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The Invisible Global Heat Danger Zone

Image by Elena Mozhvilo.
Image by Elena Mozhvilo, licensed by Unsplash

The Invisible Global Heat Danger Zone

By Robert Hunziker

NASA claims that 2022 was one of the hottest years ever recorded with record-breaking heat waves around the world, as major commercial waterways, like the Danube, Po, Rhine, Yangtze, and Mississippi rivers temporarily dried up leaving humongous river barges choking in mud.

But that was merely global-warming-lite.

The real global warming threat is invisible. It’s the oceans where 90% of planet-generated heat is captured, and it’s starting to impact the climate system with increasing ferocity. Statistical records dating back to 1958 show a relentless rise in global ocean temperatures that rapidly accelerated post 1990. By now, it’s evident that climate change got a set of wings during the final decade of the 20th century, and it’s still soaring.

According to a recent extensive study by Lijing Cheng, et al, Another Year of Record Heat for the Oceans, Atmospheric Sciences d/d January 10, 2023: “The inexorable climb in ocean temperatures is the inevitable outcome of Earth’s energy imbalance, primarily associated with increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases. The trend is so steady and robust that annual records continue to be set with each new year.”

The repercussions are immense but not recognized until it’s too late, which is the unique characteristic of invisibleness. The general public, plus country leaders, do not connect with this hidden monster. After all, it is invisible. That one fact alone may explain why the world’s nation/states have not felt enough public pressure nor truly come to grips with the danger in order to aggressively take unified steps to halt rapid increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gases. It’s because so much of it is invisibly hidden in the sea; this then explains, in part, the wasteful series of bereft annual UN Conferences of the Parties COPs with almost zero net results after three decades of haggling over the same subject time and again. Regularly, greenhouse gases continue setting new records in the face of 30,000-40,000 professionals meeting annually to discuss the subject of too much CO2.

If in fact global warming could be flipped and the oceans replace the atmosphere with its heat content turned loose for all to see, feel, and experience, it would create a panic-stricken world that would likely burn up over time, as if it’s an emergent Venus with its 95% CO2 atmosphere and 850°F temperature, hot enough to melt metal.

For example, according to Ken Buesseler, a biochemist at the prestigious Woods Hole Institute in Massachusetts: CO2 levels in the atmosphere “would jump by nearly 50 percent” without the many ecological services the twilight zone (ocean) provides. Already, the ocean stores 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere and 20 times more than all plants and soil combined. (Source: Bella Isaacs-Thomas, When it Comes to Sucking Up Carbon Emissions, ‘The Ocean Has Been Forgiving.’ That Might Not Last, PBS News Hour, Science, March 25, 2022).

Meanwhile, Argo, which is a global collaborative partnership with several nations maintaining an array of ~4000 autonomous ocean floats (Argos) that each profile vertically from 2000m once every 10 days, measuring temperatures and salinity data.  The data from Argo allows for unprecedented spatial coverage of the world’s oceans, with approximately one float per 3-degree box across the global ocean where it is deeper than 2000 meters.

So then, what are the repercussions of too much heat in the oceans?

For starters, the year 2022 saw the most volatile climate behavior of any current lifetime, massive floods, pounding droughts, depleting reservoirs everywhere, as the oceans reacted to too much heat. Studies clearly show that the world’s seas are the predominate influence on global weather. As oceans get hotter, they supercharge extremes like intense hurricanes and massive pounding atmospheric rivers with its sights recently set on Northern California, nearly slip-sliding into the ocean.

According to an article in The Guardian that discussed the Cheng study: “The international team of scientists… concluded: ‘The Earth’s energy and water cycles have been profoundly altered due to the emission of greenhouse gases by human activities, driving pervasive changes in Earth’s climate system.” (Source: Damian Carrington, Oceans Were the Hottest Ever Recorded in 2022, Analysis Shows, The Guardian, January 11, 2023)

“Prof John Abraham, at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and part of the study team, said: ‘Measuring the oceans is the most accurate way of determining how out of balance our planet is… We are getting more extreme weather because of the warming oceans and that has tremendous consequences all around the world,” Ibid.

Another major study claims it is highly likely that the oceans are now at the hottest in over 1,000 years and heating up faster than any time over the past 2,000 years. (Source: Annual Review of Marine Science by Department of Physical Oceanography, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institutions, January 2021).

Moreover, as for the global warming outlook, it’s lousy! The World Meteorological Organization recently reported that atmospheric concentration of the main greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide reached all-time highs as of October 2022. Alarmingly, the WMO found the biggest year-over-year jump in methane which is a major concern as it is a powerful stimulant of global warming. Methane emissions have skyrocketed, hitting +262% pre-industrial levels.

Posthaste, meaning like yesterday, scientists claim we need a major transformation of our industrial, energy, and transport systems and whole way of life, as time is running out to do much of anything to alleviate a thundering freight train behind that bright light at the end of the tunnel, assuming it can even be done. The UN has been warning for some time now that even with current emissions pledges by countries, which few if any seem to honor, it will lead to catastrophic climate breakdown. And, based upon the out-of-control climate system of 2022-23, it appears to have already started in earnest. So, forget all the phony promises of “net zero by blah-blah-blah” and buckle-up!

Still, a universal plan to address the biggest threat of all time to humanity awaits in the wings. Yet, understandably, it’s nearly impossible to really impart to the general public and to national leaders the gravity of the situation the way climate scientists see it. Many of them are scared, really scared.

Of even more concern, watch out below/duck for cover as the amount of latent heat contained in the oceans combines with a distinct possibility of the current La Niña, a cooling trend at the equatorial Pacific Ocean (which served to cool the hottest year in 2022- didn’t help much, hmm) ends and transitions into El Niño, when the waters of the equatorial Pacific turn much warmer with extensive global impact. This could result in a super cycle of crazed weather patterns throughout the world getting even crazier with scorching bouts of drought followed by Noah’s Ark flooding, followed by city-flattening hurricanes followed by who-knows-what’s next. This is all within the realm of possibility more so than ever before because of the constant pressure of more and more CO2 and sister gases spewing into the atmosphere as the oceans may now be too weakened or simply unable to continue absorbing 90% of planetary heat and 30%-45% of CO2, which is becoming more and more evident via the ballistic off-the-charts climate system of recent.

The ocean is now paying the price for years of absorbing heat and CO2 to enable a stable climate system, until now.

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 was originally published on January 13, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Another Blistering Year Next Year?

Photo by Patrick Perkins
Photo by Patrick Perkins

Another Blistering Year Next Year?

By Robert Hunziker

NASA claims that 2022 was one of the hottest years ever recorded. Furthermore, according to CareOurEarth.com, this past year experienced: “Record-Breaking Heatwaves Around the World.”

It was the year of fires (everywhere, big fires), scorching heat (globally) floods (Pakistan! Europe, China) loss of potable water (especially France and Italy) nearly impassable commercial waterways (Danube, Po, Rhine, Mississippi) sunbaked droughts (US Southwest, Chile) sputtering water reservoirs (Lake Mead). In all, a mini-biblical-scale worldwide disaster scenario that conditioned people of the world for what to expect when global warming really cranks up bigtime.

