Oblivion With Bells

'[T]he thicket of mind and flesh, the one on fire with the awareness of death, of your grave-bound life. [A]nd above all, the awareness of the crumbling, meaningless insubstantiality of life lived only by your own lights. [T]hat burden is what … relationship[s] [can help relieve]'

― @lazenby

I realise not everyone has time to read former NASA chief climatologist James Hansen's letter 'A Realistic Path to a Bright Future' about the state of the climate emergency, so I've read it and summarised what I think are the key quotes from it are below :

(emphases in bold are mine)

'An essential early requirement is that global greenhouse gas emissions begin to decline during this 4th decade of the Framework Convention.'

'China and the United States … [a]s the largest economies in the world, … have the ability to alter the global energy pathway via agreement on simple, honest carbon pricing, but adequate pricing becomes practicable only in concert with advances in carbon-free energy technologies including modern nuclear power.'

'Young people in the United States have the most urgent and crucial task: to fix the broken two-party political system.'

'To achieve the bright future, young people must understand what is needed and affect the political process accordingly.'

'[I]t’s certain that global warming will exceed 1.5°C and almost certain that it will exceed 2°C. That’s what real data from the physical sciences tells us.'

'The present large planetary energy imbalance should cause a new global temperature record to be reached by 2023 or 2024.'

'Barring the unlikely event of a Pinatubo-scale volcanic eruption, the +1.5°C level should be breached within a decade.'

'The inertia of the climate system allows us the opportunity to ameliorate consequences, if we understand the climate system and take sensible actions.'

'The eventual response to [current projection of climate change] – if it is left in place – will be global warming of about 4°C'

(above) 'This is the most important graph – carbon intensity – the amount of carbon per unit energy. Carbon intensity must go to near zero to solve the climate problem.'

(above) 'Global energy consumption since 1965 increased by more than a factor of three. Renewables – the green area – are increasing, but not enough to replace other energies. Because the carbon intensity of the energy decreased only from 80% to 70%, global CO2 emissions – the graph on the right – increased by a factor of three.'

'Emerging economies will be the source of most future emissions. So we should work together with China, India, Indonesia, Viet Nam…and other economies that are growing rapidly.'

(above) 'Today, China has the greatest emissions. China, the U.S. and India produce half of global emissions, as shown by the pie chart on the left. However, global warming is accurately proportional to cumulative emissions – total historical emissions – the pie chart on the right. The West – especially the United States – is responsible for more than half of historical emissions, despite the relatively small population of the West.'

'[O]n a per capita basis – using today’s populations – the U.S., the U.K., and Germany are the three major nations most responsible for global warming. Per capita responsibilities of China and India are much smaller.'

'[A]ll nations want to raise living standards. That’s the priority of governments. So, given the energy options readily available today, emissions will rise.'

'Special interests wade in the Washington swamp and bribe politicians. Politicians lie to the public to try to gain favor, for example, by declaring that climate change is a hoax.'

'A rising carbon price is the basic requirement to solve the climate problem; it will make all other actions to reduce emissions work better and faster.'

'When China and the United States agree on a rising carbon fee, the climate problem will be on the way to solution, and we will have a much cleaner, healthier, world.'

'When President Xi of China and Prime Minister Modi of India say that they will aim for net zero emissions by 2060 and 2070, they recognize the difficulty of the task and the fact that the world is not taking actions to make carbon intensity dive rapidly toward zero. The required actions are a rising carbon fee – to make the price of fossil fuels include their costs to society – and modern nuclear power as cheap as fossil fuels.'

'History shows that once a good design for a nuclear power plant is approved, nuclear power provides the fastest way to decarbonize because of the massive amount of energy provided by each power plant.'

'We must look at real data to assess the global situation. We cannot rely on soothing words heard at the COPs, words about goals for 2050. The data are damning. The data reveal minimal progress toward the zero carbon intensity goal. The data should make us suspect that carbon-free plans for 2050 are in part a hoax, a "scheme," as opposed to true carbon-free energy. Beware of any reference to "net zero" or "offsets."'

