It rained for 9 hours at Summit Station/Greenland, 10,530’ elevation.
Greenland is sending signals to coastal metropolises around the world that it’s never too early to start building seawalls. These are not mixed signals from the big ice island. Rather, they are straightforward signals indicative of rapid breakdown of average ice thickness of 5,000 feet sooner than ever thought possible.
Stating the obvious, it’s horrible news.
In conjunction with freakish rain at the top of Greenland, the response to global warming has increasingly exposed humans as farcically trapped behind the biggest eight ball of all time by not taking global warming seriously. Now, there may be no way around it.
Greenland is acting out. For example, it rained at the Summit Station at 10,530 feet above sea level where it has never rained throughout all recorded history. It’s not supposed to rain at the top of an ice sheet nearly two miles above sea level. But, it did.
Why?Climate System Scientist Paul Beckwith knows why, as he explains in a 41-min video released July 14, 2022 entitled: Greenland Ice Sheet Vulnerable to Bone-Crushing Melt from Stronger More Frequent Atmospheric Rivers
He starts by explaining how the first rainfall in recorded history at the summit happened one year ago. An atmospheric river caused it. Accordingly, he explains: “These atmospheric rivers are occurring more frequently.”
Here’s how Beckwith sees it: “The idea that the ice on Greenland will last decades and decades, even centuries. I think you could throw those ideas out the window as you get more and more atmospheric rivers, you’ll get more and more abrupt changes in the melt rate.”
On the first day of rain at the Summit, it rained every hour, which was unprecedented and shocking to the scientists at the station at 10,000 feet elevation. Temperatures were more than 18°C higher than normal.
The implications are horrifying. For example, when and how much sea level rises has become a roll of the dice that threatens every coastal city of the world. When and how much?
Keep in mind nobody is gonna ring a bell or pre-announce: Hey, Greenland’s crumbling so fast that we’d better head for the hills. Nobody is going to make a public statement like that, and if they did, climate deniers, including 52% of House Republicans and 60% of Senate Republicans would tear them to pieces in the media labeled as a “commie plot,” or as a “lie to scare Americans,” or something equally stupid and juvenile that a whole bunch of people would believe.
Beckwith introduced a new study d/d June 2nd, 2022 entitled: Greenland Ice Sheet Rainfall, Heat and Albedo Feedback Impacts From the Mid-August 2021 Atmospheric River, Geophysical Research Letters, Vole 49, Issue 11 by Jason E. Box, et al. Box is widely recognized as the world’s leading authority on Greenland.
Regarding the analysis according to Christopher Shuman, a glaciologist with University of Maryland: “To see this many melt events at this intensity in such a short period is absolutely remarkable in the historic records that are available to us… We now see three melting events in a decade in Greenland – and before 1990, that happened about once every 150 years, and now rainfall in an area where rain never fell,” Ibid.
According to Beckwith: “This has huge implications for Greenland’s rate of melt, it has huge implications for global sea level rise. It has huge implications for the Ocean Circulation Pattern… It’s a solid indicator that we’re in abrupt climate system change… crazy things are happening, we’re at that state.”
The frequency of atmospheric rivers driven by highly amplified jet stream patterns is increasingly troublesome and threatens continued rapid melt. This is also an issue in Antarctica.
Since the timeline and extent of sea level rise is now an unknown more so than ever before and in the face of rapidly deteriorating conditions at both poles, coastal communities worldwide should preempt the unknown by building sea walls, especially low-lying areas like Miami. And yet, there are no hues and cries across the land to initiate emergency measures to hold back rising seas.
Bottom line according to Beckwith: “Throw out all of the models, the idea that it can take decades and decades or even centuries for a place like Greenland ice to melt out with a huge increase in sea level rise… If atmospheric rivers become more frequent, the Greenland ice sheet is basically a sitting duck to be obliterated by these atmospheric rivers.”
“In just one week in July last year, the ice and snow virtually disappeared from the surface of Greenland’s barren interior. Only a few months earlier, when Box predicted this might happen, he was dismissed by many of his fellow scientists as an alarmist.” (Source: Greenland Melting, Rollingstone, 2022)
Box explains the problem of science: “For most scientists publishing a paper is a masturbatory act… Few people read it, you feel good, and then it’s over; it has no influence on policymakers; it does nothing to increase public understanding of what is happening to the climate system,” Ibid.
Meanwhile, according to NASA: Greenland and Antarctica are losing three times as much ice each year as they did in the 1990s.
Years of warnings about dangers of excessive fossil fuel CO2 emissions have not moved the needle. Fossil fuels today account for 75-80% of the energy mix, same as 50 years ago. And, according to the International Energy Agency, fossil fuel companies plan on $1.5T of new production between now and 2030.
With warnings galore of dangers of global warming, even The Economist felt compelled to carry an article Aug. 25, 2020: The Greenland Ice Sheet has Melted Past the Point of no Return: “The ice loss, they think, is now so great that it has triggered an irreversible feedback loop: the sheet will keep melting, even if all climate-warming emissions are miraculously curtailed. This is bad news for coastal cities.”
The Economist article was two years ago, one year before the unusual rain incident at Summit Station, which was a big time wake up call. Yet, the planet’s biggest threat remains worse than ever. Alas, at some point in time global warming warning articles, like this one, will become meaningless. Gurgle!
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.
Will Egypt Drain the World’s Second Largest Wetlands?
By Robert Hunziker
“With 35% loss globally since 1970, wetlands are our most threatened ecosystem, disappearing three times faster than forests. Wetlands’ services for climate mitigation, adaptation biodiversity, and human health outweigh all other terrestrial ecosystems.” (Source: Wetlands are Being Lost at Alarming Rates, Global Wetland Outlook, 2021)
Sudd is Africa’s largest freshwater wetland at roughly 3,500 square miles in an otherwise dry region of South Sudan. It’s under threat by a megaproject named Jonglei Canal that has the potential to devastate this ecological gem.
According to conservationists: “Even a partial loss of the Sudd would be an ecological disaster, desiccating the world’s second largest swamp and ending seasonal flooding of the surrounding grasslands, which comprise Africa’s largest intact area of savannah.” (Source: Will Nile Canal Project Dry Up Africa’s Largest Wetland? Grist, July 8, 2022)
Egypt has Sudd’s water in its sights, some of it or all of it, only time will tell. Its plans involve a 40-yr disrupted work-in-progress that is now moving ahead once again, diverting water from the Sudd watershed to Egypt.
Completion of a 240-mile canal will divert White Nile River flow directly to Egypt. This risks draining Sudd to levels that’ll negatively impact the ecosystem forever. But, nobody on the Egyptian side will even hint of such possibilities. The White Nile is one of two main tributaries of the Nile. It begins at Lake Victoria and flows thru Uganda and South Sudan, where it feeds water to Sudd’s remarkable pristine ecosystem, one of the world’s finest.
Wetlands are the principal feeder system for replenishment of the world’s aquifers. According to NASA one-third of the world’s largest aquifers are stressed in large measure because of loss of wetlands.
Cementing over, draining, diverting, or plowing under the world’s wetlands destroys the kidneys of the planet and a whole lot more. The path of destruction is already at critical levels.
“In just over 100 years we have managed to destroy 50 percent of the world’s wetlands… It is a startling figure.” (Source: Achim Steiner, executive director, UN Environment Programme, Hyderabad UN Conference)
“Wetlands are critical to human and planet life. Directly or indirectly, they provide almost the entire world’s freshwater. More than one billion people depend on them for a living and they are among the most biodiverse ecosystems. Up to 40% of the world’s species live and breed in wetlands, although now more than 25% of all wetlands plants and animals are at risk of extinction.” (Source: Wetlands Disappearing Three Times Faster Than Forests, United Nations Climate Change, October 2018)
One sentence from above says it all: Directly or indirectly, they (wetlands) provide almost the entire world’s freshwater. In a world riddled with unprecedented bouts of severe drought, it takes on new significance.
As for completion of the work-in-progress canal, South Sudan’s environmental ministry has different ideas than most others in its administration. The ministry will not support “completion of the canal because of the ecosystem services that Sudd provides to our nation, the region and the world.” (Source: Will a Nile Canal Project Dry Up Africa’s Largest Wetland? YaleEnvironment 360, June 28, 2022)
What Will be Lost?
