The hyperthreat is a combination of impending ecological carnage influenced in large measure by hidden behind-the-scenes human forces that drain the vigor and lifeblood of reasonable solutions.
A major exposé of the hyperthreat is the essence of a recently released book by E.G. Boulton, PhD: Cancelled Woman, Destination Safe Earth Publishing, 2022.
Dr. Boulton introduces the concept of hyperthreat by reflecting on how “people in the past responded when their worlds started to descend.” Now society once again is at a crucial crossroads like what brought on The Ballarat Reform League Charter of 1854 and The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Both documents “rejected unfairness and brutality and set a new ethical baseline for human society.”
The sinister nature that’s found within hyperthreat is at the core of the message in Cancelled Woman: “This is because a type of tyranny has arisen that operates behind the scenes. One of its tactics is to cancel people who challenge its authority, power, or worldview.”
Liz Boulton’s doctoral research led to the profound fact that “taken together, global warming and all array of ecological destruction and degradation constituted a new form of threat, for which she coined hyperthreat.” In time, hyperthreat has taken on new meaning beyond ecological collapse. Accordingly, it also refers to “hidden forces which enable and turbo-charge the hyperthreat.”
Indeed, Dr. Boulton herself has become a threat to the hyperthreat’s subtle mechanisms and hidden voices of control. Her curse was to boldly identify a hyper-response to hyperthreat, which she code-named PLAN E. Paradoxically, her research exposed her as a threat to the same hyperthreat that she revealed. Consequences have been daunting.
After all, PLAN E proclaims: The world’s militaries, intelligence agencies, foreign affairs strategies, and think tanks are unwittingly advancing the hyperthreat, which is an acceleration of climate and environmental change leading to Hothouse Earth, as detailed in Boulton’s publication: Plan E: A Grand Strategy for the Twenty-first Century Era of Entangled Security and Hyperthreats by Elizabeth G. Boulton, PhD, Journal of Advanced Military Studies, Vol. 13 No. 1 2022.
PLAN E was published in two parts in the Journal of Advanced Military Studies and by the US Marine Corps University Press, a professional university of the US Marine Corps located in Quantico, Virginia, which listed her thesis as: An Introduction to PLAN E.
Elizabeth G. Boulton, PhD, Australian National University and MA/Climate Policy, University of Melbourne is a former army major in the Australian Defence Force, having served in East Timor (1999) and Iraq (2004) and logistics work in Ghana, Nigeria, and Sudan. She was a lead research officer at army headquarters.
Over time, someone somewhere decided Boulton went too far. Thereafter, her tome has been the subject of cold shoulder treatment amongst sources and venues that usually post or publish such work.
As a result, Cancelled Woman has risen from the ashes of rejection into a book of challenging personal reflections and tense explosive poems. It is an important commentary on the shamelessness of the forces behind the scenes of the ominous hyperthreat. Cancelled Woman elaborates: “As the world hurtles along a trajectory towards WW3; dangerous climate; ecological collapse and other calamities, the hyperthreat has taken societies voice and its capacity to conduct effective sense-making just when we need it most.”
Accordingly, hyperthreat has infiltrated every megaphone in society inclusive of news outlets, social media, universities, think tanks, and publishing houses. The infiltration process focuses on “creation of confusion.” Such mindset ricochets by ending badly within the world: “We face a looming crisis, yet not only does ‘power’ or the ‘establishment’ not initiate crisis or contingency planning, but they also suppress alternative narratives, ideas, and concepts for crisis response.”
Therefore, “overcoming the hyperthreat requires a new way of being; a more ethical way of living across the board.” Part of this is the importance of people speaking up about issues or policies or threads of ideas that harm the greater good, calling-out the perpetrators.
Liz Boulton’s book was written to convey the ‘feeling’ of being in battle with the hyperthreat. This she has accomplished by revealing its “strange tactics; the subtle way voice is lost, truth buried, and democracy stolen.”
It’s an important book for people to read and keep for further reference to gain an understanding of the clandestine forces shaping society in objectional unwelcomed ways. Whether fully realized or not, we are living under the influence of the hyperthreat. It’s very important to know what to look for. Cancelled Woman helps to understand what’s at stake, and most importantly, that it’s really truly happening.
Indeed, within the confines of a remarkable transformation into feudalism redux, we, all of us, are subjects of the hyperthreat! Yes, subjects, believe it or not, it’s true. The hyperthreat is as real, and as threatening, as described in Cancelled Woman.
The truth is brandished for all to see: “Let me be clear about one specific message I wish to convey in this book: To Australians and global citizens, I feel it is my duty to inform you that a concept for an emergency or ‘hyper-response’ to the hyperthreat of climate and ecological crisis (called ‘PLAN E’), has been deliberately side-lined and suppressed by those entrusted to address such problems. Research is being censored.”
Finally, the strongest statement by Elizabeth Boulton: “In my view, ‘power’ is consciously abrogating their responsibilities to protect the public.”
Liz Boulton can take some comfort knowing that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) was on the American Library Association (ALA) list of top 100 banned and challenged books. Subsequently the Modern Library ranked Brave New World #5 on its list of 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. She’s in good company.
Postscript: Salutations: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924)
Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.
Worldwide, eleven thousand (11,000) sharks will be killed within the next 60 minutes. That’s 180 sharks per minute; it’s a bloody affair.
One hundred million (100,000,000) are killed per year, mostly for shark fin soup. In fact, the shark-fin trade is responsible for 75% of sharks killed each year even though more than 50 countries have some kind of shark finning ban in effect.
Nevertheless, stealthy fishing techniques are used to clandestinely hook and de-fin sharks. This illicit practice of Chinese trawlers has been exposed by two separate investigations of massive illegal shark-finning operations, which are discussed in more detail herein.
According to the IUU (Illegal, Unreported, Unregulated) Fishing Index, China is ranked as the world’s worst abuser of sea laws, especially shark finning, a bloody mutilation for a delicacy in China.
China’s fleet of 17,000 fishing vessels is the largest in the world. This compares to 250-to-300 total vessels for both the United States and the EU. China’s distant-water fleet numbers 3,000 ships. Enormous refrigerated vessels referred to as “Motherships” upload the catch of the Chinese fleet, thus allowing an entire fleet of trawlers to fish 24/7 without returning to port for weeks or even months.
Sharks are central to maintaining healthy ocean ecosystems. Without sharks, lower prey spiral out of control, leading to collapse of marine ecosystems. Sorrowfully, based upon rate of kill, collapse of the ecosystem is on the horizon. Shark finning is out of control, mostly illegal, inhumane, and disgustingly immoral, actually worse than disgusting, whatever that is?
So, who cares? After all, Jaws (1975) put on a pretty good display of the dangers of a very, very big threatening shark with fierce jagged teeth. It instilled fear that lingers to this day. However, that 25-foot mechanical shark named “Bruce” has a docile ring to it. Aside from Bruce’s reign of celluloid terror, the odds of getting chomped to pieces by a shark are extremely low at 1-in-3,734,067 or much less than getting hit by lightning.
On the other hand, the odds of a human killing a shark are extremely high. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (Switz.), overfishing has led to a 71% decline in shark species since the 1970s.
Sharks, a permanent feature of the planet, have lived on Earth for 450 million years. Now 70% have been wiped-out in only 50 years, as 450 million years of heritage is gone in a hundred-millionth fraction of 450M/yrs. Poof!
According to a prominent article in Nature: “Oceanic shark catch rates have increased threefold since 1970… We document an alarming, ongoing, worldwide decline in oceanic shark populations across the world’s largest ecosystem over the past half-century, resulting in an unprecedented increase in the risk of extinction of these species.” (Source: N. Pacoureau, et al, Half a Century of Global Decline in Oceanic Sharks and Rays, Nature, Jan. 27, 2022)
Moreover, according to the article: “The low reproductive output of these slow-growing species is clearly no match for the intense fishing pressure that they are currently under.”
Demand for Shark Fins
According to the World Wildlife Foundation: “The growing trade in shark fins – often used to make an expensive Asian soup – has become a serious threat to many shark species. The latest research suggests that around 100 million sharks may be killed annually, often targeted for fins. This practice affects many different shark species, including whale sharks (40,000 lbs. and 20-40 feet long)… Overfishing happens because of huge demand, mainly for shark fins, but also some species such as spiny dogfish and porbeagle are targeted for meat.”
Mongabay, which is one of the world’s premier conservation web portals, recently published an exposé on shark finning, to wit: Exclusive: Shark Finning Rampant Across Chinese Tuna Firm’s Fleet, Mongabay, Nov. 1, 2022.
The article is a stomach-churning story that deserves worldwide exposure. Mongabay conducted extensive investigations via interviews of dozens of crewmembers of Dalian Ocean Fishing (DOF), which is partially state-owned and known as China’s biggest supplier of sashimi-grade tuna to Japan.
“But DOF’s boats have also been the nexus of a massive illegal shark finning operation, an investigation by Mongabay has found, based on interviews with dozens of men who worked as deckhands throughout its fleet of some 35 longline vessels.” (Source: Philip Jacobson and Basten Gokkon, Exclusive: Shark Finning Rampant Across Chinese Firm’s Fleet, Mongabay, Nov, 1, 2022)
“Sharks are terrifying in their power,” according to an eye-witness crewmember, “Sometimes we needed three or four people, one with a spear, one with a hand-hook, and one with a stunner.”
The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF)/London, which also investigates the fishing industry, provided Mongabay with additional excerpts of interviews separately conducted with 11 crewmembers of six of DOFs boats, exposing the highly secretive shark finning operations.
“I was quite dumbstruck by the level of abuse that we found,” EJF CEO Steve Trent told Mongabay. Shark finning and other illegal fishing practices, he said, appear to be “running throughout and across the Chinese distant-water fleet. It’s not just a rogue element within it… DOF uses banned gear to deliberately catch and cut the fins off huge numbers of sharks in international waters, Mongabay has found,” Ibid.
Longliner commercial fishing techniques involve thousands of baited hooks dragged through the sea to capture tuna and other fish. As reported by crewmembers, DOF utilized shark lines and extra-strong wire leaders, which are banned in the western Pacific, alongside regular longlines. In other words, regular longliners added illegal shark fishing gear with much stronger leaders/hooks at a different depth on the same network. This is blatantly illegal.