In that regard, the upcoming year 2023 looks like it could be bigtime.

And, of special note, the world’s leaders, scientists, economic bureaucrats, and fossil fuel lobbyists met in Egypt at UN-sponsored COP27 only a month ago for two weeks to figure out what’s going on with climate change. The gathering of 40,000 honorable delegates took place right on the heels of resounding evidence of a climate system on crutches. The delegates agreed in unison that we should not exceed 1.5°C pre-industrial or all hell will break lose.

Well, okay, but unfortunately 1.5C will likely come much earlier than most people expect based upon a recent article in Wired magazine by Bill McGuire, one of the world’s most forthright climate scientists: El Niño Is Coming—and the World Isn’t Prepared, Wired, December 24, 2022.

Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, has a reputation for telling it like it is, no sugar coating. In his words: “Global heating will set the stage for extreme weather everywhere in 2023. The consequences are likely to be cataclysmic.”

Well, if cataclysmic means more water supply failures, then the Po River Valley and French authorities that trucked water to more than 100 towns this past summer will need more trucks. Commercial barge operators on the rivers Danube and Mississippi will need to buy trucks to deliver basic goods.

The world climate system on-the-ropes in 2022 didn’t go unnoticed. An article in the Insurance Journal, d/d August 26, 2022, one of the nation’s most well-respected insurance trade publications, discussed the issue: Why Are the World’s Rivers, Canals, and Reservoirs Turning to Dust?

“From the U.S. to Italy to China, waters have receded, leaving nothing but barren banks of silt and oozing, muddied sand. Canals are empty. Reservoirs have turned to dust.” (Insurance Journal)

“The world is fully in the grip of accelerating climate change, and it has a profound economic impact. Losing waterways means a serious risk to shipping routes, agriculture, energy supplies — even drinking water,” Ibid.

“Rivers that have been critical to commerce for centuries are now shriveled, threatening the global movement of chemicals, fuel, food and other commodities,” Ibid.

“The reasons global waterways have dried to a trickle are complex. There’s the impact of the weather-roiling La Niña, prolonged drought in many regions and also simple bad luck. But the biggest driver underpinning the shift is climate change,” Ibid.

When a mainstream, conservative publication like the Insurance Journal publishes an article that reads like a doom & gloom rejoinder to climate deniers, inclusive of several right-wingnut Republicans, one must wonder what the hell’s really going on in the world, meaning: Who’s preventing a facsimile of a Marshall Plan to hopefully fix climate change that, at the very least, gives it its best shot? After all, it’s not exactly a military secret that the climate system is out of whack, screwed-up, and extremely dangerous, unless you listen to the insanity of Fox News charlatans.

Of considerable concern, the record-setting heat of 2022 happened during a recurrent climate cycle known as La Niña when waters of the equatorial Pacific are noticeably cooler than normal. In turn, La Niña influences weather patterns across the planet by providing a “cooler” backdrop. Thankfully, it acted to reduce the record-setting heat of 2022. Hmm.

“La Niña will end and eventually transition into the better-known El Niño, which sees the waters of the equatorial Pacific becoming much warmer. When it does, the extreme weather that has rampaged across our planet in 2021 and 2022 will pale into insignificance.” (McGuire)

Forecasters expect La Niña to continue into early 2023, but El Niño is expected to start strutting its stuff sometime during the year, which will probably bring on “the hottest year on record,” according to Bill McGuire, as the heat builds in 2023, it is within the range of possibility that global temperatures will “touch or even exceed 1.5°C.” But delegates to the UN COP27 affair in Egypt only one month ago drew a line in the sand at 1.5C.

McGuire views 1.5C as entry into the dreaded climate breakdown zone, meaning, in his words: “The formerly stable climate will begin to collapse in earnest.”

Assuming it happens as suggested, the implications are not good: Starting with (1) drought-slashing crop yields, leading to (2) rising crop prices, stoking inflation, resulting in (3) the possibility of civil unrest, as (4) Lake Powell could stop power generation for 4 million householders sometime in 2023, foreshadowing (5) the possibility of Lake Mead “dead pool” status in 2024, impacting 40,000,000 people. If the foregoing sounds apocalyptic, it is apocalyptic, but frankly, it’s only a sampling. Hopefully, with fingers crossed, nature surprisingly takes an altered course, or some other unexpected miracle intervenes to lessen the impact of what could be an extremely dangerous unforgiving 2023 and 2024.

McGuire also mentioned the impact of super storms. La Niña lessens the impact of hurricanes in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico but losing its impact in 2023 is expected to bring stormier weather, e.g.: “This would favor the formation and persistence of super-hurricanes, powering winds and storm surges capable of wiping out a major US city, should they strike land.” (McGuire)

According to Severe Weather Europe d/d December 3, 2022: “We are already seeing signs that later in 2023, an El Nino could emerge after several years. It can completely change the weather patterns for the weather seasons next year.” (Severe-weather.eu)

“El Nino and La Nina are just opposite faces of the ENSO, which stands for ‘El Niño Southern Oscillation.’ This region in the equatorial Pacific Ocean periodically shifts between warm and cold phases. Typically, there is a phase change around every 1-3 years,” Ibid.

Over time, ENSO affects overall global circulation, as it influences weather patterns across the world.

Once damaging weather systems disrupt what the world depends upon, like grain supplies, at some point in time universal distress takes over people’s behavior as they start figuring out what’s going on in the world and start looking for answers. Along those lines, most major nations are squeezed for funds because of excessive levels of debt. Meanwhile, almost all the extra money that could be used to help fix the climate mess is held at the top of the pyramid where billionaires hang out with their pet projects, like a death-trip to Mars or a 20-minute joyride into outer space. Oh, Gee, What a thrill! But what if confused angry masses surround their gated estates, like the Reign of Terror/Paris 1793 when 80,000 Parisians surrounded the Bastille, demanding billionaire funding for fixing the climate and who knows what else? What will the billionaires do?

As it happens, industrial civilization, the biggest heat machine of all time, increasingly puts a bigger and ever-bigger exclamation point on the ENSO cycle, which results in years like 2022 with NASA posting red-warning-flags all over the place. Countries of the world recognize this human-generated impact on global warming and ecosystem destruction because they meet once a year at the UN Conference of the Parties COPs to discuss it, in fact, nearly 200 attended COP27. Why would all 0f the world’s countries agree to meet every year to discuss the same thing over and over again if they weren’t nervous about dire ramifications when too much CO2 blankets the atmosphere, like we’ve got right now?

Yet perplexingly, despite NASA’s red-warning-flags and despite unanimous agreement among all of the nations at COPs that global warming must be stopped at 1.5C, after 30 years of haggling, nothing of consequence on a worldwide coordinated basis has been initiated to reduce greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Why not? After all, if you break it, y0u can fix it, or can you?

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 was originally published on December 30, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Multiple Breadbasket Failures as Radicals Stop Private Jets

Photograph Source: Timo Breidenstein – GFDL 1.2
Photograph Source: Timo Breidenstein – GFDL 1.2

Multiple Breadbasket Failures as Radicals Stop Private Jets

By Robert Hunziker

Global warming is taking a big bite out of the planet. Unprecedented severe droughts dry up major commercial waterways and extreme conditions have either diminished or partially decimated many crops in the US, Europe, China, Australia, the Indian subcontinent and throughout regions of Africa.

