Oh, I believe you, Robert. We don't need to repeat the exercise. And suppose all this is more or less correct. We will have 2°C by 2036. The Scribbler then goes on to describe all the horrific consequences of that scenario. If you were planning on living after 2036, you can forget about it!

Mann wraps coal and other human aerosol emissions into his equation and, under business as usual, finds that we hit 2°C of ECS [equilibrium climate sensitivity] warming by 2036 as global CO2 levels approach 450 ppmv and global CO2e [CO2-equivalent] values approach 540 ppmv. At that point, were the aerosols [from coal burning] to fall out we end up with an actual short term warming (ECS) response of 2.5 to 3 C and a long term response (ESS) of about 5 to 6 C. ( Don’t believe me? Plug in the numbers for yourself in Mann’s climate model here .)

Michael Mann and some of his colleagues have come up with a simple model of climate sensitivity which says humans will get 2 degrees centigrade (2°C) of warming by 2036 in a "business as usual" (BAU) scenario. That's not 2 more degrees over what we already have; that's 2 degrees total above the pre-industrial average. Flatlander Robert Scribbler is hysterical about Mann's model results, which is par-for-the-course for him. Here's the bottom line, with some clarifying interjections so you can understand the technical language.

As I perused the Flatland landscape today—think of it abstractly as a huge 2-dimensional square—I felt the urge to add that dreaded third dimension, the one humans can not see. That 3rd dimension is called depth. And since I was reading Flatland climate discussions, adding depth in this context means we can have a climate change discussion for adults. Adults do not exist in Flatland.

What can we do about this climate horror? Here's The Scribbler again.

How do we avoid this? In short, it might not be possible to avoid some or even all of these effects. But we may as well try. And this is what trying would look like. First, we would rapidly reduce human greenhouse gas emissions to near zero. As this happens, we would probably want a global fleet of aircraft that spray sulfate particles into the lower atmosphere to make up for the loss of aerosols once produced by coal plants. Finally, we would need an array of atmospheric carbon capture techniques including forest growth and cutting, then sequestration of the carbon stored by wood in lakes or in underground repositories, chemical atmospheric carbon capture, and carbon capture of biomass emissions. For safety, we would need to eventually reduce CO2 to less than 350 ppm, methane to less than 1,000 ppb, and eliminate emissions from other greenhouse gasses. A very tall order that would require the sharing of resources, heroic sacrifices by every human being on this Earth, and a global coordination and cooperation of nations not yet before seen. Something that is possible in theory but has not yet been witnessed in practice. A test to see if humankind is mature enough to ensure its own survival and the continuation of life and diversity on the only world we know. A tall order, indeed, but one we must at least attempt.

OK, I know there are actual adults reading here, so I'll continue this post after you stop laughing.

Are you sober again? Good.

Now I will refer to Flatland "grown-ups"—the problem is that they look like adults and seem to talk like adults—as children. How do children view fixing the climate problem?

Children like Robert Scribbler and Michael Mann surely know there is an abstract thing called the global economy, but they can not bring themselves to think about it. If they could bring themselves to think about it, they might then understand the benefits of things like indoor plumbing, supermarkets, the internet, air conditioning, central heating, lamps and light bulbs—electricity on-demand generally—internal combustion engines, lithium batteries, trash pick-up trucks and many, many other things.

If children were to think about that global economy further, they might even begin to admit that life without at least the most basic things it provides would be very miserable indeed. But to think about such potential misery, they would have to see that the global economy and greenhouse gas emissions are inextricably linked in some bizarre dance of death.

In this way, children might come to understand why there's been so much resistance to actually doing something about our climate problem.

But children do not want to face the complexity of all that. It would be too depressing for them. Instead of linking supermarkets and the internet with GHG emissions, they prefer to talk about "Business As Usual" scenarios, a sleight of hand which in effect pushes those daily conveniences into some kind of murky shadowland, a place where refrigerators, server farms, paved roads and Volkswagens are invisible.

Try driving an invisible car sometime. Remarkably, in Flatland, people do it all the time. And they also think driving a Prius or a Tesla gets them off the hook. Unless these children are living off the grid in the woods and growing their own food, all this means they are effectively blind to where their everyday conveniences come from.

No, children would rather pretend that they can have paved roads and supermarkets (the cake) and "rapidly reduce human greenhouse gas emissions to near zero" (eat it too). Thus children live in a fantasy world where the existence of this global economy has no consequences.

And really, it's worse than I've said up to now because these children also believe that this global economy whose existence they tacitly can't acknowledge can get bigger in a future in which we rapidly reduce emissions to zero. You know, more indoor plumbing, supermarkets and internet server farms for more and more people all over the world. Children never make the link between growth and the emissions they are hysterical about.

And that's interesting because all you have to do is go to Google and type in the query "global economy" to find out how it's doing lately, how it's done in the past, and how it may fare in the short- and medium-term. Lots of people talk in very specific terms about the global economy all the time. (It turns out the global economy isn't doing so well lately, so this BAU thing may partially fix itself for some time to come.)

But climate children never talk about the global economy whose existence makes their lives possible, preferring to talk about abstractions like SRES "marker" scenarios and so on. They like graphs like this one.



There's no "global economy" in this graph, no server farms or supermarkets to be found

It seems that these children never use Google to learn about this global economy thing because it doesn't effectively exist for them. They would much rather live ensconced in a fantasy world made up of things like "BAU" and "climate sensitivity" and simple models like Mann's. It never occurs to them that in the Real World, it is simply not possible to talk about emissions without talking about supermarkets too.

In this way these children can keep reality at bay and, better yet, cling to their own self-righteousness.

Which is what children characteristically do.