Four Degree World: Observations and Impacts

World Bank: Four Degree World

Heat Waves and Extreme Temperatures

The past decade has seen an exceptional number of extreme heat waves ...

• the European heat wave of 2003,
• the Greek heat wave of 2007,
• the Australian heat wave of 2009,
• the Russian heat wave of 2010,
• the Texas heat wave of 2011, and
• the US heat wave of 2012

These heat waves often caused many heat-related deaths, forest fires, and harvest losses.

These events were ... typically more than 3 standard deviations (sigma) warmer than the local mean temperature ...
[S]uch 3-sigma events would be expected to occur [by chance] only once in several hundreds of years.

The five hottest summers in Europe since 1500 all occurred after 2002, with 2003 and 2010 being exceptional outliers.
The death toll of the 2003 heat wave is estimated at 70,000, with daily excess mortality reaching up to 2,200 in France.
The heatwave in Russia in 2010 resulted in an estimated death toll of 55,000 ...
(p 13)

Stefan Rahmstorf:

Figure 3-5:
Arctic Sea Ice Cover in September (the Summer Minimum Extent) in 1979 [the first year of satellite observation] and in 2005.
(NASA, May, 2007)

(Anthropogenic Climate Change: Revisiting the Facts, In Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto by E Zedillo, Brookings Institution Press, pp 34–53, 2008)

CONTENTS

The Rise of CO2 Concentrations and Emissions

Rising Global Mean Temperature

Increasing Ocean Heat Storage

Rising Sea Levels

Increasing Loss of Ice from Greenland and Antarctica

Ocean Acidification

Loss of Arctic Sea Ice

Heat Waves and Extreme Temperatures

George HW Bush

Blue Army: Persons of Interest

George HW Bush:
Where is it written that we must act as if we do not care?
As if we are not moved.
Well I am moved.
I want a kinder, gentler nation. ...
(Republican National Convention, New Orleans, 1988)

In many ways George Bush was what Ronald Reagan pretended to be.
As an actor, Ronald Reagan played the war hero.
George Bush was a war hero — a decorated naval aviator.
Ronald Reagan played the athlete.
George Bush was the captain of his Yale baseball team and played twice in the college championship game.
He was also a first rate tennis player.
Both preached family values, but only Bush could point to a happy family.







Carl Sagan:
President Ronald Reagan, who spent World War Two in Hollywood, vividly described his own role in liberating Nazi concentration camp victims. ...
On many occasions in his Presidential campaigns, [Reagan recounted his] epic story of World War Two courage and sacrifice, an inspiration [to] all of us.
Only it never happened ...
[I]t was the plot of the movie A Wing and a Prayer ...
{Living in the film world, he apparently confused a movie he had seen with a reality he had not.}

Many other instances of this sort can be found in Reagan's public statements.
It is not hard to imagine serious public dangers emerging out of instances in which political, military, scientific or religious leaders are unable to distinguish fact from ... fiction.
(On The Distinction Between True And False Visions, The Demon Haunted World, 1997, p 132)

CONTENTS

Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited

Echoes of the Wise Men

Power: Forms of Government

Bertrand Russell: Power

Bertrand Russell:
Except when he feels enthusiasm for a leader, the voter in a large democracy has so little sense of power that he often does not think it worth while to use his vote.
If he is not a keen propagandist for one of the parties, the vastness of the forces that decide who shall govern makes his own part in them appear completely negligible.
[A]ll that he can do ... is to vote for one or other of two men, whose programmes may not interest him, and may differ very little, and who, he knows, may with impunity abandon their programmes as soon as they are elected.

If, on the other hand, there is a leader whom he enthusiastically admires, the psychology involved is that which we considered in connection with monarchy: it is that of the tie between a king and the tribe or sect of his active supporters.
Every skilful political agitator or organiser devotes himself to stimulating devotion to an individual.
If the individual is a great leader, the result is one-man government ...
[I]f he is not, the caucus which has secured his election becomes the real power.
(p 133)

CONTENTS

Forms of Government

Political

Corporate

Democracy, Wealth and War

Carl Sagan

Green Army: Persons of Interest

Exodus:
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
(22:18)

The Demon-Haunted World:
The demonic seducers of women were labelled incubi; of men, succubi.
There are cases in which nuns reported, in some befuddlement, a striking resemblance between the incubus and the priest-confessor, or the bishop ...

