Here’s a depressing story. It’s from David Roberts, who writes about energy and climate change for Vox, and he’s telling us that we have already missed our goal of keeping global warming below 1.5°C. But this is not the depressing part since it’s been obvious for a while. This is:

To hit 1.5˚C, emissions would need to fall off a cliff, falling by 15 percent a year every year, starting in 2020, until they hit net zero. That’s probably not going to happen. Temperature is almost certainly going to rise more than 1.5˚C.

A lot of climate activists are extremely averse to saying so. In fact, many of them will be angry with me for saying so, because they believe that admitting to this looming probability carries with it all sorts of dire consequences and implications. Lots of people in the climate world — not just activists and politicians, but scientists, journalists, and everyday concerned citizens — have talked themselves into a kind of forced public-facing optimism, despite the fears that dog their private thoughts. They believe that without that public optimism, the fragile effort to battle climate change will collapse completely.

….From where I’m sitting, it looks like the 1.5˚C goal is utterly forlorn. It looks like we have already locked in levels of climate change that scientists predict will be devastating. I don’t like it, I don’t “accept” it, but I see it, and I reject the notion that I should be silent about it for PR purposes.

It’s pretty obvious that Roberts had to pump himself up to say even this much. He’s nervous about it because going public means he’s going to be hit hard by activists and possibly drummed out of the corps of “serious” climate change journalists. He tries to forestall this a bit by saying we “probably” won’t hit 1.5°C and then going on for more than 3,000 words to explain why he’s taking such a pessimistic attitude.

This is crazy. Of course we’re not going to hit 1.5°C. We left that in the rear-view mirror years ago. It would take a miracle for us just to hit 2°C. Realistically, we might manage to top out below 2.5°C, but only if we (a) get lucky and invent something spectacular or (b) give up and start spraying sulfates in the atmosphere. Is this really so hard to admit? All it takes is a quick look at the most basic CO2 emissions chart to see that there’s no reason at all to believe that emissions are suddenly going to start plummeting anytime in next few years:

For what it’s worth, I’d add one more truth bomb to this: It’s time to stop blaming Republicans for this state of affairs. Don’t get me wrong: Republicans are obviously lying about climate change for partisan purposes, and they are just as obviously a big obstacle in the way of serious climate action by the United States. They don’t care that they are helping destroy the planet and they deserve every bit of scorn they get.

But. Even if Republicans were fully on board with a serious climate plan, it would have only the smallest effect. The USA line in the chart above might be slightly lower than it is. But not a lot. After all, even the biggest plans from Democrats wouldn’t make more than a small dent in that line. And it wouldn’t make any dent at all in the lines that really matter: the ones for China, India, and the rest of the developing world. Those are going up like a rocket, and until that turns around we’ll never make any serious progress on climate change.

If you want to be serious about global warming, this is what you have to confront: it’s a global problem. It’s a human nature problem. Your solution, whatever it is, has to be global too. Mine is here. What’s yours?

With 2019 behind us, we now have a full year’s worth of measurements of the ISM’s Purchasing Managers’ Index for manufacturing. Here it is:

The typical measure of a recession is two consecutive quarters of contraction, and the quarterly averages for Q3 and Q4 are both negative. So manufacturing is in a recession.

The lesson here is simple: pray that Donald Trump ignores you. If he loudly tries to help, you are almost certainly doomed.

New rules from the Trump administration are expected to cut the SNAP (food stamp) benefit rolls in 2020 by about 700,000. Here’s approximately what that looks like:

All the Democratic candidates have announced their Q4 fundraising totals, and Bernie Sanders is the big winner:

This amounts to a total of $131 million, far more than the $46 million raised by the Trump campaign in Q4. This is considerably better than a field of challengers usually does against an incumbent president.

Ameer Al Mohmmedaw/DPA via ZUMA

A military strike on a convoy headed to the Baghdad airport—carried out by the United States—has killed Qassem Soleimani, leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force. The Quds Force is primarily responsible for “unconventional” military operations in foreign countries, which basically means intelligence, finance, politics, sabotage, and special ops of various kinds. Soleimani had been the head of the Quds Force for more than two decades.

The unanimous opinion of Twitter is that this is a huge deal, probably the biggest deal in the Middle East since we invaded Iraq. Based on the notion that Twitter is usually wrong—and no, I’m not joking about this—I’ll go out on a limb and say that it’s probably not as big a deal as everyone thinks. Soleimani was a military target, not a civilian one, and the attack took place in Iraq, not Iran. If Iran chooses to use this as an excuse to escalate hostilities, then it will do so. But I doubt that they find this strike any more outrageous than we’d find a strike against our top military commanders.

I am absolutely no expert on this stuff, but my take is a little different from the ones I’ve been reading. As near as I can tell, President Trump is hellbent on continuing to provoke Iran in hopes that eventually they’ll overreact and give him an excuse for all-out war. This is obvious enough that Iran is likely, at some point, to figure that there’s nothing they can do about it, so they might as well retaliate in a time and manner of their own choosing. I don’t know what that means, but I doubt that it will take the form of a bunch of random terrorist attacks around the world, as many people seem to be suggesting. If the Iranian leadership decides that war is inevitable, then it will engage in war: attacks on tankers in the Gulf; attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia; major escalations of hostilities in Iraq; and so forth.

Either way, I’ll make one prediction for sure: every time we kill someone like this, the replacement turns out to be even worse. We may consider Soleimani a state terrorist of the first order, but I’ll bet he seems like a cautious and prudent institutionalist compared to whoever takes over for him.

A little while ago I was browsing through old photos with the idea of starting out the new decade by devoting the month of January to a look back at the previous couple of decades. I hemmed and hawed about this until Marian suggested that instead of a whole month, I do Throwback Thursday once a week until I run out of pictures. That seemed like a better idea, so that’s what I’m going to do. These will all be photos taken with the ghosts of cameras past between 2001 and 2014.

Our first entry is a picture of the much-photographed Nyhavn (pronounced new’-hau-en, BTW) on a lovely, bright spring day in Copenhagen.

I’m having a slow start to the 2020s. For one thing, this is my 8th decade, and that seems wrong somehow. I suppose this is what I get for being born near the end of a decade and then blogging near the beginning of another, but still. Eight decades!

Well, let’s start out with a chart, shall we? Here is Tim Duy’s log scale of the stock market, which suggests that everything is ducky. Stocks seem to be rising in value at about the same rate as they have for a long time (outside of the dotcom bubble, of course). What this means is that if you buy stocks because they don’t look overvalued, and then you lose your shirt, you should blame Tim. Just don’t blame me.

Having trouble recovering from your wild New Year’s Eve debauchery? Maybe this gazania shining brilliantly in the noonday sun will help. Just keep staring at it for a while. . .

Top photos! Top cats! Top charts! Top things I hope will die! I’m still working hard right up to the very end of the decade. You can show your appreciation by sending a bit of coin our way before the decade expires. It only takes a minute.

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Just because I posted a list of top photos of the year doesn’t mean you don’t also get a regular ol’ lunchtime photo of the day, too. Today’s is a diptych with a story to tell. It starts with this cute little unsuspecting coot, which represents 2010:

Awww. So cute. So looking forward to a fresh new decade. But what happens when our little coot manages to get just a little something of his own? Answer: the rest of the decade swoops in and kicks his butt. But maybe the 2020s will be different? Sure. Maybe.