How Bad Is Global Warming?

[Joe Hillshoist]

Yes the timelines for sunspot activity and temp match rather well.

No they fucken don't.

Sunspot activity and associated energy has been dropping as the planet has got hotter. if those things corresponded then the peak of recent heating would have been decades ago with the peak of the solar maximum. Since that didn't happen its reasonable to assume that while sun cycles can/did contribute energy to the earth and the 20th century heating doesn't correlate with the heating well enough to be the primary cause.

Anyone who spent at least 20 minutes researching this online at any time in the last decade would know this.

The last peak was 5 years ago. Since then the planet has warmed a little and we've had 4 of the 5 hottest years on record. That peak was significantly cooler than the one in the 80s so where has this extra heat come from?

Maybe it isn't CO2 maybe its all the fucken hot air coming out the arses of oil industry propaganda stooges.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Correction 5 of the 5 hottest years on record.

And this one (2019) won't be any cooler.

[Sounder]

Joe, I know it is very hot where you live and hope for the best for all involved during what appears to be a dire fire season.

I took the twenty minutes and will make a short comment and put this to bed.

The graphs show a breakdown in correlation between sunspots and temps recently as you said. However, a few years ago it seemed that everyone had agreed that there had been an eighteen year pause in rising temps since 1998. The given rational was that the CO2 had been absorbed into the ocean. Yet, now the referenced graphs show no break in the temp rise, making me wonder about the veracity of temp lines in the graph.

At any rate, not that it means anything but weather where I live has been, for a few years now, colder with a wet cold spring and no 'Indian summer' in the fall like we used to have.

In general though, AGW was dreamed up by Maurice Strong and the Club of Rome. Maurice Strong was made head of Petro-Canada when he was only 25 years old.

Now, that is someone Rockefeller could trust.

Oil company's work on a cost plus basis and like it when costs go up.

[seemslikeadream]

F574A02F-3EE9-435B-9AD4-30BDD6077205.jpeg

]

Adam Klasfeld
‏
Court docs from earlier this month suggest one likely line of questioning will probe allegedly missing emails from Tillerson's secret address under the alter-ego "Wayne Tracker."

The NYAG's Oct. 5, 2019 brief fell under the radar.

From March 2017: https://www.courthousenews.com/fraud-pr ... te-change/ …


Read the full brief alleging Exxon failed to preserve the evidence here. https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/D ... ystem=prod …

Tillerson is standing next to the witness stand, wearing a red tie.

Proceedings are about to begin.

"The people call Rex Tillerson."

He's sworn in and questioning begins.

Assistant AG: Did you discuss all shareholder proposals for the management committee of Exxon?

Tillerson: Yes.

AAG asks whether Tillerson was aware as CEO that there were proxy costs of carbon.

"Yes," he replies.

Questioning Tillerson is Kim Berger, who is Bureau Chief of the Bureau of Internet and Technology.

Berger displays an email from Robert Luttgen, a manager from the office of the Secretary, to another exec William M. Colton on March 21, 2014.

Tillerson's not on the email, but it refers to him as "RWT."

"Rex Wayne Tillerson"

"RWT reviewed the document and found it acceptable."

The email attaches the 2014 report "Energy and the Climate."

On the attachment, there are three large paragraphs highlighted in red on page 18 and part of page 19, which the email described as passages that Tillerson wanted to add.

Tillerson said he couldn't "recall" that, but has no reason to doubt it.

"I had the opportunity to add things, suggest things," Tillerson said.

Berger pulls up a final version of "Energy and Climate," and turns to a section subtitled "Proxy cost for emission policies."

It contains the line: "Future policies related to limiting GHG emissions remain uncertain and likely will vary over time and from country to country."


Tillerson says the energy outlook was meant to address the question: "How's our world going to look 20 years from now, 30 years from now, 40 years from now?"

Berger questions Tillerson about a color coded map depicting CO2 proxy costs.

This map.


Referring to proxy costs, Tillerson says: “If you are in the power-generating business or selling fuels to power generators, what does this mean?”

Berger turns to a different exhibit with a second report from later that year: "Energy and Carbon -- Managing the Risks."

Berger shows Tillerson a letter addressed to him from a group of investors, date-stamped Sept. 12, 2013, “Office of the Chairman.”

They wrote:

Referring to greenhouse gases, “We are an international group of institutional investors, collectively representing nearly USD 3 trillion in assets, writing to inquire about ExxonMobil’s exposure to these risks and plans for managing them.”

Three pages of investors signed onto it. Berger says they represented 72 in total, including New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, the then NYC comptroller and California's treasurer.

Tillerson referred to them as "activist shareholders."

“There’s nothing wrong with that," he said earlier. "That’s fine.”

Asked whether activist shareholders have the right to truthful disclosures, Tillerson replied: "Absolutely."

Shareholders had asked Exxon to address the risk of "stranded assets" presented by the climate crisis.

From Exxon's report: "Based on this analysis, we are confident that none of our hydrocarbon reserves are now or will become 'stranded.'"

Speaking of greenhouse gas costs, Tillerson says: "If you go back to this history of this, this was all fairly new."

Berger displays a 4/22/11 email chain between Tom Eizember (corporate strategic planning) and Robert Balles, the GHG manager.

“This is an email exchange," Berger says. "You are not on it, but it references conversations with you.”

Eizember: "We need to settle on a basis for this year's plan - a combined plan basis review with MC is last May."

Balles replies: "One potential change I would like to discuss is whether to harmonize [planning & budgeting] assumptions and [energy outlook] assumptions."

Tillerson testifies he does "not recall" much about this email exchange, in which Eizember wrote:

"Rex seemed happy with the difference previously – appeared to feel it provides a 'conservative' basis." Eizember added a caveat to that.

He added: "(but only if viewed from the perspective of claiming economics credits to reduce emissions; it is not conservative vs EO from the perspective of debiting actions that increase emissions.)"

From an email attachment:

“In recent reports released by EM (….) we have implied that we use the EO basis for proxy cost of carbon when evaluating investments.”

Berger questions Tillerson about Exxon's investing tens of billions of dollars in Kearl Oil Sands Project in Alberta, Canada.

Tillerson agrees, saying: “It was a lot of money.”