'The crucial requirement is that electricity generation be truly carbon-free. In most countries carbon-free electricity is unlikely to be achieved without a significant contribution from nuclear power.'

'Absolute proof of the pudding is the greenhouse gases. Look at what happened since the Paris Agreement of 2015. Gases are growing as fast as ever. A pathway to keep warming to 1.5°C was defined, but already a gap has opened up that would cost about $1 trillion dollars per year to close. Boris Johnson claimed that COP26 was a success – the goal to keep global warming below 1.5°C was still achievable. That assessment is pure, unadulterated bullshit. There is now no chance whatever of keeping global warming below 1.5°C. Young people, you cannot count on today’s politicians to solve the problem – you must get involved – don’t be discouraged – look at it as an invigorating challenge.'

'Large sea level rise is the irreversible climate impact that we must avoid. We are warming the ocean and it is beginning to melt the ice shelves around Antarctica. We may be close to the tipping point at which the West Antarctic ice sheet collapses and sea level goes up several meters. Contrary to the impression left by models that IPCC relies on, we know from Earth’s history that ice sheet collapse is exponential.'

'One consequence of sea level rise, low latitude overheating, and climate disasters will be increased emigration pressure that could make the planet almost ungovernable.'

'The underlying cause has long been recognized: the role that money is allowed to play in our democracy.'

'I have great confidence that young people today are even better able to take on the task of saving our democracy and their future.'

'[A third political party in the U.S.] should advocate and fight for ranked voting in as many states and locales as possible.'

'I am confident … that the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) badly understated the threat of large, rapid sea level rise.'

'[I]f greenhouse gas emissions remain high – feedbacks associated with these ocean changes will cause exponential sea level rise of several meters by the end of the century – consistent with the nonlinear way that ice sheet disintegration has almost always occurred in the past.'

'[I]ce sheet disintegration is an exponential process and large sea level rise this century is the expected outcome, if high emissions continue.'

'Adaptation is needed, but it will be ineffectual for most coastal cities in the event of exponential sea level rise by several meters. With high emissions, coastal fortification would prolong the lifetime of such cities by only several years. A majority of the world’s largest cities are coastal. If ice sheet disintegration is allowed to pass a point of no return, today’s young people thus could inherit a situation that’s out of their control.'

'Our expectation of multi-meter sea level rise on the time scale of a century refers to the case of continued high greenhouse gas emissions. The time scale for ice sheet collapse and large sea level rise might be longer if greenhouse gas emissions are much reduced and global warming is more limited. Despite uncertainty in the time scale of the ice sheet response, paleoclimate data imply that we will need to aim to return to a global climate no warmer than the mid-20th century, and perhaps cooler, if we wish to maintain reasonably stable sea level.'

'[C]ondemnation of investigation of ways to alleviate global warming impacts – and demonize them all with the "geoengineering" label – is unhelpful. We already are geoengineering the dickens out of the planet, pumping energy into the ocean at a rate that’s much greater than any time in Earth’s history that we know about.'

'There is a difference between compensatory good - like Mark Zuckerberg one day donating 99% of his shares to charity - and intrinsic good, where the actual business the company is involved in is a positive force.'

One in four people aged over 65 in the UK are worth more than £1Million on paper.

'Business wants older workers to retire because of cognitive and physical decline but are all for them running the systems that supposedly check and balance'

― twitter.com/srnairn

'Politicians should wear sponsor jackets like Nascar drivers, then we know who owns them.'

'The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.'

'When someone’s defence for their actions is "everything I did was legal" you know that they’re defending what they know to be their immorality.'

'Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.'

'Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.'

'In an unequal society, those who land on top want to believe their success is morally justified.'

'Those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.'

'Most people are not only comfortable in their ignorance, but hostile to anybody who points it out.'

'The standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.'

'Nobody ever goes broke overestimating the rage and misogyny of the average American male.'

'Football, beer, and above all gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.'