On a normal longliner the hooks hang several dozen meters below the surface, where tuna tend to swim. In contrast, shark lines run directly from the buoys and floatlines, ensuring the hooks dangle just a few meters deep. “It’s all about where the baited hooks are located in terms of the depth, because sharks tend to be found in higher concentrations in the upper part of the water column,’ said Chapman, the shark expert.” (Mongabay)
According to Mongabay: “DOF’s captains presided over the finning of all manner of shark species in disregard of rules set by treaty organizations governing high-seas tuna fisheries and international wildlife trade… Photos smuggled off one vessel, the Long Xing 629, show large quantities of detached shark fins strewn across the deck.”
Officialdom of China’s agricultural ministry refused to comment on Mongabay’s article. Paradoxically, China explicitly banned shark finning as well as deliberate catching of sharks on the open seas in January 2019. However, there is no enforcement to speak of as partially state-owned vessels continue to run rampant with finning operations in clear violation of their own laws. Astonishingly, DOF is the recipient of millions of government annual subsidies for fishing operations. This entire enterprise is rotten-to-the-core.
“Almost every DOF deckhand interviewed by Mongabay and the EJF said their boat had transshipped shark fin with other boats in violation of rules adopted by the WCPFC (Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission) and the equivalent organization in the Atlantic, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.” (Mongabay)
Transshipping avoids risks of inspectors finding contraband. It’s typically done under cover of darkness. For example, based upon testimony by deckhands, along the Shandong coast (an eastern coastal province of China), two DOF boats transferred 30-50 sacks of dried fin onto a third smaller vessel, which looked like a local fishing boat. The tell-all witnesses reported being awakened after midnight and ordered to carry the sacks to the moonlit boat. The two DOF captains boarded the third boat for delivery of fins, returning a day later. The approximate two metric tons of dried fin carries a black market value of $300,000-$400,000.
Shark-less Ecosystem Stress
Sharks are crucial to maintaining a healthy marine ecosystem. The marine food chain will collapse without sharks at the pinnacle. “Fish-hunting sharks weed out weak and sick individuals, ensuring that the fish population remains healthy and at a size that the habitat’s resources can support… If the sharks disappear, the smaller fish explode in population because nothing’s eating them,’ Daly-Engel told Live Science. ‘Soon, their food — plankton, microorganisms, shrimp — all of that is gone… fish ultimately starve.” (Source: Want if There Were No Sharks? LiveScience, Sept. 9, 2020)
Deep-sea sharks regulate the amount of carbon that drifts up to the atmosphere by eating/scavenging dead animals on the bottom of the ocean. It’s estimated they remove up to ½ of manufactured carbon to the atmosphere. (Source: Why do We Need Sharks for Our Ecosystem? Oceans-Research, September 20, 2021)
Medicinal research is being conducted on sharks as shark tissue is a strong anticoagulant and antibacterial that may become a key to new medicines.
One of the main problems with overfishing is that sharks grow slowly, taking years to fully mature, and they reproduce few young. Females reproduce once in two-to-three years. Reproduction can’t come close to keeping up with overfishing, especially illegal finning, which decimates regional populations.
Illegal shark fishing, especially finning, is threatening collapse of marine ecosystems. Of special concern, it is already happening much faster than authorities can keep up or regulate. And, regulation is tacky and thin and practically nonexistent as Official China hides behind the dirty work of shady ship captains.
Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.
Dateline: November 7-18, 2022, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Dignitaries from every country will be meeting to discuss climate change at COP27. Based upon early confirmations, 90 heads of state will attend, lending an aura of importance.
“Climate change is the crisis of our lifetime. If we are not able to reverse the present trend that is leading to a catastrophe in the world, we will be doomed.” (António Guterres UN Secretary-General, BBC interview leading to COP27)
The Secretary-General has been beating that same drum for some time now, which prompts a thought: Should the UN stop holding annual COP “Conference of the Parties” climate change meetings? For 30 years straight, following each COP meeting, CO2 emissions have climbed higher than the year before. That’s thirty years, or an entire generation, of failure to slow emissions by even a teeny bit. It’s starting to get embarrassing.
For historical perspective, Global CO2 emissions in 1992, when COPs started, were just over 22 billion metric tons. In 2021 CO2 emissions were a record high 36 billion tons or an increase of 65% since nations signed up to protect the planet from excessive greenhouse gases. This equates to thirty-years of blabbering and more blabbering with nothing to show for it, except big increases in greenhouse gases, an amazing anti-achievement!
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) formed at the Earth Summit in May 1992 with 178 member nations unanimously agreeing to bring CO2 emissions down to 1990 levels of 354 ppm by the year 2000.
May 1992 CO2 @ 359.99 ppm – UNFCCC formed
May 2000 CO2 @ 371.82 ppm – missed the 354 target
October 2022 CO2 @ 427.01 ppm – Oh, well!
COP meetings are the Super Bowl of climate change but not quite as extravagant but still pretty darn plush. And, millions are expended to house (multi-star hotels) and feed (30,000 registered delegates for COP27) to annual COP two-week get-togethers, not including airfare expenses as well as CO2 exhaust fumes.
So far, taxpayers or grants or private funding or institutional funds that support attendees have witnessed CO2 emissions increase every year ever since UNFCCC formed, never a down year. It’s been a bad investment, but offsetting that misfortune is effective PR. “Climate Change” is universally recognized.
Meantime – The All-time Worldwide Killer is Fossil Fuels
One seldom-noticed world statistic stands out like a sore thumb: “There are almost 10,000,000 (ten million) fossil fuel specific air pollution deaths per year.” (Source: Dr. Peter Carter – UN June Climate Meeting Bonn: Bad Beyond Belief – more on Carter to follow)
That puts fossil fuels in the all-time standings list with World War I and World War II, actually in first place. Wars end. Fossil fuel emissions do not. Why not use that statistic for more effective (compelling) PR?
According to a 2018 study by Harvard University, University of Leicester and University College London: “More than 8 million people died in 2018 from fossil fuel pollution, significantly higher than previous research suggested.” (Source: Global Mortality From Outdoor Fine Particle Pollution Generated by Fossil Fuel Combination, Environmental Research posted at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 02/09/2021)
Unfortunately, any prospects for a letup in fossil fuel-related deaths does not appear to be on the horizon, in fact, quite the opposite based upon the UN Emissions Gap Report2022 d/d October 27, 2022, to wit: “As growing climate change impacts are experienced across the globe, the message that greenhouse gas emissions must fall is unambiguous. Yet the Emissions Gap Report2022: The Closing Window – Climate crisis calls for rapid transformation of societies finds that the international community is failing far short of the Paris goals, with no credible pathway to 1.5°C in place. Only an urgent system-wide transformation can avoid climate disaster.”
Alas, there is no known “urgent system-wide transformation” that “can avoid climate disaster” on the drawing boards even as the United Nations insists it’s the only way to avoid climate disaster.
But, of course, the IPCC does not control fossil fuels, which, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), plan nearly $1 trillion of new fossil fuel projects, oil & gas, by 2030, and the IPCC does not control coal emissions.
According to Bloomberg, US Edition, Sept. 21, 2022: “A year after President Xi Jinping promised China would stop building coal power plants overseas, the country has completed 14 such facilities beyond its borders and will finish another 27 soon.” The soon-to-be completed plants will emit more emissions than the Philippines or 140 million tons of CO2/yr.
Additionally, India May Boost Coal Power Fleet By 25% By 2030 Amid Rising Demand, Bloomberg, US Edition, Sept. 22, 2022. India’s PM claims reliable electricity supply is the nation’s priority, and thus, according to Bloomberg and COP26: He aims for net zero by 2070, not 2050. Why not make it 2170? That’s likely what’ll happen over time, assuming an excruciating pounding summer heat, like the summer of 2022, doesn’t bring on mass protests or more likely mass deaths well ahead of net zero by 2070.
And, just for good measure: “The US government has funneled more than $9bn (£7.7bn) into oil and gas projects in Africa since it signed up to restrain global heating in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, a tally of official data shows, committing just $682m (£587m) to clean energy developments such as wind and solar over the same period.” (Source; Two-thirds of US Money for Fossil Fuel Pours Into Africa Despite Climate Goals, The Guardian, October 31, 2022)
In the face of all of that, expectations are high for COP27 in Egypt, but they’re always high before every COP. In all honesty, maybe COP meetings should be stopped in favor of an altogether different approach because whatever they are doing is clearly not working. As a practical matter, maybe scale down the meetings to much smaller delegations and omit the edit of policy measures by individual country bureaucrats or economists or fossil fuel reps and leave the fixit policy measures to scientists/engineers and establish strict enforcement by monitoring country promises of CO2 reductions, abandon voluntary country emission reductions. That has never worked!
Of more than passing interest, people have already expressed trepidation about holding COP27 in Egypt with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisis’s massive crackdown on dissent. It’s over-the-top excessive and whether intentional or unintentional, may serve to diminish street protests at COP27. According to the Arabic Network for Human Rights, at least 60,000 political prisoners are held behind bars for expressing political beliefs. Amnesty International ranks Egypt as the 3rd worst country by numbers of executions. Highlighting Egypt’s troubling repressiveness, Naomi Klein referred to COP 27 as the “Carceral Climate Summit.”
In order to better understand what to expect at COP27, Dr. Peter D. Carter, director, Climate Emergency Institute and IPCC expert reviewer analyzed a major preliminary meeting to COP27 at the Bonn UN Climate Change Convention of June 2022 with insight to COP27, which Dr. Carter boldly labels: “Bad Beyond Belief”
Following the Bonn meetings on June 16th, according to Dr. Carter: “It is my unpleasant duty and with profound sadness that I’m going to report on what happened… I’ve called it an unbelievably abysmally bad Bonn United Nations Climate Change Convention meeting.” (Source: UN June Climate Meeting Bonn: Bad Beyond Belief, link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTfs4kKpFEQ)
Carter: Bonn demonstrated a level of “incredible climate change denial throughout the conference.” Yet, Bonn paves the way for COP27, which brings to mind: Who listens to the Secretary-General?
It’s even worse than the Secretary-General realizes, according to Dr. Carter: “Today there is no agreement, not even a plan, to put emissions into decline… Bonn this June 2022 was yet another international meeting that refused to stop the rapid, rampant wanton destruction of the sacred earth.”
Accordingly, the most amazing media report by BBC that came out of Bonn: “To Bridge the 1.5C Degree Gap.” Countries agreed to a new “work stream” for this current decade. But that is one more decade following one more decade “work stream” or work program, a-work-in-progress. At the Bonn meeting, both the EU and the US said the “work stream should continue until 2030.” According to Carter: Effectively, they’ve advocated keeping on blah blah blah until 2030: “Which is definitely a delayed death sentence.”
