Systemic Collapse: The Basics

[littlebabyjesus]

I don't have a problem with the idea that a doubling of CO2 emissions by 2050 could very likely lead to a warming of 6 degrees*, and certainly not with the idea that we should be investing much more heavily in renewables and energy efficiency in order to prevent this / seriously reduce the impact of climate change.

That's pretty much been my position throughout this thread and every other thread on the subject.

.

Mine too. It's most people's position on here, tbh. The climate change deniers who simply don't understand science seem to have disappeared from threads like these. But I have to say that they have been replaced by one or two who, while not showing a total disregard for the science, are intent on representing it in a skewed way.

imo Falcon gets carried away with his own rhetoric very often, and this leads him to misrepresent the case he's putting forward.

Dr Jon is a fatalist who appears to think that humans are irredeemable, that it is our destiny to fuck ourselves up.

 

[Falcon]

Free Spirit - it's fine. If you feel your knowledge is better than that of the IEA and the scientific community, then knock yourself out. I'm done inviting you to explain how your view fits with their interpretation of the data.

Regarding LBJ's opinion about "skew", there is a very interesting blog posting by John Michael Greer this morning on what motivates former climate change supporters to become, effectively, climate change deniers:

there’s more going on in the world of climate change activism than the honest concern of citizens and the honest labor of researchers, and it’s past time to examine the reasons why the climate change movement got so large and accomplished so little.

Broadly speaking, once climate change becomes apparent, it ceases to be a useful device for getting people to do what you want them to do (it's no longer a threat that your pet programme wards off) and, in fact, gets in the way. Hmmmm. You might find it interesting.

Equally, you might find him someone to add to your long list of people who must be wrong in order for you to maintain your belief system.

I'll confess even I was unaware that areas of open water in the Arctic up to a kilometer across are now "fizzing with methane" - hard to see how that fits with your various speculations about the conveniently relaxed timescale for exploring the scalability of your agriculture experiments ("Vast methane 'plumes' seen in Arctic ocean as sea ice retreats", Independent, 13 December 2011). As Greer points out - why is no-one talking about this?

 

[free spirit]

Free Spirit - it's fine. If you feel your knowledge is better than that of the IEA and the scientific community, then knock yourself out.

wtf are you on about?

I largely agree with the IEA position as outlined in that article.

Your position on this and other threads has been significantly different to the IEA position outlined in that article, and I disagree with much of your position largely because of those differences.

See the difference?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Regarding LBJ's opinion about "skew", I'll confess even I was unaware that areas of open water in the Arctic up to a kilometer across are now "fizzing with methane" - hard to see how that fits with your various speculations about the scalability of agriculture experiments and the conveniently relaxed timescale ("Vast methane 'plumes' seen in Arctic ocean as sea ice retreats", Independent, 13 December 2011).

Very worrying. I would not deny that. You should know that I would not deny that.

I stand by my comment that you present scientific findings in a skewed way. You take away uncertainty. You also represent what might happen if we carry on as we are as if it were what will happen regardless. As I said, you get carried away with your own rhetoric.

 

[elbows]

My opinion so far:

Free spirit is too positive, but some positivity is probably required when focussing on the areas where something can be done, so not a big issue unless such giddy levels of positivity encourage complacency and a failure to act.

Dr Jon far too negative, though still perhaps of some use as a reminder of the stakes should we utter fail.

Falcon continues to demonstrate a level of dishonesty during debates which I find disgusting, my anger over this is rising exponentially . Your blatant misrepresentation of that quote says it all, don't know who you think you are trying to kid, truly pathetic. I won't waste much more time on you since little is gained by watching you tie yourself up in knots. Maybe Im wrong and others don't perceive you in this manner, but we'd need other voices beyond the usual half-dozen regulars in this thread in order to find out.

 

[elbows]

I should also point out that much of my frustration towards Falcon over these details is because there is rather a lot of potential for Falcon to be a positive and helpful force. You've clearly got a good grip on many aspects, but you utterly ruin it for me by going out on a limb that is, despite your frequent attempts to show otherwise, not fully supported by the evidence.

I wanted to hear more about your experience with the transition movement, rather than your continued hype, but you seem uninterested in discussing this so I shall consider you a waste of time for now.

