Kevin Anderson Hits the Target About Academics "Running Scared"

Kevin Anderson is to some global leaders and many academics what Tiresias was to King Oedipus in the Noble Prize Summit -- OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE April 27 performed by Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Jeffrey Wright, Frankie Faison, David Strathairn, Corey Hawkins, and Nobel Prize-winning scientists, including Elizabeth Blackburn and Harold Varmus among others. In another performance of Sophocles' Greek tragedy, starring Michael Pennington & Claire Bloom, Tiresias says, "You compel me to speak. [ . . . . ] You are the man, the unclean thing [causing the plague . . . .]"  There are obvious differences in that Anderson, a previous Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, is a top climate scientist relying on best available data to warn about effects of a possible 4 C [above 1850 preindustrial baseline] Earth, while Tiresias uses intuition to warn about the continuing plague in Thebes until Oedipus accepts responsibility. The suffering is similar in that possibly 4 billion humans, or more, face early death in a 4 C world, that may, or may not, happen depending on action primarily among top CO2 emitting citizens of Earth, and historically top CO2 emitting nations of the U. S., China, India, Russia, and Japan. 

Anderson, in a May 13, 2021 interview by Dan Miller (posted May 23, 2021), makes several excellent points. When I watched his interview May 24, it had 84 views. Based on Anderson's integrity (he hasn't used an airplane since 2004), clarity, and honesty, it deserves 84 million views. For example, the interview notes he took an 11-day train trip to China, one way, instead of boarding a plane when he was required to attend a ceremony as Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. It reminded me of when my students said "We know you wrote books about climate change, but what else have you done?"

In the Anderson interview, starting at 11:07 on the timeline, he says about the Paris Climate Agreement, "So it then talks about the sort of levels of emissions that need to be achieved at certain times during the century, take 2030 and 2050, but in doing that it is sort of hiding the fact that it is relying on huge amounts of [ . . . ] negative emissions technologies, or carbon dioxide removal, actually some way that we can remove carbon dioxide. [ . . . ] When I say 'we,' [ . . . ] I mean our children and our children's children. So we're already passing that burden to another generation. Can remove huge quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the future, and that allows us to [ . .  ] paint a relatively politically palatable picture for the nearer term [ . . . . ] That part is highly misleading. [ . . . . ]  But actually, if you played out the temperature thresholds themselves, and [ . . . ] were not to rely rather on our children deploying these huge numbers of technologies in the future, then the political challenge is an order of magnitude different than what most people would interpret from the Paris Agreement."  

At 18:50 on the timeline, he continues, "There are no non-radical futures. The future is radically different to the present either because we make huge rapid shifts in reducing our emissions with profound shifts in our society or we hang on to the status quo for a few more years while we lock in huge impacts from climate change. [ . . . . ] The climate doesn't respond to targets. The climate only responds to less CO2 emissions, and other GHGs [Greenhouse gases]. [ . . . . ] If you assume there is an increased number of commitments after 2030, but not the dramatic levels that would be necessary, then I think it's fair to say that the [Paris Climate Agreement] NDCs [Nationally Determined Contributions] are somewhere between 3 to 4 degrees centigrade of warming [above 1850 preindustrial baseline] so a different planet [ . . . . ] It's occurring so quickly [to a 4 C rise] that human systems, ecological systems, can not evolve that rapidly in any sort of stable form so [ . . . ] you could not adapt to that level of change and still hold a moderately organized civilized, if we are civilized, [society . . . ] You couldn't live in the sort of reasonable levels of security that we have today. [ . . . . ] And it also wouldn't be stable so you wouldn't be stopping at 4 degrees centigrade. [ . . . . ] I regularly say in talks that I would like to see significant funding of negative emissions technologies, and some of the other carbon dioxide removal techniques, and deployment of them if they meet strict stringent sustainability and equity criteria. But to rely on those, rather than actually reducing our emissions today, that is the moral hazard. [ . . . . ] It's the reliance on these [carbon capture] technologies being deployed at global scale. [ . . . . ] If you look at most of the scenarios that are informing governments on reducing emissions, and if you look at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group Three, [ . . . and] if you look at all the scenarios in the IPCC, virtually every single one of them, they're awash with some sort of way of removing huge quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the future at a scale that is not that dissimilar to the size of the current oil and gas industry. [ . . . .]" 