Rather than discussing emissions decline, Bonn has reinforced the 1.5C climate catastrophe by more climate action delay. In contrast, the world’s most eminent climate scientist James Hansen said it is scientifically impossible to limit to 1.5 degrees. Evidently, nobody at Bonn was focused on that and what to do, if anything, about it.
Much more disturbing yet: “There are scientists supporting the 1.5C falsehood, wrongfully proclaiming there is no climate emergency. Instead they claim we can still limit to 1.5C.” (Carter)
According to Carter, Bonn has written the future off once again. The truth: “We face global climate hell at 1.5 degree C.” This fact was made obvious in the 6th Assessment by the IPCC itself. Hmm.
Meanwhile according to Carter: “We are getting severe extreme weather events at an increasing rate affecting all habitable regions on the planet. These will increase over time, heat waves, droughts, forest fires, superstorms, hurricanes and cyclones, torrential rains, floods. And the heat waves, unprecedented heat waves across the Northern Hemisphere.” For example, practically all of India was only recently under an unprecedented pounding heat wave. People died.
In spite of everything mentioned above, at the Bonn climate talks, no one could agree on what a work stream should look like. Thirty years of negotiations, and nobody knows what their recommendations for a work stream on climate action will look like. Amazingly disturbing.
However, Bonn did discuss carbon markets under the 2015 Paris agreement Article 6, which are really only mechanism for emissions trading or what many refer to as “junk or zombie credits,” worthless credits but now approved and used for greenwashing. In total 320 million of the credits equivalent to the annual emissions of 86 coal-fired power plants have been made available for countries to count towards climate emission reduction commitments. Hmm.
Bottom line: “There was not a hint of putting emissions into decline at the two-week Bonn meetings. All agreements result in continued emissions.” (Carter) The inertia is shameful.
Adding insult to injury, as part of COP negotiations, way back in 2009, rich countries agreed to provide 200 billion dollars a year to underdeveloped countries by 2020. As of today, they have failed to pay the first 200 billion. Bonn meetings ended with nothing more done about this 200B failure. Ever since 1992, major countries have stalled. This is a recurring source of distrust in the process by underdeveloped countries. A BBC headline regarding Bonn’s two-week meetings stated: “Climate Change: Bonn Talks End In Acrimony Over Compensation,” BBC News Science.
Additionally, it’s hard to accept, but Bonn caved in to major emitters. China rejected any references to being labeled a “major emitter.” However, they are a major emitter. In fact, China’s emissions are double the next largest emitter, which is the US. India, China, and Middle East all objected to any language about “major emitters,” which, in fact, was deleted.
They also agreed to omit any emissions accounting by the UN climate secretariat for NDC or voluntary national emissions targets, even though these are, in fact, “paltry targets” which will not even come close to limiting global warming to 2C. And, what they did agree to will not even be new national emissions accounting until 2023. Only Australia promised deeper cuts.
Alas, it’s hard to believe, but there is no plan for how countries will work out and submit their emission targets. Different countries are using different methodologies. “This is a basket case. It’s chaotic how national emissions targets are being accounted and registered with the UN.” (Carter)
Dr. Carter: “This is absolute madness. You read thru the accounts of these meetings and you cannot believe it is true… we will not survive if these unbelievably sky-high greenhouse gases, particularly CO2 are allowed to continue to increase at the accelerating rate. We’re on a global suicide proposal.”
Postscript: COP26/Glasgow/2021 news not covered by mainstream media: Commentary of Dr. James Hansen (Ex-NASA Climate Chief) re COP26/Glasgow: “In a memo published last December – unreported until now – Prof Hansen warned that world governments and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are severely under-estimating the speed and impact of global warming this century.” (Source: COP26 Pledges Will Have Catastrophic Consequences Says Ex-NASA Climate Chief, Byline Times, February 16, 2022)
“Conventional climate models, he said, do not sufficiently account for the Earth’s paleoclimate history or ongoing observations of the climate system… Prof Hansen criticized Boris Johnson’s ‘claim that COP26 salvaged the chance to keep global warming below 1.5°C’ and that ‘we’ll look back at COP26 as the moment humanity finally got real about climate change. Describing the UK Government’s claims about the success of the COP26 as ‘unadulterated bulls**t’, his memo warned that ‘the 1.5°C global warming ceiling will be breached this decade’ and that pledges made by Johnson’s administration at COP26 will do nothing to stop the world hitting dangerous climate change.”
Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.
A fresh approach to fixing climate change/global warming is outlined in a new book: Climate Restoration, which focuses on how the climate can be restored. Indeed, the book is full of fascinating details, meriting a closer look and critique (Peter Fiekowsky and Carole Douglis, Climate Restoration, Rivertowns Books, 2022).
But first: The words climate change and global warming have become imbedded in the fabric of society so much so that the attendant dangers become a nonevent in people’s minds. Over time, they become comfortable with their own personal knowledge of what it means. That’s a problem because studies suggest that only a tiny fraction of people truly understand the real science and inherent dangers.
Meanwhile, in touch with reality, the risks associated with climate change/global warming keeps climate scientists wide-eyed in the middle of the night staring at the ceiling, unblinking, in a cold sweat.
For example, one well-known scientist claims: “At just 1.2°C of global average warming, tipping points (ed. meaning the point of no return) have been passed for several large Earth systems. These include Arctic sea ice, the Greenland Ice Sheet, The Amundsen Sea glaciers in West Antarctica, the eastern Amazonian rainforest, and the world’s coral systems… The meme that ‘we have eight years to avoid 1.5°C and tipping points’ should be deleted from the climate advocacy vocabulary. It is simply wrong.”
Moreover: “Certainly, in the case of West Antarctica, the evidence continues to pile… Thwaites ‘doomsday’ glacier could begin rapid melt with ‘just a small kick’, researchers say… Similarly, scientists now report that Greenland ice sheet has passed a point of system stability and is now “irreversibly committed” to a significant sea-level rise regardless of twenty-first-century climate pathways.” (Source: Climate Dominoes, National Centre for Climate Restoration, Melbourne, May 2022 by David Spratt, Climate Code Red, September 28, 2022).
On the other hand, from a positive viewpoint, is it possible to roll back time and restore the climate to its former self? Climate Restoration makes that claim and offers supporting evidence.
But first, Climate Restoration tells the ugly truth about the popular rallying cry “Net Zero by 2050.” This idiom is widely accepted as the solution to the global warming monster, but that assumption is simply wrong.
In point of fact, if the world follows through on Net Zero by 2050, by the year 2050 CO2 will be at 460ppm, or higher, and according to Fiekowsky/Douglis, the world will have changed: “The great coral reefs are gone… the oceans are largely devoid… gone, too, are most of the old-growth forest and rainforests… average sea level rise of about two feet. The path of humankind in this scenario is a risky one from which there may be no turning back.” pgs. 7-9
Therefore, assuming the nations of the world continue on the pathway of Net Zero by 2050. Fiekowsky-Douglis make a case for a planet that nobody will want to live on. And, maybe they should’ve even gone further in the analysis by stating major portions of the planet will basically be unlivable. There are scientists who believe that’ll be the consequences of Net Zero by 2050, which the world at large has already embraced as the magical solution: “No worries, we’re gonna hit Net Zero by 2050!”
Thus and therefore, it’s vitally important to be brutally honest about whether one book can change the world, re-educate enough people to see the scientific truth and find a better pathway? Hopefully, Climate Restoration can turn enough heads to make a difference. Moreover, double-hopefully, will it truly work?
Fiekowsky-Douglis, echoing Al Gore, state: “It’s time to acknowledge the inconvenient truth that climate scientists and activists have failed to confront, which is: Meeting the goal of Net Zero by 2050 in no way guarantees the survival of human society as we know it or even that of homo sapiens as a species.” pg. 22.
That paragraph is a shot across the bow for today’s world leaders as the Net Zero by 2050 ship logs into Titanic’s route, Southampton to New York. According to the authors: “The ecosystems we depend on will still continue to collapse” even as society achieves Net Zero by 2050 with universal renewable energy, electric vehicles, and total elimination of fossil fuels.
The hard truth: A monster hangs over, and in fact deflates, Net Zero by 2050: “There will still be a trillion tons (ed. 1,000,000,000,000) of excess CO2 lingering in the atmosphere for a millennium or longer.” pg. 23
Under that scenario with a trillion tons of CO2 still hanging around like a big blanket in the atmosphere continuing to heat up the planet (1) ice caps will continue melting (2) sea levels will keep going up and (3) ecosystems will continue collapsing all whilst the world community pops champagne corks on January 1, 2051 to celebrate Net Zero!
Net Zero does not remove the big blanket. Get over it!
Furthermore, according to the book: “No scientist I know will defend the claim that humankind is likely to survive if we limit our climate efforts to meeting the Paris goals… I sometimes refer to the Paris Accords as ‘the Paris Suicide Pact.” pg. 27
The authors initially discuss the goals of climate restoration on page 28: “Achieving the net zero goal set by the Paris Accords is not enough to guarantee a healthy, sustainable future… We need to go further by reducing the level of atmospheric CO2 to below 300 ppm level to which our species originally evolved and has historically flourished.”
Significantly, the climate restoration plan supplements and completes the work that Paris has started with its target of Net Zero by 2050. Keep in mind, it’s not all bad, as Paris ’15 has inspired the world to work towards a common goal of a cleaner, healthier, sustainable planet as well as motivating nations to work to reduce emissions. In spite of general neglect by nations to abide by IPCC commitments to reduce emissions, Paris ‘15 is still a positive event in many respects, specifically by bringing the issue onto the world stage.
Beyond the work to be (hopefully) accomplished by Net Zero by 2050, the good news is that climate restoration is already fairly well advanced. It involves technological processes not anticipated by Paris ’15. Many have already been tested and successfully developed.
Climate Restoration
“Restoring the climate means reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide from today’s 420 ppm to below 300 ppm by 2050. This will require removing roughly a trillion tons of carbon dioxide that we’ve already pumped into the air that would otherwise remain in the atmosphere far beyond our lifetimes, as well as removing any continuing emissions while we head to zero emissions.” pg. 30
Removing a trillion tons of CO2 is the same as removing seven tons of CO2 per year for every person on the planet. Try that one on for size!
