"Green" policies are destroying this country

Akrasia is a scaremonger, allowing emotions to cloud their rationale. However much I agree or disagree they contribute well to discourse and in most case provide reputable sources.

Their beliefs in the imminent annihilation of the human species tends to have them favour an extreme alarmist position, coupled with an acceptance of sacrificing others lives in the pursuit zero emissions provides for some entertaining mental gymnastics to justify policies and over extension of governments.

Indeed, another registered charity and a private company registered by guarantee. Very handy if you are a very litigious outfit in that you can appeal all the way through the courts without having to worry about it personally costing you a penny.

Amazing the cross-over in membership between both of them and the Green Party. From some of the names that crop up in relation to the tree bodies people would be inclined to believe they were somehow omnipresent. Me, I think on them more in line with how my mother used to describe such people locally. "Busy-bodies that have their noses stuck in everything"

Science.

Longstanding definition of science: A theory/model that is supported by facts, data, and empirical research. That which is vigorously debated and constantly challenged with the emergence of new data and facts. 

Green woke definition of science: A consensus of opinions aligned with the preferred narrative. No debate or challenge is permitted and no research is allowed that might uncover uncomfortable or inconvenient facts. Research results which go against the preferred narrative will be suppressed and the perpetrator vilified, ridiculed, and punished.

Pay attention to those 4 I mentioned and think about quantities needed for EV cars compared to ICE cars. You may want to rethink your "clever" comment.

This **** new version of boards is so awful. I spent 20 minutes replying to your post, I went to a different browser window to check a reference and boards deleted my message.

I'll reply to this later if I get time.

Ice cars require thousands of kilogrammes of resources to be dug out of the ground, refined, transported around the world and burned throughout the lifetime of the vehicle.

ICE cars are much dirtier than BEVs if the electricity comes from renewable sources

BEVs need a clean grid to make sense, but when the energy comes from renewable sources, they are much cleaner than ICE vehicles

Set up by the government in the 70`s as an independent board but all on it are appointed by the government and ABP is answerable to nobody.

Sounds good in theory until you see how open decisions are to personal bias and circumstance. Something highlighted lately by the decisions of it`s deputy chair Paul Hyde and a number of cases where the decision by APB was the opposite of that of recommended by their own inspectors.

Even for those cases the only recourse to having them overturned is to seek a judicial review. Something that financially would be beyond the means of many.

Great. I’m sure there was some logic to this in your own mind.

I’m not sure your own stance on this subject, but it’s worth remembering if you are concerned about C02 as an imminent threat to humans and the planet. You might want to consider the use of the internet.

This very forum requires a hefty power hungry infrastructure to support its services. The irony of reading post that are anti Data Center posted on a forum that is dependent on the very thing they abhor.

Iwe must release C02 to fight C02? My C02 is holier than yours. Noble causes C02 release doesn’t trap as much heat I guess?

I don’t know- it just seems crazy that every major piece of infrastructure gets delayed for ages meandering it’s way through the lazy river that seems to be ABP:

Bus connects

Metrolink

Dart upgrade

Lng terminal

Housing.

The department of you and me.

No but I mean there has to be a line minister in charge of the funding that goes to ABP.

For example if they need an increase in funding, who do they contact I wonder?

Was Elon Musk behind the coup in Bolivia? I'm asking because he came out with some statement about changing the government there so that he could access the lithium on the cheap.

Whoever was behind it has a lot of deaths on their hands, but you are unlikely to hear the Greens complain.

TLDR, this is a response point by point to PS200306's post from this weekend. It was well thought out and they referred to the science so I thought it well worth a detailed reply.

The pieces in Italics are quotes.