And by the way Im not asking you to make a massive change to your beliefs, to think that we will make it ok, or that we have loads of time. I just want you to knock off the unhelpful hype and exponential wailing. Given that I believe the system is in trouble, and that free spirit is too positive, I am not the polar opposite of you. But I would much rather focus on how much can be achieved, quite what can be sustained, rather than simply shouting about how quickly we will face total and utter destruction with nothing left. If we don't blow ourselves to smithereens then there is a level of success we can reach, the efforts of the likes of free spirit are therefore better than nothing. It won't be the same as what we can achieve unsustainably right now, but it will be more than nothing.

 

[Dr Jon]

Dr Jon [is] still perhaps of some use...

Phew! That's a relief!
Being marooned on a doomed planet is bad enough, but being marooned on a doomed planet with no useful purpose is just too much.

Thank-you for that.

 

[elbows]

I will also admit that I focus on your words because I have little new of my own to add. Im in limbo, waiting for later chapters, for more dramatic movements on the energy, economics, austerity & ideological fronts. I have little idea quite how long I will have to wait, other than a general expectation that before the end of this decade we will have something to discuss and a few less uncertainties. The extent of things such as economic & ideological collapse, scaling up of gas fracking and scaling up of unconventional oil (tar sands, tight oil etc) set the pace and its very hard to predict any of these with certainty. Contrary to the impression given by some, the overall story may remain the same but the timescale has a boatload of potential variations.

 

[Falcon]

I stand by my comment that you present scientific findings in a skewed way. You take away uncertainty. You also represent what might happen if we carry on as we are as if it were what will happen regardless. As I said, you get carried away with your own rhetoric.

Yeah. I have never yet got either of you to engage on the only point I have ever made - what do we do in the absence of certainty about matters that have the capacity to kill us?

 

[elbows]

Phew! That's a relief!
Being marooned on a doomed planet is bad enough, but being marooned on a doomed planet with no useful purpose is just too much.

Thank-you for that.

Im afraid I am rather rude and inconsiderate of the actual person behind the posts when I parp out my opinions about how much use different posters output is.

I am frustrated because I consider myself fairly useless at the moment. Since I lost my job in December it would be nice if I could go off on a path that is both productive and in tune with my expectations for the future, but I don't know where to start. I flirted with trying to promote positive change in daily energy usage, but got put off by the couple of years of intense greenwashing and use of this stuff to encourage consumption rather than discourage it. My natural temperament makes me a better fit with the gloomier side of things, but I haven't thought of a good way of applying this in a useful manner, and politically it seems either impotent or dangerous, at least right now.

Any ideas? I assume the middle ground is more potentially fertile, but at this point its rather hard to get a lot of engagement with people who are in this group. They've either not much to say pending future realities, or they've already said there bit, or they are stunned into relative silence by the loud volume of the voices who presently find much more to say by milking the extremes.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yeah. I have never yet got either of you to engage on the only point I have ever made - what do we do in the absence of certainty about matters that have the capacity to kill us?

What you don't do is add together a number of uncertainties - even partially or largely correlated ones - and treat your conclusion with the same level of uncertainty as the individual factors.

You don't accept this. I don't accept that you are right not to accept this.

 

[free spirit]

Yeah. I have never yet got either of you to engage on the only point I have ever made - what do we do in the absence of certainty about matters that have the capacity to kill us?

I've answered that multiple times, it's just that you appear not to like the answer, so ignore it.

What we don't do is something that absolutely certainly will destroy the entire global economy in a matter of years, and in the process destroying all hope we may have of an orderly transition to a low energy and carbon intensity economy supporting an average quality of life as close to current levels as possible (or higher), and probably leading directly to the sort of mass die off you and John keep predicting.

What we should do is to move as rapidly as possible to that sustainable, low carbon, low energy intensity global economy in order to limit the risks from climate change while not only not destroying the entire economy, but while actually moving the economy to as close to a full employment situation as we're likely to get in order to make that transition a reality.

I also strongly suspect that it'd be far more likely for the latter proposition to gain popular support, and become a reality, than the former, although the current suicidal economic policies combined with 25 years of inaction on GG emissions suggest a middle road position of continuing to do fuck all, then allow peak oil to do its worst on the global economy is more likely. I'll stick to advocating the position outlined in the 2nd paragraph though.

 

[elbows]

Yeah. I have never yet got either of you to engage on the only point I have ever made - what do we do in the absence of certainty about matters that have the capacity to kill us?