All of which prompts a burning question for many people: Where is all of the CO2 located? According to MIT: “Carbon dioxide mixes evenly through the atmosphere. But the atmosphere as a whole is densest near the ground, so a cubic foot of air at ground level will contain more carbon dioxide molecules than a cubic foot of air high up in the sky.” (Source: Is There a Place in the Atmosphere Where Carbon Dioxide is Concentrated, and if so, Can we Remove it? MIT Climate Portal)
The restoration schedule: The decade of the 2020s is projected for scaling up the removal technologies. Thereafter, removal technologies work full tilt from 2030-2050, thus removing a minimum of 50 gigatons of CO2 each year, which in effect removes legacy CO2 by 2050.
Significantly, the technologies all have one thing in common. Each is an adaptation of natural processes that have actually occurred in former geological eras, hands free, no humans involved.
Climate restoration is not based upon fancy new technology breakthroughs. Rather, it’s as 0ld as nature itself. The planet on its own merits has encountered and resolved the same exact global warming problems over the eons but much, much, much more slowly. As explained by the authors: “Nature was not in a hurry to remove geologically relevant amounts of CO2.” However in contrasts to good ole slow Mother Nature: “Using modern technological tools, we can do the same as nature but on an accelerated timetable. For our survival, we now need to do so roughly a thousand times faster.” Hmm.
Accordingly, “scientists and engineers have developed and demonstrated four major technology processes for reducing greenhouse gas levels that reproduces large-scale natural processes.” pg. 33
Four Major Technologies
The technologies for climate restoration are classified as biomimicry and geomimicry, as follows:
1. Synthetic Limestone Manufacture – capturing CO2 and converting it to synthetic limestone producing a commercial product, which when scaled-up could pull 50 Gt of CO2 per year from the atmosphere.
2. Seaweed Permaculture – the construction of arrays of light-latticed structures constructed of tubes to which seaweed can attach in mid-ocean. At scale it could capture enough CO2 to reduce excess CO2 by 20% over 20 years.
3. Ocean Iron Fertilization – adding trace amounts of iron-ore dust to iron-poor ocean areas, in turn, photosynthesis increases rapidly with expansion of phytoplankton which in turn pulls CO2 from the atmosphere. “If just one or two percent of the ocean bloomed with phytoplankton thanks to ocean pasture restoration, the trillion tons of excess carbon could be drawn… within 20-30 years.” Pgs. 40-41
4. Acceleration of Natural Methane Oxidation – by adding iron chloride to the atmosphere to oxidize methane and thus restore pre-industrial methane levels by 2028.
Each of the four strategies is discussed at length in four separate chapters, pgs. 83-162.
Climate Restoration is a bold idea; it is a fresh idea; it is new to the scene as an adjunct to Net Zero by 2050, which by itself can make a huge difference, but it cannot and will not stop the legacy of 1,000,000,000,000 tons of CO2 hanging-out in the atmosphere. That massive blanket will continue to heat up the planet post 2050. It must be removed… period!
In Conclusion, once you’ve read this article, you have some choices to make. One obvious choice is to think about it for a moment but move on with life, biz as usual.
Or, think about what you can personally do to help restore the climate. Here are a couple of suggestions:
Forward this article to everybody you know with a personal message that you intend to get involved and want friends to help, asking them to also spread the word. It’s that important. After all, “restore the climate” is not exactly well known, but the more word gets around, the better chances it can happen. Word of mouth is a powerful tool for making things happen. Your forwarding message could be: “I am sending an article about climate restoration. It’s fascinating stuff! Let me know what you think.”
Or, write to every local, state, and federal government representative asking them to look into climate restoration.
Or, maybe forward William Shatner’s message, which is found in the postscript to this article.
It’s important to be realistic when it comes to fixes for climate change. For decades now, nations have dragged their feet, not keeping commitments and breaking promises to cut emissions. And, the climate change issue has acquired a considerable amount of cynicism, which is fed by various sources like Fox News, politicians of note like Trump and Bolsonaro, and a general public belief that it’s old news, heard over and over again, that somebody somewhere will handle it if it gets bad enough. In other words, the general public is not well-educated about the reality.
In that regard, it’s much worse than people realize and happening so much faster than scientists ever expected. Ecosystems are stressed to breaking points from the far northern latitudes to the far southern and everywhere in between.
Harmful climate change is happening everywhere where nobody lives. For example, while blindfolded throw a dart at a globe; it’ll probably hit close to a stressed ecosystem, for example, Thwaites “Doomsday” Glacier in West Antarctica (tipsy) or Greenland (massive ice loss) or Siberian permafrost (methane bubbling lakes) or Lake Mead (close to dead pool status) or the Po River/Italy (a trickle this past summer) or the Amazon rainforest (30,000+ human-fires/August) or melting Andes’ glaciers (water wars in So. America) or tanker trucks supplying drinking water to 400,000 families outside of Santiago, all signs of stressed ecosystems threatening to shut down nature’s climate system of life support.
Thus and therefore, whether Climate Restoration can gain enough traction to get the job done is a major concern, and it’s why every person who can help, must help. Our home, our planet is at stake, and right now it does not look good. Time is of the essence.
It is imperative that Climate Restoration gets a chance to prove itself because, frankly, it is the only known technological process for naturally reviving our spectacular blue planet.
Postscript: Dateline, October 13, 2021: Capital Kirk, aka: William Shatner’s feet touched ground after a 10-minute 66-mile trip four miles beyond the edge of space on Blue Origin. Shatner wept, but he wasn’t sure why, until he reflected for a spell: “I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.”
Upon more reflection: “My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”
At a later date, upon more reflection: We must have “a clarion call to stop climate change… a Manhattan Project of scientists charged with removing carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.”
Climate Restoration, Rivertowns Books, 2022
Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.
Photograph Source: Andrewglaser at English Wikipedia is licensed by CC BY-SA 3.0
Virtual Power Brightens the Future
By Robert Hunziker
Imagine the impact of a United States white-glove clean power system with costs benefits to individual homeowners in a Virtual Power Plant network (VPP) extending coast-to-coast with every household, en mass, involved in electrical power generation for the entire nation.
It’s coming. It’s a future where everybody benefits as greenhouse gas emissions such as CO2 dissipate as homeowner electric bills shrink and utility grid brownouts and blackouts cease. It’s a sun-worshipping wonderland of clean energy that works without intermittency 24/7. And, it’s coming, quietly but surely.
A prototype in New England has already proven hugely successful. Sunrun, a global leader in solar power, established the first-of-a-kind Virtual Power Plant this past summer by interconnecting 5,000 small-scale home solar energy systems in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont to create a Virtual Power Plant. The 5,000 homes utilize home solar and home battery storage units to provide power to the grid when energy demand is high in addition to providing additional home electricity.
The Sunrun program clearly demonstrates that VPPs can deliver electricity to multistate power markets. This is the first successful major Virtual Power Plant operation on a multistate level and a peek into the future of electrical power generation via cooperation amongst consumers and utility grid operators; it’s semi-cooperative with the grid operator is still in control.
“This is the energy system of the future and the future is not very far away,” according to Todd Olinsky-Paul, Senior Project Director/Clean Energy States Alliance and Clean Energy Group. (Source: Miranda Wilson, Northeast Embraces First-of-A-Kind Virtual Power Plant, E&E News, EnergyWire, October 12, 2022)
Already, Virtual Power Plants are starting to spread across the country. In certain respects, it is a grassroots movement as householders with solar and backup battery storage of solar energy come together. For example, in California, when Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) put out notices for customers to conserve energy during the 2022 hot summer, 2,500 PG&E customers with Tesla Powerwall battery systems came together to add up to 16.5MWof solar power delivered to the grid.
According to PG&E CEO Patti Poppe, when the Tesla/PG&E Virtual Power Plant activated for the first time August 17th: “The world’s largest distributed battery sure did put on a show.” (Source: Kavya Balaraman, PG&E, Tesla Virtual Power Plant Delivers 16.5 MW to California Grid Amid Calls for Energy Conservation, Utility Dive, August 23, 2022)
There are approximately 50,000 Tesla storage systems in PG&Es service area. When the grid is stressed, customers who chose to participate are paid $2/kWh of electricity exported to the grid. This is a prime example of a very powerful movement spreading across the country to combat the challenges of an increasingly dangerous cycle of excessive fossil fuel-derived CO2 emissions causing global heating that’s threatening the entire American West by turbo-charging a vicious endless drought of the past two decades.
Last Bulb is an org that tracks the growth of the Tesla Virtual Power Plant in California. Tesla Powerwall owners have now been conjoined to Southern California Edison as well as PG&E with a virtual network of 3,500 homes having power capacity of 50MW. This is a powerful fallback safety valve as well as enhancement to the power grid.
The Virtual Power Plant movement bringing utilities and consumers together is also bringing together a relationship between a nonprofit that builds affordable housing in partnership with a local utility, joining forces in a Virtual Power Plant to benefit low-income homeowners who will be compensated by providing power to the grid.
According to an article in Grist entitled: The Plan to Turn Blighted Houses Into a New Source of Green Power for the Grid, August 3, 2022 by Emily Pontecorvo: CEO James Becker of the nonprofit RCF Connects restores abandoned homes and facilitates first-time home ownership in dilapidated/blighted areas of Richmond, California.
The rejuvenated homes are outfitted with energy-efficient lighting, an electric vehicle charger, electric stove, electric heat pumps for heating, air conditioning, and an internet-connected “smart thermostat. Rooftop solar panels and a backup battery system allow homeowners to self-power their homes during a power shortage, and they become part of California’s power grid and earn money doing so as part of a Virtual Power Plant.
As such, low-income homeowners will not only be self-reliant as well as experience lower power bills and generate income from the grid, but they will also help cut greenhouse gas emissions and local pollution, especially significant, as Richmond’s California Air Quality Index at 39.4 is a lowly ranking of #1,354 in the state. “Richmond has long been known for the three Cs: crime, corruption, and Chevron.” (Source: Richmond v Chevron: The California City Taking on its Most Powerful Polluter, The Guardian, October 9, 2019)
According to the Grist article, since starting the program in 2015, RCF has completed 20 renovations in blighted areas of Richmond. RCF prevents gentrification of the blighted zones by working with the California Housing Finance Agency and other sources giving priority access to participants via a financial counseling service and a first-time buyer program that RCF administers, including a down payment assistance program of up to $20K for low-income buyers.
