Climate Issues - Haggard Earth

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Issues; Hits: 78

Climate Gates......Maybe we don't need billionaire opinions on everything Bill McKibben Oct 31, 2025 I feel quite strongly that we should pay less attention to billionaires—indeed that’s rather the point of this small essay—so let me acknowledge at the outset that there is something odd about me therefore devoting an edition of this newsletter to replying to Bill Gates’ new missive about climate. But I fear I must, if only because it’s been treated as such important news by so many outlets—far more, say, than covered the UN Secretary General’s same-day appeal to international leaders that began with a forthright statement of the science. Here’s Antonio Guterres: The truth is that we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5C in the next few years. And that going above 1.5C has devastating consequences. Some of these devastating consequences are tipping points, be it in the Amazon, be it in Greenland, or western Antarctica or the coral reefs.’ I

In fact, I could probably just note that Gates, with impeccable timing, decided to drop his remarks at the same moment that Hurricane Melissa plowed into Jamaica, doing incalculable damage because of winds made stronger by the ocean heat attributable to global warming. As Jeff Masters reported......"Human-caused climate change increased Hurricane Melissa’s wind speeds by 7% (11 mph, or 18 km/h), leading to a 12% increase in its damages, found researchers at the Imperial College of London in a rapid attribution study just released. A separate study by scientists at Climate Central found that climate change increased Melissa’s winds by 10%, and the near-record-warm ocean waters that Melissa traversed — 1.2 degrees Celsius (1.2°F) warmer than average — were up to 900 times more likely to be that warm because of human-caused climate change.".And, oh, the same day Hue, in Vietnam, reported one of the two or three greatest rainfalls in recorded human history: f ive feet of rain in 24 hours, the kind of deluge made ever more likely by a warming atmosphere that can hold more water vapor. As the Associated Press reported, “global warming is making tropical storms stronger and wetter, according to experts, because warmer oceans provide them with more fuel, driving more intense winds, heavier rainfall and shifting precipitation patterns across East Asia.”

Anyway, Bill Gates’ letter......."There’s a doomsday view of climate change that goes like this: In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization. The evidence is all around us—just look at all the heat waves and storms caused by rising global temperatures. Nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature. Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong. Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future. Emissions projections have gone down, and with the right policies and investments, innovation will allow us to drive emissions down much further."...... It was wrong of him to write it because if his high-priced pr team didn’t anticipate the reaction, they should be fired.

I assume they did, and that they were okay with the entirely predictable result from our president. Here’s how the Washington Times described it......“I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax,” said Mr. Trump in a Wednesday post on Truth Social. “Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!”....... Bill Gates didn’t, of course, say that. He said climate change was real and we should be worried about it, but that it wouldn’t lead to “humanity’s demise” or “the end of civilization” (which seems like the lowest of low bars) and that......."Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease"......and therefore that’s where we should focus our money. His letter is actually directed at delegates to the global climate conference next month in Brazil, essentially telling them to back off the emissions reductions and concentrate on growing economies in the developing world because “health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change.”

Any conversation about Bill Gates and climate should begin by acknowledging that he’s been wrong about it over and over again. He’s explained that up until 2006—i.e., 18 years after Jim Hansen’s testimony before Congress laying out the science, and well past the point where George W. Bush had acknowledged its reality—he like Trump thought the whole thing was a crock. “I had assumed there were cyclical variations or other factors that would naturally prevent a true climate disaster,” he explained—at the time he was the richest man in the world, and yet his scientific advisors couldn’t get across the simple facts to him. And he was last heard from on the topic in 2021, when he wrote a book explaining that it was going to be very hard to do renewable energy because it came with a “green premium”—i.e. it cost more. Sadly for his argument, that was pretty much the year that sun and wind crossed the invisible line making them less expensive than coal and oil and gas. (You can read my review from the New York Times here, and you can read his response to it in Rolling Stone here where he explains “McKibben is stuck in this time warp.”)

So—if we were listening to people on the grounds of whether they had a good track record, the world would not spend a lot of time on Gates and climate. But if you have a hundred billion dollars all is forgiven, and so there has been lots of fawning coverage. The fact that Gates framed all this in a way designed to appeal to the president is so obvious that it hardly bears mentioning (the richest men in the world have all been sucking up to him, so no extra shame here); let’s instead just go to the heart of his argument. Which is weak in the extreme.Bill Gates didn’t, of course, say that. He said climate change was real and we should be worried about it, but that it wouldn’t lead to “humanity’s demise” or “the end of civilization” (which seems like the lowest of low bars) and that. Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease and therefore that’s where we should focus our money. His letter is actually directed at delegates to the global climate conference next month in Brazil, essentially telling them to back off the emissions reductions and concentrate on growing economies in the developing world because “health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change.”