This article explores the impact of “multiple breadbasket failures” as defined by UN research. As well as a discussion of angry radicals that stop private jets, thus challenging in direct fashion a source at the pinnacle of climate issues, discussed in the final 7 paragraphs.

But first: (1) What will stop global warming? (2) Will global warming get worse even as countries go to net zero by 2050, which will continue adding CO2 every year for the next 27 years? (3) Therefore, does net zero by 2050 imply loss of commercial waterways like the Danube and loss of major water reservoirs like Lake Mead, both of which nearly failed in 2022? (4) Is net zero by 2050 a ruse?

The UN-sponsored Conference of the Parties COP annual get-togethers have punted on any kind of serious diminishment of fossil fuel emissions, as the fossil fuel industry itself is cranking up big time by planning to spend well over $1T to develop more oil and gas, which, in turn, ultimately brings on severe droughts that destroys crops and bleeds commercial waterways of navigability as reservoirs hit dead pool status.

It’s an endless circuitous spectacle of insanity in pursuit of elusive infinite economic growth bumping up against planetary limitations, as we currently use 1.5 more biocapacity than the planet can regenerate (Global Footprint Network).

It’s also a guaranteed losing proposition, but who really cares is the problem. If it were otherwise, meaning if world leaders really cared, then there’d be all kinds of worldwide coordinated Marshall Plans funding renewables, climate restoration, refreezing the Arctic, etc. but that’s not the case, not even close.

More than 80% of the world’s population lives in countries that are currently running ecological deficits, using more resources than the ecosystems can regenerate. Meanwhile, global warming is hammering that deficit hard and harder via soaring drought conditions around the world.

According to the World Economic Forum’s coverage of drought conditions, a new UN study claims drought frequency and duration has increased by nearly a third since 2000. A 33% increase on a biomass as large as the planet in only 20+ years is almost impossible to phantom. How is it even possible in such a short timeframe? (Source: Droughts are Getting Worse Around the World, World Economic Forum, August 2022)

The Drought in Numbers 2022 Report concludes: “Sustainable and efficient agricultural management techniques are needed to grow more food on less land and with less water, and humans must change their relationships with food, fodder and fibre – moving toward plant-based diets and stemming the consumption of animals,” Ibid.

Stop Eating Animals helps resolve many ecosystem issues.

UN researchers refer to global warming’s damage to major growing regions as “Multiple Breadbasket Failures.” They know, as we all know, unless global warming lessens soon, meaning real soon, multiple breadbasket failures will get worse. “A study of global hotspots of heat stress due to climate change showed areas of Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia and North America (40–60 degrees N.), which include the major grain producing areas of the world, as being particularly vulnerable.” (Source: Anthony Janetos, et al, The Risks of Multiple Breadbasket Failures in the 21st Century: A Science Research Agenda, Boston University, March 2017)

The risks are well defined: Only 23% of total cropland in the world accounts for most of total global cereal production of three major crops, i.e., maize (70%) wheat (69%) and rice (85%) according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Statistics Division. The Rub: Those producing areas are the most exposed or most “particularly vulnerable.”

The impact of devastating drought and food vulnerability is nowhere more prevalent than the Horn of Africa where tens of millions of people are up against the wall with 9,000,000 animals already dead, a result of 60 months of terrifying brutal drought. It is an example of global warming-enhanced drought conditions gone bonkers, at its worse. According to Dr. Deepmala Mahia of CARE International, 50,000,000 people are “one step away from starvation.” (Source: Hunger Crisis in Horn of Africa Grows as Drought Persists, Voice of America News, VOA, September 23, 2022)

Imagine being one of fifty million one step away from starvation. This represents a gruesome global warming-enhancement story that unfortunately the world choses to ignore as thousands of furrowed brows of global leaders and high-ranking bureaucrats and climate scientists gather annually at UN-sponsored COPs to discuss how bad climate change was in previous years… but do nothing meaningful enough to resolve it.

Meanwhile, global warming has turned ferocious and mean-spirited like never before. The trend is ominously right around the proverbial corner until and unless a massive worldwide coordinated campaign stops fossil fuel dead in its tracks. It’s impossible to sugar coat the devastating impact of fossil fuel emissions.

Scientists are now discussing a new Era of Climate Change-Driven Simultaneous Food Supply Failures: The UN World Food Programme has warned that climate change is now the driving force behind global hunger. For example, extreme temperatures starting in March of 2022, and lasting for weeks, badly damaged India’s rice crop, which is 40% of the world rice trade. Vegetable yields in parts of India were down by 50%. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s floods reduced the rice harvest by 30%. Pakistan is the world’s fourth largest exporter of grain.

Gernot Laganda, Director of Climate at the United Nations World Food Programme: “Climate change is an important driver in the current increase in global hunger. Right now, 345 million people are facing acute food insecurity – which is an increase from 135 million since 2019.” (Source: Scientists Warn of Breadbasket Failure Because of Climate Change, Deccan Herald, Sept. 5, 2022)

In only three years’ time the number of people facing “acute food insecurity” has ballooned by 200,000,000, up 150%. At 345 million it’s the size of the United States. It’s little wonder that mass migrations have become brazen constant features of the Northern Hemisphere. People turn desperate, move to new territory, encounter pushback by sadistic white supremacists, especially in the former colonial empires of Europe and America and all hell breaks loose in local communities that heretofore were stable and quiet, peaceful no longer.

Acute food insecurity has not hit the US, yet. Americans generally ignore the issue, but as a precursor to a tough challenging future, global warming hit US crops hard: (1) corn at its lowest yield in 10 years (2) hard red wheat the smallest since 1963 (3) Texas cotton farmers walked away from 70% of their crop because of paltry harvest (4) California’s rice harvest down 50%. The problem is more widespread that it appears on the surface, as drought has hit 40% of the US for the past 100+ weeks, according to USDA’s Brad Rippey: “Precisely where that 40 percent shifted over time, meaning different swaths of the country’s agricultural land have been affected at different times, spreading pain and difficult choices geographically and by crop.” (Source: The Summer Drought’s Hefty Toll on American Crops, The Washington Post, Sept. 5, 2022)

It is only too obvious that climate change madness must be reigned-in, or the future will turn very dark. As things stand, according to a McKinsey study, 2023 could witness a grain deficit of 60 million tons. (Source: The Grain Shortage Caused by Global Food Crisis Could Correspond to the Annual Nutritional Intake of up to 250 Million People: McKinsey, Helsinki Times, August 25, 2022)

According to McKinsey, the pandemic of 2020 increased the price of grain, and “since then, drought-induced harvests have increased prices even more. With the ongoing war in Ukraine, there is a risk of a food crisis, which may become the most serious so far in the 21st century,” Ibid.

