Caldeira states he was asked by SciAm editors "what would happen if... we burned ALL the fossil fuels available and dumped that CO2 into the atmosphere", and he claims he took some pains with his answer so it would stand up to the scrutiny of his scientific colleagues. At minute 2:00 he then states: "it might be that for the middle classes of the industrial world that climate change is really a secondary issue and they'll still have their TV sets and their McBurgers and McNuggets to eat and life would go on...."
Matthias Honegger translated an interview Hanna Wick conducted with Ken Caldeira that was published in German and posted it for this group here<https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering/tree/browse_frm/thread/51bdd45979ce24a3/a97348bd8422e04e?hide_quotes=no>. His translation of what Caldeira said in that interview went a bit further than in this SciAm video: Honegger translated Caldeira in this way: "My opinion is that climate change will be an ecological disaster. For most middle-class people in developed countries* it will not be felt very strongly*". I wonder how these statements are received by Caldeira's scientific colleagues. The time frame for the event, i.e. burning of all the fossil fuels, and the consequence, what would happen, appear to be different. Maybe he is thinking about the middle classes in 2050, or even by 2100, when many consequences will still be "in the pipeline", and in any case it will not have been possible to burn all the fossil fuels yet. If Caldeira actually believes it is possible to burn ALL the fossil fuels and have the average middle class person in developed countries not feel the consequences very strongly, how is it that apparently, so many of his colleagues disagree with him? I'd like to know where I've gone wrong in my effort to understand what scientists believe. Consider the publicly expressed views of John Schellnhuber of PIK, who stood before the audience at the 4 degrees conference held in Australia and after telling them their Great Barrier Reef was doomed even if civilization managed what seems now to be the almost impossible goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C, asked them if very many of them play Russian Roulette at home. He then explained that even if civilization limited global warming to 2 degrees the odds were worse than 1 in 6 that tipping points would be passed anyway which would threaten the existence of civilization. Perhaps Caldeira assumes geoengineering research has reached a point where he can assume it will be employed, and the planet can be successfully cooled no matter if all the fossil fuels are burned, and that civilization can survive relatively unscathed as the biosphere is disrupted wholesale in the high CO2 artificially cooled world? Is Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre, who says there is "a widespread view" among top flight scientists he is in contact with that a mere 4 degrees C warming will prove to be "incompatible with an organized global community" and have a "high probability of not being stable", aware of Caldeira's views? On Tuesday, August 14, 2012 3:22:07 PM UTC-7, andrewjlockley wrote: > > > CarnegieGlobEcology just uploaded a video: > > The Great Climate Experiment: How far can we push the planet? Ken Caldeira > [Scientific American] > Ken Caldeira discussing his article in the August 2012 issue of Scientific > American. > > The article is titled "The Great Climate Experiment. How far can we push > the planet?" It extends from page 78 to page 83. > > http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab/ > http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciammag/ more > user by visiting My Subscriptions. > > © 2012 YouTube, LLC > 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066 > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/geoengineering/-/WNHPgLBYuz8J. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