Any conversation about Bill Gates and climate should begin by acknowledging that he’s been wrong about it over and over again. He’s explained that up until 2006—i.e., 18 years after Jim Hansen’s testimony before Congress laying out the science, and well past the point where George W. Bush had acknowledged its reality—he like Trump thought the whole thing was a crock. “I had assumed there were cyclical variations or other factors that would naturally prevent a true climate disaster,” he explained—at the time he was the richest man in the world, and yet his scientific advisors couldn’t get across the simple facts to him.

And he was last heard from on the topic in 2021, when he wrote a book explaining that it was going to be very hard to do renewable energy because it came with a “green premium”—i.e. it cost more. Sadly for his argument, that was pretty much the year that sun and wind crossed the invisible line making them less expensive than coal and oil and gas. (You can read my review from the New York Times here, and you can read his response to it in Rolling Stone here where he explains “McKibben is stuck in this time warp.”)

So—if we were listening to people on the grounds of whether they had a good track record, the world would not spend a lot of time on Gates and climate. But if you have a hundred billion dollars all is forgiven, and so there has been lots of fawning coverage. The fact that Gates framed all this in a way designed to appeal to the president is so obvious that it hardly bears mentioning (the richest men in the world have all been sucking up to him, so no extra shame here); let’s instead just go to the heart of his argument. Which is weak in the extreme. Bill Gates didn’t, of course, say that. He said climate change was real and we should be worried about it, but that it wouldn’t lead to “humanity’s demise” or “the end of civilization” (which seems like the lowest of low bars) and that......"Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease"......read on https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/climate-gates?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Issues; Hits: 113

The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything But according to science journalist Peter Brannen, that dismal view is far too narrow. In his first book, The Ends of the World, Brannen chronicled Earth’s five major mass extinctions, charting the deep history of our planet’s greatest catastrophes. For his second, The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything (Ecco, 2025), he has higher ambitions, taking readers on dizzying jaunts through deep time to reframe our understanding of what may be the most vilified and misunderstood molecule on Earth.

Inspired and informed by conversations with leading planetary scientists, Brannen’s central argument is that CO2 is not merely an industrial pollutant but a key player in the four-billion-year-old drama of life on Earth. It is the molecule that built our planet, forming the global carbon cycle that has regulated climate, shaped geology and powered evolution for eons. He shows how the ebb and flow of atmospheric CO2 across Earth’s vast history has played a role in, yes, practically everything under the sun—from the primordial origins of life to the development of human civilization and our global economic system. From the ancient past to the present day, Brannen makes the case that to understand CO2 is to understand the very fabric of our world.

carbon dioxide has a terrible reputation. It’s much maligned because of its role as a biosphere-threatening pollutant, but in fact the atmospheric compound has been a critical driving force behind the creation of life on Earth, shaping human history and the waves of evolution preceding it.

Peter Brannen’s new book, “The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything: How Carbon Dioxide Made Our World,” is just what the title promises, drawing on geology, thermodynamics, chemistry, biology, and eventually, economics and sociology to make his case. “Four billion years ago, CO2 came alive,” he writes. “It remains the ultimate source of carbon for all life, the primary knob of Earth’s temperature, and our species’ signature product.” The pivotal part of the tale begins hundreds of millions of years ago when photosynthetic energy in the form of early plant life, algae, and bacteria became buried within the Earth’s crust, eventually forming fossil fuels. Those deposits were uncorked eons later by England’s industrial capitalism, and more than a century after that, by multinational fossil-fuel corporations, creating a thickening blanket of atmospheric CO2 and detonating today’s perilous carbon bomb.

One might argue that the history of life revolves around O2 (oxygen) and H2O (water) as much as CO2. But though the buildup of oxygen in the atmosphere enabled complex life, Brannen shows that the gas wasn’t primarily created by photosynthesis but by longtime geologic processes, which naturally involve CO2. And to Brannen, water is merely an assistant, helping to transform carbon dioxide from the air into the stuff of life. So carbon dioxide, he convincingly shows, is the real star of the show.