According to the International Panel on Climate Change, IPCC: “Future projections in global yield trends of both maize and wheat indicate a significant decline; these declines can be attributed to the negative impacts of climate change arising from increasing greenhouse gas emissions.” (Source: The World’s Food Supply is Made Insecure by Climate Change, United Nations – Academic Impact)

Declining crop yields effectively reverse the impact of the storied Green Revolution, aka: The Third Agricultural Revolution of some 50-70 years ago which saw dramatic increases in crop yields and production. Whereas a couple of generations later we’re going backwards, but the global population of 3 billion in 1960 has exploded to 8 billion today. Astonishingly, we’ve added 5 billion people during one lifetime! Whew! Meanwhile, global warming’s impact of less crop yield in the face of nearly triple population numbers has grave implications.

The IPCC effectively researches and informs world leaders of the risks of climate change, as UN Secretary-General Guterres exclaims: “We are losing the fight of our lives.” In fact, they do a decent job of exposing risks. So, where’s the disconnect and failure to do something about the well-known death trap of fossil fuel emissions?

The origin of the death trap is the economic system of neoliberal capitalism that focuses on profits and growth above all other considerations, oblivious to the health of crucial life-supporting ecosystems and certainly unruffled about global warming. Notably, and obvious for all to see, it generates a tiny flock of fabulously rich people that have nearly gained control over much of the world order. Therefore, maybe the answer to the current upside/down climate system is to upend the upside/down socio-economic system that in fact perpetuates fossil fuels at any costs towards an elusive infinity of growth. After all, that tiny flock basically controls the media, as well as holding major influence over the direction of UN-sponsored COPs. Thus, they have a certain level of control over the ultimate direction of fossil fuel usage or renewable energy sources as a replacement. Therefore, the ultimate question for the future direction of the planet’s climate system, and by extension, its food supply is whether neoliberal capitalism is so impregnable as to be immovable. If its iron-fisted grip over the socio-economic system cannot be broken, then the climate system is destined to break apart worse and ever worse and even worse under neoliberalism’s relentlessness push for elusive infinite growth. Significantly, it’s getting to be very expensive.

What can be done beyond than tens of thousands of people meeting at world forums like the UN-sponsored COPs for climate change and biodiversity but without appreciable results? Meanwhile, the tiny flock of super wealthy are convinced “the market will bail us out.” After all, this is all they know. Ergo, in its infinite wisdom, the unfettered forces of neoliberal capitalism will solve the problem of global warming via human ingenuity. But unfettered neoliberal capitalism is what got us into this mess in the first place, and frankly it seems to like it.

Moreover, they proclaim, grinning from ear to ear, we’ve got all-powerful clean fusion, which sparked for the first time ever only recently, creating more energy output than energy input for a mere fraction of a second. Yeah, maybe, but that’s likely off in the future by a few decades. Stop grinning!

There is something else at work, something that goes well beyond 40,000 well-intentioned climate delegates at COP27 and all the other COP flops of the past 30 years, and its chutzpah is just starting to show enough influence over the masses to incite profound change in the direction of the infamous world order.

Recently “700 self-described climate rebels breached the chain-link fence surrounding Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, the world’s third-busiest hub for international passenger traffic, on November 5.” (Source: Christopher Ketcham & Charles Komanoff, The Shutdown of “Luxury Emissions” Should Be at the Center of Climate Revolt, The Intercept, December 13, 2022)

As it happened, bolt cutters pried open metal fences and ladders propped up against the 9-foot fence, as 700 rebels poured onto the tarmac to surround and effectively ground private jets for 6.5 hours, until police laboriously peeled the throng away.

As reported from the scene, “The superrich have got used to polluting as they please with a total disregard for people and planet, and private jets are the pinnacle of these luxury emissions that we simply cannot afford,’ Jonathan Leggett, one of the activists, told us,” Ibid.

“For reasons both symbolic and practical, the climate movement must strike not just at pipelines and mines, but also at obscene wealth,” Ibid.

“At the nexus of consumption and wealth sits luxury carbon. Which is why the Schiphol action was so strategic… The justification is unarguable. Large personal fortunes feed carbon consumption and make a mockery of programs to curb it. As well, the surplus wealth of the superrich is probably the lone source of capital that can finance the worldwide uptake of greener energy and also pay for adaptation where it’s most critical,” Ibid.

“A few days after the Schiphol revolt, climate activists under the banner of Scientists Rebellion disrupted operations at private airports in four U.S. states and a dozen other countries,” Ibid.

The world is stirring towards outright demands for radical change for the betterment of everybody. 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.

This article was originally published on December 16, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Refreeze the Arctic

Photograph Source: Gary Bembridge – CC BY 2.0
Photograph Source: Gary Bembridge – CC BY 2.0

Refreeze the Arctic

By Robert Hunziker

Refreezing the Arctic sounds like a crazed impossible idea, but a knowledgeable group of scientists believe it has the potential to be the best most efficient quickest way to reduce manifold risks of a climate system that’s already in shaky condition.

For eons the world’s biggest reflector of incoming solar radiation has been the Arctic’s multi-year ice pack 10-20-30 feet thick. Now it’s merely a shadow of its former self whereas it used to reflect 80%-90% of solar radiation back into outer space. But a lot of that solar radiation is now absorbed by the planet. This loss of mojo is the result of human-generated greenhouse gases that heated up the atmosphere 3-fold more in the Arctic than elsewhere on the planet. As a result, multi-year ice has taken a big hit.

Meanwhile, the Arctic is fast approaching the dreaded Blue Ocean Event BOE, which means a period of time with essentially no ice, and which is packed full of negative connotations so far-reaching for the hemisphere that it’s beyond the scope of this article.

Interestingly, like Father Time as a figment of one’s imagination, the Arctic should carry a designation as Father Weather. After all, what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. Major changes in configuration of the Arctic seascape disrupt the jet streams in the troposphere at 20,000-30,000 feet as if it’s a child’s spinning top towards the end of its spin, turning wobbly. Which, in turn, bolsters unpredictable formidable weather throughout the hemisphere, a living nightmare that gets worse and worse.

Americas’ West experiences its worst drought in 1200 years, 100-yr floods become a routine matter, as Arctic warming amplifies Greenland disintegration and partial collapse. In all cases, the Arctic is responsible for one disaster after another, immediately to its south.

What can be done?

Answer: Refreeze the Arctic.

When it comes to the significance of refreezing the Arctic, which is roughly 2.5 times the size of Canada (NOAA) delegates to COP28 in Dubai/2023 (proof positive that oil sheikhs have highjacked UN-sponsored COPs) may want to consider memorizing, chapter and verse, A Farewell to Ice (Oxford University Press) by Peter Wadhams, emeritus professor of Ocean Physics, and Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, a brilliant book about the significance of loss of the Arctic.

Meanwhile, there is a prominent school of thought amongst a group of scientists that the most effective way to save humanity from going over the very steep climate cliff is refreezing the Arctic. Sounds complicated.

Indeed, there is ample evidence that the large loss of Arctic albedo, or ice reflection of solar radiation back into outer space, has already morphed the climate system into a monster from the North. In other words, the loss of Arctic ice is a major cause of climate-related problems throughout the hemisphere and in record numbers unprecedented throughout human history.

For example, nowadays it’s newsworthy to report colossal floods never witnessed before, massive megafires throughout the hemisphere literally around the world, torrential pounding rainstorms drowning villages and towns as well as cities, white-out blizzards, and scorching droughts destroying major water reservoirs worldwide.

None of that is normal, not even close to normal. It’s a world gone haywire.

Furthermore, mainstream news outlets have even gone so far as to discuss extreme threatening events like the Doomsday Glacier (Thwaites) situated in West Antarctica that unannounced could bust lose and flood Miami someday in the future. The public hears these unnerving news stories. Yet tens of thousands (40,000 at COP27 in Egypt) of climate delegates at UN-sponsored Conference of the Parties (COP) cannot establish a clear pathway to ameliorate the broken climate system. They simply cannot do it! Yet the delegates jabber away whilst toasting champagne glasses at the end of sessions that go nowhere but do break glass and then return home.

Planetary-Restoration

A significant very ambitious plan for refreezing the Arctic is described by climate scientists on a Google-thread code-named: Planetary-Restoration. They detail how and why refreezing the Arctic should be the primary goal of the world. Their logic has considerable merit. The following synopsis comes from Planetary-Restoration:

A stable climate is when planetary cooling balances the heating. According to the Planetary-Restoration group, to re-achieve that all-important balance via reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), such as CO2, is too slow, too risky, and too expensive to deliver net zero heating. Instead of focusing on reduction of GHGs like CO2 the focus should be: “Albedo enhancement or planetary radiation of heat and light reflected to outer space” which is far quicker, easier, cheaper, and safer for cooling the planet.

This refreezing solution is supported by the fact that “rapid Arctic warming, not global warming, is what’s causing difficult, dramatic extremes in weather and climate issues throughout the hemisphere.” Moreover, these “extremes” are far beyond anything anticipated by IPCC models and well in-excess of anything in the historical record.

Of major concern, Arctic warming is accelerating/amplifying the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet and thus risking the onset of sudden sea level rise by partial collapse. This risk is more evident and more threatening than ever before. According to Jason Box, professor in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland: “In the foreseeable scenario that global warming will only continue, the contribution of the Greenland Ice Sheet to sea level rise will only continue increasing. When we take the extreme melt year 2012 and take it as a hypothetical average constant climate later this century, the committed mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet more than doubles to 78 cm (nearly 3 feet).” Notably, this study is only looking at the situation of the Greenland Ice Sheet, not considering the mass loss from Antarctica or other glaciers around the world. (Source: Glaciologists Cut Through Melt Uncertainty of Greenland Ice Sheet, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, August 2022)

Therefore, the immediate priority for climate action must be to halt Arctic warming, which involves a type of cooling intervention called Solar Radiation Management SRM of which Stratospheric Aerosol Injection SAI is a prime example. According to the analysts, and this is a crucial fact, SAI shows promise of benign intervention sufficiently powerful to refreeze the Arctic.

The scientists recommend immediate small-scale SAI deployment to gain insight to efficacy. It is all-important to get this off the ground and operational as soon as possible. Even large-scale CO2 removal will not provide the required “cooling power” in a short enough timescale that SAI can provide.

Time is of essence more so than can be adequately expressed. According to the Climate Change Institute/The University of Maine, the Arctic was 6.63°C (11.93°F) warmer as of 12/06/2022 when compared to some 20 years ago. And, according to navy.mi animation: Arctic Sea ice thickness has barely increased over the past 30 days when ordinarily it should be rapidly thickening.

All of this is leading to more voices that were previously against or neutral on geo-engineering to call for it to help fix a nearly out-of-control climate system that has the potential to radically alter landscapes permanently, for the worst. It does not make sense to sugar coat the situation by saying “we still have time to go to net zero by 2050.” That’s a big joke, a copout. Some climate scientists believe net zero by 2030 may be cutting it too close. This brings refreezing the Arctic into the picture as a very important option for consideration.

It is believed that refreezing the Arctic will go a long way towards resolving two monstrous issues:

1. The rapid sea ice loss in the Arctic has altered the Northern Hemispheric jet streams by reducing the energy that drives the jet stream eastward, resulting in big meandering patterns north to south that create “blocking patterns” of weather extremes that, in turn, create extremes of weather-related havoc across the hemisphere.

2. Rapid Arctic warming is impacting Greenland’s melt rate which threatens to contribute to undesirable sea level rise. Already, the ice sheet is showing signs of disintegration which could result in sudden collapse. Nothing could be worse.

However, it must be noted that the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report cautions that technological fixes in the field of climate geoengineering that are unproven like carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management could trigger “catastrophic events” and a range of new hazards to both people as well as ecosystems. Indeed, the scientific community is not uniform on this issue. The ongoing debate about geoengineering’s impact on the planet is not close to settled and likely poses a challenge.

But that begs an open question of whether humans have already been geo-engineering the climate by spewing greenhouse gases, e.g., CO2, into the atmosphere like a mad hatter for over a century. So, yes, geo-engineering can go wrong, but not necessarily if it’s done right, hopefully.

Nevertheless, if Planetary-Restoration’s goals are realistic and accomplish refreezing the Arctic, which on the surface seems like a challenge beyond human capacity, but if successful, it goes without saying it will be classified as miraculous and award-winning to the nth degree, an event that may help rescue humanity from itself.

Refreezing the Arctic deserves a thorough undertaking.

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 was originally published on December 9, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Life Beyond 1.5C

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Life Beyond 1.5C

By Robert Hunziker

Headlines describing the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties (COP) of UNFCCC more commonly referred to as COP27 at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt sent troubling messages: “The Greenwashing Scam Behind COP27’s Flop” (In These Times) “COP27 Climate Summit Missed Chance for Ambition on Fossil Fuels” (Reuters) “COP27 Is Full of Politicians and Policymakers” (The Guardian). None of the headlines spotlight climate scientists because they have been pushed into the background.

At issue, nation-state commitments to reduce CO2 emissions routinely fail. It’s been over 30 years. As a result of inaction, the impact of global warming at only 1.2°C above pre-industrial is already disrupting ecosystems. Meantime at COP27 the rallying cry was “Keep 1.5 Alive” with the delegates all voicing the same slogan, smiling, joining hands, thumbs up.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has already informed the world that it’s necessary to hold global temps below 1.5°C pre-industrial or all hell will break lose. Moreover, the IPCC, does not yet see a clear pathway out of the morass. In fact, based upon several analyses, it’s starting to look like 1.5C is in the cards. So, get used to it… it’s coming this decade!

For perspective, it’s worth contemplating that this is the first time in human history that a series of major forums, most recently 40,000 attendees at COP27 in Egypt, met to discuss the ramifications of, and possible solutions to, potential destruction of civilization. Such a massive series, twenty-seven COPs, has never happened before. In that regard, it’s unbelievable that the results have been negative for three decades running. Greenhouse gas emissions continued rising and accelerating, never down. It’s as if they, world leaders or their surrogates, are frozen in time like the well-preserved remains of well-to-do Romans at Pompeii.