"An IPCC press release is not "science" no matter who writes it. It's a press release. It carries no more weight than the UN Secretary General blathering about "code red for humanity" and "millions at imminent risk from climate change" in response to the release of AR6. My consistent experience is that whether it's news media or the UN Chief Alarmist, the perennial doom mongering never matches what the science actually says. That's why I only read original sources. (Disclaimer: I am decidedly not a scientist; however I do have three degree and advanced degree qualifications in hard sciences, none of them climate related. I point this out only as evidence that, although this subject area is outside my expertise, I'm well used to reading and assessing academic papers generally)."

I didn't say the IPCC press release was science, but it is reasonable to assume that the statements that they release to the press are indicative of their views on the science. (The IPCC doesn't do any original research, they merely review all of the relevant papers released since the previous synthesis report)

It's unreasonable to call me an extremist when I am hold the same position as the UN body who are tasked with reviewing the totality of scientific literature on this subject.

"You say you "referenced" a brand new study. To me, a reference is a link to an actual paper. You linked to a summary in the journal Science. Even though their website says they've made the article generally available "as a service to the community", their login mechanism appears to be broken. So I'm going to hazard a guess you didn't actually read this paper yourself? Your fellow alarmist on this thread, Da Cor, also linked a press release version of it. You're going to have to excuse me for not accepting press release versions -- those are generally sensationalist and rely on the general public not being able to make their own assessment. No, I want to stick my finger in the wound. Fortunately, I've managed to dig up the pre-print version that was submitted for peer review -- follow the PDF link here. (You're welcome)."

Referencing a paper behind a paywall is unavoidable sometimes, but when it's a paper published in one of the top journals, the executive summary or the abstract will match what the conclusions of the paper ultimately say. And the fact that it passed peer review means there is no need for me, a non expert, to validate those findings. I do usually try to find a non paywalled link to any paper I refer to but my 'unpaywall' extension didn't find any on this occasion. Thank you for the link to the pre-print.

"So, does this paper point to a newly discovered existential crisis based on climate tipping points? In a word, no. It's not very different from what was already in AR6. Nor does it contain any new evidence -- it is primarily a literature review with a mind-numbing 312 references. (112 of them were added between the pre-print and the publication in Science, so I acknowledge that the version I'm reading is probably substantially different from the final one, but it's all I've got). A not inconsiderable number of the references list at least one of the current paper's contributors as an author, so there is some self-referential citing going on. Some are also explicit inputs to AR6, being some of the working groups' contributions. Obviously it's utterly impossible to chase up every reference but I tabulated their years of publication -- 2012 or earlier (45 references), 2013 (23), 2014 (10), 2015 (22), 2016 (23), 2017 (18), 2018 (20), 2019 (23), 2020 (45), 2021 (50), 2022 (16), uncertain date (17)."

The paper was a meta-analyses of existing research, it was not intended to be new research, but by looking at the existing literature, it was able to conclude from multiple sources how likely each tipping point is breached at a given temperature rise, and this analysis does actually add to the debate. The IPCC AR6 did not do a good job to dealing with the tipping points, hopefully the existence of this paper will allow the next IPCC reports to more accurately include these in their assessment.

"So a lot of these papers were around well before AR6 and are presumably not "news". About a quarter were published after 2020, probably too late for AR6 to take note of. Again, the volume is too large to chase up but I went through the titles of all 66 papers from 2021-22, and didn't notice anything especially remarkable. There's a few on Antarctic ice loss, which one of authors (Winkelmann) seems to have a special interest in and has contributed to several of the referenced papers herself. More on this below."

The cut off date for IPCC to include published papers for AR6 was in Jan 2021, so this paper includes at least 66 papers that were released since that cut off point, but that's not really relevant, the kind of Meta-Analysis in this paper would have been out of scope for the IPCC, the conclusions of this paper will likely contribute to the next IPCC report.

"I think it's worth quoting the "Rationale" section of the article in Science:

These authors are "experts" on tipping points. We can be sure of this because quite a few of the references are to their own previously published work! For instance, Lenton et al., 2019 mentioned above is here:"

Yes, research science is generally done by people who specialise in those fields, and those scientists publish their work, and collaborate with other scientists who are also experts in related fields. This is not unusual. And it is also not unusual to reference their own work. That is completely normal, and as long as that work is peer reviewed and has not been withdrawn by the journal then this is completely fine.