Ecologists claim the magnificent Sudd is under threat of turning into desert. Sudd is home to thousands of crocodiles, hippos, elephants, zebras, and the great majority of the world’s shoebill storks. It serves as one of the world’s mightiest mammal migration pathways, including 1.3 million antelope that cross through the ecosystem’s 100s of miles of rich grasslands to Gambella, Ethiopia. Ecologists fear that much of this will be lost. (Grist, July 8th)
Furthermore, hydrologist claim the project will reduce rainfall for farms and the rainforests across South Sudan as well as in neighboring countries.
Canal Status
British colonial engineers first proposed the canal in 1904. It was 2/3rds completed in the 1980s but abandoned because of a raging civil war. Rebels kidnapped the operators of the canal. They saw the canal as water theft by Egypt, depriving Sudd’s nomadic Dinka, Nuer, and Shilluk of fisheries and seasonal flooding of pastures for livestock. A 22-year civil war ensued.
“The abandoned site of the half-completed Jonglei Canal is one of the strangest scenes in Africa. A dry excavation 250 feet wide and up to 25 feet deep, extends across near-desert east of the Sudd for 160 miles, ending at the Bucketwheel, a 2,300-ton laser-guided digging machine as tall as a five-story building. The machine was brought there in 1978 by a French construction company, and for six years its 12 giant rotating buckets steadily excavated the canal.” (Grist)
In February 2022, South Sudan’s VP for Infrastructure Taban Deng Gai became the first minister to publicly call for the canal to be completed: “For our land not to be submerged by flood, let’s allow this water to flow to those who need it in Egypt,” Ibid.
Clearly, Egypt stands to gain the most, and it’s likely the only true beneficiary of completion of the canal.
However, an incipient coalition of environmentalists, concerned members of the Sudan National Legislature, academics, and NGO officials are pushing back with an energetic “Save the Sudd” campaign. Accordingly, John Aker, the vice chancellor of the University of Juba claims: The canal “has the potential of draining and destroying the Sudd’s ecosystem, with dire consequences on the Sudd region’s biodiversity, livelihood, culture, and hydrological cycle,” Ibid.
Academic Jacob Lupai claims: “South Sudan did not fight two costly and devastating wars… just to be at the receiving end of predatory outsiders’ imposed projects and to allow its precious natural resources to be plundered,” Ibid.
Supporters of the canal project claim it will not entirely dry up Sudd, merely shrink it. But, by how much is uncertain… guesstimates run as low as 7% and up to 40% with some opponents claiming total devastation. According to conservationists, “even a partial loss of the Sudd would be an ecological disaster.” (Grist, July 8th)
Significant amounts of water evaporation from Sudd’s skies carry south via winds that consistently maintain moisture for the ecologically crucial Green Belt that spreads across most of southern South Sudan and including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. In that regard, according to a hydrological model at Delft University of Technology and the University of Juba’s John Alec: “A shrinking Sudd will eliminate all-year rains across the region.”
Additionally, four billion tons of carbon would be released from peat if and when a significant Sudd dry out occurs.
Egypt’s completion of the Jonglei Canal puts at risk one of the world’s last remaining spectacular wetlands. The loss would be immeasurable and obviously irreplaceable, as it impacts one of the planet’s last remaining wonderlands of wildlife.
It’s truly one of a kind.
Save the Sudd!
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.
Noam Chomsky and the United Nations Warn of Collapse
By Robert Hunziker
It’s entirely possible that doomsayers of the world, though widely ridiculed, could be on target about the prospects for global societal collapse. But, of course, when? According to a recent Noam Chomsky interview, it’s an ongoing grind that will end with a thud.
The onset of societal collapse is not hidden. Rather, similar to animals in the wild, people sense when something’s out of the ordinary, amiss, trouble brewing, on the alert. There’s tension in the air, tempers flare, strangers lash out, and society turns against establishment protocols; it’s the antithesis of The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet (1952-1966) and Father Knows Best (1954-1960). Instead, it’s Mad Max (1979) redux. It is today’s world, and people sense trouble, something’s not right.
As for confirmation of those haunting feelings that something’s not right, a recent UN report discusses prominent risks of “global collapse”: UN 2022 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, aka: GAR2022 d/d May 2022, more on this later.
Accordingly, escalating synergies of (1) disasters (2) economic vulnerability and (3) ecosystem failures increasingly accumulate into a juggernaut of collapse, and finally, similar to an orderly line of tripped dominoes, it cascades without enough notice.
On the heels of the recent UN warning, Noam Chomsky also echoes the central premise of doomsayers: “The challenge ahead is beyond anything humans have ever faced. The fate of life on the planet is now at hand.” (Chomsky – Principal speaker for the American Solar Energy Society 51st annual conference, University of New Mexico, June 21, 2022).
Chomsky is an iconic fixture of the Left known for strength of character, brilliance, and omniscience. His opening statement at the conference: “We are at a unique moment in human history. Decisions that must be made right now will determine the course of future history if there is to be any human history, which is very much in doubt. There is a narrow window in which we must implement measures to avert cataclysmic destruction of the environment.”
Chomsky questions survivability of humanity with one key sentence, as follows: “If there is to be any human history, which is very much in doubt.” This statement didn’t come from George Carlin in one of his cynical monologs on American ethics or morals. It’s Noam Chomsky, the father knows best figure of academia.
Chomsky speaks the same sentiments as the doomsayers of the world and in concert with an unlikely but factual United Nations doomsayer analysis, which is much deeper, and scarier, than publicly realized, more on that to follow.
Are they onto something?
Chomsky: The facts are clear. There are two major issues in front of us. The immediate crisis is severe. The crisis is coming to a head in Washington D.C., capitol of the most powerful nation/state in world history.
The fate of the world hangs in the balance of what happens in Washington. It’s not a secret. Indeed, New York Times energy environment correspondent Coral Davenport described a long carefully executed campaign to destroy organized human life on Earth in a recent NYT article: Republican Drive to Tilt Courts Against Climate Action Reaches a Crucial Moment, NYT, June 19, 2022.
Chomsky admits the Times article may seem outrageous, but he feels it is completely accurate. As explained therein, the campaign has been carried out meticulously for years by the Energy System. It’s enormous in institutional breadth, including fossil fuel companies, banks and other financial institutions and a large part of the legal community. It also has an international base of support called NATO.
It’s not widely known but in the post cold war era NATO formally undertook an expanded mission based upon the following dictum by the Secretary General: “To guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is directed for the West and more generally to protect sea routes used by tankers and other crucial infrastructure of the energy system.” (Source: NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, 2004-09, outlining NATO’s mission at NATO conference)
The Energy System campaign has a strong political base in the Republican Party, especially since 2009. The McCain platform (2008) included a climate program until the Koch brothers got involved. And refused to tolerate it, launching a huge juggernaut bribery intimidation and enormous lobbying campaign to stop it, and going so far as to create a fake citizens group in opposition. They were successful.
Regarding Washington today and Davenport’s column: The Supreme Court, which is reactionary, will consider measures that restrict the use of fossil fuels to limit the effects of environmental destruction. If they strike down EPA authority, it’ll become a precedent for others winding their way thru the legal system. (Addendum- Subsequent to Chomsky’s speech, the far-right Court hammered the EPA, clobbering prospects for a green future in favor of a very dark world order.)
According to Chomsky, for most of history Homo sapiens lived in harmony with nature, until Aug 6 1945 the day that taught two stark lessons: (1) Human capacity reached a level to destroy everything (2) Very few seemed to care. The upshot: “Now, we are at the point when the major institutions of organized society are intent on destroying organized human life on Earth and the millions of other species.” And, too few seem to care enough to stop it.
The famous Doomsday Clock (University of Chicago) was reset during the Trump administration at two minutes to midnight for the first time since 1953. Now at 100 seconds. It will be set again in January, and Chomsky believes a good case can be made to move the second hand even closer to midnight, which is the final hour when humanity self-destructs, either with a bang or suffocation.