Zooming ahead 2,000 years beyond Pompeii and focusing on the results of 30-years of meetings to discuss global warming, then what about 1.5°C above pre-industrial? Will 1.5°C hit soon enough that it impacts today’s generation?

Based upon the opinion of analysts, it looks like the answer is “yes.” One explanation for 1.5C hitting this decade by 2030 is found in the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), which is the same brand that published “Brazilians Should Keep Slashing Their Rainforest” (March 27, 2020) and “What Greta Thunberg Forgets About Climate Change” (July 12, 2020). AIER is a favorite of the Charles Koch Foundation, which donates accordingly. When it comes to libertarian credentials, AIER gets an A-plus grade.

An AIER article by James E. Hanley: The Battle for 1.5 Degrees of Warming Is Already Lost, So What’s Plan B? April 7, 2022, clearly conforms to what several climate analysts are saying about the inevitability of hitting 1.5C. It’s inevitable!

His article does a good job, convincingly, explaining how fossil fuels are embedded in society, really embedded more so than people realize, way more than realized. Frankly, it is difficult to take issue with his facts as presented. Not only does he explain embedded fossil fuels but also: “In more bad policy news for the 1.5 degrees goal, few countries are committing to the necessary policy actions to achieve it. According to Bloomberg research group: ‘No G-20 government has implemented sufficient and concrete policies to match promises … from COP26 in Glasgow last year.” This is also commonly mentioned by climate analysts.

More significantly yet, according to the same article, he proffers the IPCC take on the issue: “Here’s the simple math. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that holding the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius requires keeping atmospheric CO2 concentrations to 430 ppm. In 2020 we reached 412 ppm, up from 400 in 2015. At that rate of increase, we’ll hit 430 before the end of the decade, and zero-emissions climate pledges aren’t even scheduled to take full effect until 2050, another twenty years later.” As of Nov. 29th Mauna Loa registered daily CO2 at 416.58 ppm.

As a solution, or Plan B if you like, the article suggests environmentalists don’t really have any suggestions, no real Plan B, other than renewables, which according to the article have several serious drawbacks; alternatively, the article suggests solutions such as nuclear power and massive subsidization into research for carbon capture and sequestration, including atmospheric removal.

An altogether different source that’s more palatable to environmentally sensitive circles is Climate Code Red, which recently stated: “The warming trend will reach 1.5°C around 2030, irrespective of any emission reduction initiatives taken in the meantime. This is because short-term warming is largely determined by past emissions, and the inertia in the energy and political systems.” (Source: Over Half of All Fossil Fuels Are Extracted By Just Seven Countries, As World Heads to 3C of Warming, Climate Code Red, November 28, 2022)

In part, the Climate Code Red analysis is based upon a study by H. Damon Matthews, Global Efforts Are Insufficient to Limit Warming to 1.5°C, Science, vol 376, June 23, 2022.

So, what of 1.5C? What happens beyond 1.5C? Obviously, nobody knows because it’s never happened before. However, some clues come from trends at +1.2C, where we’re at today.

“I can say with a high degree of certainty that civilizations can thrive in a 14-degree C world – but nobody can tell at any degree of certainty that we can thrive at (much higher temperatures) because we’ve never been there,” according to Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research while at COP27 in Egypt.” (Source: Explainer: How Close Are We to Passing 1.5 Degrees Celsius of Global Warming? Reuters, Nov. 14, 2022)

1.5C has become a focal point. At the COP27 meetings countries argued over whether the endangered 1.5C goal should be kept or abandoned. Of serious concern, according to IPCC scientists, studies have shown that air pollution particulate matter is holding down global temperatures by 0.3C. This means the planet may effectively “already have 1.5C in the pipeline but is not showing the effects yet,” according to Rockström.

At 1.5C several things happen much worse than what’s already happening at 1.2C. Most prominently, food and water shortages, which are already very serious problems, as international conflict arises over natural resources combined with ultra-extreme weather events, all-in putting the world on edge, a razors edge that has unforgiving political connotations. Just look at politics at only 1.2C. It’s edgy.

The concerns surrounding 1.5C have already started to surface at 1.2C. Over the past 24 months the world has literally been on fire, massively on every continent for the first time ever, especially the methane vulnerable Siberian permafrost (threatening a breakout of runaway global warming thereby making 1.5C look frighteningly ominous), Australia’s biblical megafires, Western US, Paradise, Calif. pop 27,000 burned to the ground like a matchstick; floods have ravaged, torn apart communities, for example Pakistan (1,739 dead) and the massive European floods of ‘21 (125 dead), and the out-of-the-blue massively disruptive Henan, China flood (302 dead, people trapped in Zhengzhou subway cars with water up to their chins); in stark contrast to flooding, droughts shriveled major rivers and commercial waterways, Rhine, Loire, Danube, Po, Yangtze, Mississippi as well as depleting water resources for entire towns and villages in France and Italy (trucking water to towns) and China and elsewhere in the world, like Chile, where suburbs of Santiago, a city rationing water, also trucking water for 450,000 families. Meanwhile, angry residents take water truck drivers hostage in Northern Mexico (NY Times, Aug.3, 2022). And America’s largest most important reservoir system Lake Mead close to dead pool status. As of November 1st, Lake Mead’s level was 1,046 feet. Dead pool status is 995 feet.

These recurring disasters, already powerfully destructive, but only a small sampling of the bigger world, will likely hit with ever more frequency and potency at 1.5C. This is not normal! All of this is something that’s never been witnessed at such massive scale! It’s absolutely frightening. World governments need to focus on whether the climate system can be fixed or somehow toned down, e.g., by drastically reducing emissions. Yet, that’s not happening at forums of 40,000 high-ranking people. Really?

In turn, the edginess of failing ecosystems brings in its wake social turmoil as disheartened confused people look for scapegoats, thus empowering bellicose political leaders who could care less about social welfare. This is an exercise in insanity.

It’s a nonstop disaster merry-go-round that upends the establishment in favor of rambunctious leaders of desperate souls that have nothing more to lose going nowhere. Maybe the establishment needs to go all-in with both barrels blazing to fix climate change, assuming it’s possible, while they’re still “the establishment.”

What can be done? Some scientists say the only way is to physically remove the stuff, CO2, from the atmosphere while also reducing reliance on fossil fuels slowly approaching net zero, which is a major sticking point that seems insurmountable when understanding the true dimensions of the fossil fuel industry that holds hostage the neoliberal economic system. It’s a fact that needs to be recognized. It’s an iron grip.

Hopefully, developed governments will unite to strategically provide massive amounts of funds to finance technologies, natural climate restoration systems, and/or whatever techniques required to reduce the impact of way too much CO2 in the atmosphere. But, of course, that’s what UN-sponsored COPs are supposed to do. Hmm.

Meantime, beyond 1.5C some say 2C, 3C are on the docket.

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 was originally published on December 2, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Montreal Biodiversity COP15 December 2022

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Montreal Biodiversity COP15 December 2022

By Robert Hunziker

What is it about a bunch of high-ranking people getting together at a Conference of the Parties (COP) at some major metropolitan center with plenty of 4-star and 5-star hotels in order to figure out how to save the planet, but it never works!

