I remember Mr. Cloete's article and went back to re-read any below is my response to him, and indirectly to you.
It is a breathtaking display of hypocrisy when he accuses Mr. Lynne of financial bias and then state that he has "achieved financial freedom" based on BAU and then tout the same BAU that assures the continuation of his financial freedom.
As Upton Sinclair said:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
My reply to Colette with some additions:
No climate emergency since we won't reach 6˚C so we are OK" is at best misleading at worst callous.
3˚C, (which casually is admitted that the world would reach by 2100 with the assertion that there is "very little chance of touching 4˚C" with absolutely NO scientific backing-see below on how long CO2 stays in the atmosphere), completely ignores the devastating effect that 3˚C of warming since 1850 would have on humanity, not to mention 3.5˚ or 3.7˚C, still far, far away from 4˚C.To be sure, not reaching 6˚C will be a win but not for the hundreds of thousands that will be dead and millions who will be displaced and a world economy that will be crushed.
(Please take a look at the link below that was published by SwissRe on the impact of climate change at 2.5 ˚C they anticipate by mid-century, not 2100- note that they are actuaries whose job is to be RIGHT about risk, so in effect their salary depends on being right and not on NOT being right).
Also, pretending that American and European mortality due to bad diets and over-eating will somehow be curtailed and be a net-positive because of depressed food production in the breadbaskets of the world is simply irresponsible and belies today's reality. Unlike BAU beneficiaries not everything is about Americans and Europeans.
As it is today, the wealth of Western populations will ensure a comparative abundance of calories available to them while the less fortunate in the world will starve as we blow past 2˚ in the coming decade.It is very easy to discount the effects of climate catastrophe once you achieve financial freedom as you have and live in safety and comfort, with access to (so far) abundant energy to heat or cool your home, drive or fly to wherever you want whenever you want and have access food 24/7.
Only 1 billion or so people live and benefit from the BAU he (and you) champion, many more billions do not. Many people do NOT live well in the tropics, the wealthy that live in air-conditioned houses, who visit resorts or take trips on monstrously wasteful cruise ships might but tell that to people living and working in the southern tip of India or Sri Lanka or the kids in the pit mines of the Congo digging cobalt for BAU, where wet bulb temperatures are set to reach lethal levels more and more often in the next decade, in fact it already has been. They are going to cook before they have a change to drown from the slow-moving sea level rise.
Also please consider 2.5 degrees or 3 is not a destination but a pit-stop. Warming does to suddenly stop once it reaches an arbitrary level you decide if we keep on pumping green houses gasses into the atmosphere. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years and the only reason our charts go to 2100 is because we have ten fingers and like to think in groups of ten. Nature doesn't.