In addition to the primary concerns surrounding the dictates of the Doomsday Clock of a growing threat of nuclear war and of failure to prevent lethal global heating, a new concern has been added: The deterioration of rational discourse. ”Unless that gap can be closed, there’s no hope of closing the dread in time to save ourselves.”
Moreover, for Chomsky, there’s a deeper question. It is the famous Fermi Paradox… in brief: Where are they?
Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) was a distinguished astrophysicist (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1938) and he felt certain about the reality of a huge number of planets with conditions to sustain life to lead to higher intelligence, and that we were within reach of advanced communication.
But we cannot find a trace of them out there.
So, where are they?
According to Chomsky, one response that has been proposed and cannot be dismissed is that higher intelligence has actually developed numerous times throughout the eons but has always proven to be lethal. Similar to today’s merry-go-round tinkering with fission and excessive levels of greenhouse gases, “they discovered the means for self-annihilation but did not develop the moral capacity to prevent it. Perhaps that is inherent with higher intelligence. We are now confronted with whether that principle holds for modern humans.”
Watch out below!
The UN’s GAR2022 defines risks of an impending collapse of global society unless drastic remedial measures are adopted on a worldwide coordinated basis. However, get real, what are the odds of a worldwide coordinated effort?
The risk of global collapse, as dealt with in the UN Global Assessment Report or GAR2022 has received little or no media attention.
Yet, it is the first-ever UN flagship global report with findings that current global policies are “accelerating the collapse of human civilization.” The report does not suggest that collapse is a “done deal.” Rather, without radical change, it’s where the world is headed.
The collapse scenario suggested in GAR2022 is explained in much more detail in a separate contributing paper: Pandemics, Climate Extremes, Tipping Points and the Global Catastrophic Risk – How These Impact Global Target, published by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
The contributing paper discusses the impact of crossing planetary boundaries outside of what’s referred to as a “safe operating space for human societies to develop within a stable earth system,” resulting in Global Catastrophic Risk or GCR events. GCR events are defined as those events that lead to more than 10 million fatalities or more than $10T in damages.
The UN papers do not specify whether any of several collapse scenarios has actually begun, but according to the report, the world is clearly “tending dangerously towards these collapse scenarios.” No precise timetables are given.
Are the UN Reports Watered Down?
The following article addresses the issue of tampering with UN reports: Nafeez Ahmed (special investigations reporter – Byline Times) UN Warns of ‘Total Societal Collapse’ Due to Breaching of Planetary Boundaries, Defend Democracy Press, 26 May 2022
Nafeez Ahmed, a British investigative journalist and a former Visiting Research Fellow at the Faculty of Science and Technology at Anglia Ruskin University (est. 1858) Global Sustainability Institute authored the referenced article in Democracy Press. The following commentary comes directly from his article:
But there are reasons to suspect that a collapse process has already started, even if it is still possible to rein in.
A senior advisor to the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and contributor to the Global Assessment Report who spoke to Byline Times on condition of anonymity, claims that GAR2022 was watered-down before public release.
The source said that the world had “passed a point of no return” and “I don’t feel that this is being properly represented in UN or media as of now”.
“The GAR2022 is an eviscerated skeleton of what was included in earlier drafts.”
The UN GAR2022 is a landmark document. It is the first time that the United Nations has clearly underscored the impending risk of “total societal collapse” if the human system continues to cross the planetary boundaries critical to maintaining a safe operating space for the earth system.
Yet, despite this urgent warning, not only has it fallen on deaf ears, the UN itself appears to have diluted its own findings. Like the fictional film Don’t Look Up, we are more concerned with celebrity gossip and political scandals, seemingly unable – or unwilling – to confront the most important challenge that now faces us as a species.
Either way, these UN documents show that recognizing the risk of collapse is not about doom mongering, but about understanding risks so we can make better choices and avoid worst-case outcomes. As the report acknowledges, there is still much that can be done. But the time for action is not after 2030. It’s now.
Postscript: Effective Monday, July 4, the Italian government put restrictions on water on cities and towns in the north. The Po River, a source for agriculture, is at a 70-yr low. Global warming is hammering the country as drought has started to affect south-central Italy as well. Meanwhile, in South America the city of Santiago is rationing water to a population of 6.8 million, as human-caused global warming knows no boundaries. China has reduced water usage from January to October 2022 for Guangzhou (15M pop.) and Shenzhen (12.5M pop.) because the East River is down 50% The US Bureau of Reclamation is rationing some of the seven southwestern states as Lake Mead approaches the Dead Pool, getting frighteningly close! Only recently the Bureau demanded cuts by all seven states w/i 60 days in what’s considered an emergency situation.
For additional factual evidence of spreading drought worldwide, Google these articles: (1) World Drought Gets Worse, Cities Ration, May 8, 2022 or (2) Drought Clobbers the World, August 27, 2021.
The world climate system is no longer normal.
What does it take to get governments of the world to unify a global plan to combat their own destruction? For decades leaders of the world have failed to take global warming seriously. What now?
Then again, as suggested by Professor Chomsky, we’ll find out if the Fermi Paradox holds true for modern humans, as it has, in theory, for advanced (higher intelligent) civilizations over eons. But, that’s lights out, so what’s to find out?
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.
America loves its military. It should because it’s the most expensive defense force of all time. $778B was allocated for defense spending in 2022. China comes in a distant second at $229B.
All of which prompts a provocative question: What if the Marine Corps publishes a landmark study that claims recipients of the US government defense budget are collectively responsible for accelerating the danger of climate change to very dangerous levels, in fact, to unlivable levels?
As of June 2022, that’s precisely what’s happened.
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. This startling information is explained in detail in an eye-opening analysis in which hyperthreat is the primary subject, to wit: Plan E: A Grand Strategy for the Twenty-first Century Era of Entangled Security and Hyperthreats by Elizabeth G. Boulton, PhD, Publisher – Journal of Advanced Military Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2022.
The analysis is published in two parts in the Journal of Advanced Military Studies and by the US Marine Corps University Press, which is a professional university of the US Marine Corps located in Quantico, Virginia, listing the analysis as: An Introduction to PLAN E.
The publications contain the following clause: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Marine Corps University, the U.S. Marine Corps, the Department of the Navy, or the U.S. government.
Publishing an article is ordinarily consistent with some level of tacit approval of its general tenor, especially when the article points an accusing finger at the publishing entities’ main source of existence. That’s tacit approval, in spades. Further to the point, by all appearances, the military seems to want Boulton’s thesis in the public domain as a wake up call and more likely as a brilliant strategy going forward.
The analyst/author Elizabeth G. Boulton, PhD (Australian National University) and MA of Climate Policy (University of Melbourne) is a former army major in the Australian Defence Force, serving in East Timor (1999) and Iraq (2004) and undertaking logistics work in Ghana, Nigeria, and Sudan, and a lead research officer at army headquarters.
All quotations within this article come from Boulton’s article or from the following synopsis of the article: Defence Agencies ‘Accelerating’ Risk of ‘Hothouse Earth’, US Military Study Warns, David Spratt, Climate Code Red, June 27, 2022.
A key finding in the landmark study, which applies war theory and military strategy to the dynamics of the climate and ecological crises, states that activities of military and intelligent agencies are: “Accelerating the likelihood of triggering a worst-case ‘Hothouse Earth’ scenario that would make the planet ‘unlivable for most species.”
That’s a very powerful statement that’s seldom found outside of spirited scientific analyses. Yet, it is lodged within the heartbeat of the US Marine Corps, a tacit endorsement that’s desperately needed for the political establishment to get the hint, hello out there, all is not well. For decades now Congress has handled climate change like a hot potato. That’s an amateurish way to approach an existential threat.
Moreover, and even more damning, the study argues that various agencies of government “have become the biggest danger to planetary security, in effect, working to accelerate the ‘hyperthreat’ of climate and environmental change.”
According to the study: “The hyperthreat impact is an unprecedented combination of rapid global warming and the unraveling of Earth’s ecological systems.” Of heightened concern, the study warns that the hyperthreat’s most dangerous course of action is provoking cascading tipping elements thereby accelerating a transition to: “Hothouse Earth state uninhabitable for most species.”
