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abbottisgone

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Peter Wadhams
« on: August 21, 2016, 11:10:18 AM »
His latest views have been captured in this article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/21/arctic-will-be-ice-free-in-summer-next-year

 If he is saying that science is not entirely sure of the life span of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere AND that Nasa has already admitted that the atmosphere needs to be scrubbed of CO2 then shouldn't we be preparing for imminent market panic?

 (Surely if Nasa is saying that the atmosphere needs to be scrubbed of the CO2 already in it and we don't know how to do that then a critical mass of people are going to realise that sooner rather than later!)
..
But I left school and grew my hair
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Milret2

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Re: Peter Wadhams
« Reply #1 on: August 21, 2016, 12:25:48 PM »
Seems to me that the powers that be have no real interest in climate change what so ever. I personally would be much more concerned about what a blue Arctic would do physically to my wife and I then what it would do to my not inconsiderable exposure to the " market".

However, I have, like some others here, the feeling that we have already blown past population, co2 levels, and biodegradation on levels incompatible with survival of many humans or other life forms on the planet so I am just an observer who is greatful to be 65 years old and with no children. Civilizations have failed before, only thing different this time is a supposedly intelligent species appears to be causing it.

Theta

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Re: Peter Wadhams
« Reply #2 on: August 21, 2016, 01:04:36 PM »
His latest views have been captured in this article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/21/arctic-will-be-ice-free-in-summer-next-year

 If he is saying that science is not entirely sure of the life span of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere AND that Nasa has already admitted that the atmosphere needs to be scrubbed of CO2 then shouldn't we be preparing for imminent market panic?

 (Surely if Nasa is saying that the atmosphere needs to be scrubbed of the CO2 already in it and we don't know how to do that then a critical mass of people are going to realise that sooner rather than later!)

I agree, it seems that the current state of affairs are going to fall down when people realise just how hopeless prospects are for earth and the human race. I bet the powers that be will try their best to keep things as calm as possible, but eventually, things will fall apart and the earth will burn
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budmantis

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Re: Peter Wadhams
« Reply #3 on: August 21, 2016, 03:34:40 PM »
However, I have, like some others here, the feeling that we have already blown past population, co2 levels, and biodegradation on levels incompatible with survival of many humans or other life forms on the planet so I am just an observer who is greatful to be 65 years old and with no children. Civilizations have failed before, only thing different this time is a supposedly intelligent species appears to be causing it.

What you're saying Milret is pretty dire, but unfortunately true. Our success as a species in some ways will end up causing our demise, unless we are able to change course very quickly. Based on our track record so far, the odds of that are very long.

Theta

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Re: Peter Wadhams
« Reply #4 on: August 21, 2016, 05:24:38 PM »
However, I have, like some others here, the feeling that we have already blown past population, co2 levels, and biodegradation on levels incompatible with survival of many humans or other life forms on the planet so I am just an observer who is greatful to be 65 years old and with no children. Civilizations have failed before, only thing different this time is a supposedly intelligent species appears to be causing it.

What you're saying Milret is pretty dire, but unfortunately true. Our success as a species in some ways will end up causing our demise, unless we are able to change course very quickly. Based on our track record so far, the odds of that are very long.

I don't think we can change course at this point. The man has already fallen off the cliff, awaiting the impact.
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Cate

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Re: Peter Wadhams
« Reply #5 on: August 21, 2016, 07:11:42 PM »
Further to the Guardian interview today, here is their review of Wadhams' new book, A Farewell to Ice, published on Sept 1.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/21/farewell-to-ice-peter-wadhams-review-climate-change

AbruptSLR

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Re: Peter Wadhams
« Reply #6 on: August 21, 2016, 08:42:40 PM »
The linked article was written by Chloe Maxmin (a fellow with "The Nation"), and in it she acknowledges that Neoliberal thinking has become “The Washington Consensus”, by means of a long-term, well planned coup; and that the climate movement currently has no such clear plan of action and is left playing defense by allowing climate skeptics to endlessly frame the discussion in the media, so that the climate movement cannot make significant progress.