The theologian Meric Casaubon argued — in his 1668 book Of Credulity and Incredulity [—] that witches must exist because ... everyone believes in them.
(p 111)

Pope Innocent VIII:
It has come to Our ears that members of both sexes do not avoid to have intercourse with evil angels, incubi, and succubi, and that by their sorceries, and by their incantations, charms, and conjurations, they suffocate, extinguish, and cause to perish the births of women [along with all manner of] abominations and enormities. ...

Our dear sons Henry Kramer and James Sprenger [have] by Letters Apostolic [been] delegated as Inquisitors of these heretical [de]pravities.
(1484)

With this Bull, Innocent initiated the systematic ... torture and execution of countless [girls and women] all over Europe. ...
(p 112)

With exhaustive citations of scripture and of ancient and modern scholars [Kramer and Sprenger] produced the Malleus Maleficarum ...
What the [Hammer of Witches essentially] comes down to ... is that if you're accused of witchcraft, you're a witch.
Torture is an unfailing means to demonstrate the validity of the accusation {[— provided] the instruments of torture [are first] blessed by the priests.}
There are no rights of the defendant.
There is no opportunity to confront the accusers. ...

[With the Pope's encouragement] Inquisitors began springing up all over Europe.
It quickly [degenerated into] an expense account scam.
All costs of investigation, trial and execution were borne by the accused or her relatives [including:]

• per diem for the private detectives hired to spy on her,
• wine for her guards,
• banquets for her judges,
• the travel expenses of a messenger sent to fetch a more experienced torturer from another city ...
• the faggots, tar and hangman's rope [and]
• [bonuses for] the members of the tribunal for each witch burned.

[Following a successful prosecution, the balance of the witch's estate was then] divided between Church and State.
As this legally and morally sanctioned mass murder and theft became institutionalized [attention shifted] from poor hags and crones to [more lucrative targets among] the middle class and well-to-do of both sexes.
(p 113)

[I]t was widely accepted] that tens of thousands of witches had gathered for a Sabbath in public squares in France [and] that 12,000 of them darkened the skies as they flew to Newfoundland. ...

Legions of women were burned to death [based on the] well-intentioned sentence [from] canon law [that:]

Council of Tours:
The Church abhors bloodshed.
(1163)

Innocent himself died in 1492, following unsuccessful attempts to keep him alive by transfusion (which resulted in the deaths of three boys) and by suckling at the breast of a nursing mother.
He was mourned by his mistress and their children. ...

In Britain witch-finders [so called 'prickers', received] a handsome bounty for each girl or woman they turned over for execution. ...
Typically they looked for 'devil's marks' — scars or birthmarks or nevi — that when pricked with a pin neither hurt nor bled.
A simple sleight of hand often gave the appearance that the pin penetrated deep into the witch's flesh.
When no visible marks were apparent, 'invisible marks' sufficed.
Upon the gallows, one mid-seventeenth-century pricker

... confessed he had been the death of above 220 women in England and Scotland, for the gain of twenty shillings apiece. ...

(p 114)

Edward Gibbon:
[T]he practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude that, if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision.
Their love of the marvellous and supernatural, their curiosity with regard to future events, and their strong propensity to extend their hopes and fears beyond the limits of the visible world, were the principal causes which favoured the establishment of Polytheism.
So urgent on the vulgar is the necessity of believing, that the fall of any system of mythology will most probably be succeeded by the introduction of some other mode of superstition ...
(The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776-89)

CONTENTS

The Most Precious Thing

Science and Hope

Aliens

The Demon Haunted World

Merchants of Doubt: Climate Science

Naomi Oreskes: Merchants of Doubt

Of Free Speech and Free Markets:
[As] one leading scientist said about [Bill Nierenberg's] 1983 [NAS] report, [Changing Climate: Report of the Carbon Dioxide Assessment Committee],

Edward Frieman:
We knew it was garbage, so we just ignored it. ...
(16 March, 2007)

Unfortunately, garbage doesn't just go away.
Someone has to deal with it, and that someone is all of us:

• journalists who report scientific findings,
• specialist professional bodies who represent the scientific fields, and
• all of us as citizens. ...

Global warming is a big problem, and to solve it we have to stop listening to disinformation. ...
We all need a better understanding of

• what science really is,
• how to recognize real science when we see it, and
• how to separate it from the garbage.