Two nights ago I watched Merchants of Doubt, one of Anderson's favorite films, which complements my note two posts below about evidence "fossil fuel companies have known this [climate distaster] would happen since 1959." While fossil fuel companies are primarily responsible, Anderson makes it clear some cowardly global leaders, and many cowardly academics are also to blame. Specifically, a June 16, 2020 press release about a paper led by Anderson in the journal Climate Policy noted he "draws a damning conclusion from the research: 'Academics have done an excellent job in understanding and communicating climate science, but the same cannot be said in relation to reducing emissions. Here we have collectively denied the necessary scale of mitigation, running scared of calling for fundamental changes to both our energy system and the lifestyles of high-energy users. Our paper brings this failure into sharp focus.'” Bull's-eye. 

Steven Koonin vs Climate Reality

It would be wonderful to discover NASA scientist James Hansen's June 23, 1988 warning to the U. S. Congress about climate change, and his 2016 video "Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms [ . . .]," were wrong. I could change this fishing/climate blog into just a fishing blog. I could write about many other social justice/nonhuman issues that need attention. I could breathe more deeply, relax, sleep better. Unfortunately, each new IPCC report shows Hansen was right, and it would be wise for global leaders and citizens to listen to him and others like him. 

Steven Koonin's new book Unsettled argues, as his publisher's page suggests, various climate-concerned "statements are profoundly misleading." Dean Myerson wrote a helpful Amazon review: "As more scientists look at Koonin's work, it is not faring well. Global fire decreasing? Apparently he is using figures that mostly measure manmade fires set by farmers, which are decreasing. Wildfire is increasing. Greenland not melting faster than 80 years ago? Well it is melting faster than 60, 70, 90 or 100 years ago. But there was a brief heat wave 80 years ago, making the statement true but irrelevant. It goes on an on like that." A May 3, 2021 Climatefeedback.org article edited by Boris Bellanger gives more details, noting "Twelve scientists analyzed the [Wall Street Journal] article [praising Koonin's book] and estimate its overall scientific credibility to be very low." Bellanger's article further refutes the Wall Street Journal April 25, 2021 article by Mark P. Mills. 

Mills' wrote "Mr. Koonin makes clear, few areas of science are as complex and multidisciplinary as the planet’s climate." I must disagree. As I wrote in one of my most recently-visited posts, "What is the Best Way to Explain the Climate Crisis?," "astronaut and former Director, Earth Sciences Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Piers Sellers says 'the ice is melting, the Earth is warming, the sea level is rising – those are facts.'" Sellers continues,  "Rather than being, 'oh my god, this is hopeless', say, 'OK, this is the problem, let’s be realistic and let’s find a way out of it'. And there are ways out of it. If we stopped burning fossil fuels right now, the planet would still keep warming for a little while before cooling off again.' At the time he says this, he has 'pancreatic cancer, stage four,' and dies December 23, 2016, about two months after the film [Before the Flood was] released October 21, 2016.  I observed people close to death get rare perspective and honesty, and Sellers gives both."

Mills' comments "the right response is to debate the science" and "basis of claims that are so unsettled" are the same tired arguments oil giants made long enough to turn a treatable disease, to use the metaphor of a human body, into a possible terminal illness. More recently the tactic, according to Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, has been to reframe/redefine responsibility away from oil companies to consumers. Derrick Jensen in a video Forget Shorter Showers, based on his 2009 Orion essay, showed why this oil company ploy is ridiculous. 

Supran and Oreskes wrote in the May 13, 2021 paper "Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil's climate change communications" at One Earth, "Smerecnik and Renegar have shown that subsequent BP branding activities similarly 'plac[e] participatory emphasis on consumer conservation behavior as opposed to corporate responsibility.'”  In a related matter, BP, Koonin's former employer where he was Chief Scientist "from 2004 to early 2009," notoriously "featured a TV ad 'We will get this done. We will make this right.' as oil gushed 87 days [in the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill], and highly toxic dispersants were used to hide devastation from the public.  Tim Wall of news.discovery.com noted December 3, 2012, in an article “BP Oil Highly Toxic When Mixed with Dispersants,” “When the oil was combined with the dispersant, the mix became up to 52 times more toxic than the oil alone, according to the study Martinex conducted at Georgia Tech.” I wrote about this, and more, in my 2014 "Manifesto from Poet on a Dying Planet" at Split Rock Review. 

