A Good Time to Pray (post recycled from 1/9/18)

This is the first time I recycled a post. I thought it odd this post was visted recently until I read it again.

Today I saw James Temple's  December 6, 2017 article "Global Warming’s Worst-Case Projections Look Increasingly Likely" in MIT Technology Review citing a paper in Nature that claimed "under the the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s [IPCC's] steepest  prediction for greenhouse-gas concentrations [ . . . . ] the odds that temperatures will increase more than 4 [°C over pre-industrial level . . . ] by 2100 in this so-called 'business as usual' scenario increased from 62 percent to 93 percent." For context, consider the newly complied data means a prediction "15 percent hotter than the previous estimate" following a pattern of the situation being much worse than thought.

Consider what an increase of 4 °C over pre-industrial level means. In a December 31, 2013, article in The Guardian by Damian Carrington, Professor Steven Sherwood, at the University of New South Wales, in Australia, said "4C would likely be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous [ . . . ] For example, it would make life difficult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics, and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet."

If Greenland melts, it has been widely reported seas will rise "6 meters (20 feet),"  and if the Antarctic Ice Sheet melts, "60 meters (197 feet)."

Below I wrote we need a modern Alan Turing (invented computer) with enough vision to matter. However, the more one looks into the scale and trends, the more obvious it is that social engineering is needed as much as technological geoengineering, especially since, as was noted below by Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam University Professor of Physics of the Oceans, speaking at the 2017 Bonn Climate Conference, geoengineering is unlikely to work. Many people cringe when they hear the term "social engineering" so how about "global social awakening"?

Robert Bly's book The Light Around the Body quotes Jacob Boehme (1575-1624): "For according to the outward man, we are in this world, and according to the inward man, we are in the inward world…. Since then we are generated out of both worlds, we speak in two languages, and we must be understood also by two languages." and

"Dear children, look in what a dungeon we are lying, in
what lodging we are, for we have been captured by the spirit
of the outward world; it is our life, for it nourishes and
brings us up, it rules in our marrow and bones, in our flesh
and blood, it has made our flesh earthly, and now death has us."

It is possible the IPCC is wrong, but probably not.

If you are a prayerful person, now would be good.  I recall in Leonardo Dicaprio's Before the Flood, he met with my favorite Pope, Francis. Dicaprio noted "He said that as far as the Paris Conference is concerned, he felt was a step in the right direction, but certainly not enough. He feels we all need to keep speaking out about this issue as loud as we can, and that we must immediately take action. But more than anything, he said to pray for the human race."

If space aliens are watching, children of the same God, I hope they don't follow a Star Trek-like "Prime Directive" or "Temporal Prime Directive."

If they are following those, or aren't watching, it's up to you, me, and anyone willing to help.

Poem for COP28 in East Fork Eagle Creek, Columbia Gorge; James Hansen's "Global warming in the pipeline" (revised 23 May 2023) notes "Equilibrium global warming including slow feedbacks for today's human-made greenhouse gas (GHG) climate forcing (4.1 W/m2) is 10°C, reduced to 8°C by today's aerosols."; British Antarctic Survey researcher Dr. Kaitlin Naughten says "It looks like we’ve lost control of melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet." meaning, according to a related video, "slow addition of nearly 6 feet [1.8 meters] to sea levels" "in hundreds of years."

Poem for COP28
in East Fork Eagle Creek,
Columbia Gorge

Below 172-foot Tunnel Falls

a dead deer,

maybe from crossing

swift winter current.

 

I’m guessing

when flesh hit basalt

it ended quick.

Soon, coyotes would feast.

 

I knew it was metaphor

for something big

but didn’t know how big.

In a related matter, James Hansen's "Global warming in the pipeline" (revised 23 May 2023) appeared with this abstract:

"Improved knowledge of glacial-to-interglacial global temperature change implies that fast-feedback equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is 1.2 +/- 0.3°C (2σ) per W/m2. Consistent analysis of temperature over the full Cenozoic era -- including 'slow' feedbacks by ice sheets and trace gases -- supports this ECS and implies that CO2 was about 300 ppm in the Pliocene and 400 ppm at transition to a nearly ice-free planet, thus exposing unrealistic lethargy of ice sheet models. Equilibrium global warming including slow feedbacks for today's human-made greenhouse gas (GHG) climate forcing (4.1 W/m2) is 10°C, reduced to 8°C by today's aerosols. Decline of aerosol emissions since 2010 should increase the 1970-2010 global warming rate of 0.18°C per decade to a post-2010 rate of at least 0.27°C per decade. Under the current geopolitical approach to GHG emissions, global warming will likely pierce the 1.5°C ceiling in the 2020s and 2°C before 2050. Impacts on people and nature will accelerate as global warming pumps up hydrologic extremes. The enormity of consequences demands a return to Holocene-level global temperature. Required actions include: 1) a global increasing price on GHG emissions, 2) East-West cooperation in a way that accommodates developing world needs, and 3) intervention with Earth's radiation imbalance to phase down today's massive human-made 'geo-transformation' of Earth's climate. These changes will not happen with the current geopolitical approach, but current political crises present an opportunity for reset, especially if young people can grasp their situation."

As a reminder, Gregor Aisch at Datawrapper provided this "[ . . . 2°C, 3°C, 4°C, 5°C] Degrees of Global Warming" graphic based on the Raftery et.al, 2017 article "Less than 2 °C warming by 2100 unlikely," in Nature Climate Change, and "Inspired" by Josh Holder, Niko Kommenda and Jonathan Watts' article in The Guardian, "The three-degree world: the cities that will be drowned by global warming."

In more bad news, October 23, 2023 eurekalert.org quoted British Antarctic Survey researcher Dr. Kaitlin Naughten, "It looks like we’ve lost control of melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. If we wanted to preserve it in its historical state, we would have needed action on climate change decades ago. The bright side is that by recognising this situation in advance, the world will have more time to adapt to the sea level rise that’s coming. If you need to abandon or substantially re-engineer a coastal region, having 50 years lead time is going to make all the difference."

This October 23, 2023 Associated Press YouTube featuring Naughten notes, "The full melt will take hundreds of years, but its slow addition of nearly 6 feet [1.8 meters] to sea levels will reshape where and how people live." She adds, "I definitely don't want people to read this study and say, 'Oh, there isn't any hope. We should just give up.' because the West Antarctic is not the whole world. There are so many other impacts of climate change that we probably still can avoid even if this isn't one of them."

Regarding recent humanitarian issues, please donate to Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders to help those suffering in Gaza, and for its offer to support the injured in Israel. I have supported Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders for many years, and greatly respect their work.