Indeed, Maxmin concludes that the climate movement must take the time (decades) to develop a comparable action plan with a shared intellectual platform, clear mainstream messaging, and methodical implementation at all levels of society (from grass roots to the stratosphere).
Assuming that she is correct that the climate movement will continue to flounder without such a multi-decade effort to develop an action plan, we can conclude that by then the global socio-economic collapse will have occurred and that the action plan should be developed for the less than 1 Billion people remaining, or else we will wind-up with the feudalism envisioned by JimD.

In such a post-collapse society, I envision two main socio-economic frameworks keeping mankind above feudalism, which are: (a) the inheritors of those orchestrating the "4th Industrial Revolution" (AI, robotics, biotechnology, etc.) who will acquiesce personal freedom in order to focus on enhanced effectiveness via the information-driven fruits of the 4th Industrial Revolution and (b) the inheritors of the mindfulness movement who rally around a clear compelling message focused on "Free Will" as understood by millennia of wisdom from such traditions as the Vipassana movement (see the "Adapting to the Anthropocene" thread).


https://www.thenation.com/article/what-the-climate-movement-can-learn-from-the-neoliberal-coup/

Extract: "What the Climate Movement Can Learn from the Neoliberal Coup
With its strategy and our moral compass, the climate movement could be unstoppable.


 How can the climate movement develop the political power to fight effectively?

To glean a few answers, I looked to what I regard as one of the most successful examples of social change in the modern era: the neoliberal coup. Between 1975 and 2008, an ideological movement called “neoliberalism” evolved from fringe theory into the dominant economic paradigm of our age, with great help from the Republican Party, and then, the Democrats as well.


 In 1958, 73 percent of Americans trusted their government.

All that changed in the 1970’s. Stagflation—high unemployment, high inflation, and stagnant growth—gripped the US economy. Keynesian policies did little to alleviate the crisis

 Then came neoliberalism’s true champion, Ronald Reagan, in 1981. He mesmerized the country (and the world) with free market idealism expressed in anti-big government rhetoric, policies, and practices. Reagan’s focus.

 Neoliberal thinking is now the status quo among Republicans, many Democrats, and most major institutions—it’s called “The Washington Consensus.”

 The Republican’s neoliberal movement rests on a shared vision and a long-range understanding of how to translate that vision from theory to practice. From the very beginning, neoliberals were committed to a disciplined long game.

 The climate movement has developed as a social force since the 1980s, but it does not yet have the shared vision or long game capable of changing the core of American society.

 The neoliberal movement’s vision was forged among an exclusive group of thinkers and then fed to a political party that champions elites. The climate movement will need to produce a shared vision in ways that are consistent with our democratic values.

 An important step in the neoliberal ascent was clean, clear, compelling messaging that exemplified neoliberal values, garnered support, and could flow through the Republican Party. One word did most of the work: freedom.

 Another key component of the mainstream infusion was think tanks—institutions that incubated ideas and policies. Neoliberalism’s converts developed a “transatlantic network,” as Jones calls it, that established think tanks to further the cause. As Jones comments, these “nodes” absorbed ideas from neoliberalism’s Founding Fathers and turned them into innovative policy formulations. It was these think tanks that then nurtured neoliberal thinking for three decades, maintained close relationships with Republican politicians, and ultimately fed innovative policies to Washington’s elite for mainstream diffusion. The Heritage Foundation was ground zero for the GOP’s original position on individual mandates for health insurance. (In 1983, Ronald Reagan told a Heritage gathering that they were leading an “intellectual revolution.”)

…  “The real action is in the think tanks these days.” Mirowski adds that the left has “no conception of the amount of regimentation it takes to achieve something like this.”
 The lack of a shared intellectual platform, clear mainstream messaging, and methodical implementation leaves the climate movement playing defense.

 The best defense is a good offense. Brulle agrees that we need to “start taking examples from how effective the conservative movement has been and try to apply some of the strategies…. we need to expand our tactics to encompass some of this.” We focus on local specific campaigns to defend ourselves against the ever-present threats to home, family, and life. This work is crucial, but we also need to take the time to develop a vision, incubate our thinking, develop policies, disseminate new intellectual frameworks, and implement new action strategies. Some will say that the climate movement doesn’t have time to develop this kind of intellectual and political apparatus. My response: We don’t have the time not to.