Brannen, the author of “The Ends of the World,” a 2017 account of Earth’s five mass extinction events, is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic, where he has taken on scientifically contentious issues, like whether we’re living in the Anthropocene or not, or refuting the idea that the Amazon is the Earth’s lungs. In his latest book, he wades into other provocative debates, such as whether or not Earth is really facing a sixth major mass extinction, but he fully acknowledges that humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions are propelling us toward such a catastrophe.Before assessing how the planet became so imperiled, though, he examines the probable origins of life. Brannen explores two leading hypotheses: that it began with “metabolism first” — with chemical reactions at deep-sea hydrothermal vents that didn’t require photosynthesis — or with “information first,” in which a soup of RNA-like molecules began replicating and eventually produced proto-cells. The jury is still out on this debate, though Brannen leans toward the metabolism idea, making the provocative suggestion that “perhaps the first life wasn’t a miracle, but a necessity” to resolve chemical instabilities at those marine vents.

In chronicling how Earth reached today’s climatic tipping point, Brannen takes a lively tour of past eras, when the planet wildly swung between snowball Earth and greenhouse Earth. The former resulted from a dearth of carbon dioxide and a layer of ice encasing the planet, while the latter came from an overabundance of atmospheric carbon, dramatically raising temperatures. (Venus, where a runaway greenhouse effect made that world uninhabitable around a billion years ago, serves as a warning, he writes.) https://undark.org/2025/09/26/review-the-story-of-co2/

AND,......Another review........The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything But according to science journalist Peter Brannen, that dismal view is far too narrow. In his first book, The Ends of the World, Brannen chronicled Earth’s five major mass extinctions, charting the deep history of our planet’s greatest catastrophes. For his second, The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything (Ecco, 2025), he has higher ambitions, taking readers on dizzying jaunts through deep time to reframe our understanding of what may be the most vilified and misunderstood molecule on Earth. Inspired and informed by conversations with leading planetary scientists, Brannen’s central argument is that CO2 is not merely an industrial pollutant but a key player in the four-billion-year-old drama of life on Earth. It is the molecule that built our planet, forming the global carbon cycle that has regulated climate, shaped geology and powered evolution for eons. He shows how the ebb and flow of atmospheric CO2 across Earth’s vast history has played a role in, yes, practically everything under the sun—from the primordial origins of life to the development of human civilization and our global economic system. From the ancient past to the present day, Brannen makes the case that to understand CO2 is to understand the very fabric of our world.When we talk about carbon dioxide, the narrative is almost always that of a modern-day morality play. We hear about gigatons of CO2 emitted, about rising global temperatures and about the dire, unheeded warnings of climate scientists.......read on https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-dioxide-isnt-what-you-think-it-is/

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Issues; Hits: 70

In a June 24, 2025, interview published in the Guardian Weekly on July 4, 2025, climate expert Genevieve Guenther discussed the reality of climate tipping points and the importance of correcting misleading narratives that downplay climate risks. She highlighted the need for honest public discourse about potential catastrophic risks and countered the false narrative that the climate threat is under control...........‘This is a fight for life’: climate expert on tipping points, doomerism and using wealth as a shield. Economic assumptions about risks of the climate crisis are no longer relevant, says the communications expert Genevieve Guenther. Guardian Jonathan Watts Tue 24 Jun 2025 Climate breakdown can be observed across many continuous, incremental changes such as soaring carbon dioxide levels, rising seas and heating oceans. The numbers creep up year after year, fuelled by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. But scientists have also identified at least 16 “tipping points” – thresholds where a tiny shift could cause fundamental parts of the Earth system to change dramatically, irreversibly and with potentially devastating effects. These shifts can interact with each other and create feedback loops that heat the planet further or disrupt weather patterns, with unknown but potentially catastrophic consequences for life on Earth. It is possible some tipping points may already have been passed. Dr Genevieve Guenther, an American climate communications specialist, is the founding director of End Climate Silence, which studies the representation of global heating in the media and public discourse. Last year, she published The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It, which was described by Bill McKibben as “a gift to the world”. In the run-up to the Global Tipping Points conference in July, Guenther talks to the Guardian about the need to discuss catastrophic risks when communicating about the climate crisis.The climate crisis is pushing globally important ecosystems – ice sheets, coral reefs, ocean circulation and the Amazon rainforest – towards the point of no return.

