.

Update (December 13):  Satellite images presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting show cracks across the ice shelf protecting the Thwaites glacier. The shelf could shatter into hundreds of icebergs within three to five years.

Update (December 17):  Robert Hunziker reiterates how precarious the situation is.

Once the ice shelf collapses, it’ll lead to massive "ice cliff collapsing," ongoing collapse of towering walls of ice directly overlooking the ocean that crumbles into the sea. And, once ice cliff collapsing starts, it will likely become a self-sustaining "runaway collapse."

[T]he biggest unknown in this grisly affair is timing, assuming Thwaites does collapse within a decade, how soon will ice cliff collapses bring on sea level rise that drowns the world’s coastal metropolises?

Satellite images from 2015 and 2021:

Update (June 12, 2022):  A paper published in Nature Geoscience finds that Antarctic glaciers are retreating at the fastest rate in 5500 years. Ted Scambos explains why the flow rate for Thwaites has doubled in the past 30 years.

Update (September 6, 2022):  A study published in Nature Geoscience finds that the Thwaites glacier has retreated very quickly in the past and could do so again.

Update (September 7, 2022):  Matthew Rozsa reports on the Thwaites study and a Greenland study.

Extreme Drought

As the carbon dioxide concentration reaches it's highest level in 3.6 million years, much of the western United States is on the verge of a permanent drought.

Update (April 17):  Decreased flow in the Colorado River may prompt the U.S Bureau of Reclamation to declare an official water shortage for Nevada and Arizona.

Declining Church Membership

Amanda Marcotte notes that the failure to recruit younger generations has resulted in a steep drop in religious affiliation in the past couple decades. The trend in Gallup polls shows 73 percent participation in 1937, 71 percent in 1975, 70 percent in 1999, but only 47 percent by 2020.

It's a story with a moral so blunt that it could very well be a biblical fable: Christian leaders, driven by their hunger for power and cultural dominance, become so grasping and hypocritical that it backfires and they lose their cultural relevance. ... [I]t's undeniable that this decline is tied up with objectively good trends: increasing liberalism, hostility to bigotry, and support for science in the U.S.

Update (April 3):  While "creeping secularism" might be pushing the religious right toward increasingly anti-democratic views, John Stoehr argues it's a mistake to view secularization as being opposed to religion.

The same person can be religious and secular at the same time. Secularization is not, or should not, be a goal in and of itself. It is a means, rather, to an end, namely liberty.

I suspect many [non-religious liberals] believe religion itself is the problem, and they believe this, because they have accepted uncritically what the zealots themselves believe when they say the only way to be a religious person is by first being a conservative person.

All religions have liberal traditions. They may be buried. They may have been silenced. But they are there. More importantly, for liberals, is that these traditions be given oxygen, which is to say, be given the freedom they need to thrive. For the zealots, the point of religion is not doing unto others as you would have done unto you. It is not bringing the greatest good to the greatest number. It's about dominance. To the extent the liberals know this, it's from the inside of the zealots' preferred view, which means they are fighting against freedom even as they fight for a secularized America.

A secular society is not one in which religion is absent. A secular society is one in which there is enough room for the vast varieties of religious feeling to be expressed openly and safely, inside and outside the realm of politics. Liberals should pursue religious diversity with the same oomph with which they pursue racial diversity. With enough time and effort, perhaps religion will stop being a byword for conservative. That would be good for religion. That would also be good for American politics.