Note to self: Review this transcript for instances of Tillerson saying "I don't recall."

Tillerson: "What I do know is the Alberta government does not want to put the oil sands out of business."

Q: Exxon owned a 70% interest in that [i.e., oil sands]?
Tillerson: That’s right

Berger quotes Rex telling shareholders:

“We really are trying to undertake the most attractive opportunities that we see, thinking about them in terms of 30 years. Are we going to be happy with this over the next three decades?"

"Not, are we going to be happy with it over the next three or four years?"

Berger asks him about a question from Robert Fore, a rep from the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. Foundation, on this issue.

"[W]hat specifically are you doing to ensure the business model of ExxonMobil is nimble enough to withstand low carbon demand scenarios, including disruptions, be they technological, regulatory or market-based," Fore asked.

Rex answered: "We have... for many years included a price of carbon in our outlook... It's a proxy. We don't know how else to model what future policy impacts might be. But whatever policies are, ultimately they come back to either your revenues or your costs."

Direct examination ends, after roughly an hour and a half of questioning.

Despite the pretrial motions, nothing on Wayne Tracker.

Tillerson’s cross examination by Exxon’s attorney Ted Wells is about to begin.

Wells: This is a pretty serious case, right?
Rex: Yes.

Wells shows the first sentence of the complaint: "This case seeks redress for a longstanding fraudulent scheme by Exxon, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, to deceive investors and the investment community."

Wells asks whether the allegation is true of false.

Rex claims false.

Series of similar questions with Rex denying claims follows.

Complaint: "Exxon’s fraud was sanctioned at the highest levels of the company."

Rex claims false.

Complaint: "Throughout its fraudulent scheme, Exxon in effect erected a Potemkin village to create the illusion that it had fully considered the risks of future climate change regulation and had factored those risks into its business operations."

Rex: "It was a real system."

Rex claims that NYAG didn't ask to interview him before complaint filed.

Asked whether anyone on Exxon's management committee had been approached for an interview, he responded: "Not to my knowledge."

Rex said Exxon supported a carbon tax, as the "best regulatory mechanism."

"It's simple," Tillerson says of the carbon tax. "It's straightforward. It's transparent."

Rex expresses preference for that over emissions trading.

Wells asks whether advocating for a carbon tax would have been one way of dealing with the risks of the climate crisis.

Tillerson: "t would have been one way of dealing with it at a macro level."

Wells asks whether Tillerson supported the Paris Accord.

"I did," he replied.

"This was the first time we had any success dealing with this as a global problem" requiring a "global solution."

Observation: Tillerson’s memory appears a lot sharper upon friendly cross-examination by Exxon.


If Tillerson answered “I don’t recall” during cross-ex, I do not believe I noticed it yet.


Tillerson says Exxon’s GHG metric was not disclosed until 2014.

For those just tuning in, this is a bench trial. No jury, just Judge Barry Ostrager.

Tillerson describes Exxon’s energy outlook as a “very granular buildup of the demand, sector-by-sector, country-by-country.”

Providing an example, he says it would factor in electric cars on gas purchases.



Meanwhile... https://www.courthousenews.com/greta-th ... ts-action/ …

Tillerson: “I don’t ever recall GHG (greenhouse gas) costs being a determining factor in any decision that we made.”

Wells underlines that point, which Tillerson restates.

“It’s just one of the many expense items,” he adds, referring to GHG costs.

Wells: GHG costs “not material” to the decision-making.

Rex: “That’s correct.”

Wells: SEC rules prohibit using speculative analysis of future regulation.

Tillerson agrees.

Cross-ex ends with Tillerson saying “I feel badly” for Exxon employees accused of fraud, not necessarily the accusations against him personally as the face of the company.

Brief redirect by NYAG.
‏
Berger starts with shareholders asking Exxon to evaluate various climate crisis risks.

“I’ve met with some of these people,” Tillerson says of the signers.

Tillerson’s memory gets hazy again back on redirect.

“I don’t recall” pops up again with some frequency, here in response to questions about an alternative methodology to calculating greenhouse gas costs.

Tillerson’s testimony ends.

Court officers order press and public to remain seated as they escort him out.



https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/sta ... 1641194496

Rex Tillerson Tied to Climate Report at Exxon Fraud Trial
ADAM KLASFELDOctober 30, 2019

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, second from right, leaves a courthouse in New York on Wednesday. In a securities fraud lawsuit brought by the New York Attorney General’s Office, Tillerson, the onetime CEO of Exxon, told a court Wednesday that the energy giant’s leaders sought a full understanding of how new climate regulations would affect the company’s bottom line. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
MANHATTAN (CN) – A packed New York courthouse buzzed with anticipation Wednesday as five words ushered forward the key witness in a trial accusing Exxon of defrauding investors about the climate crisis.

“The people call Rex Tillerson,” said Kim Berger, a bureau chief from New York State Attorney General’s Office.

Tillerson, a former secretary of state for President Donald Trump and a decade-long CEO for Exxon, took the stand this morning in a red tie that hearkened more to his Republican bona fides than the oil giant’s green policies.

Unlike Trump, Tillerson professed to accept climate science.

“We took the issue quite seriously,” said Tillerson, 67, testifying that he had lobbied the previous administration for a carbon tax and pushed for the landmark Paris Climate Accords, a treaty that his future boss Trump would attempt to unravel.

In two reports published under Tillerson’s watch in 2014, Exxon told shareholders that the company would factor in the “cost of carbon” in assessing the risks to their business.

The New York State Attorney’s General Office claims that those alleged measures amounted to a “Potemkin Village,” put up to stave off climate action.

Berger, who heads the office’s Bureau of Internet and Technology, questioned Tillerson about how his additions to the climate report were received by other Exxon officials.

“RWT reviewed the document and found it acceptable,” wrote Robert Luttgen, a manager from the company’s office of the secretary, using initials for Rex Wayne Tillerson.

A native of Exxon’s home state of Texas, Tillerson spoke with a twang as he told the attorney that Exxon’s energy outlook had been meant to address the question: “How’s our world going to look 20 years from now, 30 years from now, 40 years from now?”

The report to which Tillerson contributed contained a color-coded map on the “proxy” costs of carbon dioxide, varying across country and continent.