For example, the tenth (10th) meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity was held in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan from October 18-29, 2010. More than 13,000 delegates from around the world. The Aichi targets were designed to help, or in the best of cases, save or revive biodiversity.

Zoom forward twelve years to November 11th 2022: A news release by Climate Change News announces the upcoming COP15 biodiversity conference scheduled for Montreal December 7-19, 2022: “In the past decade, countries agreed to a ten-year plan called the Aichi targets, aimed at halting biodiversity loss. A UN summary report shows countries failed to meet a single one of those targets.” (Source: UN Nature Pact Nears Its ‘Copenhagen or Paris’ Moment, Climate Change News Nov. 11, 2022)

Thirteen thousand (13,000) delegates specially selected by countries of the world to save biodiversity agreed to save nature. Utter failure ensued.

There’s something happening in the world that’s very strange maybe a curse or something “in the air” that hexes these get-togethers. The truth is: Get-togethers by thousands of well-intentioned people to save the planet time and again fail, not just a little bit, but total utter failure. For example, for more than 30 years climate conferences, COPs, e.g., Paris ’15, have miserably failed. Greenhouse gas emissions set new records by the year, which is going backwards, downhill into a deep climate change abyss. Eventually, the abyss will be so deep, if not already, that it’s impossible to climb back out.

More to the point, at some point in time, likely once biodiversity loss turns horrendous, much worse, maybe when humans start killing 200,000,000 million sharks for fin soup per year rather than the current 100,000,000 or as for climate change/global warming, when the Doomsday Glacier, Thwaites, the world’s widest glacier in West Antarctica crashes, leads to Miami Beach flooding, maybe that’s when the various Conference of the Parties, COPs, will turn dead serious and take drastic measures, which, by then, will be too late but maybe, hopefully, only hopefully, take some the edge off these ongoing disasters, even though the marine ecosystem crashes because of loss of its top predator, and desperately the Army Corp of Engineers scrambles to try to save Miami.

Montreal COP15 December 2022

Climate Change News’ intro to COP15 clearly states: “After a two-year delay and a change of location, the UN biodiversity summit aims to halt nature loss by 2030 and restore ecosystems. It could either be a success like the signing of the Paris Agreement or a dramatic failure like the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen,” Ibid.

Hmm, well the “signing of Paris” was a success; it’s the follow through, emission reduction targets, that miserably failed.

At COP15 more than 100 nations are expected to meet to agree to “protect 30% of all land and ocean ecosystems by 2030.” So far, the “big-forested countries” China, Brazil, and Indonesia have not accepted invitations to attend.

According to Brian O’Donnell of the advocacy group Campaign for Nature, following two years of online negotiations: “What started as a very good framework has ended up almost all in square brackets… indicating a lack of consensus,” Ibid.

Of concern, even though the original meeting was to be held in China, which is still designated as “presidency of the talks,” China has not officially invited world leaders to the talks, which commence shortly. That very important task has fallen to Elizabeth Maruma Mreman, urging world leaders to attend rather than going to the World Cup. Tough choice to make!

Unfortunately, cynicism, anger, and fatigue are the byproducts of reporting on the various international Conference of the Parties (COPs) to save Planet A. Across the board, the failures of COPs add tons of credibility to the film Don’t Look Up (Netflix, December 2021) winner of the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Don’t Look Up is an apocalyptic political satire about two astronomers played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence that spot an incoming asteroid and try to warn a largely numbed body politic, as party leaders urge their dumbed-down adherents not to look up, a campaign motto. Meanwhile, one of the president’s top funders, who was appointed to head NASA, has no background in astronomy, and stupidly assures, not to worry. The film not only points to the dangers of ignoring science but also targets how badly America has been dumbed down into submissive easy prey for bellicose politicians that care less about social welfare.

The Montreal COP15 most assuredly will be held, speakers will drone on about the necessity of saving Planet A’s basic life-supporting ecosystems, agreements will be touted, hands joined, thumbs up, but when 2030 arrives, well, who knows how bad it’ll be?

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 was originally published on November 28, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Stop COP

Photo by Roxanne Desgagnés on Unsplash
Photo by Roxanne Desgagnés on Unsplash

Stop COP

By Robert Hunziker

Fossil fuel interests have taken over climate talks. The acronym COP for “Conference of the Parties” should be changed to “Continue Oil Production.” Eighteen of the twenty companies that sponsored UN climate talks at the make-believe Egyptian resort Sharm El-Sheikh either directly support or partner with oil and gas companies. Global Witness/London identified at least 636 fossil lobbyists at COP27. What are fossil fuel lobbyists doing at a climate conference?

According to Pascoe Sabido of Corporate Europe Observatory/Brussels: “These findings underline the extent to which this COP has never been about the climate. It’s been about rehabilitating the gas industry and making sure that fossil fuels are on the agenda. This is part of the bigger problem which is linked to the overall corporate capture of the U.N. climate talks… We need to kick the big polluters out.” (Source: Fossil Fuel-Linked Companies Dominate Sponsorship of COP27, DeSomg, Nov. 16, 2022)

Of course, fossil fuel interests sponsor big pavilions, like showtime at Las Vegas conventions. Dubai’s racy, futuristic colorful pavilion was a standout as an effective ploy to convince the world of their serious intentions for net zero. Oh, please! Hopefully, a massive worldwide movement to Stop COP28 Dubai can effectively reverse the embarrassment of holding next year’s COP in the kingdom of oil. It’s an insult to climate scientists. Is Saudi Arabia next?

Adding insult to even the remotest idea of holding further COPs, COP 27 was a virtual disaster. “Indeed, the real legacy of COP27 could well be exposing the climate summit for what it has become, a bloated travelling circus that sets up once a year, and from which little but words ever emerge… in the course of 27 COPs, there has never been a formal agreement to reduce the world’s fossil fuel use.” (Source: Bill McGuire, professor emeritus, Geophysical & Climate Hazards, UCL, The Big Takeaway From COP27? These Climate Conference Just Aren’t Working, The Guardian, Nov. 20, 2022).

Hopefully, a movement to stop COPs altogether will emerge from the shadows of backroom and boardroom negotiations resembling fraternity initiations of naive pledges turned into nincompoops. COP is that ridiculous and overly expensive as well as duping the public into thinking something constructive is happening. Stop COP!

According to Bill McGuire: “Some old hands have labelled it (COP27) the worst COP ever, and I doubt many would argue… it is becoming increasingly difficult to view these events as anything other than photo opportunities for presidents and prime ministers who turn up simply to make the world think they care… hijacking by the fossil fuel sector, and failure, year on year, to do the job they were set up to do, surely means that COP is no longer fit for purpose.”

Rampant Climate Disinformation

Meanwhile climate disinformation campaigns around the world are experiencing a strong revival after a short spell of relative pause.

Interestingly, as actual climate crises spread across the land, so does denialism and disinformation. Climate Action Against Disinformation, a global coalition of over 50 leading climate and anti-disinformation organizations recently released results of a new study. According to Jacob Dubbins, a coauthor, while at COP27: “The rise of climate misinformation is undermining climate action here at COP27.” (Source: November 15, 2022 Climate Disinformation Campaigns Threaten COP27 Progress, a New Report Concludes, Inside Climate News)

Fox News is spotlighted in the new study as a powerful force of false and misleading information fueling unfounded public skepticism and going so far as to “inspire violence against policymakers who advocate strong climate action,” Ibid. Exactly how fascists earn their stripes.