Meanwhile, the world beyond America is starting to build-out Virtual Power Plants. For example, AGL/Australia is the world’s largest retail led Virtual Power Plant. In Australia 2.5 million households have rooftop solar power and can elect to join AGL Virtual Power Plant/Adelaide, which uses cloud-based operation systems to interconnect solar batteries installed in homes and businesses in the city.
And, in Japan on the island of Miyako-jima, since 2021, Tesla has installed a Virtual Power Plant with Powerwalls in over 300 homes. It’s the largest commercial Virtual Power Plant in Japan. Tesla expects to have over 600 Powerwalls installed on the island within the next 12 months.
People living on Miyako-jima experience regular power outages during typhoons, and Powerwalls keep the lights on in individual homes. “During typhoons, lights are available, refrigerators are usable as usual,’ claims a Powerwall customer.” (Source: Tesla Quietly Built a Virtual Power Plant in Japan, The Verge, August 29, 2022)
Virtual Power Plants are the most opportunistic way to connect consumers to the reality of tackling a nearly out of control global warming conundrum that the nations of the world have not properly tackled.
Rather, avoidance of IPCC Paris ’15 commitments to reduce emissions has been the low road traveled by nearly all of the 190-nation attendees to Paris ‘15. It’s outrageously scandalous. But, setting the tone, the Trump administration deniers withdrew from the Paris ‘15 accords! That major setback still reverberates among other nations that followed suit by not cutting emissions, as promised, proclaiming: If America doesn’t commit then why should we!
The interconnectivity of householders to vast grids statewide or nationwide brings forth the stark realization that something about the climate change issue has been amiss, mishandled, or askew. After all, if individual consumers can make a difference in combating global warming, why shouldn’t major governments be onboard as well?
And, yes something has been amiss for decades now. In America, until only recently, it has been, and remains, abject political failure sparked by Republican deniers failing to come to grips with the dangers of greenhouse gases like fossil fuel-derived CO2 blanketing the atmosphere, heating up the planet, which has gotten out of hand and everybody knows it, but nobody does anything about it because they have tirelessly blocked opportunities.
However, Biden’s shabbily named Inflation Reduction Act has become a much-needed breath of fresh air green catalyst, of sorts.
Meanwhile, in more than a subtle fashion Virtual Power Plants send a signal to the public that mean-spirited politics in the face of dire circumstances should suffer consequences: How dire? While blindfolded throw a dart at a world map. Bulls-eye, you’ll hit one of the worst drought areas of the past 500-to-1200 years!
Oh, by the way, don’t forget to vote. It counts!
Postscript: Speaking of voting and its impact, Sweden’s new far-right PM Ulf Kristersson freshly installed on October 18th, celebrated victory by dismantling the Ministry of Environment on October 19th.
Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.
A mysterious uptick in atmospheric methane (CH4) was first detected 15 years ago. Of major concern, CH4 is a potent greenhouse gas that’s ~80 times greater than CO2. It’s like a turbo-charged booster heating up the planet. It is a climate change event that keeps scientist up at night, sleepless bouts of tossing, turning, sitting up, screaming on occasion.
“In the past few years, however, that uptick has accelerated into a surge. The implications for global warming are immense.” (Source: L. Hook and C. Campbell, Methane Hunters: What Explains the Surge in the Potent Greenhouse Gas? Financial Times, August 22, 2022)
Every year chemists at the Global Monitoring Laboratory of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Boulder, Colorado receive roughly 6,000 flasks from 50 worldwide atmosphere-monitoring stations. The lab measures levels of gases inside the samples, e.g., carbon dioxide (CO2) nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4).
Since 15 years ago, the lab’s results have shown methane acceleration increasing year-over-year. As a result, since 2007 the scientific community has become increasingly concerned about levels of CH4 in the atmosphere. Its danger is triggering an unstoppable self-fulfilling cycle that ratchets up global warming way too fast too quickly.
That threat is already starting to bubble to the surface in thousands of thermokarst lakes or melted permafrost lakes that are rapidly spreading all across the high latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere. According to an article in Nature Communications by Katey Walter Anthony, Professor of Ecology and Biogeochemistry at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, current climate models greatly underestimate the methane released by these lakes that are popping up like spring flowers all across the interior of Alaska. She believes that methane could become the dominant source of atmospheric warming. It’s on a fast track guided by nature’s own course as it reacts to global warming. A plane flight across Alaska finds mile after mile after mile of newly formed thermokarst lakes bubbling up methane. Anthony claims the lakes emit methane 10 times more than a normal lake. In her words: “They are hotspots.”
According to Sir David King, former chief scientific advisor for the UK and founder of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group: “With the Arctic having warmed 3C, well above the global average… risks are also growing that large amounts of methane trapped in thawing permafrost could be released… If all of that is released, we’ll see temperatures rise 5-8C (8-14F) over 20 years… extraordinarily destructive to the future of humanity.”
It is only too obvious that surging methane is a major risk to society at large. It is widely acknowledged that a rise of 5-8C global warming most likely spells “death warrant.”
A potential solution to excessive levels of methane is discussed in more detail at the end of this article, which is a group of scientists and engineers under the banner Atmospheric Methane Removal AG, Switzerland, link: https://amr.earth
“Atmospheric methane had its highest growth rate ever recorded by modern instruments in 2020, and then that record was broken again in 2021. Nobody knows exactly why.” (Source: L. Hook and C. Campbell, Methane Hunters: What Explains the Surge in the Potent Greenhouse Gas? Financial Times, August 22, 2022)
However, after years of research, scientists have identified the distinguishing fact that fossil sources of CH4 contain more carbon-13 isotope than do microbial sources like wetlands, cattle, and landfills. As such, that evidence has exposed a major concern for the scientific community, to wit: Since 2007, it has become quite obvious that the worst possible case may be underway: “The planet itself could be emitting more methane, and it is not slowing down,” Ibid.
According to Ed Dlugokencky, a chemist at the NOAA lab: “After 200 years of increasing… all of a sudden we start to see a decrease in delta carbon-13. That means something significant has happened,” Ibid.
As such, horror of horrors, if Dlugokencky’s significant change proves to be the “methane bomb,” meaning the planet warming itself thereby causing more methane released into the atmosphere in a terrifying feedback loop sans human influence, then how to stop it? In the vernacular, it leads to the ultimate threat called runaway global warming.
“If you think of fossil fuel emissions as putting the world on a slow boil, methane is a blow torch that is cooking us today,” according to Durwood Zaelke, Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, Ibid.
There are plenty of professionals, like Zaelke, that are extremely concerned about the prospects of the methane bomb, which could wipe out civilization, unless it can be stopped. In that regard, the UN Environment Programme claims that existing technologies (not yet proven as operational) could cut methane emissions by 45% by 2030. In turn, this would avoid 0.3C of additional warming.
Atmospheric Methane Removal Ag is one strong prospective source for cutting methane emissions. AMR is an engineering company that is science driven. Its technology is designed to help “Cool Planet Earth.”
According to AMR: “The problem of atmospheric methane is that it has an initial global warming potential (GWP) 120 times worse than CO2 (2). 40% of all current global warming (GW) is caused by methane, and the problem / the proportion of methane is growing… Unlike atmospheric CO2, which enables photosynthesis, atmospheric methane has no beneficial effect – life on earth could happen with zero methane in the air.”
AMR utilizes Enhanced Atmospheric Methane Oxidation (EAMO) via Iron Salt Aerosol, a natural chemical reaction in order to deplete methane from the atmosphere. This process is similar to the same chemical reaction accomplished by the sun interacting with natural iron salt aerosols emitted by the planet, except EAMO accelerates the process fast enough to make a big difference in methane’s impact, quickly. The sun takes much, much longer, maybe a decade or more, for the same impact of nature taking its own course.
According to ARM, by utilizing EAMO, within approximately 20 years atmospheric methane would decrease to pre-industrial levels. Thereby, average global temperature would cool by ~0.5 degrees, compared to conditions without EAMO in combination with emission reductions as scheduled by nation/states to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
AMR’s Enhanced Atmospheric Methane Oxidation process sends iron-salt aerosols into the atmosphere. It’s significant that implementation of AMR’s technology in terms of costs, effectiveness, and build-out is “the lowest hanging fruit of all GHG removal technologies.” The first prototype has already undergone tests in a laboratory environment. The initial field test is scheduled for 2023.
AMR’s development to date should attract a significant level of interests by nation/states as well as individual parties that are interested in funding a well-conceived plan.
It should be stated that the alternative to initiating technologies to helping solve the global warming threat, which may already be so far along that only an all-world effort suffices, is unspeakable, but nobody wants to believe it.
Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.
This article addresses the most current research on sea level rise, as well as adaptation measures being taken around the world. Of special interest, brilliant adaptation measures are taking place in the face of higher seas.
“Sea level has been fairly stable for 6,000 years, which is most of human civilization… but its risen eight (8) inches or twenty (20) centimeters in the last century, and the rate is tripling right now.” (Source: John Englander, Expert on Sea Level Rise, Talks with US Harbors About Changing Coastal Waters, July 5, 2022).
According to knowledgeable sources, regardless of mitigation efforts, sea levels are destined to rise by approximately one foot by 2050. Thereafter, fairly high probabilities indicate up to 5 feet-to-10 feet by the end of the century, which is considerably more than “up to 3 feet in a high-GHG emissions scenario” forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The oceans have absorbed 93% of the planet’s heat, and there’s no off switch to stop warming ocean waters from melting the world’s two largest ice structures Greenland and Antarctica. What if the oceans did not absorb 93% of the planet’s heat? According to scientists’ calculations in the multi-award-winning documentary Chasing Coral (2017) if oceans stopped absorbing heat, land temps would average 122°F.
During the 1990s Greenland and Antarctica combined lost 81 billion tons of ice mass per year on average. A decade later, during the decade of the 2010s, the ice mass loss increased 6-fold to 475 billion tons per year on average. (Source: Greenland, Antarctica Melting Six Times Faster Than in the 1990s, NASA, March 16, 2020)
NASA’s findings, published online in the journal Nature from an international team of 89 polar scientists from 50 organizations, are the most comprehensive assessment to date of the changing ice sheets. It is startling information that seems to predestine higher sea levels. The question of the decade, therefore: How to stop the runaway-freight-train loss of ice by Greenland and Antarctica? Is it even possible to control a warming ocean as the root cause?
Speaking of which, on August 30, 2022 the Journal of Geophysical Research published the following paper by A. T. Bradley, et al: The Influence of Pine Island Ice Shelf Calving on Basal Melting. (Basal melting occurs from heat delivered by the ocean beneath ice shelves.)