Why is it important to talk about tipping points?....... We need to correct a false narrative that the climate threat is under control. These enormous risks are potentially catastrophic. They would undo the connections between human and ecological systems that form the basis of all of our civilisation

How have attitudes changed towards these dangers?.........There was a constructive wave of global climate alarm in the wake of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on 1.5C in 2018. That was the first time scientists made it clear that the difference between 1.5C and 2C would be catastrophic for millions of people and that in order to halt global heating at a relatively safe level, we would need to start zeroing out our emissions almost immediately. Until then, I don’t think policymakers realised the timeline was that short. This prompted a flurry of activism – Greta Thunberg and Indigenous and youth activists – and a surge of media attention. All of this converged to make almost everybody feel that climate change was a terrifying and pressing problem. This prompted new pledges, new corporate sustainability targets, and new policies being passed by government. This led to a backlash by those in the climate movement who prefer to cultivate optimism. Their preferred solution was to drive capitalist investment into renewable technologies so fossil fuels could be beaten out of the marketplace. This group believed climate fear might drive away investors, so they started to argue it was counterproductive to talk about worst-case scenarios. Some commentators even argued we had averted the direst predictions and were now on a more reassuring trajectory of global warming of a little under 3C by 2100. But it is bananas to feel reassured by that because 3C would be a totally catastrophic outcome for humanity. Even at the current level of about 1.5C, the impacts of warming are emerging on the worst side of the range of possible outcomes and there is growing concern of tipping points for the main Atlantic Ocean circulation (Amoc), Antarctic sea ice, corals and rainforests. If the risk of a plane crashing was as high as the risk of the Amoc collapsing, none of us would ever fly because they would not let the plane take off. And the idea that our little spaceship, our planet, is under the risk of essentially crashing and we’re still continuing business as usual is mindblowing. I think part of the problem is that people feel distant from the dangers and don’t realise the children we have in our homes today are threatened with a chaotic, disastrous, unliveable future. Talking about the risks of catastrophe is a very useful way to overcome this kind of false distance.

In your book, you write that it’s appropriate to be scared and the more you know, the more likely you are to be worried, as is evident from the statements of scientists and the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres. Why?....... Some people at the centre of the media, policymaking and even research claim that climate change isn’t going to be that bad for those who live in the wealthy developed world – the UK, Europe and the United States. When you hear these messages, you are lulled into a kind of complacency and it seems reasonable to think that we can continue to live as we do now without putting ourselves, our families, our communities under threat within decades. What my book is designed to do is wake people up and raise the salience and support for phasing out fossil fuels. [It] is written for people who are already concerned about the climate crisis and are willing to entertain a level of anxiety. But the discourse of catastrophe would not be something I would recommend for people who are disengaged from the climate problem. I think that talking about catastrophe with those people can actually backfire because it’ll just either overwhelm them or make them entrench their positions. It can be too threatening.

A recent Yale study found that a degree of climate anxiety was not necessarily bad because it could stir people to collective action. Do you agree?...... It depends. I talk about three different kinds of doomerism. One is the despair that arises from misunderstanding the science and thinking we’re absolutely on the path to collapse within 20 or 30 years, no matter what we do. That is not true. Second, there’s a kind of nihilistic position taken by people who suggest they are the only ones who can look at the harsh truth. I have disdain for that position. Finally, there’s the doomerism that comes from political frustration, from believing that people who have power are just happy to burn the world down.......read on- there's much more https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2025/jun/24/tipping-points-climate-crisis-expert-doomerism-wealth

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Issues; Hits: 52

Even the Guardian's Monbiot has been converted to Nuclear..... Before coal became widely available, wood was used not just for heating homes but also for industrial processes: if half the land surface of Britain had been covered with woodland, Wrigley shows, we could have made 1.25m tonnes of bar iron a year (a fraction of current consumption) and nothing else. Even with a much lower population than today's, manufactured goods in the land-based economy were the preserve of the elite. Deep green energy production – decentralised, based on the products of the land – is far more damaging to humanity than nuclear meltdown. But the energy source to which most economies will revert if they shut down their nuclear plants is not wood, water, wind or sun, but fossil fuel. On every measure (climate change, mining impact, local pollution, industrial injury and death, even radioactive discharges) coal is 100 times worse than nuclear power.

