Climate’s Troubling Unknown Unknowns

Donald Rumsfeld famously popularized the term “unknown unknowns” in a 2002 news briefing when describing the challenges of linking Iraq to weapons of mass destruction. Troublingly, climate change may also be strewn with such unknowns, and they pose daunting tests for how we face the future.

Dirty air blanketing the New York skyline at sunset.

One is choosing among policy alternatives. Should we minimize tomorrow’s risks now by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or save money today and spend it on adapting to the effects of planetary warming once threats emerge more fully, like rising seas or prolonged droughts? The policy debate increasingly tilts toward adaptation.

But we can’t adapt to perils from unknown unknowns. In such cases, adaptation will largely fail; only mitigation will be effective.

Read the opinion piece from The New York Times by William B. Gail - “Climate’s Troubling Unknown Unknowns.”

Top oil firms spending millions lobbying to block climate change policies, says report

The largest five stock market listed oil and gas companies spend nearly $200m (£153m) a year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change, according to a new report.

ExxonMobil leads the oil firms in spending on branding
campaigns suggesting they support action against climate change.

Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil were the main companies leading the field in direct lobbying to push against a climate policy to tackle global warming, the report said.

Read the story from The Guardian by Sandra Laville - “Top oil firms spending millions lobbying to block climate change policies, says report.”

The government’s $2bn climate fund: a rebadged rehash of old mistakes

Australia’s new flagship Climate Solutions Fund, announced this week by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, will spend more than A$2 billion on cutting greenhouse emissions by 2030.

Scott Morrison has given a new name to an old policy.

While action on climate change is welcomed, this announcement seems to be a faithful reprise of the previous Emissions Reduction Fund, which was beset with problems.

The government has put a new name on an existing scheme, while steadfastly refusing to learn from mistakes made along the way. In cruder terms, it’s slapped a gleaming coat of lipstick onto a pig of a policy.

Add to that the A$1.38 billion pledged today for building the Snowy 2.0 scheme – another plan hatched by one of the government’s former incarnations – and there’s not a lot of imagination on display as Morrison’s government scrambles for some much-needed climate credibility ahead of this year’s election.

Read the piece from The Conversation by a Senior Lecturer in Economics from the The University of Queensland, Ian A. MacKenzie - “The government’s $2bn climate fund: a rebadged rehash of old mistakes.”

When These California Wildfires Go Out, New Ones Will Come

“Paradise is gone,” resident Sue Brown told the Los Angeles Times after witnessing the devastation from the Camp fire, which is now the largest fire in California history. Brown said she and her husband had planned to spend the rest of their lives in Paradise, a city of about 27,000 in the Sierra Nevada foothills about two hours north of San Francisco. But now the entire town is in ashes. The Camp fire has burned more than 110,000 acres and consumed 6,713 structures. Twenty-nine people have died. And it’s still burning. Southern California is also ablaze. In the hills around Malibu, the Woolsey fire has consumed 83,000 acres and forced more than a quarter-million people to evacuate.

A tattered American flag flies over a burned out
home at the Camp Fire, in Paradise, Calif., Nov 11, 2018.

I remember Paradise. I have driven through it while visiting family, who live just north of the town, or on my way to a cabin we used to have in the Sierra Nevada mountains. I remember Paradise because the name always struck me as so hopeful, even if the town, itself, seemed ordinary, with modest ranch houses set among scattered oak trees and pines. People have ATVs in the garage and horses on a few acres of land out back. On clear days, you can see the outline of the Sierra Nevada mountains on the horizon. This is not elite treehugger California; Butte County, which includes Paradise, was a Trump stronghold in the 2016 election.

Read the story from Rolling Stone magazine by Jeff Goodell - “When These California Wildfires Go Out, New Ones Will Come.”

This California teen studies climate data after school

Some high school students find data analysis boring, but one California teen loves it.

McGregor: “When I get home, I spend my free time creating different graphs and reports on how climate change is affecting southern California.”

Studying climate data after school.

That’s high school student Edgar McGregor. When he first saw graphs of regional climate change, he was struck by the sharp rise in temperatures, especially over the past decade. So he began digging into climate data, looking at …

McGregor: “… which months are changing more than others. Is one month getting drier while another is getting wetter? Just to kind of understand what I can expect when I’m in my 60s, 70s, and 80s.”

Read the Yale Climate Connections story - “This California teen studies climate data after school.”

Economy After Fossil Fuels - watch the webinar

Just a week or so ago the Post Carbon Institute hosted a webinar entitled - “Economy After Fossil Fuels” – I urge you spend just an hour watching it.

The host was Asher Miller from Our Renewable Future and the guests, author, Richard Heinberg; the Professor of Ecological Economics at Vermont University, Joshua Farley; and Rob Dietz from the Centre for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy.