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Mar 1 • 20 tweets • 18 min read
IPCC author literally begging you to read the AR6. The summary for policymakers (SPM) doesn’t work for me, but the rest - 3000+ pages - looks tremendous. It is unlike any other report you’ve seen. If we fuck this up, there is no long-term future. So, dig in. Climate thread 1/?
2/ To start, good advice by @mich_koenig: the 2-page IPCC summary factsheets may help. The goal IMHO should be to bring this report into actionable form, for government or corporate decisionmaking. Change requires different *form* than academic papers. Image
3/ Disclaimer: welcome to the IPCC's contradictory model world. Economists (IAMs) expect a growing global economy even in future 4°C hell. Yet it is the basis of all current climate policy, so let's hop in. @climateinteract models help as dynamic intro. 🙏 ImageImageImage
@climateinteract 4/ Many scientists have shown why such assumptions are dangerous to insane: Limits to Growth 1972; Garrett @ProfSteveKeen Grasselli 2020. Ecological / degrowth economists are mentioned (for the first time!) by the IPCC, but inconsequential b/c not modeled.
@climateinteract @ProfSteveKeen 5/ I dont understand why "degrowth vs. ecomodernism" is framed as a question of competing 'narratives' by the IPCC. We can either grow forever on a finite planet, and degrade it forever, or not. Every schoolchild can tell you that one of these is suicidal.
6/ Reminder why this matters: inter-governmental IPCC reports are less tools of scientific discovery than of geopolitical control, for STATES to keep control of AGENDA SETTING in climate policy. Sorry nat scientists—IR scholars can tell you how this works.
7/ Best and most balanced intro: Agrawala on how this came about and why something like the IPCC was an evolutionary necessity. Also, why we now need to move on, because it's unfit for today's fast-moving world. @ClimateOpp himself: blogs.edf.org/climate411/200… Image
8/ Against the powers of state, market, ideology lined up against us, judging from history since 1985, it's a success to even get the word degrowth into the IPCC. Happened only b/c of tireless scholar-activists like @g_kallis @jasonhickel @timparrique. Ty!
@g_kallis @jasonhickel @timparrique 9/ Not to scare anyone, but quick cross-over to Putin's Ukraine war: climate scientists who point to uncomfortable truths (or otherwise back in the day, could imperil geopolitical imperatives) tend to historically get disappeared. Hence why we went into climate overdrive in 2016.
@g_kallis @jasonhickel @timparrique 10/ I always marvel at how @Revkin singlehandedly covered everything that happened in this field, back to before we were even born. Ty, too! 1985:
@g_kallis @jasonhickel @timparrique @Revkin 11/ This just an institutional-geopolitical frame I take for climate science and policy. (Fantastic alternatives by folks like @adam_tooze @70sBachchan) It follows that if you have something to say on climate, say it now. Later, for physical or political reasons, may be too late.
12/ I won't summarize the report itself. People paid to do so can do it for you. (But beware, saying "shit is bad and getting worse" won't help, if this is not made actionable.) See these remarks, as heartfelt as, I feel, helpless. So, what can we DO? carbonbrief.org/scientists-rea… Image
13/ Now, onto reading this brick. Give me some time; not joking when I say I need to find someone to pay me to do this or related work. This 👇 is well-intentioned, but (my view) for systems thinkers, whoever we are, this doesn't feel intuitive. Pretty sure there are better ways. Image
14/ Many approaches are valid, but keep system dynamics 👇 in mind as you read the AR6. Morecroft as one intro to do analysis or consulting professionally. You'll need creativity, empathy, and all the tools for livable futures (😇). b-ok.cc/book/2563337/7… Image
Thank you. Yes!
15/ Why the above detour? This summary thread (ty @leobarasi @GernotWagner!) to see the problem in brutal clarity (see @ProfSteveKeen et al 2021). Sorry, 4°C by 2100 is OPTIMISTIC. We're def not on track for 2-3°C. Simple physics, but also look at Ukraine.
@leobarasi @GernotWagner @ProfSteveKeen 16/ I'm an outlier on Ukraine, but the fallout from the end of the post-Cold War order will upend current plans. We'll be less energy-blind 1-2 years from now, but in a strong El Niño, risk will be enormous. We must start real analysis now. @chrismartenson Image
@leobarasi @GernotWagner @ProfSteveKeen @chrismartenson 17/ On a less serious note, as Gernot says these spider graphs just aren't good analysis. If any systems analysts can take care of these diagrams? IMHO it matters because it shows that so far we have no simple, visual, dynamic, testable, actionable models.
@leobarasi @GernotWagner @ProfSteveKeen @chrismartenson 18/ Compare what a good model could look like, here for covid after barely 1-2 years (plus online policy simulator). @IPCC_CH, why can't we do this for climate after 20-30 years? Image
@leobarasi @GernotWagner @ProfSteveKeen @chrismartenson @IPCC_CH 19/ This looks interesting - and ....more spider graphs! ;)