“The report included a scientific survey on the media consumption habits of thousands of people in six different countries: Brazil, Australia, India, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. It found that Americans, especially those who regularly watch Fox News, are the most likely among the study’s participants in all six countries to hold false beliefs about global warming,” Ibid.

Common misrepresentations and outright lying includes statements that renewable energy is more expensive than fossil fuels and that the world’s scientific community is still not sure about the real cause of global warming. Worldwide right-wing media pokes fun at global warming as if it’s child’s play.

Twenty-five (25%) of Americans think climate change is a “hoax,” a consistent talking point of Donald Trump and the GOP. To the contrary: “A staggering 99.9 percent of peer-reviewed studies on global warming conclude that climate change is real and that humans are causing it by burning fossil fuels and clearing land for agriculture.” (Source: More Than 99.9% of Studies Agree: Humans Caused Climate Change, Cornell Chronicle, October 19, 2021)

According to Harriet KIngaby, co-chair of Conscious Advertising Network in a letter submitted to COP27 presidency and country delegations: “Climate disinformation is a global problem, and it is a huge problem… We are on track for 2.8°C of global warming while emissions continue to rise, humanity faces climate catastrophe, yet vested economic and political interests continue to organize and finance climate misinformation and disinformation to hold back action.”

In a twisted perverted manner, COP events feed into the disinform agenda by falsely leading the public into believing something is being done when nothing at all is accomplished. The majority of people do buy into COPs as somehow constructive because of mainstream media coverage that highlights minor accomplishments, like tossing a monetary bone to lesser-developed countries.

STOP COP

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 was originally published on November 22, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Amazon Rainforest Crisis Report at COP27

Photo by Ivars Utināns on Unsplash
Photo by Ivars Utināns on Unsplash

Amazon Rainforest Crisis Report at COP27

By Robert Hunziker

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) issued a new Living Amazon Report, 2022 at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. The eye-opening report defines a horror story of human destruction of the world’s largest rainforest. There’s no other way to look at it.

Commercialization of the Amazon Rainforest is rampant in a pattern of ignorance amidst reckless abandon with a level of stupidity that’s nearly beyond comprehension, as the iconic nature reserve has been pushed to the edge of ruin. It is hard to believe that pure ignorance and greed could wreck the world’s most critical asset, but it is happening, way too rapidly.

According to the WWF report, 35% of the Amazon rainforest is either totally lost or highly degraded. (Source: Living Amazon Report 2022, World Wildlife Fund publication, November 8, 2022)

“The situation has begun to show signs of nearing a point of no return: seasons are changing, surface water is being lost, rivers are becoming increasingly disconnected and polluted, and forests are under immense pressure from increasingly devastating waves of deforestation and fire. This could lead to irreversible change in the near future,” Ibid.

As it happens: “The tipping point, according to studies by Thomas E. Lovejoy, 1941-2021, former president of the Amazon Biodiversity Center, and Carlos Nobre, Nobel Laureate and Brazil’s top climate scientist is said to occur when deforestation and degradation combined exceed the threshold of between 20% and 25%, a figure that refers to the eastern, southern and central Amazon.” (Source: The Amazon Will Reach Tipping Point if Current Trend of Deforestation Continues, Mongabay, October 3, 2022)

As stated in the report presented at COP27, there is no scientific consensus on the exact probability of a point of no return because of the massive complexity of the ecosystem; however, it is known that probability increases with deforestation, degradation, and the impact of climate change.

It’s only too obvious that the Amazon Crisis essentially calls for the world to collectively pull together and take whatever actions are necessary to hopefully (underlining hopefully) preserve natural resources that are essential for life or face societal chaos. That’s what COP27 is supposed to be all about, but based upon prior COPs dating back to 1992, the cumulative impact of 30 years of bombastic hot air has been just that, hot air, as nonstop destruction of the environment and poisoning of the atmosphere, continue apace, actually intensifying by the year.

According to the WWF report: There are (1) six-hundred (600) infrastructure projects in operation along Amazon rivers (2) twenty planned road projects, (3) four hundred operating, or planned, dams; meanwhile, numerous mining operations continue to dump chemicals such as mercury into rivers. According to PRODES, a satellite monitoring system, the pace of commercialization of the Amazon trudges ahead as 4.2 million square miles of the rainforest was cleared for commercial development last year alone.

The upshot of this hellbent commercialization is already apparent in another recent report from Amazon Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information (RAISG) claiming that 26% of the forests have already “irreversibly transformed.” “The savannization of the Amazon is already visible in Brazil and Bolivia while Ecuador, Columbia and Peru seem to be heading in the same direction.” (Mongabay)

The WWF calls for “urgent action,” requiring massive collaboration worldwide. The WWF advocates following the principles of the COICA-led “Amazon for Life” initiative organized for conservation of >80% of Amazon forests by 2025. COICA – Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indigenas de la Cuenca Amazónica founded in 1984 in Lima.

In a hopeful message within the clutches of an impending disaster scenario, the WWF says of its own report: “The report collects successful experiences implemented by WWF and partners throughout the biome that can be replicated and scaled. A different future is possible for the Amazon, if we collectively act now.”

The delegates (30,000) to COP27 carry an enormous burden not only for the Amazon Rainforest but also for all of the major ecosystems of the planet that are showing rapid deterioration and threatening to fail to support life on Earth.

In particular, the ocean is literally under a wartime attack by human-influenced overfishing and out of control global warming, as the ocean absorbs 90%+ of planetary heat. It’s not only enormously destructive to ocean life; it is heating up the world’s largest ice sheets way-way too fast, e.g., Greenland’s massive ice sheet may already be a goner.

What will COP27 accomplish?

Postscript: Nature, the illustrious British scientific journal, conducted an anonymous survey of IPCC authors in November 2021: Most of the respondents (climate change scientists), in fact 88%, said global warming constitutes a “crisis,” and nearly as many said they expect to see “catastrophic impact during their lifetimes.” Few of IPCC scientists believe the world will limit warming.

Conclusion: The real truth hurts!

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 was originally published on November 15, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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The Foreboding Hyperthreat Looms Large

Photo: Contaminacion del Lago de Maracaibo by Wilfredor is licensed by CC BY-SA 3.0
Photo: Contaminacion del Lago de Maracaibo by Wilfredor is licensed by CC BY-SA 3.0

The Foreboding Hyperthreat Looms Large

By Robert Hunziker

Image - Cancelled Woman by E.G. Boulton
Image – Cancelled Woman by E.G. Boulton

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.

Cancelled Woman website: https://www.destinationsafeearth.com/purchase

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.

This article was originally published on November 25, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Posted on

Killing Sharks for Fin Soup

Image by Alex Rose on Unsplash
Image by Alex Rose on Unsplash

Killing Sharks for Fin Soup

By Robert Hunziker

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.

This article was originally published on November 11, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.