That statement has strong endorsements throughout the world of science, to wit: “In 2019, Ripple and colleagues (2020) warned of untold suffering and declared a climate emergency together with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from 153 countries. They presented graphs of planetary vital signs indicating very troubling trends, along with little progress by humanity to address climate change. On the basis of these data and scientists’ moral obligation to ‘clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat,’ they called for transformative change.” (Source: World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2021, BioScience, Oxford Academic, September 9, 2021)
Timeline for Action
The Boulton study places a timeline on taking action in order to prevent a worst case scenario: “Without concerted global action between 2022 and 2025, the most dangerous course of action is also the most likely course of action.”
Failure to address the danger within the 2022-25 timeline with proactive real time actual policies is explained in war terms: “The hyperthreat has ‘war-like destructive capabilities’ that make it hard to recognize the enormity of its destructive impacts or ‘who is responsible for its hostile actions.’ This is a phenomenon that humanity has never encountered before.”
The study identifies the difficult-to-grasp and stealthy nature of the hyperthreat by focusing on the main centre of gravity, which is its freedom of movement via invisibility and unknowability and human hesitancy to respond: “Human activity that fuels the hyperthreat is (1) often legal (2) has social license or (3) is understood as legitimate business or security activity; its contribution to slow violence is often obscured.”
For example, legitimate activity includes plans to exploit fossil fuel and natural ecological resources at rates and scales that exceed safe planetary boundaries: “Indeed, while declaring all manner of ‘net zero’ commitments, oil and gas firms continue to plan vast fossil fuel production projects. If executed, these would drive climate change beyond internationally-agreed temperature limits, leading to potentially catastrophic impacts.”
The world’s biggest oil and gas companies are projected to spend $932 billion by the end of 2030 developing new oil and gas fields, according to a new analysis of Rystad Energy, data by Global Witness and Oil Change International… And by the end of 2040, this figure grows to an even more staggering $1.5 trillion.” (Source: World’s Biggest Fossil Fuel Firms Projected to Spend Almost a Trillion Dollars on New Oil and Gas Fields by 2030, Global Witness and Oil Change International, April 12, 2022)
But, what if that same $1.5T was spent on renewables and mitigation measures, e.g., retrofitting buildings to maximum energy efficiency or sustainable public transportation or enhancing carbon sinks?
As for coal, China is now building or planning to build in China and elsewhere in the world new coal plants amounting to 176 gigawatts of coal capacity, enough to power 123 million homes. (New Scientist, April 26, 2022)
Additionally, “India Expected to Commission 10 Thermal Coal Power Plants in 2022-23, add 7,010 MW.” (S&P Global Commodity Insights, June 3, 2022)
“By seeking to protect the existing fossil fuel system, humanity’s security agencies are in effect working for the enemy.” Yet, this is not intentional behavior, rather, it’s the effect of national security institutions entangled within the status quo. It’s normal operational behavior.
Further clarification by Boulton: “After the Second World War, military strategy traditionally involved securing resources and protecting supply chains – all considered crucial to post-war rebuilding and prosperity narratives. But it is now clear that this very system, which military and security strategies are designed to support, is the primary driver of global insecurity.”
In a twisted manner, the very resources regarded as good and critical for functioning of the global system now threaten all forms of planetary life. “By applying economic, diplomatic, military, and other tools of force and power to participate in the ‘race for what’s left’ of Earth’s resources, humanity is unwittingly aiding the hyperthreat.”
Plan E
Dr. Boulton has elaborate plans to head off the biggest threat of all time, including a radical transformation of security paradigms. The next 8 years are pivotal. Defense resources need to develop a “whole of society approach, bringing into the fold numerous civilian capabilities to leverage Earth’s entire human population as an asset.”
The list of recommendations is beyond the scope of this article, but a couple of ideas follow herein:
For a full explanation, the link to Dr. Boulton’s article in the Journal of Advanced Military Studies, Marine Corps University Press go to: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/857233
One idea is establishment of a Global Climate Emergency Peace Treaty from 2022 to 2030 to allow nations to focus on the emergency hyper-response.
Another idea is to use international diplomacy to create a new, neutral, rules-based governing architecture for the world based on “ecological survival and safe Earth requirements… For this, we need to reimagine the role of great powers in the world, realigning geopolitical security with the overarching aim of containing the hyperthreat.”
Dr Boulton explores how ecological thinking can be used to reinvent traditional political institutions. Multilateralism should become ecomultilateralism to facilitate cooperation on caring for ecosystems and disaster response. “Earth citizenship’ could allow nations to mobilise the world’s 18 million work-ready forcibly displaced people in hyper-response work.”
In essence, Plan E or a Grand Strategy for the Twenty-first Century Era of Entangled Security and Hyperthreats utilizes a transdisciplinary approach to the idea of framing climate and environmental change as a new type of threat, a hyperthreat and when properly framed: “This approach contrasts to prior literature and longstanding geopolitical discourse that identify the risks of taking a securitization approach.” Instead, the author argues that it is now riskier not to consider climate and environmental change within a mainstream geopolitical and nation-state security strategy.
Dr. Boulton’s detailed analysis, combined with a generous layout of how to tackle the issue, is perhaps one of the finest approaches extant, bringing together a well-reasoned all-in all-together approach of forces to defeat a monster by the same forces that bred and fed the monster at its inception.
The Boulton thesis is an extraordinarily important statement of facts about the invisibility and difficultly of identifying risks that, in point of fact, are normal operating behavior inbred into the socio-economic fabric of late stage capitalism which, according to the Boulton thesis, can be detoured and maybe even defeated but only by well-directed powerful universal action commencing this decade.
But, the window for achievement is narrow.
Postscript: The US Supreme Court has declared war against the EPA by hampering, effectively eliminating, public policy to control polluting fossil fuels. This dangerous ruling effectively pokes a stick in the eye of military security concerns about Hothouse Earth by its own military and tens of thousands of scientists throughout the world, as the US takes one more gigantic step back into an era known as the Wild West when rugged individualism ruled the domain with guns blazing.
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.
Last year, worldwide energy-related CO2 topped 36B tons. That’s a new world record.
“Carbon dioxide removal is essential to achieve net zero [greenhouse-gas emissions],” Diána Ürge-Vorsatz, vice-chair of the working group that produced the nearly 3,000-page UN climate panel report. (Source: UN Climate Report: Carbon Removal is Now ‘Essential’, MIT Technology Review, April 4, 2022)
“Removing the greenhouse gas from the air will likely be necessary, along with radical emissions cuts, to keep temperatures from rising 2°C,” Ibid.
According to the above-mentioned MIT report, we are now paying the price for long delays in addressing global warming despite decades of warnings. The levels of greenhouse gas the world can still release before pushing the planet past very dangerous warming thresholds has become alarmingly tight. Here’s betting the alarms will soon be blaring.
Along those lines, every global agreement to limit CO2, most recently Paris ’15, has bombed-out. A trail of broken promises has been ongoing now for decades. Will this time be any different, even with climate change turning brutally ugly?
Worldwide heat is on a tear: (1) Japan tops 104°F for the first time ever (2) Kuwait hits 127°F (3) Record heat hits Spain, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic (4) Norlisk, Russia posts an all-time record high (above the Arctic Circle) 89.6°F (5) Beijing’s hottest day ever 111.2°F (6) Parts of the world experience power cuts and water shortages, especially Pakistan and India where people are dying in the streets (7) the US summer officially began with 65 million Americans exposed to regular highs above 100°F. Suffocating heat is found throughout the four corners of the earth.
Yet, average global temperatures are only 1.2°C above pre-industrial, and yet all hell is already breaking loose, including the Doomsday glacier in Antarctica as melting Arctic permafrost morphs into blasts of methane CH4. And, they (IPCC) claim we do not want to exceed 1.5°C or especially 2°C. Really? Oh please! Shit’s already hitting the fan!
Meanwhile, America, purportedly the leader of the free world, downplayed global warming for four of the most crucial years to do something constructive in one more lost opportunity. In 2017 then-President Donald Trump was shown a Time magazine cover: “How to Survive The Coming Ice Age” by deputy national security adviser KT McFarland. It made Trump’s day by reinforcing his personal beliefs and policies against global warming science.
