Few have missed the fact that Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene, published two days ago is a reworking of 1990s ‘runaway global warming’ hypothesis, now dubbed ‘Hothouse Earth’. The abstract:

We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies. Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.

Positive feedback worries have taken a back seat in climate debates in recent years, as more concrete understandings of the climate system developed, the Precautionary Principle was settled on and somewhat de-emphasised (or simply buried under mountains of verbiage), and as observations failed to support prognostications from the alarmists’ end. Now that Silly Season is here, however, the new report has prompted some discussion about its categorically alarmist tone, and whether this is real, or an illusion manufactured by the media. More on that shortly.

The article and its reinvention of runaway warming is interesting to me for two reasons. First, there is the naked alarmism itself, and its authors’ rush to move from ‘science’ to the overt and explicit declaration of political imperatives. There is broader (than the article) acknowledgement that the paper is highly speculative. In which case, why define such concrete political terms? As I have long argued, it seems clear, when this paper is seen in context, that its political premises precede by decades any scientific claim it can make. Indeed, both Johan Rockstrom and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber are notable for their stated desires for a ‘dream of a world government and geocybernetic control‘. Though such terms as ‘global government’ often accompany somewhat hasty alarmism of its own, in this case, it is not hyperbole, nor unfounded.

Second, and similarly, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, which is home to, Rockstrom and Schellnhuber is notable for a reformulation of the Limits to Growth hypothesis of the late 1960s as ‘Planetary Boundaries’. Planetary Boundaries was the theoretical framework of Mark Lynas’s 2011 tome ‘The God Species’, which equally tried, and failed, to reformulate environmentalism as some kind of pro-human, science-based perspective. (Read my review at Spiked).

Lynas takes his inspiration from the work of Professor Johan Rockström, director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, which aims to offer ‘research for governance of social-ecological systems’. According to Lynas, Rockström and his associates – referred to by Lynas as the ‘planetary boundaries experts group’ – believe that they have identified nine fundamental measures of the planet’s ecological health that human development must not interfere with, if ecological catastrophe is to be avoided.

And as I have tried to explain then and since, even attempts to reformulate environmentalism say much more about the environmentalist than the environment.

According to Lynas, Gaia is a metaphor for a ‘universal scientific principle’: the emergent property of self-organisation in complex systems. But the metaphor looks far more like those who invoke her than ‘nature’. The preoccupation with ‘self-regulating systems’ seems to coincide with a desire for the regulation and systematisation of human life. We have to presuppose a great deal to take this account of life on Earth at face value, and even more to start organising society around the principle. Indeed, we might now be able to call this ensemble of presuppositions about ‘balance’ and ‘self-organisation’ environmental ideology. Lynas, like many environmentalists, presupposes both balance and the system which produces it. They claim evidence for it in science, but the claim precedes the science. Scientists have looked for Gaia, but they have not found her. Perhaps scientists and science are not so immune to ideology, after all.

Greens reinvent their failed doctrines in order to overcome their crises. Indeed, we could see all environmentalism as precisely that: an attempt to overcome political crises. The neomalthusians of the late ’60s and ’70s emerge as the economic boom collapses, oil shocks ricochet around the world, and ill ease dominates politics. In the UK, the 1970s are an era of ‘managed decline’, IMF loans, deep industrial disputes, and ‘winters of discontent’. Climate warriors are keen to emphasise the scientific facts underpinning their outlook, but the historical context of their movement is far more revealing to understanding it.

The scientific facts of such strong claims for the “collective human action” “required to steer the Earth System”, and for “stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies” cannot and should not be taken at face value. And the ideological underpinnings of those claims must also be exposed before any sense can be made of the science or the politics of the Stockholm Centre’s dire work. On Twitter, and across the debate, however, there is great resistance to the idea that mere ‘politics’ can shed any light on alarmism. Only scientific evidence is acceptable as a rebuttal to the speculative alarmism, and the design of the political order it is the foundation of.

More sensible comment has claimed that the paper is merely a ‘perspective piece’. Here’s Tol, citing Betts.

This. Note also that the paper was "reviewed" and "revised" in 18 days. With 16 authors, many senior, you would typically need 18 days to get an initial reaction. https://t.co/26H6RJssBd — Richard Tol (@RichardTol) August 8, 2018

‘This’, indeed. But the wider debate takes little interest in the nuances of academic publishing formats and stranding.

I copy Richard Bett’s series of Tweets below (rather than embed the Tweets), to give a flavour of his defence, or rather account of the article. It is not yet complete, and he has offered his response to the Climate Feedback website, which has not yet been published, and which may offer more insight from perspective inside the ivory towers. There is much to agree with him about. But I also have found his and other scientists’ understanding of the debate, and scientists’ responses to the excesses of their colleagues somewhat impotent, and far too forgiving.