 The next lesson to learn from the Republican neoliberal coup is the impressive top-down and bottom-up political apparatus. As Mirowski told me, true success stems from having a “central intellectual guide and a set of projects at the local, individual, parochial level.”

 The climate movements offers our society truth instead of denial, survival instead of chaos, justice instead of injustice, equality instead of inequality, and democracy instead of oligarchy."


See also:
http://www.chloemaxmin.com/

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

budmantis

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Re: Peter Wadhams
« Reply #7 on: August 22, 2016, 01:02:33 AM »
However, I have, like some others here, the feeling that we have already blown past population, co2 levels, and biodegradation on levels incompatible with survival of many humans or other life forms on the planet so I am just an observer who is greatful to be 65 years old and with no children. Civilizations have failed before, only thing different this time is a supposedly intelligent species appears to be causing it.

What you're saying Milret is pretty dire, but unfortunately true. Our success as a species in some ways will end up causing our demise, unless we are able to change course very quickly. Based on our track record so far, the odds of that are very long.

I don't think we can change course at this point. The man has already fallen off the cliff, awaiting the impact.

I had that same thought while I was writing the above post. Still, I'm hoping for the best.

Adam Ash

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Re: Peter Wadhams
« Reply #8 on: September 09, 2016, 06:14:31 AM »
...
In such a post-collapse society, I envision two main socio-economic frameworks keeping mankind above feudalism, which are: (a) the inheritors of those orchestrating the "4th Industrial Revolution" (AI, robotics, biotechnology, etc.) who will acquiesce personal freedom in order to focus on enhanced effectiveness via the information-driven fruits of the 4th Industrial Revolution and (b) the inheritors of the mindfulness movement who rally around a clear compelling message focused on "Free Will" as understood by millennia of wisdom from such traditions as the Vipassana movement (see the "Adapting to the Anthropocene" thread).
...

Hi ASLR!  Much as I would like to think that the great descent will give folks the opportunity to choose among your ' two main socio-economic frameworks ' of Robotics and Mindfulness,  I wonder how in practice you see the transition working place to place, moment to moment?

After all, the global experience to date suggests that entropy will have its wicked way, and the process of unraveling from our present high-energy, high organisation living style will be neither smooth nor particularly controlled. 

Look at 'modern day' Venezuela,  as an example.  There a technically literate and comparatively affluent proletariat have been reduced to killing zoo animals and family pets for food because the supermarket shelves are empty.  I'm sure, given a few moments of free time some of the geeks there are quite capable of creating some AI enabled robots to solve the nation's problems, and to help them avoid the compulsory farm labour requirement, but that doesn't seem to have happened at any useful scale.  Protesters in the street speak intelligently about efforts to create 'mindful' cooperatives to produce necessities such as food and clean water, but then they have to get back in the food line or they and their families don't eat.

Of course local interest groups do arise and prevail - we would call them gangs of thugs, but they and theirs do get to eat.  I doubt they are into engaging with either of the comparatively saintly behavioural adaptions you are suggesting.

In such localised unravelings the imperatives of the moment would appear to foreclose on any socially or technically 'smart' routes out of the predicament.  Instead there is a prompt descent to the lowest survivable state for some (not all) people, and any subsequent reorganisation of society into a more enlightened state of being will take time and resources.

Time we have in abundance, but unfortunately we have already blown the readily-obtainable resources.  So in my view, for individuals in each localised community suffering their own economic and social impacts, the descent to a local equilibrium will be abrupt and largely unstoppable, and any climb up from the resulting tribal life (similar to that of our forebears 1000 years ago) to anything better will take a very very long time. 
 

