This report reads like politics, not science. THB should know better than to hang its hat on this and draw conclusions like "climate change concern should not overshadow other risks" (paraphrased).
Outsourcing reasonable analysis to a third party political report, causes distrust with this publication.
Great men, like any men, often get off-tracked by singular personal events thereby damaging their entire future rational analysis. Some examples:
Elon Musk, whose trans-daughter (son?) plus his passion for rockets and thus fight against regulations has now turned him into MAGA.
Any supervilain in the Marvel, who got bullied young and swears revenge on everyone.
And THB, for being rejected by papers and idiot third party or peer reviewers, turning its back on rational analysis of Climate change.
Of course it is an existential risk, but it is not "sudden", so that's a big out-flag-caveat for you. Humans are bad at exponentials. They are not sudden at any point, until they are (because the system hits a discontinuity, the exponential is fine).
Catastrophic is that people are willingly blind to the risk just to avoid thinking about the impact to our lives and that of our descendants. And ecosystems, if you care about that.
Anyway now with MAGA in power, the climate battle is lost for a decade or two, and with that, forever. So let the chips fall where they may and MAGA voters and others, scientists and denialists, will all burn in unison worldwide, be displaced, emigrated, immigrated, alike.
I haven't managed to read the post properly but it seems that under climate change they didn't look at the start of a new glaciation which could severely change the possibility for human existence throughout parts of the US and Northern hemisphere. Why is a glaciation never part of the discussion on climate change?
If catastrophic means 25% dead then I vote for destabilizing the grid with renewables. But I guess that hits a little to close to the bone for a democrat led HLS.
If it drops in the dead of a North American winter we won’t be able to count the eventual dead.
Does seem like some reasonable people were tasked with writing this report, my question is how did they get this job as there must have been a gauntlet to run, some ideological purity tests to pass.
As you say, Planetary Boundaries (PBs) have been widely interpreted as "hard and fast [boundaries] ... within which human society must operate or else face apocalyptic consequencies". What is alarming is that authors of the seminal papers on this issue have generally failed to disabuse readers af this ascientific misconception. Indeed, as you note, Johan Rockstrom says "1.5C is not an arbitrary number ... it is a Planetary Boundary" ... meaning, fixed and well-defined. You say, correctly, that RocKstrom is wrong. "The Paris Agreement targets are not fundamental limits, they are arbitrary targets set in [by] a political process ..."
It is a while since I read those papers, so I can't recall whether they discuss or even try to quantify Boundary uncertainties ... or, better still, define boundaries probabilistically. Then there is no such thing as the "apocalyptic consequence" that would occur with 100% probability if we passed a particular boundary ... it becomes ,quite obviously, an issue of decision making under uncertainty. Conceptually, nothing has changed.
One existential threat to the US would be if an enemy took out our electric power grid. (see "Lights Out" by Ted Kopple) Our grid is risk as it is and may not be able to handle the forecasted very large electricity demand increase due to AI. Kopple said that if the entire grid went down 90% of the US population would be dead in 3 months. :(
Relatedly, a massive solar storm could also have wide-ranging effects on both the electrical grid and internet. I see that Roger mentioned the threat in his paper but it didn’t make the cut for this assessment.
Great piece, Dr. Pielke. Does this mean RCP 8.5 can finally be stricken from future consideration? Better yet, does this mean Congress can look at climate legislation with a less urgent and more long range perspective? Stop looking for quick fixes (renewables) and figure out how to reduce costs of better, sounder, and more reliable energy?
Bad ideas are the nearest thing humanity has to immortal life. Drive a stake through its heart and stuff garlic down its throat, we will still be battling RCP 8.5 when the Archangel blows his trumpet on Judgement Day.
I also think that the GCRA should certainly have been given a blank slate of possible significant risks and catastrophies rather than a list of six so some of the items mentioned by readers below could be considered. Timeframes are also very important (see ice age comment by Rushworth below relative to millions now dying now annually due to poor food, water, air and shelter) -- one year, 5, 10, 50, 100, 1000 years? I would also like to see % of population and numbers of deaths vs. local/regional/global. Probabilities in numerical ranges would be nice for guidance. Degree of control we humans have over certain events would also be useful. Most significantly, I would like to see a list of possible solutions and economic viability -- like how we could avoid, adapt, and protect from each of these and what approaches seem most logical. Not entirely serious: I think I could have met in my basement with some good wine and diverse group of free-thinking friends (some who, based on their comments below should definitely be included) for a few days to come up with report results like this.