Of course, the magazine cover was photo shopped, a fake cover put into Trump’s eager hands by one of many, too many, unqualified staffers who, in fact, was a Fox News analyst in a previous life, propagandizing right-wing crap on a suicide mission of the planet amidst unspoken secrets and sui generis handshake codes defining the primary recipe of suicide of the planet, well, actually the majority of people but not all of the people.
Throughout the 2017-2020 term, the Trump administration restricted and/or misused, and abused, science in more than 200 significant instances that will continue to bite hard for years to come: “The disregard for expertise in the federal government is worse than it’s ever been.” (Michael Gerrard, director Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, 2019) For example, Trump’s rollback of Obama-era climate regulations likely account for an extra 1.8B tons of greenhouse gases (Source: Rhodium Group).
Donald Trump speaking to California state officials, when visiting burned-out fire scenarios: “It’ll start getting cooler, you just watch… I don’t think science knows, actually.” Trump saw CO2 as a positive force for the planet. His experts told him so.
How about another four years, starting in 2024?
But, reality is an altogether different story. As long as we continue to emit CO2, scientists, engineers, and chemists across the board, and this is universal opinion, agree that coastal cities will flood, e.g., Miami (already planning sea walls) droughts will empty reservoirs, e.g., Hoover Dam’s Lake Mead (dangerously close to “dead pool” status). That’s reality! Whereas, Trump is a photo shopped freak!
What to do?
Will carbon capture and removal save the planet?
Au contraire, the planet isn’t concerned in the least about carbon capture: “Earth is a wet rock floating through space; it doesn’t care if we drown our coastal cities or turn our farmland into desert.” (Source: The Life-or-Death Race to Improve Carbon Capture, Chemical & Engineering News, Volume 99, Issue 26, July 18, 2021)
But society at large does care whether they express it or not. Assuming carbon removal doesn’t work, then, life is about to get very complicated very soon. Dark shoots, rather than green shoots, are already popping up on a synchronized basis with ecosystems across the globe. Everything is turning sour altogether all at once. Water rationing for major cities like Santiago are already a reality. That’s what global warming’s 12-year Chilean drought did to water supplies, and it ain’t gonna stop at Chile.
Meanwhile and of major concern, because very little that really needs to be done to save society gets done, according to the IPCC, roughly 40B metric tons of annual CO2 emitted into the atmosphere must be cut to zero by 2050, but there are plenty of scientists who’ll say 2050 is way too late. No surprise there. And oh yeah, additionally, thereafter tons of CO2 must be removed from the atmosphere to return to any kind of semblance of equilibrium with the climate system. Good luck with that!
According to Global CCS Institute, a carbon-capture-and-storage think tank, the issue for carbon removal is compelling: “The target has been set; the timeline has been set.” And, the conversation has shifted from “What do we do” to “How do we do it?”
Well, the technology to accomplish carbon removal is available but the costs and the scale is nearly beyond human imagination, and in fact, beyond any kind of practical achievement. For example, the UN report says it’s nearly impossible to prevent 1.5C without substantial removal of carbon and avoiding 2C will be a challenge as well.
“Preventing the former with only minimal levels of carbon dioxide removal would require cutting global greenhouse-gas emissions to about 31 billion tons per year by 2030, as the median estimate… That means nearly slashing emissions in half in eight years.” (Source: UN Climate Report: Carbon Removal Is Now ‘Essential’, MIT Technology Review, April 4, 2022)
But, already according to the International Energy Agency, commitments by countries to reduce emissions or “APS (Announced Pledges Scenario) cover less that 20% of the gap in emissions reductions that needs to be closed by 2030 to keep a 1.5°C path within reach.” (MIT)
However, it’s noteworthy: “As the IPCC warns against new fossil fuels, it’s business as usual for big polluters… the world’s biggest oil and gas companies … are projected to spend $932 billion by the end of 2030 developing new oil and gas fields, according to a new analysis of Rydtand Energy data by Global Witness and Oil Change International… And by the end of 2040, this figure grows to an even more staggering $1.5 trillion.” (Source: World’s Biggest Fossil Fuel Firms Projected to Spend Almost a Trillion Dollars on New Oil and Gas Fields by 2030, Global Witness and Oil Change International, April 12, 2022)
And, coal is on the rise. China is now building or planning to build in China and elsewhere in the world new coal plants amounting to 176 gigawatts of coal capacity, enough to power 123 million homes. (New Scientist, April 26, 2022)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and environmental NGOs can advocate for net zero until the cows come home, until hoarse, until blue in the face, but the real world is headed in the opposite direction. The most appropriate watchwords should be “watch out below” or “fasten your seat belts” we’re about to liftoff with skyrocketing global temperatures and ecosystems collapsing as global drought combined with Wet Bulb Temperature turns society into a bunch of mush heads in concert with Trump’s new presidency.
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.
Mother Earth’s affair with coal goes back in time to when swampy forests predominated the planet 360 to 299 million years ago during the Carboniferous Period of the late Paleozoic Era. Over the course of millions of years dead plant matter submerged in the ancient swamps transformed by way of geologic forces of heat and pressure into moist low-carbon peat, and over considerably more time, voilà! It transformed into jet-black coal.
It took millions of years to compress the coal into a carbon rock that takes approximately 16 hours to burn in a stove or furnace.
The resultant heat caused by burning a lump of coal is felt in the atmosphere within 95 days, which is the time it takes for its carbon emissions to trap enough heat in the atmosphere to equal the amount of heat generated when burning the lump for 16 hours in a furnace. But, it doesn’t stop there, as shall be explained in more detail.
According to the eminent atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira of Carnegie Institution for Science: “If a power plant is burning continuously, within 3 to 5 months, depending on the type of power plant, the CO2 from the power plant is doing more to heat the Earth than the fires in its boiler… CO2 accumulates, so by the end of the year, the greenhouse gases will be heating the Earth much more than the direct emissions from the power plant.” (Source: Greenhouse Gas-Caused Warming Felt in Just Months, Carnegie Science, June 2, 2015 via Geophysical Research Letters)
Thus and therefore, civilization is powered or energized by way of a tiny thread in geological time. Sixteen hours is only a blink of time within the context of millions of years, which helps to explain The Coal Equation: Millions (1,000,000s) of years of creation transformed by sixteen (16) hours of burning = Hundreds (100s) of years of overheating the planet.
All of which makes the 16-hour transformation to dust and vapor look very, very insignificant. But, it happens to be the most significant part of the equation, as sixteen hours changes the course of centuries, both before as well as after.
Metaphorically, sixteen hours of burning coal is a trigger mechanism for the biggest gun in human history, Bang! Millions of years of pent-up energy is released in a few hours. Welcome to the advent of global warming. It’s noticeable that coal is a non-renewable resource. Once burned, it’s basically gone as CO2 into the atmosphere as a blanket that heats the planet for a very long time.
Greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal are only one part of the global warming process. A new study shows that coal mining, in contrast to burning coal, also releases methane (CH4) emissions that, in fact, exceed the CO2-e of more than 1,100 coal-fired power plants in China alone. And, that’s before coal burning even takes place. Moreover, China’s coal mine methane emissions are 10xs the rest of the world combined. (Source: Global Energy Monitor: Global Coal Mine Tracker, March 2022)
What’s more, China’s tenacious love affaire with coal is on the rise once again. Commercial, industrial, and RE developments are much more important to the CPC than the challenging ramifications of The Coal Equation.
Worldwide: “Coal mining emits 52 million metric tons of methane per year, more than is emitted from either the oil sector, which emits 39 million tons, or the gas industry, which emits 45 million tons.” (Source: Ryan Driskell Tate, Bigger Than Oil or Gas? Sizing Up Coal Mine Methane, Global Energy Monitor, March 2022).