(p 265)

CONTENTS

1979

Organized Delay

The White House Effect

Blaming the Sun

The Attack on Roger Revelle

Security Implications of Climate Change: Expected Climate Change

CSIS-CNAS: Security Implications of Climate Change

Scenario Overview: Expected Climate Change

Time Span: 30 Years
Warming: 1.3°C
Sea Level Rise: 0.23 meters

There is no foreseeable political or technological solution that will enable us to avert many of the climatic impacts projected here. ...
[T]his scenario may be the best we can hope for.
It is certainly the least we ought to prepare for.
(p 55)

As a rule, wealthier countries (and wealthier individuals) will be better able to adapt to the impacts of climate change, while the disadvantaged will suffer the most. ...
Consequently, even though the IPCC projects that the temperature increases at higher latitudes will be approximately twice the global average, it will be the developing nations in the Earth’s low latitudinal bands and sub-Saharan Africa that will be most adversely affected by climate change.
In the developing world even a relatively small climatic shift can trigger or exacerbate

• food shortages,
• water scarcity,
• destructive weather events,
• the spread of disease,
• human migration, and
• natural resource competition.

These crises are ... interwoven and self-perpetuating: water shortages can lead to food shortages, which can lead to conflict over remaining resources, which can drive human migration, which, in turn, can create new food shortages in new regions. ...

[Once the] first climate change domino [falls] — whether it be food scarcity or the outbreak of disease — {this chain reaction becomes increasingly difficult to stop ...}

CONTENTS

Regional Sensitivity to Climate Change

Disease

Impact on Fuel Types

Lyndon Johnson

Green Army: Persons of Interest

My Fellow Americans:

James Thomson, Jr [National Security Council Staff]:
There was a strong sense that Americans were can-do people and that anything we put our mind to we could accomplish ...
[T]he kind of rural jungle warfare that the Communists were inflicting on us in the Third World [—] we could adapt [to it] and we could win ...

• we were smarter ...
• we had [the] technology,
• we had billions of dollars
• we would prevail. ...

A Pillar of Peace:

Larry Berman [Historian]:
Ho Chi Minh was a revolutionary [and an anti-colonial nationalist].
[But Johnson] didn't understand revolutionaries.
A revolutionary in the United States Senate is very different than someone like Ho Chi Minh.
He didn't understand the history of the Vietnamese people ...

Johnson thought he could force Ho Chi Minh to bargain.

Lyndon Johnson:
I saw our bombs as political resources for negotiating peace ...

But Ho couldn't be pushed. ...
He called the Americans "invaders".
Johnson called North Vietnam the aggressor, waging war on a peaceful neighbor.

Johnson wanted two countries, a North and a South Vietnam.
Ho wanted one.
{Their positions were irreconcilable.}

Larry Berman [Historian]:
Ho Chi Minh [had no intention] of ever allowing a peace treaty to [divide] their country.
[And t]ime was on their side.
They [could wait Johnson out. ...]

Bertrand Russell:
... South Vietnam was part of French Cochin-China, but after a long process of civil war, the French were excluded from the whole region.
A conference was summoned to meet at Geneva in 1954.
The conclusions reached were sensible, and, if they had been carried out, no trouble would have arisen.
Vietnam was to be independent and neutral, and was to have a parliamentary government established by a General Election.
The Americans did not like this.
They professed to suspect that Vietnam would become part of the Communist bloc if left to itself and that North Vietnam was already ... in spite of reiterated statements by the Government of North Vietnam that they wished to be neutral. ...

There were in South Vietnam three parties:

• the peasants [—] who constituted the large majority;
• the Buddhists; and
• a tiny minority of Christians [—] who had been supporters of the French.

The Americans decided to support [the Catholics].

