by Judith Curry
How would you explain the complexity and uncertainty surrounding climate change plus how we should respond (especially regarding CO2 emissions) in five minutes?
Last week, I served on the panel for a summer school in Canada for engineering students. They are working on an energy transition, and their Professor wants them to be exposed to the debate surrounding all of this, and to think critically. I am the only climate scientist on the panel, the others are involved in the renewable energy sector. Each panelist has 5 minutes to present their main points. The essay below is what I came up with. It’s 5 minutes longer than a brief speech, but it’s still pretty short
Let me start with a quick recap of what is known as the ‘climate crisis:’
Its warming. The warming is caused by us. Warming up is very dangerous. We urgently need to switch to renewable energy to stop warming. Once we do that, sea level rise will stop and the weather won’t be so extreme.
So what’s wrong with this story? In short, we have over-simplified both the problem and its solutions. The complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity of existing knowledge about climate change are being kept away from public and policy debates. The proposed solutions are technologically and politically less viable on a global scale.
Specifically in relation to climate science. Climate sensitivity to a doubling of carbon dioxide has factor three uncertainty. Climate model predictions of alarming impacts in the 21st century are driven by an emissions scenario, RCP8.5, which has a high unbelievable. The climate model’s predictions ignore the scenarios of nature climate change, which governs regional climate change on time scales from five years to multiple time points. And finally, cutting emissions will do little to improve the climate of the 21st century; if you believe in climate models, most of about the effects of emissions reductions that will be felt in the 22nd century and beyond.
Whether it heats up or not is ‘danger‘is a matter of values, of science there is Nothing to tell. According to the IPCC, there is still no evidence of a change in the global frequency or intensity of storms, droughts, floods or wildfires. In the US, the states with the largest population growth by far are Florida and Texas, which are warm, southern states. Real estate along the coast is soar In terms of value. Personal preference and market value not yet considers global warming ‘dangerous.’
Climate change is a big narration where anthropogenic climate change has become dominant causes of social problems. Everything is not okay consolidate belief that there is only one thing we can do to stop social problems – stop burning fossil fuels. This big story makes us think that if we solve the problem of human-caused climate change, other problems will also be solved. This belief leads us away from further investigation into the real causes of these problems. The end result is a narrowing of perspectives and policy options that we are willing to consider in addressing complex issues such as public health, water resources, weather disasters, and national security. .
All this means we should do Nothing about climate change? Is not. We should work to reduce our impact on the planet, which is not easy for a planet of 7 billion people. We should work to reduce air and water pollution. Since ancient times, humans have adapted to climate change. Whether or not we manage to dramatically reduce our carbon dioxide emissions in the coming decades, we need decrease our vulnerability to extreme weather and climate events.
Related to energy. All else being equal, people will prefer clean energy to dirty energy. However, all other things are not equal. We need safe, reliable and economic energy systems for all the nations of the world. This includes Africa, which currently lacks grid power in many countries. We need a 21st-century infrastructure for electricity and transportation, to support continued prosperity and growth. The rush to deploy 20th century renewable technology risks waste resources on inadequate energy infrastructure and increase our vulnerability to extreme weather and climate events.
How the climate of the 21st century will unfold is a subject of profound uncertainty. Once natural climate variability is accounted for, it can turn out to be relatively benign. Or we may face unforeseen surprises. We need to increase our resilience to whatever the future climate brings us. We are shooting ourselves in the foot if we sacrifice economic prosperity and social resilience on the altar of the 20th century’s emergency switch to renewable energy technologies.
We need to remind ourselves that tackling climate change is not the end in itself, and climate change is not the only problem facing the world. The goal should be to improve people’s lives in the 21st century, while protecting the environment as much as possible.
This is quite an interesting discussion.
Didn’t have much time to really recap, but I realized we SUCCESSly needed a new post. I’ve been very busy, but I’ve just finished a major project and the Atlantic hurricanes are active, hopefully in the next two weeks. I’ll try to keep up to date with heatwaves in the American West