“A boom in new coal mines and mine expansions commissioned in China since mid-2021 threatens to raise global methane emissions by at least 10%… This explosion is at odds with pledges by China to reduce methane emissions over the rest of the decade.” In response to an acute domestic “energy crisis” at the end of last year, China commissioned new mining capacity that unleashed an estimated 2.5 million tonnes (Mt) of new coal mine methane emissions within a matter of months. (Source: Ryan Driskell Tate, et al, Why China’s Coal Mine Boom Jeopardizes Short-Term Targets, Global Energy Monitor, May 2022)
The Global Energy Monitor goes on to explain that China’s coal expansion is clearly at odds with pledges to phase down coal by mid-2020s. Based upon current plans, there’s no way China can meet its commitments to the world community. They’ll keep on burning and emitting black smoke filled with nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, and mercury along with CO2.
“The surge in new coal production to meet electricity shortages boosted China’s mine capacity 464 Mt, with actual output up at least 270 million tonnes, more than the annual output of South Africa (246 Mt), the world’s seventh largest coal producer… On top of the surge in new coal mine capacity last year, China has 559 Mtpa of new coal mine proposals under development, which is equivalent to the output of Indonesia (564 Mtpa), the world’s third largest coal producer,” Ibid.
Relevant coal data by the incomparably masterful work of Alex Smith’s Radio Ecoshock entitled Future Black As Coal d/d June 15, 2022 pinpoints crucial data on coal mining in China and worldwide, to wit: (1) Coal mines never stop emitting methane, even when they are closed or abandoned (2) A 2019 analysis by Carbon Brief discovered the unsettling fact that coalmines emit more methane than the oil and gas industry (3) The UN and major institutions in harmony with the UN are publicly making important climate change assumptions with severely underestimated figures.
“According to Carbon Brief, real methane from fossil fuels could be 20% to 40% higher than we have been told.” (Tate Report) That’s a blindsiding disaster in the making. But, it does help to explain how and why ecosystems throughout the world are coughing up blood.
Even more distressing yet, if all new mining projects now under development go into operation, global methane emissions from extraction of coal could rise by up to +21.6%. (Radio Ecoshock References)
In fact the Radio Ecoshock article carries a very ominous-looking graph of Global Methane emissions during the period June 1985 thru February 2022. Starting in 2018-19, it suddenly turns up nearly vertical or parabolic. This could be big-time trouble down the line that should rattle the cage of any and all users of coal and other fossil fuels and most certainly of the anti-coal protestors. But, those cages are ironclad.
Meanwhile, China undermines the goals of Paris ’15 as if nobody ever agreed to slow down carbon emissions. But, nearly every country in the world, including China, agreed to cut emissions to hopefully hold global temperatures below 1.5C-2C, pre-industrial. “Hopefully” is the proper adverb, and it should be in bold letters because “hope” may be all we’ve got at this juncture of an increasingly virulent climate.
Decidedly, in large measure, because of China, methane emissions are much worse and more pervasive than realized and probably not properly accounted for in IPCC calculations, which is somewhat comparable to driving blindfolded over a mountain pass.
Still, it’s a given that China will switch to renewables in a panic mode once their major shipping ports start flooding on a regular basis. But, when is it too late to do something, or anything at all?
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.
Climate change and global warming, which is the largest part of the ‘change’ aspect, is suddenly getting the kind of special treatment that’s reserved for national tragedies. A special commission has been established to investigate a way out of the biggest human-caused failure of all time.
It wouldn’t be quite so disturbing if it were not for the fact that the truth about the widespread danger from fossil fuels has been in the public domain for decades now.
People in the highest positions academically, politically, and the business community have known for decades that CO2 emissions will eventually overheat the planet. But, none of them had the balls to stand up to the fossil fuel companies and right-wing hacks and the despicable denier core of charlatans. They are as guilty as the denier hacks.
Whenever society at large is under extraordinary threat, aka existential threat, special commissions composed of prominent members of the establishment pop up to study the situation and make recommendations. Only recently the 911 Commission (2002) and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (2009) are two prime examples. These special commissions have a common genesis of responding to a threat to the established way of life.
Hooray (maybe, maybe not, but at any rate sorrowfully) climate change has now joined the ranks. It’s officially designated an extraordinary threat to society. As of May 2022 the Climate Overshoot Commission has been established. Its first meeting is June 2022 at Lake Como, Italy.
The commission is composed of a wide swath of pristine leadership personalities, including past presidents, prime ministers, ministers of foreign affairs, professors, former heads of international organizations like the WTO. Indeed, they are a shiny brass group with credentials up the wazoo.
The commission will consider the risks attendant to overshooting 1.5°C and the range of response options for addressing overshoot. Based upon their mission statement, 1.5°C overshoot is preordained.
But honestly, isn’t this commission comparable to creating a commission to study what to do after the dam breaks?
Why study an overshoot of 1.5C? Ecosystems throughout the planet are already nearly overshooting or maybe actually overshooting in some cases at only 1.2C above baseline. By the time 1.5C hits there may not be enough pieces left to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
The commission may have the wrong idea and wrong target. If the commission is going to tackle the manifold risks of climate change, they should focus on the root cause, not the after effects. Why should a commission spend time and energy trying to figure out how to handle a totally unprecedented blowup of the climate system, when they should focus on the root cause of global heat and try to stop it before exceeding 1.5C?
Maybe the answer is to pivot to the Special Commission on Removing Fossil Fuel Infrastructure.
Several ecosystems (the Great Barrier Reef) are already in trouble. In that sense the commission may be needlessly spinning its wheels. Moreover, the signs of irreversible collapse is discussed in several key situations described in a recent landmark study: Dana M Bergstrom, et al, Combating Ecosystem Collapse from the Tropics to the Antarctic, Global Change Biology, Vol. 27, issue 9, February 25, 2021.
The Bergstrom study examined 20 ecosystems from Australia’s coral reefs to terrestrial Antarctica and discovered forces of ecosystem collapse driven by global climate change and regional human impacts. Nineteen (19) of the twenty (20) ecosystems are already bordering on irreversible damage.
According to the study group, an estimated 30% of global land area is already degraded, directly affecting nearly one-half of the world’s population. Ecosystems are deteriorating globally. “The endpoint of disruption and degradation of ecosystems is potentially or actually irreversible collapse.” The study found destructive processes at an advanced stage.
“We assessed evidence of collapse in 19 ecosystems (both terrestrial and marine) … extending from northern Australia to coastal Antarctica, from deserts to mountains to rainforests, to freshwater and marine biomes, all of which have equivalents elsewhere in the world,” Ibid.
In other words, their domain of study is a facsimile for what’s happening throughout the planet. In their words: “We assessed evidence of collapse.” The evidence was ubiquitous, wherever they looked. “Our analysis clearly demonstrates the widespread and rapid collapse, and in some cases the irreversible transition rather than gradual change at a regional scale.” (Bergstrom)
Here’s a summation of the Bergstrom study findings: “The 19 ecosystems presented have collapsed or are collapsing according to our four criteria (see Table S1 for details). None has collapsed across the entire distribution, but for all there is evidence of local collapse. Rapid change (months to years) has occurred in several cases (Figure 2c, Table S1). We identified 17 pressure types affecting the 19 ecosystems (Figure 1). The key global climate change presses are changes in temperature (18 ecosystems) and precipitation (15 ecosystems), and key pulses are heatwaves (14 ecosystems), storms (13 ecosystems) and fires (12 ecosystems). In addition, each ecosystem experienced up to 10 (median 6) regional human impact pressures (presses and/or pulses) (see Figure 1). Habitat modification or destruction has occurred in 18 ecosystems, often at substantial levels, but over a relatively small spatial scale in the Antarctic ecosystem. Run-off with associated pollutants was the most common single human impact pulse (6 ecosystems).”
Note that “the key global climate change presses” are all directly or indirectly a result of global warming. Hence, the primary target for any commission should be how to prevent global warming in the first instance, not what to do once it’s exceeded a flash point of 1.5C above baseline. Then, it may be too late.
More to the point, we as a society know much more about how to control greenhouse gas emissions at the source than we know about mitigation of ecosystem damage once 1.5C is breached or metaphorically after the dam bursts.
Where’s the commission to get off fossil fuels?
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.