Lets engage on that point then. Before I start, would you like to put it a couple of different ways to make sure I am accurately identifying the point.

In the meantime I will say that broadly speaking this issue has some parallels with other phenomena that make the human condition a bit tricky sometimes. For example the balance between security and freedom, how easily our desire for freedom may play second fiddle to the desire for at least the illusion of security. The impossibility of achieving genuine security on a sustained basis, the eternal presence of the possibility that any of us may drop dead at any moment.

And perhaps more interestingly, the difficulty humans have in discussing things in terms of 'having no choice'. As I mentioned when I was going on about climate change timing & policy agenda having some overlap with peak oil, I believe that even in times of great woe, humans like to choose narratives which still have them in the driving seat, making choices to go down one path or another. Being presented with a scenario where there really is no alternative is not the easiest thing to engage with, especially at the early stages where people will understandably want more proof that the path really is the only way. I still have severe concerns about how this will affect important decisions and beliefs in future, I worry that the unachievable will be promised by sinister political forces and that a meaningful chunk of people may believe the whole thing is a dastardly plot chosen by some elites instead of an inevitable resource reality that we have no choice but to come to terms with.

But there is a more positive outcome from such phenomenon. The powerful desire of humans to cast themselves in the hero role does make it slightly more likely that when the harsh reality is unavoidable, people will not just crawl as slowly as possible along the sane path but will actively run along it, spurred on my broader momentum and the idea that they are leading the way down a path of genuine sustainability, by choice.

 

[Falcon]

Your blatant misrepresentation of that quote says it all, don't know who you think you are trying to kid, truly pathetic.

What quote? The one where the IEA says we are 5 years from irreversible climate change (reference), or the one where the IEA says we are heading for 6 degrees (reference), or the one where we need to leave 80% of unburned fossil fuel in the ground to stay within a 2 degree rise carbon budget (reference)?

What science - exactly - do you think I am "blatantly misrepresenting". Are you saying that observing that the gassing off of seabed Arctic methane that is now observably underway is the precursor of thermal runaway is misstating scientific opinion? That stating that a six degree rise in average temperature is now both likely, and an extinction event, is a blatant misrepresentation of scientific opinion?

I see you fabricating a lot of angst whenever anything isn't couched in the wooliest, least offensive language, for reasons I can't fathom. But unless you are claiming that the IEA is incompetent, or didn't say what they said, or that neither are they incompetent nor am I a liar but that the earth is likely to settle out spontaneously at some temperature far lower than 6 degrees in defiance of our models, or that it won't but that a 6 degree average temperature rise is not likely to be an extinction event for many of the species and associated bioservices upon which we currently depend, I'm not sure what you think has been misrepresented.

 

[Falcon]

What we should do is to move as rapidly as possible to that sustainable, low carbon, low energy intensity global economy in order to limit the risks from climate change while not only not destroying the entire economy, but while actually moving the economy to as close to a full employment situation as we're likely to get in order to make that transition a reality.

I agree with you entirely. It is a viewpoint which is completely consistent with my view. This whole tedious debate about the certainty or otherwise of various views has been a total red herring.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I agree with you entirely. It is a viewpoint which is completely consistent with my view.

Good. I agree with fs entirely too. We appear to be breaking out in a rash of agreement here.

 

[Falcon]

Lets engage on that point then. Before I start, would you like to put it a couple of different ways to make sure I am accurately identifying the point.

When faced with highly harmful events of uncertain likelihood, we should act as if those events were certain until such time as it can be shown by the scientific method that they are not.

To anticipate an argument you might make based on your consideration of analogies such as freedom/security: we can distinguish between reversible harmful events (e.g. drug trials) and irreversible harmful events (e.g. climate instability) and assert that irreversible, highly harmful events demand the most conservative approach.

Discuss.

 

[free spirit]

What quote? The one where the IEA says we are 5 years from irreversible climate change (reference),

Actually, you've copied a Guardian headline and referenced it as an IEA statement. This is what the IEA actually say on the matter (in their executive summary, I've not got access to the full report)

Four-fifths of the total energy-related CO2 emissions permissible by 2035 in the 450 Scenario are already “locked-in” by our existing capital stock (power plants, buildings, factories, etc.). If stringent new action is not forthcoming by 2017, the energy-related infrastructure then in place will generate all the CO2
emissions allowed in the 450 Scenario up to 2035, leaving no room for additional power plants, factories and other infrastructure unless they are zero-carbon, which would be extremely costly.
Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment avoided in the power sector before 2020 an additional $4.3 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.

