I'm tired of what's eminating from political actors on climate. 🇩🇪's Minister for the Environment in a statement on the Emissions Gap Report: "Every ton of CO2 not emitted matters ... the gap between promises and action has to be reduced ... With its roadmap for a stepwise phase-out of fossil energies, Germany has sent a strong signal".

No reflection at all on our government's politics actively undermining climate targets, slowing a transition. It's ... climate blabla.

https://presse.bundesumweltministerium.de/m/17502520/553750-a7b7856e12a34655fb364e6e46b4d9577d15b9c15917abd051838041f32b4321dab8e63cdbc57d37a91b3cf9d9c5d153

The Guardian: "Policy has also not kept up with pledges: on current policies around the world, temperatures would rise to 2.8C."

CNN: "If countries simply follow these current policies, then warming could reach a peak of about 2.8 C."

German Tagesschau: "Earth on course to 2.8 degrees of warming."

German DLF: "Earth on course to up to 2.8C of heating by 2100".

2/2

There's a critical detail missing from today's news stories about the UNEP Emissions Gap Report (see 2/2). They all say that under current policies, heating will "rise to 2.8C".

But that glosses over that if climate sensitivity should turn out to be high, heating is projected to be 3.4C. And with all uncertainties included, 4.5C are, while unlikely, not completely out of the question. Risk analysis needs to refer to a worst case, not a 2/3 case.

1/2

The report:
https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstreams/8819b586-8d60-4aaf-bd0e-4a48d04759f2/download

In the mid-1990ies, when I worked in Boston for NASA's Earth observation, I was once sent to Arizona to see Bob Dickinson. Still a young scientist, I was in awe at getting to meet someone like him; and wondered why on Earth he would take the time. But he received me with warmth and time, full of appreciation for the work we were doing. It ended with him telling me he felt inspired. Him? I was the one with reason to feel inspired!! I'll never forget it.

2/2

A generation that formulated our early substantial alarms about what we're doing to our planet, our habitat, is leaving us behind. I just learned, via @petergleick , that Bob Dickinson has passed, a towering scientist on climate and its interactions with other elements of Earth.

In the obituary Peter linked
https://fromtheprow.agu.org/robert-e-dickinson-obituary/
this sentence: "Dr. Dickinson often spoke of his collaborations with community as being the most critical part of his work."

I can personally confirm that:

1/2

Here are four stumbling blocks I encountered in the city of Magdeburg just a few days ago.

Set into the pavement, they are a memorial to four members of one family. Three were deported and murdered, one met with an unknown fate.

Magdeburg is the capital of Saxony-Anhalt - the eastern German state where nearly half of voters today voted for an openly hard-right party with a nationalist, authoritarian programme.

It is the contention of these right-wingers that they, by merit of having been elected, are the ultimate arbiters of what's true. It's dangerous. It's designed to undermine the public's sense of truth, a necessary element of authoritarian power - they always attack scholarship. It's also a late attempt to cover up the incredible damage their politics is causing. That started with their ideological responses during the pandemic. But climate science is on their list, too.

2/2

We've normalised right-wing lunacy and it has to stop. It's dangerous.

Rather than calling today's hearing in the US with Fauci what it is, a frightening attack on science, media are calling it a "contentious" meeting. They focus on Fauci's defense rather than the unacceptability of highly aggressive, personal attacks on a distinguished scientist. By explaining what the right-wing conspiracies are after, before discussing them, they are part of popularising them.

1/2

The floors of Alvar #Aalto's #Paimio Sanatorium in SW #Finland, completed in 1933, considered one of the top icons of modernist #architecture, has yellow floors in some areas - to brighten the moods of patients struggling with illness, in this case tuberculosis. Aalto's attention to buildings designed to serve and support human qualities and social togetherness is what sets his modernism apart from so many failings by less capable architects. In 1933, all of this was revolutionary.

Just a reminder: #climate heating is still only at its beginning. It'll get much stronger, quickly, over the next decades - during the lifetime of most people alive today.

Then, everybody will be surprised. But "we told you so!" won't feel very satisfying.

Temperatures will change in the mean. That will shift weather patterns, such as the frequency, duration and location of extremes, alter seasons, produce hugely problematic ecological shifts, Earth feedbacks.

And yes ... we told you so.

In June, a beautifully made book will come out at "Berlin Universities Publishing", with contributions on: Alexander von Humboldt, perspectives for the Anthropocene - with a longish contribution from me about a certain moment in Humboldt's life, architectural theory and the history of Earth system science. The book's pdf will be free - but if you wish, you can also buy a softcover or hardcover version for the bookshelf. I just went through the proofs. It'll be an interesting read!

Imagine a publishing house with the mission of making knowledge and insights available to everybody for free, while ensuring high standards.

Well, the three universities of Berlin and the Charité have now joined forces to do just that.

They founded "Berlin Universities Publishing". Neither authors not readers pay. The pdf of books are freely available under a Creative Commons licence.

It's called "Diamond Open Access". They're just starting up. Much more to come.

https://www.berlin-universities-publishing.de/en/index.html

Interesting moment tonight when the spacecraft returned from the international space station. Soon after splash down several dolphins showed up to check out the strange things happening.

Spacecraft meets intelligent life.

Too rarely mentioned: 🇩🇪's 1st commercial nuclear plant went online in 1961. To this day, 64 yrs later, 🇩🇪 does NOT have a safe repository for its nuclear waste. It's in temporary containment - all of it. The search for a permanent storage site, itself fraught with problems upon problems, is not expected to yield a result before the 2040ies (massive protests incoming no matter where it'll be placed).

Btw, Bavaria's PM, railing against nuclear exit, rules out his state taking nuclear waste.

2/4

The zombie debate in Germany about nuclear energy ☢️ just won't die. There's a parliamentary inquiry going on these days, driven by the opposition's claim that Germany's exit from nuclear on grounds of public safety and cost were ideologically motivated (while forgetting that it was their gvmt who put the exit from nuclear into law after Fukushima showed the enormous potential for uncalculated disasters). And so the debate, facts barely mattering, again spills into the public (see ⬇️).

1/4

Imagine an existential crisis. A major international conference.

The EU commission president isn't attending.
The US president isn't.
China's president isn't.
India's PM isn't.
France's president isn't.
Germany's chancellor isn't.
Brazil's president isn't.
Russia's president isn't.
South Africa's president isn't.
Canada's PM isn't.
Japan's PM isn't.
Australia's PM isn't.
...

I've been an Earth system scientist for 30 years now. We used to say we have to turn the corner by 2020.

Wow, what a HUGE demonstration against the right, far-right and neofascists in Hamburg this afternoon!

Very important and necessary that people stand up against this undermining of democracy, decency and all our values by these demagogues and authoritarians.

https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/hamburg/Demo-gegen-Rechtsextremismus-in-Hamburg-vorzeitig-beendet,hamburgstehtauf108.html

#Hamburg #HamburgStehtAuf