Ted Scambos, a polar scientist with 20 trips to Antarctica under his belt, makes a living trekking across glaciers, measuring the speed, thickness, and structure of ice. Dr. Scambos (University of Colorado/Boulder) recently penned an article: Ice World: Antarctica’s Riskiest Glacier is Under Assault From Below and Losing Its Grip. The Conversation, June 7, 2022.
Scambos is a lead principal investigator for the Science Coordination Office of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (SCO project). How many glaciers in the world have a team of scientists dedicated to an international collaborative research effort?
Answer: Thwaites is the single most dominate factor influencing the integrity (survival) of every coastal city in the world, and it is clearly at risk.
According to Scambos: “Antarctica is a continent comprising several large islands, one of them the size of Australia, under a 10,000-foot-thick layer of ice… Its glaciers have always been in motion, but beneath the ice, changes are taking place that are having profound effects on the future of the ice sheet – and on the future of coastal communities around the world.”
Significantly, the ice sheet was “nearly in balance as recently as the 1980s,” meaning annual snowfall replaced annual ice flows. As a result, the early ice research in Antarctica involved trying to find any kind of dramatic changes but with little success.
However within only a couple of decades in the context of thousands of years of stability, everything suddenly changed. According to Scambos: “But now, as the surrounding air and ocean warm, areas of the Antarctic ice sheet that had been stable for thousands of years are breaking, thinning, melting, or in some case collapsing in a heap. As these edges of the ice react, they send a powerful reminder: If even a small part of the ice sheet were to completely crumble into the sea, the impact for the world’s coasts would be severe.”
West Antarctica’s Thwaites glacier is the continent’s prime candidate for a major collapse. In contrast to East Antarctica’s solid core of small mountain ranges underneath the ice bed, West Antarctica was once the ocean bottom. Its ice gets warmer and moves much faster. Only 120,000 years ago it was likely an open ocean and definitely 2 million years ago. Accordingly: “This is important because our climate today is fast approaching temperatures like those of a few million years ago… The realization that the West Antarctic ice sheet was gone in the past is the cause of great concern in the global warming era.” (Scambos)
Thwaites is the “big boy” glacier of West Antarctica. It is the widest glacier on the planet at 70 miles across. At issue, recent changes on the vast continent have been sudden and fast, much faster than ever expected. As for Thwaites in particular: The height of the surface has been dropping by up to three (3) feet each year. Huge cracks are forming at the coast, and ice now flows at over a mile per year. That flow rate has doubled since 1990.
The net result is a new era of geologically rapid ice flow officially underway for the 21st century. This is not a welcomed event. Nobody knows for sure how it will play out or how soon, but the risk is unfathomably scary, punctuated by the dispiriting fact that scientists’ models that predict future climate change are almost always late to the party. This makes it nearly impossible to plan for the next catastrophe, like Thwaites glacier.
As further explained by Scambos: Under the ice the geological structure of Thwaites is “a recipe for disaster.” Until only recently, Thwaites had not measurably changed since it was first mapped in the 1940s. All of that has changed now that global warming has intervened. It’s what’s happening hidden underneath that spooks scientists: “Ocean water well above melting point is eroding the base of the ice.”
All of which impacts the entire structure. Mapping of Thwaites now exposes fractures and huge cracks along with the speed of flow all-in suggesting the monster may ‘give way’ within only a few years, which would be a horrendous step towards more rapid ice flow to the sea.
Bottom line: “West Antarctica could soon begin a multi-century decline that would add up to 10 feet to sea level. In the process, the rate of sea level would increase several fold, posing large challenges for people with a stake in coastal cities.” (Scambos)
But, when does the first foot of sea level register on shorelines? Nobody really knows for sure.
Meantime, as the world wonders aloud why and how the planet’s solidest long-standing ice sheet is ever closer to crumbling, it’s frankly disgusting and outrageous that it’s even an issue, especially considering decades of warnings by scientists about the risks of fossil fuels that spew CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, blanketing heat. Now, because of human recklessness in the face of warning after warning, an ominous horrific cycle of meltdown has already started at the worst possible location on the planet where 150-to-200 feet of water has remained frozen in time throughout all of human history… until now.
Forthwith, it’s payback time after decades of human stupidity bordering on lunacy in the face of science that has been right all along. Smart people know to adhere to the science.
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.
“I’m absolutely convinced we will get a low-carbon, no-carbon economy at some point in time. The challenge is will we get there in time to heed the warnings of the scientists and avoid the worst consequences of the crisis?” (John Kerry, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, May 2022)
In a soft pitch interview by Andy Serwer of Yahoo Finance on Saturday, May 28th at Davos World Economic Forum the Climate Czar expressed optimism about handling the climate change crisis, in part, based upon the fact that several of the world’s leading corporations are dead set on stopping the multitude of dangers associated with an out of whack climate system. They understand the risks.
According to Kerry, climate change is not complicated. It is basic physics: “There isn’t anybody I know today who doesn’t admit that the planet is warming and that life has changed as a result of this… this trend is pretty obvious… the climate crisis is getting worse, not better, and we have to more rapidly reduce emissions and take the necessary steps, not what politicians are saying we should do, but scientists whose lives are dedicated to determining the mathematics and the physics of this particular challenge.”
The Climate Czar presented an interesting viewpoint of how corporate CEOs are now coming together to take on the challenge. As explained by Mr. Kerry, there’s lots of money to be made, which, of course, is good enough to get the corporate juices flowing.
If Mr. Kerry’s message and climate plan is realistically on target, which is more inclusive than just CEOs and venture capitalists foaming dollar bills at the mouth, then the world may have a shot at containing the biggest threat of all time. But, there are plenty of ifs.
Kerry was quick to caution: “Assuming it can happen fast enough.” That is a key watchword for serious students of climate change/global warming.
There are serious-minded scientists who believe it’s already too late, and there are others who nod their heads in full agreement with the Doomsday Clock’s most recent reading at only 100 seconds to midnight. It is the closest to midnight of all time. Midnight represents a catastrophe. One of the principal factors taken into consideration for setting at 100 seconds to midnight was a warning by the IPCC: “This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction,” according to Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC. “It shows that climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet.”
“Is there enough time” is a common theme amongst knowledgeable people. People whom have deep-dived the subject see serious threats. Major ecosystems, all of them, are rapidly approaching, in some cases exceeding, dangerous stages or tipping points: the Arctic, Antarctica, Greenland, Siberian permafrost, the Great Barrier Reef, the Amazon rainforest, mountain glaciers: the Himalayas, the Caucasus, the Alps, the Rocky Mtn, the Andes, ocean acidification, marine heat waves, Patagonia, the Atlantic Gulf Stream… as examples.
Here’s a more specific example: During the 1990s, Greenland and Antarctica combined lost 81 billion tons of ice mass per year on average during that decade. Moving ahead to the decade of the 2010s, the ice mass loss was 475billion tons per year on average throughout the decade. That’s flat-out breathtaking, almost exponential at face value. (Source: Greenland, Antarctica Melting Six Times Faster Than in the 1990s, NASA, March 16, 2020)
It’s an understatement to say a six-fold increase of ice mass loss within only one decade is especially troubling and nearly impossible to comprehend. After all, it’s not within centuries, which wouldn’t be quite so alarming; it’s within only one decade. Whew! So then, what’s in store for the 2020s, or how about the upcoming knotty 2030s?
81 billion tons versus 475 billion tons can only mean one thing: The impact of global warming is a helluva lot worse than what’s expected at only 1.2°C above baseline or could it be that 1.2°C is not really accurate?
Beware: “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” (Albert Bartlett 1923-2013, emeritus professor, physics, University of Colorado)
As it goes, Mr. Kerry not only has the mannerisms and cadence and stature and personal background to get the job done, he has depth of knowledge about the danger of advanced climate change/global warming that’s revealed within his choice of words and emphasis without openly proclaiming the horrific truth that “we’re screwed unless we act quickly,” but his message is just that.
The following synopsis of his interview is provided for readers to decide for themselves the likelihood of his success, or not:
As explained by Kerry, some months ago he started a movement called First Mover Coalition inclusive of thirty-five (35) major corporations that have volunteered leadership roles to create “demand for change,” e.g., Maersk Shipping, the largest container shipper in the world has agreed that the next 8 ships they build will be carbon free. Volvo promised that 10% of the steel they buy to be “green steel.” United Airlines, Delta, and Boeing and Apple agreed to buy 5% sustainable aviation fuel and eventually go to 85% reduction in emissions.