So, the IEA issue a carefully balanced statement, which the guardian then translate into a hyped up headline, and you copy the hyped up headline, misrepresent it as being an IEA statement, then state that posters who question this by basically saying the exact same thing that the IEA themselves say are in some way disagreeing with the IEA position.

I'm not, I'm disagreeing with a Guardian headline writers hyperbolic interpretation of the IEA report, and your repeating of that as if it is anything other than a hyperbolic statement.

 

[free spirit]

or the one where the IEA says we are heading for 6 degrees (reference),

yeah, as pointed out above, they don't just say that do they. They say

"The current state of affairs is unacceptable precisely because we have a responsibility and a golden opportunity to act. Energy-related CO2 emissions are at historic highs, and under current policies, we estimate that energy use and CO2 emissions would increase by a third by 2020, and almost double by 2050. This would be likely to send global temperatures at least 6C higher within this century."

now, if you can point me in the direction of anyone on this thread who's been arguing for a continuation of current policies, then your repeated assertions regarding the risks of a 6 degree rise might have some merit, but I doubt you can do that, and even if you can, then you really ought to be explaining the caveats involved instead of just making statements like that, or this one

I detect the climate scientists really starting to shit themselves over the dozens of positive feedback systems we have identified so far that more or less ensure we will engage thermal runaway and hit 6 degrees,

 

[Falcon]

yeah, as pointed out above, they don't just say that do they. They say

Oh dear. Your argument is that "we are heading for" and "on continuation of existing policies" are not synonymous?

Elsewhere, from the IEA:

"If we do not have an international agreement, whose effect is put in place by 2017, then the door to [holding temperatures to 2C of warming] will be closed forever"

-- Fateh Birol, IEA Chief Economist, 9 Nov 2011 (ref)

Let's be clear: if the neoliberal financial capitalist political economy doesn't spontaneously agree to repudiate the basic principles of neoliberal financial capitalism, and within 60 months, global temperature rise of 2 degrees is inevitable -- and we have started gassing seabed methane off already.

The sophistry with which you seek to avoid the improbability of this is remarkable.

 

[free spirit]

or the one where we need to leave 80% of unburned fossil fuel in the ground to stay within a 2 degree rise carbon budget (reference)?

again, compare and contrast

Excuse me? We need to cut production by 80% today to avoid risks which include, amongst other outcomes, species extinction. In what way is that a "long" emergency?

I accept (indeed, claim) that cutting 80% of carbon consumption will be economically and socially devastating, not least from its immediate effect on the food system. But so does burning it to keep the economy going. And, indeed, so now does burning it even to build replacements, because we left it 40 years too late.

No, I don't think that is the worst possible scenario at this point. 6 degrees is the worst possible scenario at this point.

You're taking statements that say one thing in a careful and measured way, and turning them into hyperbolic versions of those statements that contain certain aspects of the IEA statements, but also miss a lot out, and start mixing them up as well.

So, we wouldn't actually need to cut our rate of fossil fuel consumption by 80% today in order to prevent 80% of current fossil fuel reserves being burnt, these are 2 different things.

And this 80% figure relates to the 450ppm level at which it's generally believed that we'd stand a good chance of avoiding an over 2 degree rise, rather than being anything really to do with preventing a 6 degree rise. I accept that you know this, but you don't make these distinctions clear in your posts.

I know it's a pain in the arse to keep having to carefully repeat the caveats involved in these sort of statements, and using the hyperbolic headlines is much easier, but it really is misleading and counterproductive IMO.

 

[elbows]

I like a good chunk of the IAEs approach in the last 5-ish years, and find it better to separate what they say from what journalists and we say. I think their conclusions speak loudly enough for themselves, and detail is lost rather than gained when even heftier rhetoric about our plight is grafted on to their statements.

Falcon can you remind me of exactly how this stuff about climate change fits in to your wider overall point? If we believe that exploitation of certain resources is peaking, and the alternatives will not fill the gap, then we can discount the possibility that current policies, current capacity and additional capacity will cause our energy use to increase by a third by 2020.

But if I recall correctly you seem to have used climate change to make rather large claims about how much of our capacity & current levels of consumption need to be radically reduced within an impossibly narrow timeframe.