A 2011 email suggested that Tillerson favored a “conservative” estimate.

Exxon’s corporate strategic planning director Tom Eizember told the company’s greenhouse gas manager Robert Balles: “Rex seemed happy with the difference previously – appeared to feel it provides a ‘conservative’ basis (but only if viewed from the perspective of claiming economics credits to reduce emissions; it is not conservative vs [Energy Outlook] from the perspective of debiting actions that increase emissions.)”

Under friendly cross-examination by Exxon’s attorney Theodore Wells, Tillerson denied the central allegations of New York’s lawsuit.

Displaying a copy of the complaint, Wells asked a series of true-and-false questions about the sentences.

“This case seeks redress for a longstanding fraudulent scheme by Exxon, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, to deceive investors and the investment community,” the filing begins.

Tillerson insisted it was false.

“Throughout its fraudulent scheme, Exxon in effect erected a Potemkin village to create the illusion that it had fully considered the risks of future climate change regulation and had factored those risks into its business operations,” another line states.

Tillerson bristled at that statement too.

“It was a real system,” he said.

For all of the theatricality of the exchange, the trial against Exxon is not being heard by a jury. It is a bench trial in Manhattan Supreme Court before Justice Barry Ostrager, who agreed to divest from his Exxon stock before trial.

Wells asked a series of questions suggesting that greenhouse gases would not have been an issue for shareholders because the company never made decisions based on the cost of carbon.

“I don’t ever recall GHG costs being a determining factor in any decision that we made,” Tillerson said, using an abbreviation for greenhouse gas.

Conspicuously absent from the testimony was any mention of Tillerson’s alter ego, “Wayne Tracker.”

Tillerson admitted in a deposition this past summer that he used his wayne.tracker@exxonmobil.com account as his primary email, and the state complained that Exxon failed to preserve any emails from that account before Aug. 18, 2015.

“This was caused by ExxonMobil’s failure to disable its automatic ‘file sweep’ deletion program for the Tracker Account, even though ExxonMobil turned off the automatic deletion program for every other custodian after receiving the subpoena,” Assistant Attorney General Samantha Liskow wrote in an Oct. 4 brief.

Ostrager denied the state’s motion asking him to draw an adverse inference from the failure to preserve those emails.

Despite the judge’s invitation to the state to renew that request at a later date, neither party asked about Wayne Tracker on the witness stand.

Exxon had been under increasing pressure to take action on climate change the year it released its reports.

In 2013, the year before, three pages of investors signed a letter to Tillerson asking to assess the risks of the climate crisis.

“We are an international group of institutional investors, collectively representing nearly USD 3 trillion in assets, writing to inquire about ExxonMobil’s exposure to these risks and plans for managing them,” the 72-shareholder collective wrote.

Though the group included New York State’s comptroller, New York City’s comptroller and California’s treasurer, Tillerson referred to them as “activist shareholders.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” he said earlier. “That’s fine.”

Tillerson also struck a conciliatory tone when asked by Exxon’s attorney how the state’s allegations made him feel.

“When you become a CEO, you know you are going to have to become willing to take a lot of criticism,” Tillerson said, adding that was not true of the company’s other workers.

“That’s who I feel badly for,” he said.

Tillerson’s memory turned hazy throughout the state’s examination, with the CEO regularly answering questions with: “I don’t recall.” He used the phrase far less often under Exxon’s cross-examination.

As the widely anticipated testimony ended, court officers ordered the press and public to remain seated while leading the ex-business titan and U.S. presidential cabinet member out of the room. Reporters were unable to solicit comment on his testimony as he left the building.
https://www.courthousenews.com/rex-till ... aud-trial/

[DrEvil]

Joe, I know it is very hot where you live and hope for the best for all involved during what appears to be a dire fire season.

I took the twenty minutes and will make a short comment and put this to bed.

The graphs show a breakdown in correlation between sunspots and temps recently as you said. However, a few years ago it seemed that everyone had agreed that there had been an eighteen year pause in rising temps since 1998. The given rational was that the CO2 had been absorbed into the ocean. Yet, now the referenced graphs show no break in the temp rise, making me wonder about the veracity of temp lines in the graph.

No, there wasn't a pause. That was a denier talking-point and nothing more, and all it says is that you need better sources for your nonsense. There was a slow-down caused by natural cycles (this might be shocking to you, but natural cycles, including the sun, are included in and accounted for in the climate projections. They can't explain the warming. If you add in human contributions the data suddenly lines up. How strange). The long-term trend is still clear as day for anyone who doesn't cherry-pick their data.

At any rate, not that it means anything but weather where I live has been, for a few years now, colder with a wet cold spring and no 'Indian summer' in the fall like we used to have.

Weather isn't climate, but ignoring that, adding more energy to a system doesn't automatically mean "everything gets hotter all the time", it means more energetic, which can have all kinds of effects, even if the average temp is going up. Worst case where I live becomes similar to Greenland if the gulf stream slows down or stops.

In general though, AGW was dreamed up by Maurice Strong and the Club of Rome. Maurice Strong was made head of Petro-Canada when he was only 25 years old.

Short answer: NO!
Long answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

We knew about AGW long before Maurice Strong came along. How did he get everyone else to go along with it anyway, and what happened to Al Gore, I thought he was behind it?

Also, Petro-Canada was founded in 1975. Maurice Strong was born in 1929. Try to at least get the basics straight.

Now, that is someone Rockefeller could trust.

Oil company's work on a cost plus basis and like it when costs go up.

But they don't like it when they go out of business. Hell, even Saudi Arabia is trying to diversify away from oil because they're seeing the writing on the wall.

[Sounder]

Dr Evil wrote...

How did he get everyone else to go along with it anyway,

https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-maur ... mentalist/

The end of a profile article on Strong by James Corbett...

...That Strong was so successful in promoting his “global governance” agenda for so many decades is a testament not to his own visionary leadership, as so many globalists profess, but to the incredible resources of the Rockefellers and Rothschilds and others who are funding this agenda into existence and pushing it along at every step.