Synopsis of the Bradley paper: “Pine Island Ice Shelf in West Antarctica, which holds back enough ice to raise sea levels by 0.5 meters (1.5 feet), could be more vulnerable to complete disintegration than previously thought. A new study led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS) scientists shows two processes whose recent enhancement already threatens the stability of the shelf can interact to increase the likelihood of collapse.” (Source: British Antarctic Survey, Scientists Expose Vulnerabilities of Critical Antarctic Ice Shelf, Phys.org, September 21, 2022)
Pine Island ice shelf, which serves to buttress Pine Island Glacier, is but one of a few hundred ice shelves surrounding Antarctica that hold back the potential of rapid flow of glacial ice to the sea. A collapsing ice shelf is equivalent to taking the goalie out of a hockey game; the net is wide open for rapid flow of the glacier to the sea. As it happens, an ice shelf collapse increases the rate of glacial flow by up to eight (8) times.
It goes without saying that collapsing ice sheets that buttress glacial ice flow are not a welcomed event for the world’s 136 port cities, each with more than one million inhabitants.
Scientists are still shaking in their boots over the shocking disintegration/collapse of Conger Ice Shelf six months ago. It’s the first-ever ice shelf collapse on East Antarctica, which is the coldest and driest location on the planet. On March 14-16 Conger ice shelf suddenly disappeared from satellite photos. It had been there for over a thousand years. All it took was an unusual warm spell and more than a thousand years of solid ice collapsed within only a few days! It’s little wonder scientists are still shaken. East Antarctica has always been considered invincible… until the recent past.
US Harbors of Rockland, ME recently interviewed John Englander, an oceanographer and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz and one of the world’s foremost speakers on sea level rise. (Source: John Englander, Expert on Sea Level Rise, Talks with US Harbors About Changing Coastal Waters, July 5, 2022).
According to Englander: “By midcentury, it’s going to be at least a foot higher and by the end of the century, perhaps 5-to-10 feet higher. We need to wake up to a new reality about sea level because sea level determines the shoreline… We need to start now re-designing harbors for the future… Adaptation to higher sea levels is the future.”
Of major concern, “The rate of global sea level rise has tripled in 30 years. It’s gone from an average of a millimeter and a half up to five millimeters in 30 years… if we only melt 5% of global glacial ice, it’s 10 feet of sea level rise.”
Yet, Englander says: “The good news is that we have time to adapt. The bad news is it’s going to change harbors; it’s going to change every coastline from big cities like Jakarta and New York to rural fishing villages in Thailand and Africa.”
A leading institution for ocean studies is NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which will increasingly be an important resource for civil engineers around the world. A recent NASA JPL seminar provides perspective: (1) sea level change (2) how fast it is rising (3) contributing factors, and (4) the influence of land hydrology and melting ice. Josh Willis an oceanographer at NASA JPL recently conducted the following seminar: Rising Tide: Tackling Sea Level Rise from Above and Below, California Institute of Technology, 2022.
The ocean’s cover more than 2/3rds of the planet’s surface, and they are rising. In Willis’s view, “it’s a bit of a startling idea that 2/3rds of the planet is rising.” The rising sea level is a well-documented event since the early nineties by a series of satellites that have been launched to give a record of how sea levels change all across the planet. The satellites with launch dates: Sentinel 6 (2020) Jason 3 (2016) OSTM/Jason 2 (2008) Jason 1 (2001) and TOPEX/Poseidon (1992).
Thereby, NASA has tools to measure sea level rise as well as its causes. In precise fashion, satellite measurements of the ocean repeatedly occur every second of the hour. This produces an entire map of the ocean once every ten days, providing a global picture of the ocean, similar to tidal gauges of the world.
According to Willis: The planet has been warming pretty rapidly for the past 100 years. And on an historic basis, it’s happening very quickly. What’s different today is that over the last 150 years we’ve changed the composition of the atmosphere radically and increased CO2 by almost a factor of two, meaning we’re running at double the rate of CO2 of the past one-half million years. This is a major global change that will not go away for a long time.
As such, we are changing how the climate works as most of the excessive energy or heat that’s trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the ocean; it’s actually 93%. Thus the oceans get warmer as well as bigger as heated water expands, which accounts for 1/3rd of modern day sea level rise. In total (1) melting inland glaciers and (2) melting ice sheets and (3) warming of the water account for sea level rise.
Significantly, the past 150 years of sea level rise is unprecedented in human history. A graph of the last 30 years of satellite recordings demonstrates the rate of rise increasing during the first 10 years at 2mm per year followed by 3mm in the middle 10 years and 4.5mm per year over the past 10 years. That rate of rise has more than doubled in only 30 years. NASA views this as one of the most comprehensive indicators of how much human influence has changed the climate.
Additionally, Grace satellite missions are another source that actually weigh the land. For example, since the early 2000s, Greenland (20+ feet of water trapped in ice) has lost 5,000,000,000 (five trillion) tons of ice. The heated oceans are responsible for melting Greenland around the edges of the island, which is the major contributor to sea level rise.
New research by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland claims that anthropogenic-influenced climate change has set in motion irreversible Greenland ice loses amounting to 110 trillion tons, which would trigger nearly a one-foot global sea level rise this century on its own. (Source: Jason E. Box, et al, Greenland Ice Sheet Climate Disequilibrium and Committee Sea-Level Rise, Nature Climate Change, August 29, 2022).
Moreover, the National Ocean Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 2022 Sea Level Rise Report technical analysis provides an updated projection for U.S. coastal waters thru the year 2150. Accordingly, the next 30 years or today’s generation will see sea level rise of 10-12 inches or one solid foot along U.S. coastlines. This projection is equivalent to the sea level rise of the past 100 years, 1920-2020 happening in only 30 years. This is one more example of acceleration.
Making matters much more tenuous, NOAA warns: “Failing to curb future emissions (ed.- which is about where mitigation efforts stand today) could cause an additional 1.5-5.0 feet of rise for a total of 3.5-7.0 feet by the end of this century.” (Source: 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
Adaptation to Higher Sea Levels
According to John Englander, society needs a new vision of the planet. It needs to learn to “build higher and smarter.”
For example, Korea is building the first floating community for thousands of homes. Busan Metropolitan City, Korea, the second-largest city in South Korea and home to the country’s largest port is home to Oceanix Busan, a floating city prototype to house 12,000 people. The floating city will be dependent upon its own energy, water, and food without relying upon city resources. Completion date is set for 2025. The design will help regenerate marine ecosystems by promoting coral reef growth underneath the complex.
In the Netherlands, floating homes of Schoonschip in Amsterdam rise up during flood periods with utilities attached via an umbilical that absorbs movement. During flooding episodes, homes float and then settle back down to the ground able to handle 6-8 feet of sea level rise.
Finest Bay Area Development (Finnish/Estonian), Shimizu Corporation (Japanese), and Blue21 (Dutch) have plans to build Green Float Tallinn, a floating island city for 40,000 inhabitants on the Baltic Sea. The floating island will not generate waste. Resources will either be reused, recycled, or upcycled. The objective is to achieve food self-sufficiency, energy autarky, circular water systems, and carbon positivity within a closed loop system.
The Dutch floating home model is now a project under construction in the Maldives. The first block of floating homes for the Maldives Floating City development of 5,000 homes are tethered to a lagoon floor and linked together.
Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, and the UK are all strengthening design standards for building and coastal infrastructure to protect against sea level rise according to the OECD Responding to Rising Seas report, utilizing sea walls, surge barriers, water pumps, and overflow chambers.
China is building sponge cities. The underlying principle of sponge cities is to give water enough room and enough time to drain into the soil where it falls instead of channeling it away and sequestering it in dams. Sponge cities require large green spaces. An example is the coastal city Ninbgo, where an eco-corridor on an uninhabitable post-industrial site turned the channelized river into a meandering waterway surrounded by native plants that filter water. It has become a habitat for native flora and fauna and improved water quality as well as control over flooding.
British architecture studio Grimshaw and Dutch manufacturer Concrete Valley are developing Modular Water Dwellings, floating concrete and glass houses for areas subject to flooding. The dwellings will be prefabricated in factories and used to turn waterfronts into new city neighborhoods. Solar panels will allow each dwelling to self-generate power. Prototypes are under construction.
San Francisco Bay, which has lost 90% of its wetlands, still has some of the most important coastal wetlands in the Western Hemisphere. It is working to expand and protect its wetlands, which are key to a functioning hydrology system: “Wetlands not only provide valuable habitat for fish and birds, acting as the base of the marine ecosystem, but wetlands have also been shown to be one of nature’s most efficient plant communities for capturing carbon from the atmosphere, trapping organic carbon quicker and better than forests, thus reducing carbon in the atmosphere. Coastal wetlands also help to buffer our communities from sea level rise, acting as a sponge to capture floodwaters before they reach our homes and businesses. In short, wetlands, if protected, expanded and restored, are one of the most valuable ecosystem tools for reducing the impact of climate change.” (Source: Expand & Restore Bay Wetlands to Fight Climate Change, April 30, 2022)
Adaptation planning has never been more important. Mauna Loa, Hawaii measurements of CO2 continue a relentless upwards trajectory, causing more global warming, which nowadays should be labeled “global heating,” as sea level goes ever higher, and higher, at ever faster rates.
Mauna Loa CO2 measurements:
August 2022 @ 417.19 ppm
August 2021 @ 414.47 ppm
August 2020 @ 412.78 ppm
During the 1960s the global growth rate of CO2 averaged +0.8 ppm. Today it’s nearly three times that rate. Correspondingly, the rate of sea level rising of the past 30 years has more than doubled.
Since the beginnings of humanity when rubbing two sticks together was an eye-opening moment nothing compares to today’s rate of CO2 and sea level rise. Could it be that a few thousand years of the wonderful Goldilocks era not too hot, not to cold fostered complacency? Which, in turn, propagates the brand-new Age of Adaptation.