[War] ensued between the American-supported minority and the Buddhists and peasants. ...
(p 713)

It has been warfare of an incredibly brutal kind [—] brutal to a degree seldom equaled by any civilised Power. ...
It is generally admitted that there is no hope that the Americans can win this war.
(The Labour Party's Foreign Policy, Speech at the London School of Economics, 15 February, 1965)

The advantages of successful war are doubtful, but the disadvantages of unsuccessful war are certain.
(Creeds as sources of power, Power, 1938, p 103)

CONTENTS

Beautiful Texas

My Fellow Americans

A Pillar of Peace

The Last Believer

The Guardian

Green Army: Communications

CONTENTS

False Hope

Serving the Public Interest

Power: Money, Propaganda and Fanaticism

Bertrand Russell: Power

Money:
Economic power within a State ... can influence law by corruption and public opinion by propaganda.
It can put politicians under obligations which interfere with their freedom.
It can threaten to cause a financial crisis.
But there are very definite limits to what it can achieve.
(p 85)

[W]here the issue is simple and public opinion is definite, the plutocracy is powerless ...
[W]here public opinion is undecided, or baffled by the complexity of the issue, the plutocracy can secure a desired political result. ...

[The] plutocracy [has hitherto] been unable to

• introduce Asiatic labour in California or Australia, except in early days in small numbers. ...
• destroy trade unionism ...
• to avoid heavy taxation of the rich [or]
• prevent socialist propaganda.

Per contra, it can prevent governments composed of Socialists from introducing Socialism, and if they are obstinate it can bring about their downfall by engineering a crisis and by propaganda.
If these means were to fail, it could stir up a civil war to prevent the establishment of Socialism. ...

[The trade unions, for their part,] have failed ... to keep in power governments which they liked but which a majority of the nation distrusted.

[T]he power of economic organisations to influence political decisions in a democracy is limited by public opinion, which, on many important issues, refuses to be swayed even by very intensive propaganda.
Democracy, where it exists, has more reality than many opponents of capitalism are willing to admit.
(p 86, italics added)

Propaganda:
Belief, when it is not simply traditional, is a product of several factors:

• desire,
• evidence, and
• iteration. ...

[W]hen there is no outside assertion, belief will only arise in exceptional characters, such as founders of religions, scientific discoverers, and lunatics. ...
More propaganda is necessary to cause acceptance of a belief for which there is little evidence than of one for which the evidence is strong ...

One of the advantages of democracy, from the governmental point of view, is that it makes the average citizen easier to deceive, since he regards the government as his government.
(p 96)

In the totalitarian countries, the State is virtually the sole propagandist.
(p 97)

The effect of organisation and unification, in the matter of propaganda as in other matters, is to delay revolution, but to make it more violent when it comes.
When only one doctrine is officially allowed, men get no practice in thinking or in weighing alternatives ...
[Consequently,] only a great wave of passionate revolt can dethrone orthodoxy ...
[T]herefore ... revolution in a totalitarian State is not necessarily a ground for rejoicing.
What is more to be desired is a gradual increase in the sense of security, leading to a lessening of zeal, and giving an opening for laziness — the greatest of all virtues in the ruler of a totalitarian State, with the sole exception of non-existence.
(p 98)

CONTENTS

Money

Propaganda

Fanaticism

World Bank: Four Degree World

Green Army: Research and Development

Foreword:
Scientists agree countries’ current ... emission pledges and commitments would most likely result in 3.5 to 4°C warming. ...
(p ix)

Executive Summary:
A world in which warming reaches 4°C above preindustrial levels ... would be one of unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and major floods in many regions, with serious impacts on human systems, ecosystems, and associated services.
(p xiii)

Recent research suggests that large-scale loss of biodiversity is likely to occur in a 4°C world, with climate change and high CO2 concentration driving a transition of the Earth´s ecosystems into a state unknown in human experience.
(p xvi)

[Given the uncertainty] about the full nature and scale of impacts, there is ... no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world [would even be] possible.
A 4°C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation ...
It is likely that the poor will suffer most and the global community could become more fractured and unequal ...
The projected 4°C warming ... must not be allowed to occur ...
[And o]nly early, cooperative, international actions can [prevent it.]
(p xviii)

Introduction:
Current scientific evidence suggests that even with the current commitments and pledges fully implemented, there is roughly

• a 20 percent likelihood of exceeding 4°C by 2100, and
• a 10 percent chance of 4°C being exceeded as early as the 2070s. ...

(p 1, italics added)

CONTENTS

Foreword

Executive Summary

Observed Impacts and Changes to the Climate System

Projected Climate Change Impacts

Rising CO2 Concentration and Ocean Acidification

Rising Sea Levels, Coastal Inundation and Loss

Risks to Human Support Systems: Food, Water, Ecosystems, and Human Health

Risks of Disruptions and Displacements

Introduction

Observations and Impacts