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."
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