The area to which I feel we are paying a dangerously small amount of attention as a potentially catastrophic risk is that of artificial intelligence. For an example of where the risk might lie, consider HG Wells 1895 novel, The Time Machine. Taking place in the distant future, the human race has divided into two groups, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Morlocks do all the work necessary to keep civilization going while the Eloi have lost the ability to do anything useful and are utterly dependent on the Morlocks for their very existence. Now transfer this concept to the not-so-distant future where more and more of the skilled work necessary to support our civilization has been transferred to AI and AI-controlled robots. Will the profession of surgeon, for example, exist a few decades from now, given that a very sophisticated AI robot could very likely in the not too distant future do all that a human surgeon can do today? Airline pilots? Power grid control? Financial systems control? We humans could all too easily become the Eloi where the knowledge and capability to perform all these functions has been lost because it was so much easier and cheaper to let AI do everything for us. And then if some kind of a digital bug or enemy action causes the AI systems to crash – back to the stone age!
I wonder how long before the climate activists infiltrate this assessment process to corrupt the future analyses. I can image a certain activist professor at Univ. of Penn working behind the scenes to get his colleagues to reshape this climate threat counter-narrative to align with the IPCC Report for Policy Makers.
Roger wrote: "I told her that I worry much more about the things that we are not paying attention to, noting that the COVID-19 pandemic arose following a long period where there was little attention or concern about pandemics among most scientists or policy makers.:
According to your colleague Scott Gottlieb's booK, George W. Bush was very concerned about the possibility of a flu pandemic and had experts make plans for dealing with one, including stockpiling supplies IIRC. IIRC, his book ("Uncontrolled Spread") says that the administration's initial strategy for better or worse followed the strategy laid out in the Bush administration: For example, unlike COVID, schools are a major source of community spread of influenza, which is why we have traditionally been quick to temporarily and locally close schools during serious flu outbreaks. Also, COVID is transmitted pre-symptomatically and asymptomatically more often than influenza, so isolation of symptomatic patients was less effective than expected. In Taiwan (with an epidemiologist VP) and South Korea (scared by MERS), the strategy of isolating everyone who had been in contact with a confirmed positive - whether or not they had symptoms or tested positive - was extremely successful until more transmissible (but less deadly) variants took over.
Concluding that climate change risks gets a "no" it seems some reeducation of our Government is needed. Global warming is, of course, not a risk at all but is actually helping to increase food production, lower low-temperature deaths and comes with many other benefits. However, our current interglacial will end someday, as it has about 11 times over the past million years. This is as sure as sure can be and when the cooling process begins, all but the southern parts of Europe, all of Canada and the northern half of the US will begin to accumulate "permanent" ice and will become uninhabitable. Past entries into glacial ages were erratic and mostly slow, occurring over a period of many thousands of years, so there will be time to adapt. But what would those adaptations be? For example, would there be enough arable land and enough rain to produce enough food for the population of Canada and the northern half of the US crammed into the bottom half? What will be the speed with which ice encroaches on places now widely habited? There are many many other issues which will arise when our inevitable entry into another glacial age begins.
The problem with confusing global warming, as the current climate concerns were once called, and changing its name to "climate change" so that CO2 can be blamed for just about everything, is that absolutely everyone has forgotten of the for-sure opposite of warming which could begin tomorrow, in 100 years or in 1,000 years but begin it will. If the government study did not consider this, then we are doomed indeed but not because of warming but because of willful ignorance.
I agree that climate-wise, the next glaciation is the only existential threat we face, it is inevitable. I think it has begun but it will take a long time to be noticeable so it’s not a here and now like the report focus.
I like how the legislation requires a focus on future threats to humanity other than climate change. I agree that these are much more of a concern.
After the recent Covid pandemic, this is pretty obvious, but unfortunately people in politics prefer to focus on climate change and try to force through very cost-ineffective policy to mitigate carbon emissions. Those same people ignore other more pressing threats.
It also seems a little odd from the quotes that the Department of Homeland Security mentioned “regional” threats from climate change without specifically calling out the USA. While we need to think about the rest of the globe, DHS should be laser-focused on the USA. A regional threat to say Africa should be treated as very different from a threat to the American homeland by DHS.
Thanks for this… it puts into perspective what many of us have been saying all along, that NetZero is unnecessary, technologically unattainable, economically unviable and extremely foolish. And especially as the “rest” of the global economies continue to do nothing anyway. It fits with the notion of focused adaption for “high risk areas” and will allow us to get on with prosperity using the power of Fossil fuels.
This report reads like politics, not science. THB should know better than to hang its hat on this and draw conclusions like "climate change concern should not overshadow other risks" (paraphrased).
Outsourcing reasonable analysis to a third party political report, causes distrust with this publication.
Great men, like any men, often get off-tracked by singular personal events thereby damaging their entire future rational analysis. Some examples:
Elon Musk, whose trans-daughter (son?) plus his passion for rockets and thus fight against regulations has now turned him into MAGA.
Any supervilain in the Marvel, who got bullied young and swears revenge on everyone.
And THB, for being rejected by papers and idiot third party or peer reviewers, turning its back on rational analysis of Climate change.
