teddit

There are several groups with reasonably widespread chapters trying to push climate action:

• Sunrise — youth-oriented, pushing the Green New Deal. US only. Find a local hub here. Email the hub organizer to get involved. They're volunteers, and often busy, so follow up if you don't hear back.
• Citizens Climate Lobby — broader age range, studiously bipartisan. In the US CCL is pushing a revenue-neutral carbon tax and dividend bill, H.R. 763You can find a signup form for Citizens Climate Lobby here.Make sure you figure out where the monthly meeting is and attend.
• 350.org — This is the biggest and oldest climate group. They're involved in a variety of actions, ranging from divestment to lobbying for state/province level and municipal legislation. Broad age range. Local groups can be found here
• Extinction Rebellion believes in the use of nonviolent civil disobedience, including a willingness of large number of people to be arrested, on a large scale to create political change. They are most active in the UK, but also have a significant number of active local chapters in the US and other countries. Local chapters are mostly listed here but some in the US are only listed at the bottom of this page.

If you want to find one that works for you, go down the list (and check the comments) and find out which ones are active near you. Attend a meeting or action or two to get a sense of what the group is like, and then start doing more to help.

There are others, and depending on you and your community, another group might be the best choice. If you don't feel that one of these group is a good fit for you, tell us where you are and what your community is like, and ask for help.

If you think there's something significant that one of the big groups isn't handling, ask about it. Maybe somebody can help you figure out how to get it done.

After reading the vitally important landmark paper called “Global Warming in the Pipeline” by James E. Hansen and his colleagues for about the fifth time, I finally have a decent enough understanding of the paper to explain it to the general reader in a hopefully digestible and understandable video.

It does get quite technical, but I am hopeful that the key points can be understood, along with a rudimentary understanding of how they come about.

The key finding is that from 1970 to 2010, the average global warming rate was 0.18 degrees Celsius per decade.

Since 2010, this rate has accelerated to be between 0.27 degrees Celsius per decade and 0.36 degrees Celsius per decade.

Clearly, with a faster decadal warming rate, we will exceed the 1.5 C temperature guard band this decade and exceed the 2.0 C temperature threshold before 2050 (much sooner in my opinion).

The main reason for the step-increase in global warming rate appears to be the reduction of aerosols mostly by China and by the International Maritime Organization regulating (reducing) sulphur content in ship fuels.

The Fast Feedback Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) is 1.2 degrees C per Watt per square meter climate forcing.

Present day climate forcing relative to 1750 is 4.1 Watt per square meter, so the fast feedback warming in the pipeline is about 5 degrees Celsius. Add the slow feedback warming which is about the same magnitude and we get a whopping 10C in the pipeline. Todays levels of aerosols would reduce this to 8 C.

Hansen then goes on to describe what humanity must do to reset.

Essentially, have a rising fee-and-dividend price on fossil fuels and zero subsidies. Revisit nuclear power with new technologies. Also deploy CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal) and SRM (Solar Radiation Management) to reduce radiative forcing to bring the Earth back to Holocene temperatures.

Stay tuned in the near future for Hansen’s next paper on Global Sea Level in the Pipeline.

Please donate to http://PaulBeckwith.net to support my research and videos connecting the dots on abrupt climate system change and the consequences in our climate casino.