"One of the things that I doubt almost any member of the general public realises from the breathless press releases is that imminent tipping points do not mean imminent consequences. We are talking about things that could unfold over the next ten thousand years. Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet collapses occur over a period of one to several thousand years under high warming conditions. I don't know about you, but treating events that will unfold over the next several thousand years as an "existential crisis" seems like idiocy to me. The adaptive capabilities of humanity over those timeframes are utterly unknowable. It would be like trying to predict 21st century technology back in the late Bronze Age."

Some of the tipping points will take thousands of years to complete - Greenland won't melt overnight, nor will the antarctic ice sheets suddenly collapse in totality. But not all of these tipping points are long term. There is evidence that the AMOC (gulf stream) could collapse very rapidly. Similarly, the Labrador Current could flip off like a switch once it reaches a tipping point. (this would lead to consequences for the AMOC as well as having a massive impact on fish stocks in the atlantic and beyond as this current plays a crucial role in how oxygen is transported in the oceans https://www.forbes.com/sites/priyashukla/2022/02/08/why-the-labrador-sea-are-the-lungs-of-the-ocean/)

The Barents sea tipping point looks to have already been crossed, The Barents sea was a buffer between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, now the atlantic is reaching directly into the arctic ocean and there will be consequences to this that are not yet fully understood.

Mountain Glacier loss, this is something that we are being impacted by already. In many places water sourced by mountain glaciers is already in decline, but as the planet warms, this will only worsen, and beyond the tipping point, there is no recovery, those glaciers are gone and those rivers will run dry. If we avoid crossing the tipping point, then there is the chance for those glaciers to survive, although in a diminished form.

The West African Monsoon Shift will also happen abruptly. It will cause extreme drought across West Africa and the greening of the Sahel. Millions of people will be suddenly faced with starvation or re-location causing intense human suffering and political instability.

Permafrost melting will reach a tipping point where the releases of GHGs from the permafrost drive even more warming locally until nothing we do will be enough to stop the complete loss of all Boreal permafrost and enough greenhouse gas emissions to raise the global average temperatures by several degrees. it may take centuries for all of that permafrost to melt, or it could happen faster, either way, it would be serious problem that only gets worse as time advances,

And then there's the Amazon rainforest dieback, which when the tipping point is crossed, is also an abrupt event. over the course of a decade, the amazon may change from a rainforest to a savannah releasing approx 15 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere as the dead forest burns thereby accelerating climate change through removing a sink in the carbon cycle while adding vast quantities of CO2 into the air. (there would be substantial volumes of soot and particulates released during this period which may actually cause cooling for a few years, followed by very abrupt warming as that soot precipitates out and causes another positive feedback, dark snow which will amplify the loss of arctic Antarctic and glacier losses.

So, TLDR Some of those feedbacks take centuries to complete, but there are several that can happen very abruptly and can have very serious consequences that can lead to surges in warming, that can then cause other tipping points to be reached. It's the cascading effect of positive feedbacks that mean the IPCC projections are very conservative

"Curiously, one of the references added in the final version of the paper is Lowry et al., "The influence of emissions scenarios on future Antarctic ice loss is unlikely to emerge this century", Commun. Earth Environ.2, 221 (2021):

From the abstract of that paper:

In case it's not obvious, what this is saying is that we're not going to know this side of 2100 what the eventual fate of the Antarctic Ice Sheet will be over thousands of years. Because this reference was added in the final Science article, I can't tell what Armstrong McKay et al. have to say about it. However, for me it adds to the folly of their whole endeavour. In effect they are saying we have to take urgent mitigating actions against something we won't even know is a problem for another century, and then will unfold over thousands of years."