 

[Falcon]

So, we wouldn't actually need to cut our rate of fossil fuel consumption by 80% today in order to prevent 80% of current fossil fuel reserves being burnt, these are 2 different things.

Help me understand the difference between cutting it 80% today, and running at 100% and cutting it by 100% in 20% of the time we thought we had (identical volumetric scenarios), in terms of the impact on that fraction of the worlds population that depend on its input to the industrial agricultural system.

Sophistry.

 

[elbows]

I agree with you entirely. It is a viewpoint which is completely consistent with my view. This whole tedious debate about the certainty or otherwise of various views has been a total red herring.

I wouldn't call it a red herring. I keep plugging away at it despite the tedium because I still think it can be of some use. Even if its not directly of use it can brush up against some interesting issues along the way,and may help us to discover what we have in common as opposed to what sets us apart.

The level of certainty in messages matters. On the one hand it can be easier to make a clear and compelling case and get people to act if certainty is overstated, but this is not without risk. At abate minimum the levels of certainty implied should be carefully tailored to fit the audience. If you are dealing with people who are already broadly sold on the cause, then it is not desirable to soil the detail with hyperbole. And it is questionable whether certainty wins over sceptics either, it may make it easier for them to dismiss the whole thing.

 

[Falcon]

Falcon can you remind me of exactly how this stuff about climate change fits in to your wider overall point?

My wider overall point - the OP of this thread "Systemic Collapse - the basics" - is that climate instability, energy depletion, food scarcity, environmental degradation, and financial instability are converging and reinforcing crisis that share a common dependence and root cause in an over dependence on hydrocarbon as a primary energy source. The structure of industrial society is such that these convergences will result in a loss of complexity, referred popularly as "collapse". The attempt to view them as - and respond to them as - separate phenomena and ignore the interdependence of other crises - ensures that any response will be inadequate. The tendency to treat food as a separate, solvable crisis, while ignoring (or grossly understating) the deleterious impacts of climate instability, environmental degradation, financial and social instability, and energy depletion, beautifully illustrates the proposition.

 

[elbows]

Help me understand the difference between cutting it 80% today, and running at 100% and cutting it by 100% in 20% of the time we thought we had, in terms of the impact on that fraction of the worlds population that depend on its input to the industrial agricultural system.

Sophistry.

Timing and rate of change are key in so many ways, some of which other aspects of your stance rest upon, so I really struggle to appreciate where you are going with this sort of thing.

We can bet on much, but I think its a rather safe bet that we won't cut by 80% suddenly, or by 100% suddenly at some future point. Instead we see a period of maintaining or increasing consumption for as long as possible, whilst doing a little bit on the efficiency and non-fossil-fuel front, including finding a few more important areas where we might attempt to switch the type of fuel being used. We see the economy having a variety of affects on both the supply and demand side, and we can imagine periods of slowly declining consumption, punctuated with possible steeper drops as a result of large and fairly rapid shocks to the system (e.g. supply disruptions or economic siezure).

I do not doubt the sheer scale of both the transition and the overall decrease in energy consumption. What I take issue with is the timing, Im expecting the long story to continue with all manner of stuff going on over three or four decades to come. And the chapter we are in now will not yield many firmer clues regardless of how much certainty, hype, reassurance or optimism any of us throw around with our words here.

 

[Falcon]

We can bet on much, but I think its a rather safe bet that we won't cut by 80% suddenly, or by 100% suddenly at some future point.

I absolutely agree. In other words, we will not avoid irreversible climate change. Yet you lambast me for not using sufficiently imprecise language. You are currently attempting to have your cake and eat it.

 

[elbows]

My wider overall point - the OP of this thread "Systemic Collapse - the basics" - is that climate instability, energy depletion, food scarcity, environmental degradation, and financial instability are converging and reinforcing crisis that share a common dependence and root cause in an over dependence on hydrocarbon as a primary energy source. The structure of industrial society is such that these convergences will result in a loss of complexity, referred popularly as "collapse". The attempt to view them as - and respond to them as - separate phenomena and ignore the interdependence of other crises - ensures that any response will be inadequate. The tendency to treat food as a separate, solvable crisis, while ignoring (or grossly understating) the deleterious impacts of climate instability, environmental degradation, financial and social instability, and energy depletion, beautifully illustrates the proposition.