This is the “Hothouse Earth” paper that was all over the news yesterday.[LINK] It is a “perspective” piece – basically an essay rather than new modelling or data analysis, in which the authors present an argument supported by existing literature. (Thread) The authors draw on a very diverse set of literature to paint a holistic picture of how a chain of feedback processes or events could *potentially* take place and lead to very large climate warming once a threshold is passed, and also how the risks of this could still be avoided. The term “Hothouse Earth” is used to describe the conditions that could potentially occur, which are outside those of cycles of ice ages with milder periods in between that have occurred over the last few hundred thousand years (ie: within the experience of the human species). A key point is that even though the pathway towards “hothouse” conditions could be started this century (maybe decades?), the extreme conditions themselves would not occur for centuries or millennia. This does not seem to have been mentioned in media coverage that I have seen. The authors also state that they are taking a “risk averse” approach in suggesting that 2C global warming can be regarded as a potential “threshold”. They have not discovered that 2C is the tipping point, just suggested it. Again this is a key point not made in media coverage. The 2C number is supported by comment and review literature which in itself is based on previous literature, so they have not come up with new analysis supporting this as the suggested threshold. The authors argue that 2C can still be avoided if humanity takes concerted action to reduce ouor warming effect on the climate. Personally I find it an interesting thought-piece that is worth reading. Its not new research though. I suspect one reason it has got so much traction is the use of the “Hothouse Earth” term at a time when everyone’s talking about heatwaves. One thing that strikes me about the “tipping points” literature is that there’s a lot of review papers like this that end up citing each other! Here’s one that @dougmcneall, myself & colleagues wrote a while ago [LINK] (£) We need more actual research on this!

Betts appears to be claiming that the alarmism is introduced by journalists. No doubt this is in part true. However, my point, made by others also, is that it is up to climate scientists to challenge each others’ work, and the excessively alarmist copy it generates in the media. This new paper, ‘perspective’ piece or not, is such an opportunity to bring a more sober perspective to the now hackneyed alarmist perspective, that for most of the past three decades of climate debate has not been taken. Climate science does not seem able to discipline itself, nor politics, nor the media, in spite of claims that it is essential for the correct formulation of policy and public ‘awareness’. By contrast, we can find many ‘rapid reaction’ teams of scientists and organisations to quickly deal with claims, counter to the political agenda, which are an impediment to it.

Put simply, Betts makes too many excuses for the authors of the hothouse paper. That it broadly aligns with the consensus so far as it is represented by the IPCC only speaks to the text’s lack of precision. For instance, Betts says, ‘The authors argue that 2C can still be avoided if humanity takes concerted action to reduce ouor warming effect on the climate.’, but this says nothing about the plausibility of a ‘domino’ effect causing ‘hothouse Earth’, which is the substantial point. It is a bit like suggesting that the plot of Godzilla is useful advice to policy-makers because we know that radiation can cause genetic mutation, and that genetic mutation could cause lizards to become larger, and after all, we know that really big lizards did once walk the Earth. As so often in debates about the environment and climate, the matter of degree is omitted, even if Betts does point out that the scenario is unlikely perhaps even for millenia.

But the more troubling problem for Betts is that the origin of the alarmism he claims is the fault of the ‘media’ is in fact the authors themselves. Here is a transcript of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, which featured the paper yesterday.

—–

R = Johan Rockström; S = Ovais Sarmad; I = Interviewer (Mishal Husain?).

I: And the current heatwave has probably made some people think about global warming in a new and more concrete way. A report released today is warning of the risks of a ‘hothouse Earth’, trigged by global temperatures rising by around 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Currently we are at about a one-degree rise. The authors of the report warn that once we hit two degrees, the Earth’s natural equilibrium could be irreversibly disrupted. We’re joined by Professor Johan Rockström, executive director of the non-profit Stockholm Resilience Centre who is one of the authors of that report. Good morning, professor.

R: Yes, good morning.

I: Can you explain why you say that about a change in the Earth’s natural processes?

