Category: Climate science

Climate denial, Climate science, Ecological change

Misrepresentation of business-as-usual emissions: The red herring of RCP8.5

The Breakthrough Institute has been busy. Their director of climate and energy has published a critique of the use of RCP8.5 as BAU.* While it is true that many papers misinterpret RCP8.5 as being the worst case scenario and that this is equivalent to BAU, the authors of the RCPs recently reminded the climate community that RCP8.5 assumed maximum burning of coal , which is not what is … Continue reading Misrepresentation of business-as-usual emissions: The red herring of RCP8.5

Stephen Mulkey
Adaptation, biosphere carbon management, Climate science, Ecological change, Environmental politics

The Long Game: Facing Reality in the Environmental Century

170907084916-01-golf-wildfire-trnd-super-teaseGolfing while the mountains burn. Photo from Beacon Rock Golf Course.

Personally, I would rate the likelihood of staying under two degrees of warming as under 10 percent. – Michael Oppenheimer 2017

Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.  – Thomas Merton

Under a concrete sky on 5 November 2014, Michele and I awoke to realize that Paul LePage had been re-elected as governor of Maine. Once again, Mainers had split their votes three ways and LePage was elected by a minority of the voters to another four-year term. We were deeply disappointed because during his first term LePage had made clear his disdain for environmental concerns. Little did we know that the next few years would make LePage’s first term look like the good old days. Continue reading “The Long Game: Facing Reality in the Environmental Century”

Stephen Mulkey
Adaptation, biosphere carbon management, Climate science, Ecological change, Environmental politics, Sustainability science

Ecology, Loss, and Triage

Rainforest-burning-NASA-2014Amazonia burning. NASA Earth Observatory 2014

“I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that remains.”

–Anne Frank

On Sunday, 30 April 2017, the New York Times reported that global marine fisheries are being pushed to the brink. This and countless other imminent losses prompt me to once again point out that management of the global biosphere is necessary if we are to have any hope of controlling climate change and feeding ourselves. Human impacts on ecosystems are pushing the living planet into a new regime characterized by disrupted ecological relationships and accelerating extinctions on local, regional, and global scales. Ecological disruption causes ongoing positive feedbacks from widely-distributed natural sources of emissions, thus further disrupting the climate system. Globally, we are approaching a state of unmanageability on many fronts. Continue reading “Ecology, Loss, and Triage”

Stephen Mulkey
Climate denial, Climate science, Ecological change, Environmental politics

On the Fear of a Backlash Against Science

DC-march-for-Science-22-April-2017Assembling on the National Mall before the March for Science 22 April 2017.

‘Science is my passion, politics, my duty’  

– Thomas Jefferson

On Saturday I joined more than 20,000 scientists and supporters of science to March for Science in a soaking rain on the National Mall in D.C. The experience was exhilarating and inspiring. It was a much needed antidote to constant stream of bad news for our environment emanating from the White House and Congress. These days, I sometimes feel as though we are entering a dark time when reason and learning will be driven from the mainstream of public discourse. The March for Science showed that we have strength in numbers and that scientists can, at least for this golden moment, stand united. Continue reading “On the Fear of a Backlash Against Science”

Stephen Mulkey1 Comment
Climate denial, Climate science, Ecological change, Environmental politics, Trump damage to climate

Normalizing Disruption and Loss

fig3_american-samoa_before-during-after_2015Progressive death of coral. NOAA Coral Reef Watch.
A planet that can’t sustain its greatest reef will eventually become a place that won’t support human life.  – Tim Winton, 2017.  The Australian Marine Conservation Society.

For the first time the Great Barrier Reef has experienced two back-to-back bleaching events, which have been driven entirely by extreme sea surface temperatures. The devastation is hard to miss, unless you are not looking. Successive generations often experience the conservation phenomenon known as shifting baselines of perception. A boy’s granddad may remember when they fished for more than 15 species of fish in the Gulf of California, but the boy believes that the five remaining species are normal, i.e., a new baseline. As the disruption of the biosphere accelerates and reductions in biodiversity ensue, it will become increasingly hard for each generation to perceive current conditions as normal, assuming that they are paying attention. Continue reading “Normalizing Disruption and Loss”

Stephen Mulkey
Climate denial, Climate science, Environmental politics, Trump damage to climate

Diminishing Options and The Climate Endgame

ig19_hurricanes_05_02
One of the strongest hurricanes on record, Ivan, was photographed on September 11, 2004 from an altitude of about 230 miles by NASA Astronaut Edward M. (Mike) Fincke. At the time, Ivan was in the western Caribbean Sea and reported to have winds of 160 mph.

“Make no mistake: The election of Donald Trump could be devastating for our climate and our future.” Michael Brune, Executive Director, Sierra Club, November 2016

“This world is your world but that doesn’t mean you can always stop it from burning.”
― Oli Anderson from Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness 2016

There are many uncertainties about how the new administration will govern beginning on 20 January 2017, but it is all too clear that addressing climate change will not be on the agenda. Continue reading “Diminishing Options and The Climate Endgame”

Stephen Mulkey
Climate science, Ecological change

Sleepwalking toward a new ecology

The pace of ecological change is quickening and I see little sense of urgency to address the negative consequences that are unfolding. The increasing speed of change is a direct consequence of two interacting drivers – resource use and climate change. The long standing processes of human use of natural resources and resulting habitat degradation have increased in scale and impact as our population has continued to explode. Adding to this, as defense analysts have argued, climate change is both a primary driver and amplifier of change. Collectively these factors are driving worldwide ecosystem change at a pace and scale far exceeding any previous period of change in the history of our planet at least since the demise of the dinosaurs. Continue reading “Sleepwalking toward a new ecology”

Stephen Mulkey
Climate science

Linkage between extreme weather and climate change

Originally posted on Intermountain Climate:
When I speak about climate change I always remind my audiences to not conflate climate with weather.  For example, Katrina is best seen as an extreme weather event that cannot be mechanistically linked to anthropogenic climate change.  Even scientists, including me, can lapse into sloppy thinking about individual weather events and declare, as I did in the heat of the… Continue reading Linkage between extreme weather and climate change

Stephen Mulkey