Similarly, Naomi Klein wrote at pbs.org July 1, 2010, expressing concerns about geo-engineering "Steven Koonin [ . . . . was] the man who [ . . . ] was overseeing the technology behind BP’s supposedly safe charge into deepwater drilling." Jim Thomas noted June 28, 2010, at theecologist.org, "Koonin was intimately acquainted with the very technologies that have failed so spectacularly on the Deepwater Horizon rig in his former job as BP’s chief scientist. While his current employer, Barack Obama [was] trying to figure out 'whose ass to kick’ over the spill, he [may have found it] instructive to zip back to a presentation by Koonin at MIT in 2005, in which we [saw] Koonin-as-oilman boasting of his company’s technological prowess in taking oil exploration and production into the ultra deep waters of the gulf.[ par break]  In particular, he [said] that $50 million to bore a hole in the gulf’s seabed [would] yield a million barrels a day, describing the technical challenges of depth and pressure. A small note on the bottom of his slide [read] ‘marine environment creates integrity challenges’ - engineering-speak for ‘accidents likely’. [ . . . .] Koonin’s much lauded role at BP was precisely to apply cutting-edge science to the problem of declining oil reserves and growing climate crisis. Koonin led a team of researchers that would allow for the more economical extraction of hard-to-get oil (e.g. tar sands, deep water drilling)." As I noted in my aforementioned "Manifesto [. . .]," "Maybe BP could have prevented The [BP] Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill if it would have bought acoustic oil switch cut offs like those required by law in Brazil and Norway." In short, when it comes to transparency, Koonin has proven unreliable.

Given all this, how do I explain the popularity of Koonin's book with some readers? One answer is Merchants of Doubt Movie CLIP - Hard Pill to Swallow (2015).

Thoughts and Prayers for Thousands of Klamath Falls, Oregon, Farmers/Ranchers, Facing Water Shut Off for "First Year in History" as "Millions of Migrating Birds" Suffer and "70% of [ . . . Downriver Salmon Smolts Are] Already Dead in the Traps Used to Collect Them"

My all-time best fishing buddy was my second cousin Gary Starbuck who lived in Kamath Falls, Oregon, so I made visits there the past five years.  I had dinner with ranching families, and found them hardworking, honest, with an uncommon joy in life.  So, my thoughts and prayers go to the thousands in Klamath Falls, Oregon, facing, for the first year, complete water shut off, and all that means for their farms, ranches, children, bank loans, crops, livestock, futures, and culture. I can't in good conscience criticize these people for wanting water to survive. I won't criticize upriver or downriver Native peoples for wanting to survive either, or "half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of migrating birds each year," or estimated "70 percent of the fish [ . . .] already dead in the traps used to collect them and 97 percent [ . . . ] infected by the bacteria known as C. shasta" according to Yurok fish biologists cited by The Associated Press on May 14, 2021.

"[Oregon] state climatologist [Larry] O’Neill said mounting evidence suggests [ . . . this is] the driest 20-year period in the past millennium" according to Bradley W. Parks's May 13, 2021 article at opb.org. A similar drought situation happened in 2001 according to Eric Bailey's Los Angeles Times article "Water War Pits Farms Against Fish." The article noted "[Rob Crawford] and the 1,500 other farmers and ranchers in the Klamath Basin, a productive agrarian region straddling the Oregon border, have been denied water [in 2001]. They are casualties of a drought and efforts to save endangered fish. In the long history of Western water wars, it is the first time a community has been forced to stop farming, experts said. [ . . . . ] Many face bankruptcy or outright ruin." The article continues "Crawford drives by a reminder each day. Just up the road from his modest home, the farmer points to a big clapboard house. It’s a lovely spread, but the farmer who lived there, he says, committed suicide last year. Couldn’t pay his loans."

Bailey also wrote "On the road into Tulelake, population 1,000 and shrinking, signs have been erected by angry farmers. '73 Years With Water . . . Until Now!'  [ . . . . ] At Tulelake Elementary, Principal Patty Reeder [ . . . . ] said, 'kids went home crying': ‘I’m going to move. I’m going to move.’ [ . . . . ] Venancio Hernandez [ . . . . ] worked up from farm hand to manager to his own crops on leased land. [ . . . . ] He said 'I like to stay here for the kids.' [ . . . ] He turns his back, raises his head to the dusty heavens. The tears come forth. [par break] 'For someone to just come and say you can’t have water,' he sobs, 'it just feels like they cut you in half.'”

In a related climate liability matter, on April 8 I participated in Coastal Shores Specialist Meg Reed's excellent presentation "Preparing for Sea Level Rise in Oregon" in the Lower Nehalem Watershed's Speaker Series. Reed, according to tillamookcountypioneer.net, is based in Newport, Oregon, "for the Oregon Coastal Management Program, administered through the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development." The tillamookcountypioneer.net announcement quoted Margaret Treadwell, the Program Coordinator for Friends of Cape Falcon Marine Reserve, "A certain amount of sea level rise is unavoidable, even if we were to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” she said. "Adapting to sea level rise can feel like an overwhelming problem, so I think it will be very interesting and heartening to hear about the ways that it’s being planned for in Oregon and around the world.”