Of course it is an existential risk, but it is not "sudden", so that's a big out-flag-caveat for you. Humans are bad at exponentials. They are not sudden at any point, until they are (because the system hits a discontinuity, the exponential is fine).
Catastrophic is that people are willingly blind to the risk just to avoid thinking about the impact to our lives and that of our descendants. And ecosystems, if you care about that.
Anyway now with MAGA in power, the climate battle is lost for a decade or two, and with that, forever. So let the chips fall where they may and MAGA voters and others, scientists and denialists, will all burn in unison worldwide, be displaced, emigrated, immigrated, alike.
As the cornbelts die, we can just eat our words.
I haven't managed to read the post properly but it seems that under climate change they didn't look at the start of a new glaciation which could severely change the possibility for human existence throughout parts of the US and Northern hemisphere. Why is a glaciation never part of the discussion on climate change?
because its silly. We are living in a +1.5 degree world, going to 2 or 3. Glaciation will not come back for a million years after we are long gone.
Can't wait to see how apoplectic Michael Mann becomes upon reading this assessment. LOL.
If catastrophic means 25% dead then I vote for destabilizing the grid with renewables. But I guess that hits a little to close to the bone for a democrat led HLS.
If it drops in the dead of a North American winter we won’t be able to count the eventual dead.
Does seem like some reasonable people were tasked with writing this report, my question is how did they get this job as there must have been a gauntlet to run, some ideological purity tests to pass.
My surprise is it wasn’t buried.
Excellent essay, Roger.
As you say, Planetary Boundaries (PBs) have been widely interpreted as "hard and fast [boundaries] ... within which human society must operate or else face apocalyptic consequencies". What is alarming is that authors of the seminal papers on this issue have generally failed to disabuse readers af this ascientific misconception. Indeed, as you note, Johan Rockstrom says "1.5C is not an arbitrary number ... it is a Planetary Boundary" ... meaning, fixed and well-defined. You say, correctly, that RocKstrom is wrong. "The Paris Agreement targets are not fundamental limits, they are arbitrary targets set in [by] a political process ..."
It is a while since I read those papers, so I can't recall whether they discuss or even try to quantify Boundary uncertainties ... or, better still, define boundaries probabilistically. Then there is no such thing as the "apocalyptic consequence" that would occur with 100% probability if we passed a particular boundary ... it becomes ,quite obviously, an issue of decision making under uncertainty. Conceptually, nothing has changed.
Tom.
One existential threat to the US would be if an enemy took out our electric power grid. (see "Lights Out" by Ted Kopple) Our grid is risk as it is and may not be able to handle the forecasted very large electricity demand increase due to AI. Kopple said that if the entire grid went down 90% of the US population would be dead in 3 months. :(
Cities will be death traps without the grid
Everything “just in time”, nobody has much food storage, etc
I canned potatoes I grew this year, gets me another week I suppose.
Relatedly, a massive solar storm could also have wide-ranging effects on both the electrical grid and internet. I see that Roger mentioned the threat in his paper but it didn’t make the cut for this assessment.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240815-miyake-events-the-giant-solar-superstorms-that-could-rock-earth
Update: Ah, I see this topic made the comments already
Great piece, Dr. Pielke. Does this mean RCP 8.5 can finally be stricken from future consideration? Better yet, does this mean Congress can look at climate legislation with a less urgent and more long range perspective? Stop looking for quick fixes (renewables) and figure out how to reduce costs of better, sounder, and more reliable energy?
RCP8.5 should be buried in the back yard 😎
Whether it will or not . . .
Bad ideas are the nearest thing humanity has to immortal life. Drive a stake through its heart and stuff garlic down its throat, we will still be battling RCP 8.5 when the Archangel blows his trumpet on Judgement Day.
I also think that the GCRA should certainly have been given a blank slate of possible significant risks and catastrophies rather than a list of six so some of the items mentioned by readers below could be considered. Timeframes are also very important (see ice age comment by Rushworth below relative to millions now dying now annually due to poor food, water, air and shelter) -- one year, 5, 10, 50, 100, 1000 years? I would also like to see % of population and numbers of deaths vs. local/regional/global. Probabilities in numerical ranges would be nice for guidance. Degree of control we humans have over certain events would also be useful. Most significantly, I would like to see a list of possible solutions and economic viability -- like how we could avoid, adapt, and protect from each of these and what approaches seem most logical. Not entirely serious: I think I could have met in my basement with some good wine and diverse group of free-thinking friends (some who, based on their comments below should definitely be included) for a few days to come up with report results like this.