Yes, the full consequences of this particular tipping point will fall on our grandchildren and their grandchildren. The flooding caused by these glaciers and ice sheets melting will raise sea levels by tens of metres turning Ireland from an island into an archipelago. Something for our future generations to worry about. Sure they'll probably evolve gills or something, they'll be grand

But as I said, there are tipping points that are more immediate concerns for you and me, and for my kids and my as yet unborn grandkids.

"In summary:

• We don't actually know if any of these so-called tipping points are even real;"

Ah we do though. There is a very sound basis for each of these tipping points. The uncertainty is in how warm it needs to be before they get triggered.

"None of them are news -- they are all covered in AR6 under the heading of Carbon Cycle Feedbacks;"

Nope they're not news in that we know they're a thing and this is one of the primary reasons I am so concerned about us sleepwalking into disaster, the new news, is in the study that gives us an indication of how close we are to triggering them, and that's news, bad news because we've likely already exceeded some of those tipping points, and are almost certain to exceed others because we're not taking action fast enough

"AR6 did not consider any of them likely during the 21st century;"

AR7 will likely be reporting that we've already exceeded some of them

"The scientists pushing for urgent action on mitigation seem very coy about considering the economic impacts of that;"

What is the economic impact of losing the Amazon rain forest, the coral reefs and hundreds of millions of displaced people due to lack of water from monsoons failing and glaciers running dry? Bjorn Lomborg thinks we can write these off. I disagree

Also, the Stern review from 2006, said the cost of inaction was substantially higher than the cost of Action, both costs have increased significantly since that report was released due to decades of wasted time pandering to the Oil and gas industry. Nicholas Stern himself has said that even he underestimated the costs of climate change, and if he was writing that report today, he would have been even more strongly advocating action on climate change.

"In his report, published in October 2006, Stern warned that the cost of inaction would be far greater for future generations than the costs of actions taken today. “With hindsight, I now realise that I underestimated the risks. I should have been much stronger in what I said in the report about the costs of inaction. I underplayed the dangers.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/06/nicholas-stern-climate-change-review-10-years-on-interview-decisive-years-humanity

"We don't yet even know the most basic input to all climate change models -- the sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. However, the evidence points to the low end of the range of possibilities."

We know enough about climate sensitivity to know that the climate scientists on the 'denier' side of the debate were all completely wrong and we should ignore them from now on until they re-assess their position.

We know that climate sensitivity is likely to be 2.5-4c according to the IPCC, but that doesn't include these tipping points, which could drive that ECS higher. What we do know for sure is that we should absolutely not be doubling atmospheric CO2 concentrations if we can avoid it.

"If this was just a case of being prudent about a low-likelihood-high-impact event, I would fully embrace it. But the cost of mitigation may very well be economy-wrecking. For me, that completely changes the picture. We face the certainty of ruinous economic outcomes versus the extreme uncertainty of consequential climate impacts. I am entirely open to somebody coming up with a realistic summary of the economic implications, but the Greens won't bloody do it! Quite apart from that, their narrow-focused --some would say blinkered -- approach to mitigation using renewables is practically guaranteed not to work."

The stern review says the costs of not dealing with it are much higher, and therefore even if we need to borrow heavily to finance the transition, it's worthwhile to do so. Economically, there are great benefits to be had from moving from coal oil and gas to renewables, as well as political benefits from not being held to ransom by the likes of OPEC who aren't exactly the nicest bunch of people on the planet.

"You can read the rest of the Science article pre-print at the link I provided. Again, I am not seeing a vast difference from what was published about tipping points in AR6. I am definitely not seeing an existential crisis. And even if I did, I wouldn't support the Greens' ham-fisted policies which won't work anyway."

The difference is that this study says we have already crossed certain tipping points, and are likely to cross others if we fail to keep warming below 1.5c (which we won't) so we're already playing russian roulette with our future.

It's just one more study on top of thousands of others that say we need to act urgently to prevent disaster.