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More from @_ppmv

Paul Maidowski Profile picture
Mar 7
Critical thought by scientists & investigators needed. Peter Wadhams is sharp but correct. Fatal systemic IPCC bias ("erring on the side of least drama") is well documented but rarely challenged. Especially methane. Image
(Recall, "one death = a crime, a million deaths = a statistic.")

One example - interesting paper out soon, if I read this correctly. @lasch2002
@lasch2002 3/ For anyone who is new to these questions: they are so stressful because - in climate terms - there is a good chance that if we don't sort these out, almost nothing else we do really matters. And they are hard to sort.

Good methane intro @PaulHBeckwith:
Read 10 tweets
Paul Maidowski Profile picture
Mar 7
Reminder: Just because no one is telling you that some governments plan decades ahead, and that today's decisions are climate-driven, doesn't mean it's not happening.
2/ Most seem to imagine a liberal future world order like ours—with state sovereignty, freedoms, human rights, international law etc., but somehow without fossil fuel use,—only in a 4-8°C warmer world? 🥳🤣? How on Earth does anyone still believe this?
3/ Leaders know billions will die. Some have known since the 1980s.

Think about what this means. Don't assume you or your children will be spared.

Read some history. Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World versobooks.com/books/2311-lat…
Read 20 tweets
Paul Maidowski Profile picture
Mar 7
Ukraine-Russia context: LTG 1972 and Copenhagen 2009, our final warnings, went unheeded. What options remain: (1) enforce degrowth & resilience; or (2) continued growth, collapse or extinction. Survivors form a degrowth or post-collapse world order. Do we have your attention? 1/?
2/ I don't know what needs to be repeated as this has all long been clear to anyone paying attention. As current policy is based on myths & wishful thinking, facing reality changes our mental models. People can only do this themselves, we can't force them.
3/ Background on Ukraine.
Read 5 tweets
Paul Maidowski Profile picture
Mar 6
If we ignore the views from outside the silo, we may create hope for us now - but will inevitably crash harder later. I appeal to common sense. Time to move beyond abstraction, to unlearn complex systems' 'necessary lies' (Kaminsky). Much depends on us getting it right this time. Image
PNS scholars and teachers like @SFuntowicz have been discussing it for three decades, challenging even the first Nordhaus papers, but climate science at large has not responded. This really matters. Time, my friends, is running out. sci-hub.ru/10.1080/030851…
@SFuntowicz
Read 6 tweets
Paul Maidowski Profile picture
Feb 28
~"We are starting to lose habitat for the human species," co-chair Hans-Otto Pörtner just *said* in the presser. I was gonna do a summary thread of the IPCC AR6 WG2 SPM, but the words "habitat loss" and "aerosols" don't even *appear in writing* so I don't know if it's worth it.
1/ Burning embers diagrams are turning into burning towers diagrams. Idk what such diagrams are to tell us; systems thinking clearly missing. Report introduces 127 (!?) "key risks" but doesn't prioritize. We have no baseline to adapt to. Good luck I guess.
2/ There is so much we can do. Maybe look for local ecologists, systems designers, and communicators. We can do so much better than this. Start with the oceans. If we don't get this shit under control, Ukraine is but a minor warm-up. SROCC @xr_cambridge:
Read 7 tweets
Paul Maidowski Profile picture
Feb 27
Good paper. But Putin brings us to the brink of nuclear war and threatens Ukraine with flamethrowers that melt people from inside. IPCC AR6, tomorrow, will receive paltry coverage. And scientists are out there having the same old petty arguments, long since divorced from reality?
Mainstream scientists are in denial of existential climate risk. They retreated into a fantasy world of mathematical models in which they feel safe. A pathetic failure to warn society in the last few years in which we could still act.

Meanwhile society:

Climate activists are literally risking their lives, and tenured professors can’t even bring themselves to tell policymakers the truth. W t f

Be safe @MakichyanA 🙏💚 🇷🇺
Read 4 tweets

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