The area to which I feel we are paying a dangerously small amount of attention as a potentially catastrophic risk is that of artificial intelligence. For an example of where the risk might lie, consider HG Wells 1895 novel, The Time Machine. Taking place in the distant future, the human race has divided into two groups, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Morlocks do all the work necessary to keep civilization going while the Eloi have lost the ability to do anything useful and are utterly dependent on the Morlocks for their very existence. Now transfer this concept to the not-so-distant future where more and more of the skilled work necessary to support our civilization has been transferred to AI and AI-controlled robots. Will the profession of surgeon, for example, exist a few decades from now, given that a very sophisticated AI robot could very likely in the not too distant future do all that a human surgeon can do today? Airline pilots? Power grid control? Financial systems control? We humans could all too easily become the Eloi where the knowledge and capability to perform all these functions has been lost because it was so much easier and cheaper to let AI do everything for us. And then if some kind of a digital bug or enemy action causes the AI systems to crash – back to the stone age!
I wonder how long before the climate activists infiltrate this assessment process to corrupt the future analyses. I can image a certain activist professor at Univ. of Penn working behind the scenes to get his colleagues to reshape this climate threat counter-narrative to align with the IPCC Report for Policy Makers.
You never expect the inquisition.
But is do expect Piltdown to weigh in, especially as this was written and released by a Democrat appointed dept of Homeland Security
Roger wrote: "I told her that I worry much more about the things that we are not paying attention to, noting that the COVID-19 pandemic arose following a long period where there was little attention or concern about pandemics among most scientists or policy makers.:
According to your colleague Scott Gottlieb's booK, George W. Bush was very concerned about the possibility of a flu pandemic and had experts make plans for dealing with one, including stockpiling supplies IIRC. IIRC, his book ("Uncontrolled Spread") says that the administration's initial strategy for better or worse followed the strategy laid out in the Bush administration: For example, unlike COVID, schools are a major source of community spread of influenza, which is why we have traditionally been quick to temporarily and locally close schools during serious flu outbreaks. Also, COVID is transmitted pre-symptomatically and asymptomatically more often than influenza, so isolation of symptomatic patients was less effective than expected. In Taiwan (with an epidemiologist VP) and South Korea (scared by MERS), the strategy of isolating everyone who had been in contact with a confirmed positive - whether or not they had symptoms or tested positive - was extremely successful until more transmissible (but less deadly) variants took over.
Concluding that climate change risks gets a "no" it seems some reeducation of our Government is needed. Global warming is, of course, not a risk at all but is actually helping to increase food production, lower low-temperature deaths and comes with many other benefits. However, our current interglacial will end someday, as it has about 11 times over the past million years. This is as sure as sure can be and when the cooling process begins, all but the southern parts of Europe, all of Canada and the northern half of the US will begin to accumulate "permanent" ice and will become uninhabitable. Past entries into glacial ages were erratic and mostly slow, occurring over a period of many thousands of years, so there will be time to adapt. But what would those adaptations be? For example, would there be enough arable land and enough rain to produce enough food for the population of Canada and the northern half of the US crammed into the bottom half? What will be the speed with which ice encroaches on places now widely habited? There are many many other issues which will arise when our inevitable entry into another glacial age begins.
The problem with confusing global warming, as the current climate concerns were once called, and changing its name to "climate change" so that CO2 can be blamed for just about everything, is that absolutely everyone has forgotten of the for-sure opposite of warming which could begin tomorrow, in 100 years or in 1,000 years but begin it will. If the government study did not consider this, then we are doomed indeed but not because of warming but because of willful ignorance.
I agree that climate-wise, the next glaciation is the only existential threat we face, it is inevitable. I think it has begun but it will take a long time to be noticeable so it’s not a here and now like the report focus.
Quoting Pat Robinson here: "The data does not support this". Data goes into equations and simulations and produces a theoretical result = science.
You can say the words. But it is not science. Just hopeism. Or denialism. Whatever.
Glaciation is not on the schedule on civilizational timescales with the current warming trend.
I like how the legislation requires a focus on future threats to humanity other than climate change. I agree that these are much more of a concern.
After the recent Covid pandemic, this is pretty obvious, but unfortunately people in politics prefer to focus on climate change and try to force through very cost-ineffective policy to mitigate carbon emissions. Those same people ignore other more pressing threats.
It also seems a little odd from the quotes that the Department of Homeland Security mentioned “regional” threats from climate change without specifically calling out the USA. While we need to think about the rest of the globe, DHS should be laser-focused on the USA. A regional threat to say Africa should be treated as very different from a threat to the American homeland by DHS.
Thanks for this… it puts into perspective what many of us have been saying all along, that NetZero is unnecessary, technologically unattainable, economically unviable and extremely foolish. And especially as the “rest” of the global economies continue to do nothing anyway. It fits with the notion of focused adaption for “high risk areas” and will allow us to get on with prosperity using the power of Fossil fuels.
More at …. https://nigelsouthway.substack.com/p/no-netzero
I wish I had attended your recent talk! I’m in Littleton until early January.