Climate emergency?

Is the "climate emergency" fluff worth worrying about? I've been fairly dismissive in the past. But ATTP worries Another example of why I find myself confused by what some economic analyses seem to imply (modest impacts) and what many scientists appear to be suggesting (untold suffering) - Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering’. And the source for this is World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency, William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Thomas M Newsome, Phoebe Barnard, William R Moomaw; BioScience, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz088;
Published: 05 November 2019. Their history appears dodgy (see last week's Declaration of the First World Climate Conference, Geneva 1979) but what of their bold and brave

Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and to “tell it like it is.” On the basis of this obligation and the graphical indicators presented below, we declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.

which doesn't depend on them getting any history right. What of "An immense increase of scale in endeavors to conserve our biosphere is needed to avoid untold suffering due to the climate crisis (IPCC 2018)" where that last is a link to the "1.5 oC" report; but perhaps I can just look at the headline statements. These, obviously, don't support a literal use of "untold suffering". The IPCC just doesn't use that kind of language. So their ability to quote the IPCC is as dodgy as their history. They continue Most public discussions on climate change are based on global surface temperature only which I think is untrue; one hears lots about flooding, drought, sea ice and storms. What I think they mean is "a temperature rise of (globally) 2 oC may not seem like much but it is really", but that's different; if they want to say that, they should.

Next up is Profoundly troubling signs from human activities include sustained increases in both human and ruminant livestock populations, per capita meat production, world gross domestic product... the number of air passengers carried... but they're wrong. these things are all in themselves good, not bad. They may well have bad consequences (more flying emits more CO2) but the things themselves are good (more people is better, for the people concerned; see-also Derek Parfit, Ex-Philosopher). And Especially disturbing are concurrent trends in the vital signs of climatic impacts... Three abundant atmospheric GHGs (CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide) continue to increase. This is wrong too: these GHGs are not the signs of climate impacts; we wouldn't care about them much were it not for the consequences of their increases; they are the cause of climate impacts, not their signs.

They then discuss - well, it's all far too abbreviated to be considered discussion; "mention" would be better - some things that really are impacts: SLR, ocean acidification, area burnt, "extreme weather and associated damage costs". But to say that latter is increasing, without mentioning that most of the increase is due to increased value at risk due to developement, just isn't honest. Tropical forests are somewhat threatened by GW, but far more by idiots cutting them down.

Despite 40 years of global climate negotiations, with few exceptions, we have generally conducted business as usual and have largely failed to address this predicament is largely true, and alas people including Ripple et al. have failed to learn anything from all that failure. The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected - no, I don't think that's true. At that point I got bored and started skipping, ending at transformative change, with social and economic justice for all which is the kind of statist regulatory approach that shows they've learn nothing from all their failures.

[Pic: the back wall of Christ's, seen from Waterstones.]

Refs

* The 'no regrets' approach to preparing for global climate change by Bruce Yandle
* The Economics of Pleasure and Pain by Bryan Caplan; part 2, The Economics of Antipathy and Stereotyping
* Science is a messy process - ATTP
* Smile: Life In Modern America Is Actually Very Good