Paul Maidowski Profile picture
Feb 23 5 tweets 2 min read
What's ahead? Not everyone will want to know, but reality-based analysis helps if we want to change reality.

1/n Image
2/ Thought experiment, case 1: stabilize at 500 ppm CO2. Very optimistic, but not completely impossible (IMHO). Image
3/ Case 2: don't stabilize. Go to 800 ppm CO2, and feedbacks will carry you further. Less optimistic. Vital to know IF that's where we're heading so far.

There's a world of difference, wide enough for billions of lives, between cases #1&2.

Can we steer a path to #1? Image
4/ Time is running out, so we should do something. But if you follow the above logic, it's unclear what. We can't just "do" things and expect things to work.

If you see solutions, perfect. Share widely; some will always learn. I just don't see how, else I'd integrate this fully.
5/ Quick break; it's dense enough already.

I'm just summarizing here, none of this is new. But if anyone is working on these questions, or wants to start seriously - DM open. They need far more attention than they get.

Classic roy scranton line, always fine to share: Image

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Paul Maidowski

Paul Maidowski Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @_ppmv

Feb 26
Ukraine may turn out to be the first climate-driven war in Europe. This IS climate statecraft. thread. 1/n
2/n The notion that it is only climate policy when 100+ nations sit in a circle and decide *by consensus* is profoundly strange. Always has been.

A serious failure of imagination in climate analysts and scientists.
3/ Rather, climate is at the heart of world affairs. Great thread on the climatization of security and the UNSC.
Read 22 tweets
Feb 25
Poetic climate action: today 1pm, activists disrupt airport operations in Berlin/Frankfurt/Munich with 99 red balloons. Russia's war already shakes up European security & UK airline operations—what's coming is far worse. Support @Jana_Mest @AufstandLastGen letztegeneration.de/blog/2022/02/f… ImageImageImageImage
Why 99 red balloons:
Russia banning UK airlines from using its airspace
Read 6 tweets
Feb 8
The Arctic is our ticking time bomb.

Peter Wadhams: "It may be too late to save the Arctic, but if it's too late to save the Arctic, it's too late to save anything. What the world needs now is engineers to do what is needed."

Funding needed now. Thread.

2/ We should be blunt because these questions decide our future. As Peter Wadhams says in his book and on @iconickevin's blog: we know that, institutionalized via the IPCC, it has become social convention to make certain indefensible assumptions in models. kevinhester.live/2017/11/10/ful…
3/ Hand waving online and asking scientists and analysts to take the time to read up on the relevant dynamics may help but won't address what is essentially a question of power and institutional architecture, so just to leave this here.
Read 19 tweets
Feb 7
Good paper @peteirvine 2011. Only: what "other" schemes? All climate geoengineering is illusory (DAC, CCS, re/afforestation). They exist in models, but can't physically reach global scales, given real-world energy & material constraints. SAI is contested.

Hence the predicament.
From Tim's research: renewables and efficiency, the workhorses of climate policy, increase economic production and GHG levels.

Hence the predicament.

Hypothesis 3:

MEER aids structural change to decouple economic production from global metabolic needs.
journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…
@nephologue's other counterintuitive finding: resilience (= the goal of MEER) increases global prosperity and CO2. Resilience prolongs the growth phase at the cost of delaying and deepening collapse.

We need to decide what we want - a question of ethics.

esd.copernicus.org/articles/3/1/2…
Read 6 tweets
Feb 7
Why scientists disagree on physical reality: Some have uncritically taken up the political symbolism of "carbon budgets" for "1.5/2°C," a (1) message to mobilize people; and, confusingly, (2) governance metric to permit more(!) business-as-usual. In reality, budgets are negative.
@ScientistRebel1 is correct. Julia is co-author of IPCC AR6 WG1 (physical science basis), ch.3 (mitigation), inspiring scientist-activist. But we need to know that the IPCC has always been about geopolitics. Some history, please read all three (Agrawala):
@ScientistRebel1 The IPCC is a stunning, unprecedented effort by scientists. But like the AGGG, we now artificially extend overcome structures. Climate is too fast-moving for the current climate regime (IPCC, UNFCCC, etc.). Policy innovation, again, is needed. Political scientists, where are you?
Read 10 tweets
Nov 28, 2021
Thanks for nothing
While humanity may not survive a doubling of CO2, economists assume that unsurvivable futures can be treated as essentially trivial costs, barely worth talking about.
Policy over the past 30 years acted as if this weren't insane. Now, the window of action is essentially closed. What else is there to say?
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(