Post Script
Adaptation takes on new significance when consideration is given to the following update from a highly respected source. The following statement comes from Climate Dominoes, Publisher: Breakthrough – National Centre for Climate Restoration, Melbourne, May 2022 by David Spratt, Climate Code Red, September 28, 2022:
“At just 1.2°C of global average warming, tipping points have been passed for several large Earth systems. These include Arctic sea ice, the Greenland Ice Sheet, The Amundsen Sea glaciers in West Antarctica, the eastern Amazonian rainforest, and the world’s coral systems. The world will warm to 1.5°C by around 2030, with additional warming well beyond 1.5°C in the system after that. Yet even at the current level of warming, these systems will continue to move to qualitatively different states. In most cases, strong positive feedbacks are driving abrupt change. At higher levels of warming, the rate of change will quicken. The meme that “we have eight years to avoid 1.5°C and tipping points” should be deleted from the climate advocacy vocabulary. It is simply wrong.”
“Certainly, in the case of West Antarctica, the evidence continues to pile in that the Thwaites glacier is primed to trigger a much wider loss of ice mass across the Amundsen sea glacial system, for example: Thwaites ‘doomsday’ glacier could begin rapid melt with ‘just a small kick’, researchers say.”
“Similarly, scientists now report that Greenland ice sheet has passed a point of system stability and is now “irreversibly committed” to a significant sea-level rise regardless of twenty-first-century climate pathways.”
Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.
According to the Marine Stewardship Council, depletion of fish stocks is the most urgent threat to the world’s oceans.
Ninety-three percent (93%) of the world’s major marine fish stocks are classified as fully exploited, overexploited, or significantly depleted. “Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is a pervasive, far-reaching security threat.” (Source: Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing, United States Coast Guard, 2022)
“Demand for seafood and advances in technology have led to fishing practices that are depleting fish and shellfish populations around the world. Fishers remove more than 77 billion kilograms (170 billion pounds) of wildlife from the sea each year. Scientists fear that continuing to fish at this rate may soon result in a collapse of the world’s fisheries.” (Source: Sustainable Fishing, National Geographic, June 2, 2022) As a follow up question to scientists’ concerns: Who’s counting the illegal catch?
The population of Pacific Bluefin tuna, one of the ocean’s most ecologically as well as economically valuable top predators, has plunged 97% from historic levels.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, commercial fish stocks are 90% fully exploited. That leaves 10% exposed to the world’s fishing fleet.
As for example, the oceans are pretty much open prey to China’s 17,000 fishing vessels. It is the largest fleet in the world. This compares to 250-to-300 total vessels for both the United States and the EU. Not only is China’s fishing fleet 55 times larger than the combined fleets of the US and EU, but China is ceremoniously ranked as the worst abuser of sea laws as well as inhumane practices, based upon facts from the IUU Fishing Index.
China’s distant-waterfleet numbers 3,000 ships. Enormous refrigerated vessels referred to as “motherships” upload the catch of the Chinese fleet, thus allowing an entire fleet of trawlers to continuously fish 24/7 without returning to port. Moreover, this strategy makes it very easy to (1) underreport catch size and (2) hide locations of catch, as Chinese trawlers have a proclivity to drift into restricted territorial boundaries, as ship captains turn off Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders that are required international tracking devices, thus, making trawlers invisible to satellite tracking.
“Over the last two decades, China has built the world’s largest deep-water fishing fleet, by far, with nearly 3,000 ships. Having severely depleted stocks in its own coastal waters, China now fishes in any ocean in the world, and on a scale that dwarfs some countries’ entire fleets near their own waters. The impact is increasingly being felt from the Indian Ocean to the South Pacific, from the coasts of Africa to those off South America — a manifestation on the high seas of China’s global economic might.” (Source: How China Targets the Global Fish Supply, The New York Times, September 26, 2022)
The IUU Fishing Index computes illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. By all accounts, Chinese fishing fleets break every rule in the book, inclusive of (1) overfishing, (2) targeting endangered shark species, (3) illegal intrusion into restricted territorial waters, (4) falsifying licenses and catch documents and (5) employing forced labor.
The first-ever “global footprint” of Chinese distant-water fishing fleet operations published by the Environmental Justice Foundation (UK) claims the Chinese fleet is “frequently associated with illegal fishing.” (Source: The Ever-Widening Net, Environmental Justice Foundation, 2022)
Compared to investigations of distant-water fishing fleets of Taiwan and South Korea, Chinese vessels have the highest rates of alleged IUU abuses. Examples include (1) hunting turtles, cetaceans and seals (2) shark finning (3) human rights abuse, including the withholding of money and personal documents. Curiously, there’s been a major shift from Chinese state ownership to private ownership of distant-water fleets, which effectively inhibits government oversight.
The EJF report claims that 78% of offshore fishery projects that are expressly approved by China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs fall within “exclusive economic zones of 20 African states.” These are crucial zones for the local populations. West Africa is a favorite target for these distant-water fishing fleets utilizing bottom trawlers that drag heavy nets across the seafloor capturing everything in sight including non-target species and undersized fish.
Offshore South America, the Galapagos Islands are a prime target for Chinese trawlers surrounding restricted areas full of abundant ocean wildlife. Satellite imagery 2020-2021 showed the fleets lined up along the edges of international waters surrounding Galapagos, as trawlers catch marine life entering and leaving the protection zone with clear evidence of some trawlers entering the protection zone for quickie catches within restricted areas.
“Out on the lawless high seas off South America’s Pacific coast, a quiet war over the overfishing of endangered squid stocks is being waged— and China is winning.” (Source: China Ramps Up Illegal Fishing in Lawless High Seas off South America, The Telegraph, February 10, 2022)
Global Fishing Watch, which utilizes data from ship transponders to monitor trawlers, followed the pathway of “transshipment” by Hai Feng 718, a Chinese mothership, which has refrigerated storage capable of holding tons of catch as well as fuel and supplies for the fleet at sea. This operation follows the coastline of South American year-round, 24/7 as trawlers catch whatever is available. Motherships are not illegal; however, transshipment makes it easy to underreport catch by individual trawlers and disguise origin of catch.
Drift-Net Fishing
On 20 December 1991 U.N. passed Resolution 46/215 banning operation of large-scale pelagic high seas drift-net fishing and to ensure that a global moratorium on all large-scale pelagic drift-net fishing is fully implemented on the high seas of the world’s oceans and seas, including enclosed seas and semi-enclosed seas, by 31 December 1992.
“Across the Indo-Pacific, oversize fishing trawlers owned by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are using dragnets large enough to swallow a football stadium. Such illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing threatens regional food security, including in the waters of American Samoa, Guam and Hawaii. For Pacific island nations, IUU fishing is also a national security threat.” (Source: Chinese Fishing Fleet Poses Threat to Pacific Island Economies, Indo-Pacific Defense Forum, June 21, 2021)
“The impact of these drift nets is absolutely disastrous,” says Vanya Vulperhorst, campaign director of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing at Oceana Europe, a conservation non-profit that has investigated illegal drift net fishing across the Mediterranean. “They are indiscriminate in what they trap, and the result is that endangered and protected species are being killed in large numbers.” (Source: California: Trump Vetoes Bipartisan Driftnet Fishing Bill, Wine & Water Watch, Sonoma County Tomorrow, Jan. 4, 2021)
Yep, Donald Trump vetoed the bipartisan driftnet fishing bill.
“The recreational fishing and boating community has long advocated for transitioning away from large-mesh drift gillnets which needlessly kill non-target species including sportfish,” Jeff Angers, president of the Center for Sportfishing Policy… “Today marks a significant victory for marine conservation, and we are grateful for the bipartisan effort to get the Driftnet Modernization and Bycatch Reduction Act across the finish line.” (Source: Trump Vetoes Bipartisan Driftnet Fishing Bill, The Hill, January 1, 2021) Oops, vetoed!
Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.
When Congress directs the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) to coordinate with other relevant federal agencies to research a five-year scientific assessment of solar and other rapid climate interventions, it’s only too apparent that the highest levels of government have gotten the internal memo that the climate is in trouble. Even so, they are still fashionably late to the party.
Scientists have been warning about the consequences of excessive levels of CO2 and urging both Congress and the White House to take action for decades.
Now that the broken climate system has been recognized as a serious threat, as a general rule, if something is broken, it can be fixed. There’s no other plausible outcome. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been possible to build it in the first instance, or looked at another way, if it can be built, it can be fixed.
But, is it possible to fix a broken climate system? Meaning the system that we all depend upon for life support. But, we didn’t build it. Yet, we broke it. So, it does not conform to the axiom: “If it can be built, it can be fixed.” Ergo, it may be a challenge that’s bigger than the current scramble to find solutions to build-out quickly enough to turn down the heat.
Along those lines, there’s a multitude of facts readily available to prove that the climate system is truly broken (a lengthy list is available upon request). Most concerning is the breakdown in various, but not all ecosystems happening so much earlier at such a lower global average temperature change +1.2°C above pre-industrial than anybody thought possible. At only +1.2°C life support by the planet, which is our only life support, is at some indeterminate level of risk, and nobody knows how soon the major breakdown will occur, guesstimates run the gamut from (a) within this decade to (b) beyond this century. All of which brings forth the troublesome consideration that scientists’ models have been off target by a country mile over the past decades. They’re almost always too conservative and outpaced by actual climate change. They’re late to parties.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of climate scientists, engineers, physicists that say: “Yes, it can be fixed via engineering the climate system.” In point of fact, they are currently sending recommendations to the White House Office of Science and Technology. It’s that seriously urgent.
Whereas interestingly, in point of fact, human influence has already engineered or geo-engineered the climate system by changing the composition or the chemistry of the atmosphere with massive emissions of greenhouse gases, CO2 as an example.
Engineering, or is it geo-engineering, the climate system is a yes/no issue amongst experts and non-experts, no maybes allowed, and it’s loaded with controversy enough to inspire loud screaming and physical threats. It’s wild out there in the provocative world of “pro or anti” geo-engineering.
Depending upon whom y0u happen to bump into at the airport bar and grill and strike up a conversation about geo-engineering, it’s either feared or ridiculed or praised or a fist to the face, no mushy in-between opinions. There are web sites dedicated to studying geo-engineering. There are conspiracy theories galore. And, there are serious-minded research programs ongoing at major universities of the world like MIT and Harvard and Stanford and Cambridge.
“Relevant scientific research on direct climate cooling methods and technologies currently being conducted include marine cloud brightening, stratospheric aerosol injection, sea-ice freezing, ocean thermal energy conversion, ocean and glacier microspheres, terrestrial and atmospheric mirrors, cirrus cloud thinning, iron salt aerosols, and white reflective rooftops and streets.” (Source: Suzanne Reed, Healthy Planet Action Coalition, Compilation of Comments Submitted to White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Regarding US Climate Intervention Study by HPAC and Affiliated Organizations and Individuals, September 9, 2022)
In the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022 the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) in coordination with other relevant federal agencies has been directed by Congress to research a five-year scientific assessment of solar and other rapid climate interventions in the context of near-term climate risks and hazards. In other words, key people at the highest levels have gotten the troubling message that climate change is deadly serious business and a threat to the stability of lifestyles.