R: Yes, we have so much scientific evidence today. To begin with from paleo-climatic science actually {inaudible} that over the last one million years, the planet has quite harmoniously been shifting back-and-forth between ice age and inter-glacial periods of {inaudible} cycles of roughly one-hundred-thousand years. And we are now {in/at} an inter-glacial. We’ve been there since the last ice age – some twelve thousand years back. And at one degree Celsius rise in temperature that we have caused… humans have caused by burning fossil fuels predominantly… is the highest temperature on Earth since the last ice age. And we’re reaching the edge of the highest temperatures on Earth in all the inter-glacials over the last one million years. So that shows that we’re starting to reach, or hitting the ceiling of the bio-physical limits of a stable planet. Secondly, we have so much evidence today that the biosphere – the living, natural part of the planet – have the ability to absorb and dampen our warming by sucking up carbon dioxide, taking up heat, reflecting back heat from ice sheets. And that this capacity is what has kept the planet stable and that we risk crossing tipping-points, with these systems shift over from self-cooling to self-warming.

I: {short interruption}

R: Together this leads to the conclusion {inaudible}…

I: And you think that that kicks in at a rise of around two degrees Celsius?

R: We’re starting to see the cracks in the resilience of the Earth’s system. We have already one degree Celsius indications that rapid ice melts makes them… makes ice sheets absorb more heat than reflected back. We’re seeing permafrost going. We’re seeing… you know… lessened capability of oceans and land and {inaudible – forests?} to take up carbon dioxide. The scientists… science that is published {inaudible – start?} indicating that two degrees Celsius may be a threshold when these tipping points occur.

I: Yes, I mean, you you you say ‘may be’, because what you’re describing isn’t it a worst-case scenario… The point where rather than soaking up the carbon dioxide, the oceans and the former glaciers start chucking it out into the air?

R: No it’s not a worst-case scenario. It’s an intrinsic biophysical, non-negotiable part of how the Earth’s system is configured. Somewhere out there, science shows clearly that there is a planetary threshold. The question is just where is it? When do systems like the oceans and forests tip over from being self-cooling to become self-warming? We now start seeing the scientific evidence that this threshold, this tipping-point may actually be at a lower temperature than we previously thought. And we’re starting to see indications that it may be at two degrees.

I: Well, listening to that from Bonn is Ovais Sarmad who is the Deputy Executive Secretary from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – that’s the organisation that work towards the Paris Accord. Good morning, Mr Sarmed.

S: Good morning to you and to the audience and professor.

I: What do you think of what you heard from Professor Rockstrom, this point about where the threshold is, to trigger this change in the, err, in the Earth’s natural, err, processes? I mean, that, that, that, is something which has profound implications for policy.

S: Absolutely. Yes. And where we’re sitting here from the United Nations {inaudible} actual physical location my office is just right one the river Rhine. And I’m seeing the river already receding and seeing the banks here on both sides of the river. It’s quite scary and then Spain and Portugal struggling with forty degrees plus. Japan. Err, Greece seeing people fleeing to the sea. Sweden. California. Many other places and the… we’re trying to bring all that science and the politics and the debate to closer to home, so to speak. And err, inform the world at large that, how serious it is. The situation… it’s no longer cyclical and as the Professor said in very startling terms… scientific facts, that it is extremely serious and we have to do something about it now. And the Paris Agreement is the framework which has a very solid and robust framework {inaudible} to implement now, soon, sooner than… {inaudible under interruption}.

I: Yes, but there are… there are a lot of doubts aren’t there about whether it’s going to be implemented as planned? And indeed even if sticking to err, to a two-degree target… even if it is possible to stick to that.

S: It is. There are of course the political challenges as it happens in multi-lateral systems but err, Paris Agreement is the only framework we have. And as international citizens, we need to stick to that and push as much as possible and that’s exactly what we’re doing. I’m actually an optimist and I’m very hopeful that, err, increasing the ambition and explaining to the general public the impacts and as we’re seeing it now, we can prevent the damages that err, the professor explained.

I: Professor Rockstrom do you share that that that optimism, that the damage can be prevented or do you think that we need a lot more ambition in policy on this area?

R: The damage can be limited. We also know that, err, we we not only can decarbonise the world economy in line with the Paris Agreement, we also benefit from it. We have more and more evidence about the economy, our health, socially, and equitably even security-wise, we gain from decarbonising and becoming sustainable. This paper lends scientific support for the Paris Agreement. And it shows that we should do everything we can to avoid reaching two-degrees Celsius, as an aim for the one point five degrees. Remember that the writing is ‘stay well below two’ in the Paris Agreement.

I: Johan Rockström, Professor Rockström and Ovais Sarmad of the United Nations, thank you both.