It is some measure of good fortune, then, that Strong’s decades of deceit finally came to an end (more or less) in 2005, when, as Quadrant Online notes, he was finally caught “with his hand in the till”:
“Investigations into the UN’s Oil-for-Food-Program found that Strong had endorsed a cheque for $988,885 made out to M. Strong — issued by a Jordanian bank. The man who gave the cheque, South Korean business man Tongsun Park was convicted in 2006 in a US Federal court of conspiring to bribe UN officials. Strong resigned and fled to Canada and thence to China where he has been living ever since.”

Although still making appearances at various events around the world, Strong led a much more low key existence for the past decade, likely slowed by the ravages of advancing age. But now that he has finally passed away, we are left to be subjected to yet more nauseatingly lavish praise for this man and the many globalist institutions that comprise his legacy.

No, it is not difficult to understand why Maurice Strong was so beloved of the globalist jet set. Just don’t expect any of the members of that jet set to tell you this story in any detail.

Same as it ever was, rich people get first mover status so as to use public money to achieve corporate goals. In this case, the development of infrastructure so as to better tap resources, and placing the decision making process further away from locals.

[seemslikeadream]

More than 11,000 scientists worldwide declare climate emergency, predict ‘untold human suffering’ if we do not act now
New York Daily News
THERESA BRAINE
Nov 6th 2019 5:51AM

Scientists worldwide — 11,258 of them, to be exact, from 153 countries — have endorsed a declaration of “climate emergency,” predicting “untold human suffering” if more is not done to stop human contribution to climate change.

Citing scientists’ “moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat,” the researchers endorsed an urgent call to action, pleading with humankind to stop being our own worst enemy.

“We declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency,” the scientists said in a statement, adding that despite decades of warnings, “greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are still rapidly rising, with increasingly damaging effects on the Earth’s climate. An immense increase of scale in endeavors to conserve our biosphere is needed to avoid untold suffering due to the climate crisis.”

Ecology professor William Ripple and Christopher Wolf of Oregon State University led the peer-reviewed research, which was published Tuesday in the journal BioScience. Ripple founded the environmental advocacy group Alliance of World Scientists.

“Despite 40 years of major global negotiations, we have continued to conduct business as usual and have failed to address this crisis,” said Ripple, distinguished professor of ecology in the Oregon State College of Forestry, in a statement. “Climate change has arrived and is accelerating faster than many scientists expected.”

Slideshow preview image
22 PHOTOS
Spring Creek and Lake Christine fires in Colorado
SEE GALLERY


While scientists have been sounding the alarm for decades, this is the first time they have stepped into the political arena by recommending policy, The Washington Post noted. That and the lack of uncertainty in the language makes this document a “stark departure” from previous assessments, the Post said.

It is the first time this many scientists have spoken directly to the public that there’s a crisis, “rather than letting their data speak for itself,” reported Grist, the environmental news site.

“Phrases like ‘climate change’ sound a little bit mild, in terms of how severe the problem is,” Ripple told Grist. “So, we wanted to publish language that is consistent with the data and the trends that we’re seeing.”

The warning comes a day after President Trump’s administration submitted formal notice that the U.S. is pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, as the Associated Press and The New Republic reported. And, as Phys.org reported, the European Union confirmed that last month was the warmest October ever registered.

Slideshow preview image
34 PHOTOS
Drone photos of glacier show impact of climate change
SEE GALLERY

Researchers at The University of Sydney and the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, as well as Tufts University, also authored the study.

The scope of the problem goes far beyond temperature, the researchers said. Describing climate change solely in terms of global surface temperature does not “capture the breadth of human activities and the real dangers stemming from a warming planet,” the scientists said. “Policymakers and the public now urgently need access to a set of indicators that convey the effects of human activities on GHG emissions and the consequent impacts on climate, our environment, and society.”

To illustrate the true scope of the issue, the declaration included graphic “vital signs” illustrating changes since 1979 that indicate environmental degradation: Lines delineating global tree cover loss, in millions of hectares per year, shoot straight up; Brazilian Amazon forest loss in millions of hectares per year shoots straight down; lines for energy consumption — oil, coal and natural gas — flow in an inexorable upward slope, while solar remains virtually flat. Likewise air traffic, GHG emissions covered by carbon pricing, carbon dioxide emissions, human population and per capita meat production also jet vertically skyward.

“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,” the declaration said. “The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected. It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity. Especially worrisome are potential irreversible climate tipping points and nature’s reinforcing feedbacks (atmospheric, marine, and terrestrial) that could lead to a catastrophic ‘hothouse Earth,’ well beyond the control of humans. These climate chain reactions could cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable.”

On the upside, the scientists suggested measures that could mitigate or even reverse some of the worst effects. Replacing fossil fuels with cleaner sources of energy and increasing energy efficiency are necessary first steps, the scientists said. Reducing emissions of short-lived climate pollutants such as methane, soot and hydrofluorocarbons is also doable.

Equally important is preserving, protecting and restoring the planet’s rapidly decaying ecosystems, especially forests, grasslands, peatlands, wetlands and mangroves, the researchers said. When it comes to food, eating more plants and consuming fewer animal products is key, they said.

“The dietary shift would significantly reduce emissions of methane and other greenhouse gases and free up agricultural lands for growing human food rather than livestock feed,” they said in their statement, also alluding to the need to reduce food waste, given that a third of all food produced gets thrown out.

Economically speaking, we must operate carbon-free, shifting goals away from GDP growth and “the pursuit of affluence,” they said. It’s also essential to “curb exploitation of ecosystems” to a sustainable level, they said.
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/1 ... /23854248/

Exclusive: Italy to make climate change study compulsory in schools
ROME (Reuters) - Italy will next year become the world’s first country to make it compulsory for schoolchildren to study climate change and sustainable development, Education Minister Lorenzo Fioramonti said.

Italy's Education Minister Lorenzo Fioramonti gestures during an interview with Reuters in Rome, Italy, November 4, 2019. Picture taken November 4, 2019. REUTERS/Remo Casilli
Fioramonti, from the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, is the government’s most vocal supporter of green policies and was criticized by the opposition in September for encouraging students to skip school and take part in climate protests.

In an interview in his Rome office on Monday, Fioramonti said all state schools would dedicate 33 hours per year, almost one hour per school week, to climate change issues from the start of the next academic year in September.

