Having come back from France I guess I really ought to knuckle down and post some scintillating content, despite the lack of interesting things going on. Never mind, the children will be back soon, and it's Nines autumn regatta this weekend.My pic is a gorgeous view of the Aiguille du Midi taken from about 4000 on the Gouter route; you'll notice it isn't a picture from the top because I didn't get there this time; I'll bore you with the full story at some point. Climate related hook: it had been a fairly snowy spring; the glaciers weren't obviously terrible this year.
So working through my backlog I start with When will climate change turn life in the U.S. upside down? Intensifying extreme weather events and an insurance crisis are likely to cause significant economic and political disruption in the U.S. sometime in the next 15 years. It's by Jeff Masters and features stuff like "It is inevitable that climate change will stop being a hazy future concern and will someday turn everyday life upside down. Very hard times are coming..." and you sense his deep disappointment that it hasn't happened yet; he is yearning to be able to say "I told you so" and would love it if life was already upside down, but alas it isn't and he can only promise it for the indefinite future.
Although only briefly, it appears. Because he also believes that "By late this century, I am optimistic that we will have successfully ridden the rapids of the climate crisis, emerging into a new era of non-polluting energy with a stabilizing climate..." Quite how he gets there I don't know; the chances of CO2 levels having gone down significantly are low, and I'd expect SLR to just be getting interesting at that point. Never mind, it is sufficiently far off that whatever he says won't be tested in his lifetime.
Continuing on we have the obligatory nod to wokeness: "the impacts of climate change will be apocalyptic for many nations and people — particularly those that are not rich and White...". This is bullshit. The only bit that matters there is wealth; colour of skin isn't a factor, except insofar as it determines your wealth.
We then move on to how insurance is going to be a disaster, but completely fails to mention that the problem is idiot pols meddling with the system which would work fine if only the evil capitalists were allowed to run it without interference. I gave up at that point.
Refs
* Trump’s success is based on him being an avatar of what the American right has become. It’s angry, confused about all the numbers and facts liberals keep throwing around, contemptuous towards the airs they put on, not knowing anything with certainty except that they feel hostile to elites and foreigners and don’t like how the world is changing. It’s not that Trump simply knows how to appeal to these instincts. He personifies them, which is fundamental to the bond between him and his fans - RH.
Well, I thought the IPCC was fairly specific about some (maybe half) of expected impacts. Roughly to start being noticeable (in the statistical sense) around 2040 and to have increasingly visible impacts thereafter. And that was published back in 2014 (I think...) Somethings up with your comment section, I think... hope this goes through. Tom
ReplyDeleteTest. I think it's my sign-in, not your comment section. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteWelcome, unknown-Tom. I'm glad you managed to figure out my cunning encryption eventually.
ReplyDeleteAs to "start being noticeable (in the statistical sense) around 2040" well that seems somewhat different to "turn life in the U.S. upside down". And this seems to be the problem: without a doubt there will be impacts, and were you to measure them in dollars they would look like a large number but actual real estimates that mean something seem to be thing on the ground.
Yes, and bringing that to the blogosphere's attention a decade ago brought me no end of hearts and flowers from admirers everywhere.
ReplyDelete