The Assessment will address: “(1) goals for scientific research (2) the capabilities needed to model, analyze, observe, and monitor atmospheric composition (3) climate impacts and the radiation budget for the planet (4) what’s required for coordination of federal research and investments necessary to deliver an assessment to the point of managing near-term climate risk as well as research addressing climate intervention,” Ibid.
The Assessment, as outlined above, is the long version of saying: We’ve got a serious problem that needs immediate attention.
A fixit program labeled The Climate Triad is being proposed by the Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC), which is a diverse international coalition of scientists, engineers, technologists, and public policy wonks. HPAC recommends a coordinated program involving (1) Direct Climate Cooling, DCC (2) Greenhouse Emissions Reductions (3) Greenhouse Gas Removal, GHGR. All three should be treated as co-equal priorities with a goal of keeping global average temperatures below 1.5°C pre-industrial (whenever that started?).
The tone of the fixit message is one of urgency to deploy direct climate cooling “now necessary to reduce current and near term human and other species harm and risk from current and near term future levels of global warming,” Ibid.
As such, and with even more urgency, the coalition is requesting the White House to work towards shortening the proposed five-year research and implementation plan by accelerating it to one-to-two years. Implicit in this urgent request, the coalition members evidently believe that climate change is so dangerously proactive that mitigation efforts must start ASAP, which reinforces the HPAC request to jumpstart by compressing the timeframe to 1-2 years versus the 5-year plan as outlined by Congress.
For example, the coalition has submitted a menu of 15 proposed climate-cooling approaches, such as: (a) cirrus cloud thinning (b) ice shields to thicken polar ice (c) stratospheric aerosol injection. And, of utmost importance, refreezing the poles is considered a top priority in support of national and international security purposes, biodiversity protection, reducing extreme weather episodes and sea level rise.
At the top of the HPAC list: “Arctic Amplification (with up to four times the temperature rise of the equator) and the role of Arctic sea-ice in regulating climate through the jet stream and ocean currents make the Arctic Circle the most serious planetary warming risk and cooling priority,” Ibid.
This sense of urgency about climate change and the big push by Congress for the White House to take a leadership role in a massive attempt to fix the climate system is a positive testimonial to the influence of a Democratic-led Congress. There’s no other way to look at it. What is the GOP’s position?
Still, there are two sides to this hurry-up hopeful keeping fingers crossed rescue plan. One side is almost 100% certain that human engineering of the climate system will be positive, and thus the only way out of a sticky problematic climate change/global warming morass.
The other side believes an artificially (human) engineered climate system is destined to trigger negative unforeseen consequences that may spin out of control.
And, by all appearances certain aspects of the climate system are already out of control. Just ask anybody in Pakistan about the Himalayan range, where global warming has whacked the alpine glaciers with glacial lakes bursting or ask barge companies on European rivers or the hundreds of towns living on trucked water in both France and Italy, or Lake Mead nearing “dead pool” status, and the list could go on and on. All of which is happening at unprecedented levels, never before seen, signs of a disruptive or broken climate system. Nothing’s normal any longer.
Understandably, it’s the foreseen consequences (mentioned above) that are the big push behind the urgency and necessity for massive planetary experimentation. But, so far, almost all proposals are desktop modeling. The real world waits for testing hopefully leading to actual results that work according to plan.
If it works, it’ll be something to behold, kinda like a miracle.
Stay tuned!
Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.
The ecosystems of the world that support life-like Brazil’s Amazon rainforest have an incompatible relationship with far-right governments, like the United States under Trump, who took a baseball bat to the EPA. According to Christine Todd Whitman, who headed EPA under George W. Bush: “I’ve never seen such an orchestrated war on the environment or science.” (How Trump Damaged Science – Why It Could Take Decades To Recover, Nature, Oct. 5, 2020)
As devastating as Trump (4 more years?) was for the environment, President Jair Bolsonaro’s MBGA or Make Brazil Great Again has one-upped Trump. He’s single-handedly destroying the world’s largest rainforest. It may be the single most important ecosystem for the survival of Homo sapiens. As such, with such a big important target to ravage, Bolsonaro’s making Trump look weak.
MBGA Bolsonaro has denied the existence of massive intentionally lit fires in the Amazon rainforest, calling the public reports “lies” despite data produced by his own government monitoring satellites showing tens of thousands of fires. The MBGA Bolsonaro forest-clearing fires have raged like never before in Brazilian history. The fires are intentional to clear land for development, as armed men in combat boots crunch across smoldering ashes whilst hunting down/killing obstructionist environmentalists.
“Brazil is among the most dangerous countries in the world for environmental defenders and journalists. A recent study estimates that at least 20 environmental activists were killed in Brazil in 2021 alone.” (Source: A Violent Tragedy Foretold in the Amazon, NPR, June 17, 2022)
“National space research agency INPE registered 31,513 fire alerts in the Amazon via satellite in the first 30 days of the month.” (Source: Brazil’s Amazon Sees Worst August Fires, Reuters, August 31, 2022)
Bolsonaro’s fires have finally done the job so completely, so thoroughly that the Amazon rainforest has reached its tipping point, no looking back on a downward slope to a barren savannah replacing eons of thick moist forest. For decades climate scientists have warned that once a certain amount of the forest is lost, it will no longer be able to hold the necessary moisture and regenerate rainfall to support itself.
The Amazon Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information (“RAISG”), a consortium of civil society orgs from Amazon countries use forest coverage data to map how much of the Amazon has been lost since 1985. Forest density and rainfall patterns and carbon storage capacity are also studied. Accordingly, carbon storage and self-regulation of precipitation are indicators of the rainforest capacity to survive.
The RAISG report found that 33% of the Amazon remains pristine 41% registered low degradation and 26% beyond restoration. Areas of dense rainforest are already turning into savannah and trees in the north have stopped producing fruits. The composition of the rainforest is changing right before our eyes.
According to Marlene Quintanill of RAISG: “The ecological response of the forest is changing and its resilience is being lost. We are at a point of no return.” (Source: The Amazon Rainforest Has Already Reached a Crucial Tipping Point, NewScientist, September 5, 2022)
Carlos Nobre, University of Sao Paulo, who has been running climate models for three decades to understand when the Amazon could reach its tipping point says: “Unfortunately what we’re seeing today is no longer based on models. What we are seeing today is observations across the entire southern Amazon that indicates that the risk of this tipping point is immediate. The RAISG study showing the high levels of deforestation and degradation is very, very, very worrying,” Ibid.
The length of the dry season in the southern Amazon, which makes up a third of the entire rainforest, now lasts four to five months, five weeks longer today than it was in 1999. According to Nobre, if it reaches five to six months, it will no longer survive.
Crucially for the future and survival of the Amazon, Brazil is about to hold a national election, scheduled for October 2nd between incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro (67), since 2019, and former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (76), presidency from 2003 to 2011.
According to The New Republic, The Amazon Rain Forest’s Future is on the Ballot in Brazil, August 18, 2022: “Put Bolsonaro’s record next to that of his challenger, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and it’s easy to see why the Amazon is shaping up as a key campaign issue. Lula, as he is known, presided over a drastic drop in the rate of deforestation during his eight years as president (2003–2011), a feat that is all the more impressive given that Brazil increased its soy and beef exports at the same time.”
With the national election less than a month away, polls snow leftist candidate Lula with a double-digit lead. Nevertheless, for months now, Mr. Bolsonaro has attacked Brazil’s electronic voting machines as “rife with fraud.” And convincingly told supporters that election officials are aligned against him, suggesting he may dispute a loss. In a June speech, he said: “If need be, we will go to war.”
“According to interviews with more than 35 Bolsonaro administration officials, military generals, federal judges, election authorities, members of Congress and foreign diplomats, the people in power in Brazil feel confident that while Mr. Bolsonaro could dispute the election’s results, he lacks the institutional support to stage a successful coup.” (Source: The Question Menacing Brazil’s Elections: Coup or No Coup? The New York Times, August 22, 2022)
What happens in Brazil over the next several weeks will determine the fate of the Amazon rainforest. It may be the most important election of this decade. Well, come to think of it, actually it’s the most significant election of this 21st century. The rainforests hydrological role for the planet extends all the way to the cornfields of Iowa and across the oceans. The Amazon embodies the essence of life for our biosphere. Nothing else comes close to its significance for life on the planet other than the Great Barrier Reef for ocean life.
“Amazon rainforest, 60% of the world’s remaining rainforests, plays a critical role in the global water, energy, and carbon cycles. Evapotranspiration (ET) is a key component of the surface water and energy balance, through which the Amazon forest transfers a large volume of water from the land surface to the atmosphere. Therefore, any change of ET over Amazonia may affect climate at the regional and global scales.” (Source: Estimation of Evapotranspiration of Amazon Rainforest using tbe Maximum Entropy Production Method, Geophysical Research Letters, 10/29/2019)
“Synergistic trends in Amazon economies, forests and climate could lead to the replacement or severe degradation of more than half of the closed-canopy forests of the Amazon Basin by the year 2030.” (Source: Interactions Among Amazon Land Use, Forests, and Climate: Prospects for Near-Term Forest Tipping Point, The Royal Society Publishing, May 27, 2008)
According to the following recent article: Bolsonaro’s False Fraud Claims Involve This Brazil Voting System, Aljazeera, Sept. 6, 2022: Brazilian authorities adopted electronic voting machines to tackle long-standing fraud. In earlier elections, ballot boxes had arrived at voting stations already stuffed with votes. Others were stolen and individual votes were routinely falsified, according to Brazil’s electoral authority.
Electronic machines were first used in 1996 and the first nationwide, electronic-only vote took place four years later. Today, results from more than 150 million eligible voters are presented mere hours after polls close. And no significant fraud has ever been detected.
Bolsonaro critics claim his strong admiration for and emulation of former president Trump has prompted him to challenge the election well ahead of his likely loss. Meanwhile, the Amazon rainforest has two thoughtless (ill-advised, reckless, doltish) adversaries with far-reaching influence that need to be eliminated, somehow, someway, whatever it takes, the sooner it happens the better for life.
On October 2nd the planet is on the line.
Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.
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