Thanks for the explanation.

I certainly find the most interesting areas to think about today involve the large overlap between all these different things, along with ideological direction, there are so many different ways that these factors may interact. For example peak oil may lead us to tackle climate change in a manner and with timing that would otherwise have not been the case, and there could be both advantages and hideous downsides to such an interaction of major issues and the forces they unleash.

It does seem fairly likely that at some point the 'perfect storm' we face may reveal enough of itself that popular narratives of events take an increasingly holistic approach. Most likely the existing system has to show itself to be woefully ill equipped to deal with the storm for some time to come yet, which will encourage people to consider the exact nature of their plight. And there is still a chance that possibilities such as a temporary 'gas glut' that lasts for long enough will delay this moment of truth, preventing perfect storm conditions from existing even when many of the other storm ingredients are ready and waiting.

 

[elbows]

I absolutely agree. In other words, we will not avoid irreversible climate change. Yet you lambast me for not using sufficiently imprecise language. You are currently attempting to have your cake and eat it.

I never claimed we would avoid irreversible climate change, any my criticism of you about this topic is down to your attempts to use the issues of climate change to bring a new immediacy to our energy woes that does not actually exist. The problem already exists, but the genuinely unavoidable action is not yet unavoidable, they can and will delay for longer than they should, just as they have done for decades before now.

Not that I am a huge fan of the term irreversible in this case, since given long enough the planet could recover eventually, just not within a timescale that means much to my own lifespan or todays human systems.

Personally Im not too strongly wedded to any of the really specific numbers that climate change science thinks it has latched onto, since our models for the climate system will not be quite as sophisticated as the reality. I am deeply concerned about how much damage we have done to the planet already on so many levels, to the extent that it rather spoils my sense of joy at being alive. To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if key aspects of the world went badly badly wrong at any moment, but nor would I be surprised if things stumbled on for a long time to come. In many ways I do think we already went much too far, we are already well past the point of no return. But a return to what? There is no going back, and some things cannot accurately be added to the picture until we have hindsight about them, so again Im kinda stuck in limbo for now.

Anyway seeing as this thread is about systems I will return to the fruitful discussion we nearly restarted on this earlier, as I want to rant about our current system.

 

[free spirit]

Let's be clear: if the neoliberal financial capitalist political economy doesn't spontaneously agree to repudiate the basic principles of neoliberal financial capitalism, and within 60 months, global temperature rise of 2 degrees is inevitable -- and we have started gassing seabed methane off already.

The sophistry with which you seek to avoid the improbability of this is remarkable.

I've repeatedly stated in this thread that I already view it as being virtually impossible for us to limit CO2 concentrations to 450ppm, and that we're therefore unlikely to be able to limit this to a 2 degree rise. I see no reason to get excited about the IEA putting some notional date on the point when they will agree that this is inevitable, and certainly no reason to use hyperbolic statements like "5 years to avoid irreversible climate change".

I don't see that it serves any purpose to draw pointless lines in the sand that we must never cross, but inevitably will because we missed the potential to take the action necessary to not cross those lines 10-15 years ago. I also don't see that it's sensible to conflate crossing the 450ppm threshold with anything other than a slightly raised possibility of a 6 degree temperature rises, and assert that as a result an immediate 80% reduction in fossil fuel use, or leaving 80% fossil fuels in the ground is necessary because the results of not doing that would be far worse than the economic devastation such a policy would cause.

I prefer to focus on achievable stuff like aiming to actually turn the CO2 emissions Juggernaut around as early as practicable, with something like a levelling off of global emissions by sometime around 2020-2025 being a realistic possibility if we put our minds to it globally, followed by a reduction through to 2050 so that the 2050 levels are significantly below current levels instead of being double current levels as given by the IEA in their scenario that would make a 6 degree rise likely.

This would be a measured realistic position to reduce the potential for the worst case scenario 6 degree rise, while leaving the global economy intact, instead of the pie in the sky bollocks you've been coming out with on this thread.

Of course I wish we'd started this process in earnest far earlier, and been in a position now to realistically be targeting 450ppm, but no amount of wishful thinking is going to make that happen now. Let's deal with the reality of the situation and what's realistically achievable from the current starting position without sending most of the world back to the stone age (or an early grave) by willfully destroying the world economy, in a scenario that's virtually certain to never happen anyway.