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    Re: Climate study warns of vanishing safety window - big issues and important peripheral issue..... Archived Message

    Posted by John Monro on March 17, 2019, 9:32 pm, in reply to "Climate study warns of vanishing safety window"

    Firstly, this National Geographic Magazine article comments on an article publish in Nature, Climate Change. The problem being this original article, which is important, is behind a paywall. I believe that a system that allows these private, very profitable, academic journals to restrict the publication of knowledge to the wider community, (and this is not just in Nature, but in medical journals etc) is itself essentially "anti-academic". I think that governments or the international "community" needs to get involved. The lead writers of this research paper are employed at these universities, Tufts University MA, Cornell University NY, Pennsylvania University PA, and Rutgers University NJ - ie these are publicly funded employees at publicly funded institutions, therefore the pubic should,, by right, be able to read in its entirety the findings of the research they payed for Nature is owned by Springer Nature, involving a number of publishing companies, who publish a large number of academic journals with an income of $1.64 billion in 2017 with profits of €374 million. It recently listed on the German stock market to reduce a huge debt burden. The listing warns of the threat of free access to academic journals. There has been a lot of discussion about this in recent years - for instance see https://www.quora.com/What-does-Harvards-recent-stand-against-journal-subscription-prices-mean-for-the-future-of-academic-journal-publishing and you can follow links to similar discussions on Quora. Perhaps a generation or two ago, the need for such journals was less arguable, but nowadays with internet dissemination of pdf articles, the cost should be minimal. There does need to be peer review, but surely academic institutions internationally can organise this themselves?

    As to the National Geographic article. It states quite emphatically that the Paris Agreement is not fit for purpose, which is what I and many others thought at the time. Especially here in NZ, worlds most hypocritical nation in regard to climate change. Then it states that if we are to keep temperatures below 2 deg C we, all of humanity, must stop emitting CO2 entirely by 2030. That's pretty straightforward. The effort to do this is not the total cost, as suggested by the article and rationalised as just 3% GDP, but the cost as born by some very powerful industries, that's electricity generation, mining, cement, transport - and to much of humanity and their 2 billion cars. etc. To such industries the cost might be their very viability and the destruction of billions of dollars of share and asset values. To stop emitting CO2 by 2030 requires an effort several times greater than that required to fight the Second World War. I wouldn't be alone when I think this won't happen.

    It would be useful to remind ourselves of Prof James Hansen's view, that any CO2 level above 350ppm is likely dangerous. This is because the planet might not have a stable 2 deg C temperature rise. It may flip from ice age (-5 deg C), to holocene (0 deg C) and hotter (4-5 deg C) in other words, the planet's overall temperature isn't a smooth slope but more analogous to a flight of stairs. This is Hansen's view. The likely mechanism for this is the ice cover of the Arctic, the positive albedo feedback effect is probably the second most important factor after CO2 itself.

    This doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything we can to get CO2 down to zero as quickly as we can, as it is likely this will have some effect on the ultimate temperature attained.

    The article then really spoils its authority by going on to discuss the geo-engineering of spewing SO2 into the atmosphere. They call this solar geo-engineering. Well, this is an absurd description. We're not doing anything to the sun, but we are doing yet more interference with the atmosphere. This is delusional. Even if it is feasible, even if it does cool the planet, it means we are doomed to keep doing this for decades until we eventually decide to do something about CO2 emissions. Nor does it do anything at all for ocean acidification, in fact it will make ocean acidification much much worse, as SO2 is itself highly acidic, forming suphuric acid when dissolved in water. We know that, it's called acid rain, and we know the damage it can cause in pristine landscapes and to the lungs of the world's citizens. For Prof Mann to say he's "nervous about the unintended consequences" is egregiously understating the issue, rather surprising coming from Prof Mann.

    An analogy would be my treating my obese diabetic patient by prescribing him or her some toxic medication that makes them nauseated, so they don't eat so much, rather than suggesting, they might wish instead to see a dietician and eat rather more healthily. We'd end up with a very unhappy patient, still diabetic, as we'll end up with a very unhappy planet.

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