Many traditional subjects, such as geography, mathematics and physics, would also be studied from the perspective of sustainable development, said the minister, a former economics professor at South Africa’s Pretoria University.

“The entire ministry is being changed to make sustainability and climate the center of the education model,” Fioramonti told Reuters in the interview conducted in fluent English.

“I want to make the Italian education system the first education system that puts the environment and society at the core of everything we learn in school.”

Fioramonti, 42, the author of several books arguing gross domestic product should no longer be used as the main measure of countries’ economic success, has been a target of the right-wing opposition since becoming a minister in the two-month-old government of 5-Star and the center-left Democratic Party.

His proposals for new taxes on airline tickets, plastic and sugary foods to raise funds for education were strongly attacked by critics who said Italians were already over-taxed.

He then sparked fury from conservatives when he suggested crucifixes should be removed from Italian classrooms to create a more inclusive environment for non-Christians.

Despite the criticism, the government’s 2020 budget presented to parliament this week included both the plastic tax and a new tax on sugary drinks.

“I was ridiculed by everyone and treated like a village idiot, and now a few months later the government is using two of those proposals and it seems to me more and more people are convinced it is the way to go,” Fioramonti said.

ANTI-SALVINI

Surveys showed 70-80% of Italians backed taxing sugar and flights, he said, adding that coalition lawmakers had told him they would table budget amendments to introduce his proposal to hike air ticket prices before the budget is approved by end-year.

Fioramonti said targeted taxes of this kind were a way of discouraging types of consumption which were harmful to the environment or individuals, while generating resources for schools, welfare or lowering income tax.

In this vein, he suggested other levies on various types of gambling and on profits from oil drilling.

His progressive positions on the economy and the environment are the antithesis of Matteo Salvini’s hard-right League, which has overtaken 5-Star to become easily Italy’s most popular party, with more than 30% of voter support.

Fioramonti said the new government, which has got off to a shaky start with weeks of bickering over the budget, “will only last if it is brave,” and stops letting Salvini set the news agenda.

“I want to represent the Italy that stands against all the things that Salvini does,” Fioramonti said. “We have to build a different narrative and not be afraid of saying something Salvini may not like, because that’s why we exist.”

Editing by Andrew Heavens
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-clim ... SKBN1XF1E1

[Joe Hillshoist]

My mum was doing a PhD in botany at the University of Tasmania in the 60s. (The first woman to do so fwiw.)

At the time people were coming back from Antarctica (cos UT was a base for Antarctic research in Australia) with ice core samples to study AGW.

So in the (mid to late) 60s and early 70s there was already ongoing research into ice core CO2 concentrations that was specifically aimed at determining a relationship between CO2 and global temperatures, because back then people weren't sure if there was a relationship or not but were aware that if there was the potential for it to get bad was real.

In the 80s predictions were made about the weather and the climate.

The weather was predicted to become hotter overall and more extreme in both directions temperature wise. Weather events were predicted to get more extreme. More rain, stronger cyclones and hotter heat events, colder cold events. (Not at the rate they are happening tho. "Might start seeing it by the end of your my life." In hoping that is at least 35 years away, so less than 2/3rds of the way thru my life and its already worse than people thought it would be at the end, back when I was in high school.)

Ie it would get hotter and colder. This is because in a dynamic system adding energy increases the volatility of the system. It drives extremes further in all direction be it more hot weather or more cold weather. The end result is more chaotic weather measured against an ongoing rise in average temperatures, with more extreme weather events and more intensity in those extreme weather events.

I turned 50 between my last post in this thread and this one.

For 2/3rds of my life I've been seeing the effects of AGW and seeing the predictions that were made by the mid 80s happening in front of me.

Sounder, nearly a third of that time has happened since we first met in the comments of Jeff's blog, wow ... nearly 15 years ago.

In that time the weather has gone to shit. Old weather patterns are breaking down across the world. Weather patterns indigenous people in this part of the world used to set their lives by no longer hold. Somewhere in the first 1/4 of the nearly 10K posts I've made on this site I mentioned the way those patterns were starting to break down. Maybe even in this thread. Since then they're even more unstable.

The entire world is literally on fire. Parts of Europe and Asia that have never burned before have regular infernos. Parts of the US and Australia that have burned forever are experiencing the worst fire conditions on record. As I mentioned earlier catastrophic conditions in October where I live. Before a decade ago that had happened a handfull of times in Australia, never here, only in more fire prone areas and only at the height of summer.

The only variable that corresponds to this warming is human industrial activity.

There is nothing else.

[Elvis]

Global warming is a result of sunspot activity or lack of it and has nothing to do with mans activity or burning fossil fuels

Climate Myth...

It's the sun
"Over the past few hundred years, there has been a steady increase in the numbers of sunspots, at the time when the Earth has been getting warmer. The data suggests solar activity is influencing the global climate causing the world to get warmer." (BBC)

Over the last 35 years the sun has shown a cooling trend. However global temperatures continue to increase. If the sun's energy is decreasing while the Earth is warming, then the sun can't be the main control of the temperature.

Figure 1 shows the trend in global temperature compared to changes in the amount of solar energy that hits the Earth. The sun's energy fluctuates on a cycle that's about 11 years long. The energy changes by about 0.1% on each cycle. If the Earth's temperature was controlled mainly by the sun, then it should have cooled between 2000 and 2008.

TSI vs. T


Figure 1: Annual global temperature change (thin light red) with 11 year moving average of temperature (thick dark red). Temperature from NASA GISS. Annual Total Solar Irradiance (thin light blue) with 11 year moving average of TSI (thick dark blue). TSI from 1880 to 1978 from Krivova et al 2007. TSI from 1979 to 2015 from the World Radiation Center (see their PMOD index page for data updates). Plots of the most recent solar irradiance can be found at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics LISIRD site

The solar fluctuations since 1870 have contributed a maximum of 0.1 °C to temperature changes. In recent times the biggest solar fluctuation happened around 1960. But the fastest global warming started in 1980.

Figure 2 shows how much different factors have contributed recent warming. It compares the contributions from the sun, volcanoes, El Niño and greenhouse gases. The sun adds 0.02 to 0.1 °C. Volcanoes cool the Earth by 0.1-0.2 °C. Natural variability (like El Niño) heats or cools by about 0.1-0.2 °C. Greenhouse gases have heated the climate by over 0.8 °C.


