The video embedded below, along with the draft script and supporting links, can be freely…
Invited Keynote Address
On 7 July 2022, I was invited by a college student to delivery the keynote address for a workshop organized and hosted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. I subsequently prepared and delivered the 19.5-minute presentation embedded below on 14 October 2022 from New Zealand. My abstract for this presentation appears directly beneath the video below.
Abstract: Earth is in the midst of abrupt, irreversible climate change, as indicated by the scientifically conservative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC’s 8 October 2018, “Global Warming of 1.5 degrees,” concluded that Earth is in the midst of the most rapid change in planetary history, citing the peer-reviewed literature in reaching this conclusion: “These global-level rates of human-driven change far exceed the rates of change driven by geophysical or biosphere forces that have altered the Earth System trajectory in the past; even abrupt geophysical events do not approach current rates of human-driven change.” The IPCC admitted to the irreversibility of climate change due to an overheated ocean in its 24 September 2019, “Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.” Thus, the IPCC has correctly and finally concluded climate change is abrupt and also irreversible.
How conservative is the IPCC? Even the conservative and renowned peer-reviewed journal BioScience includes a paper in its March 2019 issue titled, “Statistical Language Backs Conservatism in Climate-Change Assessments.” This paper by Herrando-Pérez and colleagues includes the following information: “We found that the tone of the IPCC’s probabilistic language is remarkably conservative …, and emanates from the IPCC recommendations themselves, complexity of climate research, and exposure to politically motivated debates. Leveraging communication of uncertainty with overwhelming scientific consensus about anthropogenic climate change should be one element of a wider reform, whereby the creation of an IPCC outreach working group could enhance the transmission of climate science to the panel’s audiences.”
Contrary to the conclusion from Herrando-Pérez and colleagues, I cannot imagine the IPCC is interested in transmitting climate science to the panel’s audiences. After all, as professor Michael Oppenheimer wrote via essay titled, “How the IPCC Got Started” on the Environmental Defense Fund website on 1 November 2007, the United States government during the Reagan administration “saw the creation of the IPCC as a way to prevent the activism stimulated by my colleagues and me from controlling the policy agenda.” In other words, the IPCC was designed to fail. This mission has been accomplished.
Latest peer-reviewed journal article appears in the prestigious Elsevier series of journals:
McPherson, Guy R., Beril Sirmack, and Ricardo Vinuesa. March 2022. Environmental thresholds for mass-extinction events. Results in Engineering (2022), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rineng.2022.100342.