—–

Rockström is given several opportunities to mitigate the alarmism that Betts claims belongs to the Today Programmes’ presenters and producers. The interview asks him, ‘you say “may be”, because what you’re describing isn’t it a worst-case scenario…’. But Rockström denies it, saying, ‘No it’s not a worst-case scenario. It’s an intrinsic biophysical, non-negotiable part of how the Earth’s system is configured‘, and that ‘We’re starting to see the cracks in the resilience of the Earth’s system’. Nowhere is this presented as speculation rather than fact; the author does not explain that this is a scenario that may, but probably won’t play out for thousands of years rather than soon; there is no sign of caution, but plenty of urgency.

This is why I cannot take at face value Bett’s subsequent claim that ‘the media have missed out the key caveats of deep uncertainty and long timescales’.

It is climate scientists that are at fault here, and it is climate science’s failure. Scientists, Betts included, want scientists to inform policymaking, and to enjoy special status in that process. But they seem to have excluded themselves, their institutions, and their science from any possibility of fault.

Scientists and science have not confronted alarmism. They have not been able to resist the political colonisation of their science epitomised by the work of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. They have allowed themselves to be first flattered by, and then to become the servants of a political doctrine that swept debate out of the academy and the campus.

To be charitable, I suggest that this is the consequence of science being elevated, but not being equal to the task it has been set. It cannot bear the weight of what is expected of it: the moral questions, the political, economic, and social questions, the false promises of security, equity and health that are claimed it can produce.

If I am right, then the answer is for scientists and science to say so, and to admit ‘we don’t know’, and that ‘we cannot know’. It is not good enough to invoke ‘best available evidence’, or to claim that ‘more research is required’, and to suggest that this or that is ‘more likely’ than another thing, and that egregious work is more or less in keeping with the ‘consensus’. The ambiguity that abounds allows anything and everything to be encompassed by the climate perspective. Science has been reduced to endless reports comprising only weasel words, and a cowardly refusal to debate meaningfully with itself, or with outsiders.

But that cannot happen until scientists take the initiative. I am not holding my breath.

—–

UPDATE.

Richard has offered some clarification, saying that ‘I should keep saying “media coverage” as I did earlier, rather than just “media”‘.

I take this to mean that this includes scientists, but that this somehow leaves intact the standing of academic publishing and ‘perspective pieces’, or any other speculation of climate scientists.

But if that is so, what is the difference between academic publishing and ‘the media’? Academic publishing just becomes a slightly posher, and concomitantly (and problematically) aloof form of ‘media’.

Even as a think-piece, the article in question is dire. That it emerges after 3 decades of increasing resources available to climate science and searches for global agreements, without a meaningful critical response from within the academy is an indictment of climate science.

—–

UPDATE 2.

Matthew Nisbit has a series of tweets which shed a bit more light on what I think Richard was getting at.

1. Sensational, over the top reporting on the new “Hothouse Earth” PNAS paper not only likely confuses readers about the certainty of the author’s conclusions + how widely shared they might be but also encourages a sense of hopelessness. #scicomm #envcomm https://t.co/SEmwovJhzr — Matthew C. Nisbet (@MCNisbet) August 8, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The sense here seems to be that it is the media which allows scientists to elevate their alarmism unchecked.

Pielke adds that the IPCC as the balancing point for climate stories has diminished.

Interesting to watch the delegitimization-by-ignoring of the IPCC as an authoritative assessment on climate.

Almost invisible these days.

➡️In 2015 12% of news articles mentioning climate change also mentioned IPCC.

➡️So far in 2018 it’s 4% (via Google Trends)

🤷‍♂️⤵️ https://t.co/7ZGzdfzQ2z — Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) August 8, 2018

Nisbit’s points are somewhat blunted by his reference to Eric Holthaus’s piece in Grist (among other equally questionable opinions). Holthaus, like Grist broadly, is unashamedly irrational and emotional, and hardly given to balance more than apocalyptic mental breakdown. We see here a fairly familiar trope – a dispute between climate activists of various shades of green merely concerned about the ‘effectiveness’ of doom, rather than any wider or deeper concerns with political fear-mongering. The dispute, such as it is, is that saying something will happen is discouraging, whereas saying that it could happen is encouraging of action.

If this is nuance, I am the fairy godmother. As I pointed out to one of the authors, the difference between ‘will’ and ‘could’ in the context of unfounded alarmism is not unlike an attempt to mitigate the crime blackmail or of kidnap for ransom by saying that nothing bad would happen if the victim coughs up the cash. The report is clearly intended to limit the choices available to politics to such an extent that there is no meaningful choice at all. For example:

Kate Marvel does not mean by ‘no’ that the absurdly alarmist paper is just that, she means that if we all accept its premises and act according to its political imperatives, the world will be saved.

All of which lets alarmist authors and their peers in the ‘scientific community’ off the hook. I don’t think scientists really understand the mess they are in.