Figure 2 Global surface temperature anomalies from 1870 to 2010, and the natural (solar, volcanic, and internal) and anthropogenic factors that influence them. (a) Global surface temperature record (1870–2010) relative to the average global surface temperature for 1961–1990 (black line). A model of global surface temperature change (a: red line) produced using the sum of the impacts on temperature of natural (b, c, d) and anthropogenic factors (e). (b) Estimated temperature response to solar forcing. (c) Estimated temperature response to volcanic eruptions. (d) Estimated temperature variability due to internal variability, here related to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. (e) Estimated temperature response to anthropogenic forcing, consisting of a warming component from greenhouse gases, and a cooling component from most aerosols. (IPCC AR5, Chap 5)

Some people try to blame the sun for the current rise in temperatures by cherry picking the data. They only show data from periods when sun and climate data track together. They draw a false conclusion by ignoring the last few decades when the data shows the opposite result.

They go deeper in the comments/replies.

Climate Denial Crock of the Week

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sf_UIQYc20

A favorite hobby horse of Climate Denialists is that there is some kind of invisible, undetectable influence from the sun that is responsible for the unequivocal warming of the last century.

[brainpanhandler]

@ DrEvil: You missed one:

a few years ago it seemed that everyone had agreed that there had been an eighteen year pause in rising temps since 1998. The given rational was that the CO2 had been absorbed into the ocean.

[DrEvil]

^^Oops. It's hard to keep up with Sounder's gushing nozzle of wrong.

[DrEvil]

Dr Evil wrote...

How did he get everyone else to go along with it anyway,

https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-maur ... mentalist/

The end of a profile article on Strong by James Corbett...

...That Strong was so successful in promoting his “global governance” agenda for so many decades is a testament not to his own visionary leadership, as so many globalists profess, but to the incredible resources of the Rockefellers and Rothschilds and others who are funding this agenda into existence and pushing it along at every step.

It is some measure of good fortune, then, that Strong’s decades of deceit finally came to an end (more or less) in 2005, when, as Quadrant Online notes, he was finally caught “with his hand in the till”:
“Investigations into the UN’s Oil-for-Food-Program found that Strong had endorsed a cheque for $988,885 made out to M. Strong — issued by a Jordanian bank. The man who gave the cheque, South Korean business man Tongsun Park was convicted in 2006 in a US Federal court of conspiring to bribe UN officials. Strong resigned and fled to Canada and thence to China where he has been living ever since.”

Although still making appearances at various events around the world, Strong led a much more low key existence for the past decade, likely slowed by the ravages of advancing age. But now that he has finally passed away, we are left to be subjected to yet more nauseatingly lavish praise for this man and the many globalist institutions that comprise his legacy.

No, it is not difficult to understand why Maurice Strong was so beloved of the globalist jet set. Just don’t expect any of the members of that jet set to tell you this story in any detail.

Same as it ever was, rich people get first mover status so as to use public money to achieve corporate goals. In this case, the development of infrastructure so as to better tap resources, and placing the decision making process further away from locals.

That's not an answer. That's a rich globalist being a dick. So what? In your own words: exactly how did it work? What exactly did Maurice Strong do? How did he get literally every single country on the planet to agree to it along with all the scientists in those countries, and how did he enforce it? What did he have that made thousands and thousands of people and every single government in the world fall in line and go along with the conspiracy, and what's the long-term goal specifically (and please don't say taxes)?

[DrEvil]

Oh, look! Sounder has disappeared again. How predictable. He's now going to ignore my latest post for a couple of weeks until there's a few more posts below it, and then he will pop back in with something else equally wrong and vague and pretend our latest argument never happened. Rinse and repeat.

[DrEvil]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... mate-limit

Fossil fuel production on track for double the safe climate limit

‘We’re in a deep hole over the climate crisis and we need to stop digging,’ warn experts

Damian Carrington Environment editor @dpcarrington Wed 20 Nov 2019 05.01 GMT

The world’s nations are on track to produce more than twice as much coal, oil and gas as can be burned in 2030 while restricting rise in the global temperature to 1.5C, analysis shows.

The report is the first to compare countries’ stated plans for fossil fuel extraction with the goals of the Paris climate agreement, which is to keep global heating well below 2C above pre-industrial levels, and to aim for 1.5C. It exposes a huge gap, with fossil fuel production in 2030 heading for 50% more than is consistent with 2C, and 120% more than that for 1.5C.

Scientists have warned that even the difference between 1.5C and 2C of heating will expose hundreds of millions of people to significantly higher risks of extreme heatwaves, drought, floods and poverty.

The report was produced by the UN Environment Programme and a coalition of research organisations. It complements an earlier UN analysis showing the current Paris agreement pledges to cut emissions would still lead to a catastrophic 3-4C rise.

“We’re in a deep hole – and we need to stop digging,” said Måns Nilsson, executive director of the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), which was part of the analysis. “Despite more than two decades of climate policymaking, fossil fuel production levels are higher than ever.”

Most action to tackle the climate crisis involves reducing emissions, but Inger Andersen, head of the UN Environment Programme, said a focus on fossil fuel production was long overdue. Most of the action pledges made by countries under the Paris deal do not even mention changes to production.

The UK is a “striking” example of this mismatch, said Cleo Verkuijl, at the SEI’s centre in Oxford, UK. It was the first major economy to commit to net zero emissions by 2050, she said, but also subsidises fossil fuel production at home and abroad and intends to extract “every drop of oil and gas” from its North Sea fields. In recent years, the UK oil and gas industry has received £176m more annually in government support than it paid in taxes, the report said.

The UK Oil and Gas Authority said in a statement: “Oil and gas will remain an important part of our energy mix for the foreseeable future, including under net zero scenarios. Maximising the economic recovery from the UK remains vital to meet those energy demands as long as they exist, and to reduce reliance on imports.”

The report’s warning was strongly backed by senior figures. “Ensuring a liveable planet for future generations means getting serious about phasing out coal, oil and gas,” said Christiana Figueres, at Mission 2020 and is the person who delivered the Paris agreement in 2015 as the UN’s top climate official. “Countries such as Costa Rica, Spain and New Zealand are already showing the way forward, with policies to constrain exploration and extraction – others must now follow their lead. There is no time to waste.”