After that presentation, I emailed Reed, and Clatsop County Commissioner Pamela Wev, who also participated, "[ . . . . ] I asked the question about legally making fossil fuel companies pay for sea walls, raising roads, etc. I mentioned fossil fuel companies have known this would happen since 1959. [ . . . . ] I hope Astoria and other Oregon/Washington coastal cities will join together to make fossil fuel companies pay." The same concern obviously applies to the aforementioned "driest 20-year period" in a thousand years causing human and nonhuman disaster in the Klamath Falls, Oregon, area. 

In my 2015 book Industrial Oz, I wrote about the 2001/2002 drought in the Klamath Falls area:

My friend says 5 ranchers near Klamath Falls
shot themselves when water was cut. [ . . . . ]

"I knew them.  They were all good men.” 

Looking at Mr. Steelhead in our raft,
I think of 30,000 salmon, mostly chinook, that died in 2002 

from suffocation and disease brought by drought.  [ . . . . ]

Floating on summer silence, casting below alders,
I say “We have to do better for ranchers and salmon.” 

and think, but don’t say, it will take uncommon vision,
sacrifice, and planning this world has never seen. 

Massachusetts Review Accepting Work Until June 15 About "climate refugees, environmental migrants, and others who are experiencing the disaster firsthand"

Thanks to Alaskan Writer Ken Waldman who endorsed my new book for this:

http://massreview.org/node/9564

Here are "General Guidelines." In a related matter, one of my top posts is "Schellnhuber: 'Rising Seas Could Affect 1.4 Billion People by 2060'" with a 2017 film trailer for Ai Weiwei's Human Flow about "massive human migration."

Climate Emergency and Harlan Howard's "three chords and the truth”

It has been widely reported Harlan Howard defined country music as “three chords and the truth,” and it could also be a motto for the climate emergency. In 2019 Johan Rockström, one of the climate scientists I most respect, claimed he was misquoted by Gaia Vince's May 18, 2019 article in The Guardian regarding effects of a 4 C world above preindustrial 1850 baseline. Vince first wrote Rockström said "It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate a billion people or even half of that." The Guardian, at Rockström's request, changed that to "It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate eight billion people or maybe even half of that." The correct number could have reasonably been a billion based on founding director of the Potsdam Institute Hans Joachim Schellnhuber's quote by Paddy Manning in a July 9, 2011 article in The Sydney Morning Herald: "in a 4 degree warmer world, the population ' . . . . carrying capacity estimates [are] below one billion people.'"  Are we to believe this different analysis between the founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research -- Schellnhuber --  and current director Rockström? Maybe, but it looks suspicious.  With stakes this high, and soon to get much higher, this inconsistency is unhelpful, even if it was 100% honest.  

In other words, the urgency will be interpreted differently if a 3.2+ to 4 C world zone, with 3.2+ noted as "most likely scenario" by 2100 at Datawrapper citing  "warming predictions according to Raftery et.al, 2017," means a billion humans survive at 4 C [above preindustrial] Earth versus 4 billion. It's important because of speed of change, and scale, needed to remove carbon emissions. Dave Borlace, citing a 2019 IPCC report, noted below "It's actually more like about 5 degrees Celsius higher [ . . . . ] within 80 years or so at our current trajectory."

The site worldometers.info notes Earth's current population is nearly 7.9 billion. 

This was not the first time Schellnhuber was silenced. In my August 25, 2018 post I praised his YouTube presentation as "clear-thinking," "revealing," and "wise." In the "revealing" part I quoted him, "It's all about agency, about who could turn this crisis into a solution. [ . . . .] The CEO of Shell once told me 'The climate problem is real but it is completely intractable. You can not solve it. So, let's get rich quick before the world ends, huh?'" After I wrote this, YouTube noted "Video unavailable."  Was this video removed because of what Schellnhuber said about a CEO of Shell?  I don't know.

Anyway, out of respect for Rockström, I posted updates on the four times I used the original quote about a 4 C world, "It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate a billion people or even half of that.":

Two Charts Showing What 2 C, 3 C, 4 C, and 5 C Mean. Global Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) Agreed to in Paris in 2016 Were 3.5 C (6.3 F) Over Pre-Industrial Levels, and Global Emissions Are Still Rising.;

Climate Equity Graph from Meinshausen et al. 2009, and Aerosol Killing / Cooling Double Bind;

Two Items from New IPCC Report, "Sky Whale" Poem, and New Book (Dave Borlace, citing the September 24, 2019 IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, notes "It's actually more like about 5 degrees Celsius higher [ . . . . ] within 80 years or so at our current trajectory.");

Welcome to the Future -- Thoughts and Prayers for Those in Dorian's Path