UPDATE 3.

Judith Curry has an analysis of the paper. She does not speak about the origins of its alarmism vs the media’s contribution, but does try to find value in the paper.

Her main point seems to be that it is the overbearing policy prescriptions that are the paper’s weakness, but that the remainder helps to ‘spur critical thinking and analysis’. I’m not convinced there is more to the article than policy prescription, let alone an exercise in the philosophy of science or working out how to work out what the worst-case might be. Rather, it would seem more valuable to first understand how policy prescription precedes the ‘science’.

UPDATE 4.

Richard Betts has tweeted a link to the Climate Feedback analysis of Jonathan Watts coverage of the paper in the Guardian.

I scored this article “low” on scientific credibility because I think its errors & omissions in covering the paper are important. NB This is not a comment on the credibility of the paper itself, just the Guardian article https://t.co/5QKVCTQAVk — Richard Betts (@richardabetts) August 9, 2018

Curiously, though Richard gives the paper a ‘low’ credibility rating, the analysis differs markedly.

Five scientists analyzed the article and estimate its overall scientific credibility to be ‘high’.

This shouldn’t be a surprise, because all that Climate Feedback is really capable of is marking sceptical articles as ‘low’ and pro-climate articles ‘high’. The reviewers very much tend to the alarmist side. For instance, under a review of a recent article covering heatwaves in the US which proclaims that, Climate change is supercharging a hot and dangerous summer, Daniel Swain, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles, Institute of the Environment comments that,

This is a reasonable title for the piece. While climate change is not the only factor in recent extreme and record-breaking heat, it is an important and pervasive one. The notion that climate change is “supercharging” heat extremes is an accurate one.

It is not a reasonable title for the piece. And the analysis lacks a historical statistical, as well as a social perspective on ‘impacts’. The fact of slightly longer, slightly warmer statistical trends does not straightforwardly equate to significantly longer and more intense heatwaves with more serious consequences for people. The US and UK, for instance, have suffered longer and hotter heatwaves, with much greater ‘impact’ in the past, even if we experience more ‘heatwaves’ today. The notion of a ‘supercharged’ summer is utterly misleading.

Recalling that Richard’s overall claim that it is the ‘media’, not science which is alarmist, I think we can conclude for now that media alarmism is amplified, not mitigated, by science and scientists.

UPDATE 5.

Jaime points to Richard’s latest mention of the paper — an article at the Conversation.

Betts is keen to stress the caveats:

With some exceptions, much of the highest-profile coverage of the essay presents the scenario as definite and imminent. The impression is given that 2°C is a definite “point of no return”, and that beyond that the “hothouse” scenario will rapidly arrive. Many articles ignore the caveats that the 2°C threshold is extremely uncertain, and that even if it were correct, the extreme conditions would not occur for centuries or millennia.

But as pointed out, one of the co-authors neglect the caveats given the opportunity of media attention. It is hard to rule out the possibility, then, that as discussed above, the ‘caveats’ are simply fig leaves for the authors’ desire to create political urgency.

The blandest, sanitised reading of the paper, offered by Betts and Curry, is that it is merely a scientific exercise. But the search for ‘tipping points’ one way or another, is a half century of failed political experiments with cybernetics. Decades on, Gaia has not been found; no tipping point has been located; Spaceship Earth remains grounded; the myth of ‘balance’ remains just that. Yet the promise from cybernetics that discovery of the planet’s service manual will provide unambiguous policy instruction from Mother Nature persists, even though the home-brewed geodesic domes were abandoned, and the diaspora of the autonomous collectives that built them settled in conventionality long ago.

Explicitly or implicitly, the understanding is that a systems perspective must be possible. Rockstrom says it himself:

It’s an intrinsic biophysical, non-negotiable part of how the Earth’s system is configured. Somewhere out there, science shows clearly that there is a planetary threshold. The question is just where is it?

There’s no evidence for it, but ‘science shows clearly’ that it exists. Rockstrom admits he cannot locate it, but claims nonetheless that ‘we’re starting to reach, or hitting the ceiling of the bio-physical limits of a stable planet‘.

We cannot ignore Rockstrom et al’s contemporary political motivations. We cannot ignore their attempt to reformulate yesterday’s failed experiments. And we should not fail to ask what kind of world they want, never mind what kind of world it will be. Their work is not about the climate.

After all, it would be more interesting, wouldn’t it, to ask what are the actual environmental constraints of society. There is good evidence that they are far wider than the ‘resilience’ experts claim. We should, then, depart from the notion of ‘resilience’, to ask what better use could be made of our lot instead of paying so much undue attention to these doomsayers.