Prof Nicholas Stern, at the London School of Economics, said: “This important report shows planned levels of coal, oil and gas production are dangerously out of step with the goals of the Paris agreement.”

The report highlights the nations that are taking some action, including the closure of most coal mines in Spain and some in China, along with the end of new offshore oil and gas exploration licences in New Zealand and some parts of the Arctic governed by Canada, the US and Norway.

Verkuijl said a global agreement to phase out production would be ideal but is difficult at present with the US under President Donald Trump, as the country is due to withdraw from the Paris agreement. But she said many Democratic presidential candidates have promised to cut fossil fuel production by restricting extraction on public land, for example, or removing subsidies. She said such a candidate beating Trump in the 2020 election would be a “gamechanger”.

The report said it was crucial that workers in fossil fuel industries were helped into new employment as production ramped down. “Leaders need to [talk with] workers and their unions to plan a just transition away from fossil fuels,” said Sharan Burrow, head of the International Trade Union Confederation.

The analysis is based on the published national plans of eight key producers: Australia, Canada, Russia, US, China, India, Indonesia and Norway, which account for 60% of global fossil fuel production. The plans of other big producers, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, are not publicly available. The researchers assumed these and other producers would maintain a similar share of global production to today at around 40%.

• This article was amended on 20 November 2019 to clarify the description of the methodology. The researchers did not assume that producers such as Saudi Arabia and Iran would follow “similar paths” as the eight countries that were covered, but that those producers would maintain a similar share of global production as the eight countries that were covered.

And just to save Sounder some time, here's a story that would make for a great and irrelevant distraction:

Extinction Rebellion founder’s Holocaust remarks spark fury
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... spark-fury

[DrEvil]

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0

COMMENT 27 November 2019

Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against

The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions.

Timothy M. Lenton, Johan Rockström, Owen Gaffney, Stefan Rahmstorf, Katherine Richardson, Will Steffen & Hans Joachim Schellnhuber

Politicians, economists and even some natural scientists have tended to assume that tipping points1 in the Earth system — such as the loss of the Amazon rainforest or the West Antarctic ice sheet — are of low probability and little understood. Yet evidence is mounting that these events could be more likely than was thought, have high impacts and are interconnected across different biophysical systems, potentially committing the world to long-term irreversible changes.

Here we summarize evidence on the threat of exceeding tipping points, identify knowledge gaps and suggest how these should be plugged. We explore the effects of such large-scale changes, how quickly they might unfold and whether we still have any control over them.

In our view, the consideration of tipping points helps to define that we are in a climate emergency and strengthens this year’s chorus of calls for urgent climate action — from schoolchildren to scientists, cities and countries.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) introduced the idea of tipping points two decades ago. At that time, these ‘large-scale discontinuities’ in the climate system were considered likely only if global warming exceeded 5 °C above pre-industrial levels. Information summarized in the two most recent IPCC Special Reports (published in 2018 and in September this year)2,3 suggests that tipping points could be exceeded even between 1 and 2 °C of warming (see ‘Too close for comfort’).



If current national pledges to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions are implemented — and that’s a big ‘if’ — they are likely to result in at least 3 °C of global warming. This is despite the goal of the 2015 Paris agreement to limit warming to well below 2 °C. Some economists, assuming that climate tipping points are of very low probability (even if they would be catastrophic), have suggested that 3 °C warming is optimal from a cost–benefit perspective. However, if tipping points are looking more likely, then the ‘optimal policy’ recommendation of simple cost–benefit climate-economy models4 aligns with those of the recent IPCC report2. In other words, warming must be limited to 1.5 °C. This requires an emergency response.

Ice collapse

We think that several cryosphere tipping points are dangerously close, but mitigating greenhouse-gas emissions could still slow down the inevitable accumulation of impacts and help us to adapt.

Research in the past decade has shown that the Amundsen Sea embayment of West Antarctica might have passed a tipping point3: the ‘grounding line’ where ice, ocean and bedrock meet is retreating irreversibly. A model study shows5 that when this sector collapses, it could destabilize the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet like toppling dominoes — leading to about 3 metres of sea-level rise on a timescale of centuries to millennia. Palaeo-evidence shows that such widespread collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet has occurred repeatedly in the past.

The latest data show that part of the East Antarctic ice sheet — the Wilkes Basin — might be similarly unstable3. Modelling work suggests that it could add another 3–4 m to sea level on timescales beyond a century.

The Greenland ice sheet is melting at an accelerating rate3. It could add a further 7 m to sea level over thousands of years if it passes a particular threshold. Beyond that, as the elevation of the ice sheet lowers, it melts further, exposing the surface to ever-warmer air. Models suggest that the Greenland ice sheet could be doomed at 1.5 °C of warming3, which could happen as soon as 2030.

Thus, we might already have committed future generations to living with sea-level rises of around 10 m over thousands of years3. But that timescale is still under our control. The rate of melting depends on the magnitude of warming above the tipping point. At 1.5 °C, it could take 10,000 years to unfold3; above 2 °C it could take less than 1,000 years6. Researchers need more observational data to establish whether ice sheets are reaching a tipping point, and require better models constrained by past and present data to resolve how soon and how fast the ice sheets could collapse.

Whatever those data show, action must be taken to slow sea-level rise. This will aid adaptation, including the eventual resettling of large, low-lying population centres.

A further key impetus to limit warming to 1.5 °C is that other tipping points could be triggered at low levels of global warming. The latest IPCC models projected a cluster of abrupt shifts7 between 1.5 °C and 2 °C, several of which involve sea ice. This ice is already shrinking rapidly in the Arctic, indicating that, at 2 °C of warming, the region has a 10–35% chance3 of becoming largely ice-free in summer.

Biosphere boundaries

Climate change and other human activities risk triggering biosphere tipping points across a range of ecosystems and scales (see ‘Raising the alarm’).



Ocean heatwaves have led to mass coral bleaching and to the loss of half of the shallow-water corals on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. A staggering 99% of tropical corals are projected2 to be lost if global average temperature rises by 2 °C, owing to interactions between warming, ocean acidification and pollution. This would represent a profound loss of marine biodiversity and human livelihoods.