Jim Hunt

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Re: Peter Wadhams
« Reply #9 on: September 09, 2016, 09:04:00 AM »
A repost from the "melting season" thread:

A podcast in which Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University,  debates Arctic sea ice decline with Dr David Schroeder from the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at Reading University and Jonathan Bamber, professor of physical geography at the University of Bristol:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2016/sep/06/the-fate-of-arctic-sea-ice-science-weekly-podcast
"The most revolutionary thing one can do always is to proclaim loudly what is happening" - Rosa Luxemburg

nicibiene

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Re: Peter Wadhams
« Reply #10 on: May 23, 2017, 08:49:04 AM »
Very interesting podcast, showing the disagreement and conflicts in scientific sights of modellers and field scientists like Peter Wadhams, that goes out to make a prediction when sea ice will be gone, based on measurements-while modellers rely blindly in their computers.... I have the book here, stumbled about the chapter where he critizizes IPCC predictions from 2013 -ignoring past real datas completely, taking modelled datas, stopping history in 2005 -working with RPC2.4, that is completely unrealistic....  :-X It is really incredible what is done there

I just felt urged to translate the chapter into German and sent it to my newspaper that reported yesterday about a starting expedition to Northpole under german administration here from Saxony.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” –“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” Albert Einstein

DoomInTheUK

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Re: Peter Wadhams
« Reply #11 on: May 23, 2017, 09:27:25 AM »
...... starting expedition to Northpole under german administration here from Saxony.

Give it a few months and I might describe that as a pleasant cruise rather than an expedition.

nicibiene

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Re: Peter Wadhams
« Reply #12 on: May 23, 2017, 09:58:58 AM »
Give it a few months and I might describe that as a pleasant cruise rather than an expedition.
;D I'm so curious what they will report in our newspaper, that most times seems to be sponsered by fossil coal company ENVIA... They even gave it the headline, connecting recent weather extremes with "huge thaw of ice" and there are interesting institutes on board of Polarstern. https://www.awi.de https://www.tropos.de

Really remarkable....
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” –“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” Albert Einstein

DoomInTheUK

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Re: Peter Wadhams
« Reply #13 on: May 23, 2017, 10:59:37 AM »
All I can do is sigh and shake my head.

nicibiene

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Re: Peter Wadhams
« Reply #14 on: May 23, 2017, 12:03:31 PM »
All I can do is sigh and shake my head.
and I could scream all day long if I look at the general ignorance and inaction.

Hearing in the podcast how Wadhams, as a very experienced ice scientist, is blamed to be irresponsable to do any open warning prediction using measured datas is quite disturbing....

Here in Germany I got by coincidence in contact with a very related thing. All weather stations will get replaced by automatic ones and the green party started some protests against it. Our mountain station nearby in an altitude of 1214 m has a complete climate row of over 100 years. IMO the station is perfectly positioned at a mountainridge in east-western direction to watch and judge about occuring changes in cloud formations, athmospheric changes. There is no way to measure all things automatically (snowheights, sight distance, cloudforms)

As it will be automatic, the climate row will be disrupted - datas have to be without gaps to match the requirements of WMO for climate datas. The harsh conditions that are here in winter require qualified persons to maintain the instruments. A lot of german climate rows of already automatized stations have been destroyed sucessfully. The official person I saw there from german DWD (weather service, responsible for weather AND climate, standing under the ministery for TRAFFIC, that made "fine" lobby work regarding VW scandal!  ;D) told the interested public: measurements by humans are not neccessary any more: there are climate models to work with, satellites are available. It's general international standard.

And so the unconvenient real datas are getting eliminated like Wadhams shows! And the employees of the weather stations are not able to protest  or raise their voice, because they are officials, with guaranteed jobs and the duty to loyality.
« Last Edit: May 23, 2017, 12:22:04 PM by nicibiene »
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” –“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” Albert Einstein

DoomInTheUK

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Re: Peter Wadhams
« Reply #15 on: May 24, 2017, 05:37:43 PM »
Don't scream too long or your throat will get sore.......and that's about all that will happen.

Today's career politicians only care about the next election and what makes them look good. The idea of "in the national interest" has now been downgraded to "In the national interest if it's sexy enough to go on my CV, and I understand it".

The loss of the timelines is heartbreaking from a science point of view, but if people don't understand why it's a problem, then they won't care enough to fight to keep them.