Thread by @SteB777

1) From the latest @IPCC_CH report. We don't need to know any more. The total focus should be on this.

"Only rapid and drastic reductions in greenhouse gases in this decade can prevent such climate breakdown"
theguardian.com/science/2021/a…

2) Yet no government in the world is even suggesting this (in fact they are opening up new FF reserves). They are all pursuing some fake Net Zero by 2050 framing, that does not involve immediate reductions in GHGs, as the science indicates is necessary.

https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1423613499113152514

3) @GretaThunberg has repeatedly highlighted how little of the remaining carbon budget was left to keep below the Paris 1.5C target, and that only drastic action now could keep us within it. She was quoting the @IPCC_CH SR15. But what she said was roundly ignored.

4) Sometimes there is over-analysis, too much emphasis on relatively trivial detail and crucial facts are ignored, that if acknowledged, would drastically the direction of travel. This was one of them.

5) All along, and this was crystal clear to me 30 years ago, and to others, the tacit message from the scientific evidence, was that we must immediately start reducing greenhouse gas emissions now, not at some distant point in the future.

6) Humanity has been subjected to a massive fraud, and that fraud was that there was some safe level of warming, such as 2C or 1.5C. I created this thread to illustrate how 2C was never seen as a safe level of warming by the science.
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1413053…

7) Yet, as I explained in the thread linked to above, the media kept misleading the public to believe that 2C of warming was a safe level of warming we could work up to. This thread illustrates how I kept challenging @guardianeco about their framing of 2C.
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1413564…

8) I liken thinking, especially over the climate and ecological emergency to following a set of directions. If you approach a major highway that travels north to south, and you take the opposite direction without noticing, all your subsequent directions will be wrong.

9) I've actually been in a vehicle, where clever people have used clever arguments to deny they took a wrong turn, and who then use clever arguments to explain way why the directions don't match the features on the actual road we were on.

10) This neatly illustrates the fatal error that humanity has made. All along the scientific evidence tacitly implied that we must immediately start reducing GHG emissions, because all warming over 1C is potentially very dangerous.
carbonbrief.org/two-degrees-th…

11) However, the public were misled by silver tongued politicians who gave the public the false impression that 2C of warming was a safe figure we could work up to and they were aid and abetted by the media.

12) As the evidence I present shows, 2C was never seen by the science as safe, and any warming over 1C carried serious dangers, as we've found out this year. There's been much nonsense that the science got it wrong and didn't predict this extreme weather at less than 1.5C.

13) However, you only have to look at the 1990 Stockholm Environment Institute report, from which the 2C was derived, to see this was never the case and all warming over 1C was seen as dangerous, and this has been widely known for 31 years.
sei.org/publications/c…

14) @GretaThunberg has been heroic in stoically pointing how the science indicated we needed immediate reductions in GHG now and that this was the tacit implication of the @IPCC SR15. We never had more room to procrastinate as the politicians have done.

15) As the latest @IPCC report makes clear:

"Only rapid and drastic reductions in greenhouse gases in this decade can prevent such climate breakdown"

It means what it says. Anything else will consign us to hell on Earth.

16) Firstly, this makes the fake Net Zero position by 2050 of governments dangerous nonsense, because none of that will create "rapid and drastic reductions" in GHGs in this decade.

17) Secondly, to achieve these "rapid and drastic reductions" in GHGs requires an entirely new framework for action, and our governments are not offering this. They are therefore breaking the social contract in failing to protect the public from serious harm.

18) We need to create a mass movement in which scientists speak out openly challenging and criticising our governments for their dangerous policies and we need a mass public movement to create this moment for action.

19) @GretaThunberg has created this template for action and has been an exemplar of how to speak truth to power. It is not enough to leave this to young people, and I say scientists and all moral adults with influential positions need to speak out and challenge our governments.

20) No more deference. We need to speak out with one voice and loudly challenge the abrogation of duty of our current leadership who are utterly failing to protect the public and future generations from serious danger.

@KevinClimate @ClimateHuman @MichaelEMann @GeorgeMonbiot @billmckibben @NaomiAKlein @NaomiOreskes @JKSteinberger @IPBES @theAliceRoberts @ChrisGPackham @Luisamneubauer @ExtinctionR @ClimateBen @Fridays4future

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