As well as undermining our life-support system, biosphere tipping points can trigger abrupt carbon release back to the atmosphere. This can amplify climate change and reduce remaining emission budgets.

Deforestation and climate change are destabilizing the Amazon — the world’s largest rainforest, which is home to one in ten known species. Estimates of where an Amazon tipping point could lie range from 40% deforestation to just 20% forest-cover loss8. About 17% has been lost since 1970. The rate of deforestation varies with changes in policy. Finding the tipping point requires models that include deforestation and climate change as interacting drivers, and that incorporate fire and climate feedbacks as interacting tipping mechanisms across scales.

With the Arctic warming at least twice as quickly as the global average, the boreal forest in the subarctic is increasingly vulnerable. Already, warming has triggered large-scale insect disturbances and an increase in fires that have led to dieback of North American boreal forests, potentially turning some regions from a carbon sink to a carbon source9. Permafrost across the Arctic is beginning to irreversibly thaw and release carbon dioxide and methane — a greenhouse gas that is around 30 times more potent than CO2 over a 100-year period.

Researchers need to improve their understanding of these observed changes in major ecosystems, as well as where future tipping points might lie. Existing carbon stores and potential releases of CO2 and methane need better quantification.

The world’s remaining emissions budget for a 50:50 chance of staying within 1.5 °C of warming is only about 500 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2. Permafrost emissions could take an estimated 20% (100 Gt CO2) off this budget10, and that’s without including methane from deep permafrost or undersea hydrates. If forests are close to tipping points, Amazon dieback could release another 90 Gt CO2 and boreal forests a further 110 Gt CO211. With global total CO2 emissions still at more than 40 Gt per year, the remaining budget could be all but erased already.

Global cascade

In our view, the clearest emergency would be if we were approaching a global cascade of tipping points that led to a new, less habitable, ‘hothouse’ climate state11. Interactions could happen through ocean and atmospheric circulation or through feedbacks that increase greenhouse-gas levels and global temperature. Alternatively, strong cloud feedbacks could cause a global tipping point12,13.

We argue that cascading effects might be common. Research last year14 analysed 30 types of regime shift spanning physical climate and ecological systems, from collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet to a switch from rainforest to savanna. This indicated that exceeding tipping points in one system can increase the risk of crossing them in others. Such links were found for 45% of possible interactions14.

In our view, examples are starting to be observed. For example, Arctic sea-ice loss is amplifying regional warming, and Arctic warming and Greenland melting are driving an influx of fresh water into the North Atlantic. This could have contributed to a 15% slowdown15 since the mid-twentieth century of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) , a key part of global heat and salt transport by the ocean3. Rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet and further slowdown of the AMOC could destabilize the West African monsoon, triggering drought in Africa’s Sahel region. A slowdown in the AMOC could also dry the Amazon, disrupt the East Asian monsoon and cause heat to build up in the Southern Ocean, which could accelerate Antarctic ice loss.

The palaeo-record shows global tipping, such as the entry into ice-age cycles 2.6 million years ago and their switch in amplitude and frequency around one million years ago, which models are only just capable of simulating. Regional tipping occurred repeatedly within and at the end of the last ice age, between 80,000 and 10,000 years ago (the Dansgaard–Oeschger and Heinrich events). Although this is not directly applicable to the present interglacial period, it highlights that the Earth system has been unstable across multiple timescales before, under relatively weak forcing caused by changes in Earth’s orbit. Now we are strongly forcing the system, with atmospheric CO2 concentration and global temperature increasing at rates that are an order of magnitude higher than those during the most recent deglaciation.

Atmospheric CO2 is already at levels last seen around four million years ago, in the Pliocene epoch. It is rapidly heading towards levels last seen some 50 million years ago — in the Eocene — when temperatures were up to 14 °C higher than they were in pre-industrial times. It is challenging for climate models to simulate such past ‘hothouse’ Earth states. One possible explanation is that the models have been missing a key tipping point: a cloud-resolving model published this year suggests that the abrupt break-up of stratocumulus cloud above about 1,200 parts per million of CO2 could have resulted in roughly 8 °C of global warming12.

Some early results from the latest climate models — run for the IPCC’s sixth assessment report, due in 2021 — indicate a much larger climate sensitivity (defined as the temperature response to doubling of atmospheric CO2) than in previous models. Many more results are pending and further investigation is required, but to us, these preliminary results hint that a global tipping point is possible.

To address these issues, we need models that capture a richer suite of couplings and feedbacks in the Earth system, and we need more data — present and past — and better ways to use them. Improving the ability of models to capture known past abrupt climate changes and ‘hothouse’ climate states should increase confidence in their ability to forecast these.

Some scientists counter that the possibility of global tipping remains highly speculative. It is our position that, given its huge impact and irreversible nature, any serious risk assessment must consider the evidence, however limited our understanding might still be. To err on the side of danger is not a responsible option.

If damaging tipping cascades can occur and a global tipping point cannot be ruled out, then this is an existential threat to civilization. No amount of economic cost–benefit analysis is going to help us. We need to change our approach to the climate problem.

Act now

In our view, the evidence from tipping points alone suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency: both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute (see ‘Emergency: do the maths’).

Emergency: do the maths

We define emergency (E) as the product of risk and urgency. Risk (R) is defined by insurers as probability (p) multiplied by damage (D). Urgency (U) is defined in emergency situations as reaction time to an alert (τ) divided by the intervention time left to avoid a bad outcome (T). Thus:

E = R × U = p × D × τ / T

The situation is an emergency if both risk and urgency are high. If reaction time is longer than the intervention time left (τ / T > 1), we have lost control.

We argue that the intervention time left to prevent tipping could already have shrunk towards zero, whereas the reaction time to achieve net zero emissions is 30 years at best. Hence we might already have lost control of whether tipping happens. A saving grace is that the rate at which damage accumulates from tipping — and hence the risk posed — could still be under our control to some extent.

The stability and resilience of our planet is in peril. International action — not just words — must reflect this.

Nature 575, 592-595 (2019)
doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-03595-0

Full list of references at original.