Thanks to the expansion of shale gas production, the impacts of natural gas are catching up fast. Yes, I still loathe the liars who run the nuclear industry. Yes, I would prefer to see the entire sector shut down, if there were harmless alternatives. But there are no ideal solutions. Every energy technology carries a cost; so does the absence of energy technologies. Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small. The crisis at Fukushima has converted me to the cause of nuclear power.rejection of nuclear energy can be ignorant bordering on superstitious, but safety concerns demand more space and consideration.read on https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Issues; Hits: 87

What has changed 20 years on from Hurricane Katrina? Huge improvements in hurricane forecasting have been made since Katrina hit the city of New Orleans this day 20 years ago. From starting out as a cluster of storm clouds over the Bahamas, Hurricane Katrina went on to become the deadliest (since 1928) and costliest natural disaster recorded in the United States. BBC Darren Bett Lead Weather Presenter 29 Aug 2025 Huge improvements in hurricane forecasting have been made since Katrina hit the city of New Orleans on this day 20 years ago. As part of an Atlantic hurricane season that was the most active in documented history, Katrina took nearly 2,000 lives, destroyed or made uninhabitable an estimated 300,000 homes, and caused more than $100 billion in property damage.From starting out as a cluster of storm clouds over the Bahamas, Hurricane Katrina went on to become the deadliest (since 1928) and costliest natural disaster recorded in the United States.As part of an Atlantic hurricane season that was the most active in documented history, Katrina took nearly 2,000 lives, destroyed or made uninhabitable an estimated 300,000 homes, and caused more than $100 billion in property damage. Although the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) provided an accurate forecast of the storm's track three days in advance, the resulting devastation led to a concerted effort to significantly improve hurricane modelling, prediction, and warning capabilities.

Improved science and technology have increased accuracy.....Technological advances have been the biggest driver of improved forecast accuracy. A combination of satellites, aircraft observations, numerical forecasting models, as well as historical data are used to predict what will happen. Back in 2005 forecasters had access to satellite images every 30 minutes. Today, satellites typically capture imagery every 10 minutes, and during severe weather this can be increased to every 30 seconds. Now more data from satellites and radar can be fed more quickly into more sophisticated models to produce a more detailed forecast. Now In 2005 data from aircraft flown into storms was not being used as part of the modelling. Today unmanned drones are used as part of research to improve hurricane science. Twenty years on scientists have access to more data from the sea. Collected by gliders, floats and drifters, these instruments provide valuable information about the most turbulent region of the hurricane environment, called the boundary layer, where the air meets the ocean. Computer models now also take into account forecast errors for the previous five years. All these, plus advances in computing power and a better understanding of the physics of a hurricane through more data and research, have led to the significant improvements. In 2005 the average tracking error in a 48-hour forecast was 110 nautical miles (200km). Since then, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the error has reduced by about 50 per cent.

What challenges remain? Forecasting a storm's intensity however remains more challenging. Small changes in atmospheric conditions can have a large impact on whether a storm strengthens or weakens. A 2024 study, external suggested the two main drivers to this uncertainty are changes in wind speed and direction through the atmosphere, known as vertical wind shear, and atmospheric moisture. Vertical wind shear tends to rip storms apart, preventing intensification or even causing a storm to weaken. Moisture in the atmosphere provides the energy to build clouds to great heights and enables storms to "spin up". The most unpredictable storms occur when there is a moderate amount of wind shear and moisture in the atmosphere. Improvements in computing power and new technologies to gather data hope to make these "high uncertainty" storms easier to forecast. Whilst a weather event can now be a forecasting success it is still possible for it to be a communications failure, as demonstrated by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which hit the east coast of the US,,,,read on https://www.bbc.com/weather/articles/c3ezvk133l8o?at_campaign_type=owned&at_medium=emails&at_objective=awareness&at_ptr_type=email&at_ptr_name=salesforce&at_campaign=futureearth&at_email_send_date=20250902&at_send_id=4442089&at_link_title=https%3a%2f%2fwww.bbc.com%2fweather%2farticles%2fc3ezvk133l8o&at_bbc_team=crm

Climate Gates......Maybe we don't need Billionaire Opinions on Everything

The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything

Reality of Climate Tipping Points and the importance of Correcting Misleading Narratives

Even the Guardian's Environment EditerMonbiot has been converted to Nuclear.....

What has Changed 20 years on from Hurricane Katrina? - Huge Improvements in Hurricane Forecasting!

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