The First Mover Coalition is working in cooperation with the World Economic Forum. Kerry claims the CEOs are stepping right up to the plate and swinging away: “They understand the urgency.” They want to lead by example with “demand signals” to change behavior of industry throughout the world. Plus, a big plus, they are working on the “hard-to-do things,” like aluminum, steel, and concrete manufacturers.
When asked about the Russian Ukrainian invasion, Kerry said it has taught Europeans a lesson to be independent, and that is a motivating factor to spur ahead with renewable infrastructure development. Thus, Russia is working against its own self-interest and turning away future fossil fuel sales at a rapid clip via invading Ukraine.
According to the Climate Czar, President Biden sees a significant part of the solution of climate change to be nuclear power. He’s kept nuclear on the table. New designs for nuclear plants are being researched and worked on. France, for example, is doubling down on nuclear. According to Kerry, “we cannot get to net zero by 2050 without nuclear.” Really? Honestly?
Headline News: “Electricite de France SA’s nuclear failures are sending ripples through European energy markets, threatening to undermine the continent’s plan to turn its back on Russian gas.” (Source: EDF Nuclear Failures Undermine Europe’s Push to Exit Russian Gas, Bloomberg, US Edition, May 26, 2022)
“About half of EDF’s 56 reactors are currently halted, and EDF has estimated that output this year will be the lowest in more than 30 years. While many plants are offline for regular maintenance or refueling, a dozen are idled for checks and repairs following the discovery of stress-corrosion issues at units in late 2021,” Ibid.
Nuclear power plants put more stress per square inch on foundational structure than any other form of energy production. It’s inherently dangerous! One small crack can make all of the difference between meltdown and no meltdown. That’s how risky it is to use nuclear to boil water. For example, the following Scientific American article discusses a real event descriptive of the inherent dangers of nuclear power plant structural pressure points:
“On Feb. 16, 2002, the nuclear power plant called Davis–Besse on the shores of Lake Erie near Toledo, Ohio, shut down. On inspection, a pineapple-size section on the 6.63-inch- (16.84-centimeter-) thick carbon steel lid that holds in the pressurized, fission-heated water in the site’s sole reactor had been entirely eaten away by boric acid formed from a leak. The only thing standing between the escape of nuclear steam and a possible chain of events leading to a meltdown was an internal liner of stainless steel just three sixteenths of an inch (0.48 centimeter) thick that had slowly bent out about an eighth of an inch (0.32 centimeter) into the cavity due to the constant 2,200 pound-per–square-inch (155-kilogram-per-square-centimeter) pressure.” (Source: Atomic Weight: Balancing the Risks and Rewards of a Power Source, Scientific American, Jan. 29, 2019)
According to Kerry, the private sector is really moving. “There’s a gigantic shift with the private sector taking the lead in many places, and it involves all kinds of private sector institutions… some fossil fuel companies are now working to become energy companies and transition to producing electricity and doing it in a clean way either through hydrogen or nuclear or in other ways.”
As explained by Kerry: “This is one of the greatest economic opportunities that we’ve ever faced, potentially much larger than the industrial revolution” by building out new energy grids and new electric vehicles. By 2035, Ford and GM will only have electric vehicles. Everything has to be part of the solution, agriculture, shipping, buildings, transportation, and manufacturing.
Kerry is meeting with his Chinese counterpart to work together to see how best to achieve the promises made in Glasgow where the US and China agreed to reduce methane (CH4) and to meet about transitioning off coal, to perhaps gas or nuclear.
Headline News:China is Building More Than Half of the World’s New Coal Power Plants, NewScientist, April 26, 2022: “Some 176 gigawatts of coal capacity was under construction in 2021, and more than half of that was being built in China.” Note: 176 gigawatts equal enough power for one hundred twenty-three million (123,000,000) homes.
It looks like the Climate Czar is gonna have his hands full.
Still, according to Kerry: China has already committed to submit an ambitious national action plan on methane to the Conference of the Parties in Sharm El-Sheikh this coming November for COP 27, UNFCCC.
He says the world has now joined the methane battle, which is front and center in discussions. Kerry says it’s where “we can achieve some of the fastest reductions in greenhouse gases… 116 nations have now signed up to achieve a 30% reduction of CH4 by 2030. It is the equivalent of every car in the world, every truck in the world, every ship in the world, every airplane in the world going to zero emissions by 2030.” (hmm, really?)
Furthermore, Kerry claims the transition needs to happen all over the world. And, they’ll be working on deforestation, which he sees as a huge challenge. Illegal deforestation is the biggest threat to rainforests.
Still, the pre-eminent question is whether John Kerry and the CEOs carry enough cache around the world to achieve what decades of broken promises have failed to do? Not only that, but is it really enough? And, is the approach correct? Switching coal to gas or nuclear?
Frankly, aside from Kerry’s hopeful climate plans, what’s really desperately needed is something more, much more all-inclusive like a Climate Marshall Plan throughout the entire planet with a goal of zero fossil fuels by 2030. This is achievable if every major nation/state fully commits the funds and resources, similar to the rebuild of Europe post WWII. But sadly, that is only a dream, especially in light of the history of broken promises, one after another.
During the most recent IPCC meetings, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reveals: “A litany of broken climate promises by governments and corporations.” He accused them of stoking global warming by clinging to harmful fossil fuels. “It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track toward an unlivable world.”
Thinking out loud about Kerry’s monumental task… what’s with Kerry’s continual references to striving for net zero by 2050? Several really smart well-known climate scientists, many of whom I am sure Mr. Kerry knows, think net zero by 2050 should be taken off the table. That’s too late, and Kerry knows this. He’s the Climate Czar; he must know it. And, it’s not “net zero” that’s required; it’s “net negative,” and he likely knows this as well.
London. 26 August 2021: “The latest report published today by the Climate Crisis Advisory Group (CCAG) warns that reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is now “too little too late” and will not achieve the long-term temperature goals identified in the Paris Agreement… Drawing upon findings recently published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), it states that current global emissions targets are inadequate and that net negative – rather than net zero – strategies are required. (Source: Net Zero by 2050 is ‘too little too late’: World-Leading Scientists Urge Global Leaders to Focus on Net Negative Strategies, Climate Crisis Advisory Group, August 2021)
Members of Climate Crisis Advisory Group are accomplished scientists at prestigious institutions around the world, widely considered at the top of the field.
Regardless of the twists and turns of what Climate Czar John Kerry experiences, at the end of the day an overused cliché, “money talks” will either save the day or ruin it for good as it can work one of two ways going forward (1) funding positive results for climate mitigation programs or (2) buying denial. Hopefully, funding mitigation prevails over the past several decades of “buying denial” with underhanded dark money, which has been the big winner, especially in America, Kerry’s home base.
Here’s wishing the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate the best of luck. He’ll need 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.
Map of India – Image Source: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2022 – European Space Agency, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
A Letter from India
By Robert Hunziker
A letter from India, which follows below, was received in response to the posted article India –Birds Drop From the Sky, People Die (May 24th). The letter is a personal testament to weakened ecosystems caused by global warming and human recklessness.
In point of fact, there’s just no getting around the evidence that the Anthropocene, which is the current geological age of human dominance, carelessly, relentlessly undermines foundations of life-supporting ecosystems.
The normally robust Great Barrier Reef is halfway gone in only 25 years ever since a series of mass coral bleaching started in 1998 at the same time as the spectacular Amazon rainforest now emits more CO2 than it absorbs in some regions of the gigantic rainforest (confirmed in 2021) at the same time as only 10% of large predatory fish remain in the oceans since 1950.
Earth pre-WWII is not Earth post-1945, when world population tripled within merely a finger-click of geologic time on the world stage for all to see like a watermelon moving through a snake; it stands out.
In fact, with healthy climate systems, coral reefs that stood the tests of time over millennia do not suddenly die in only 25 years; all-powerful rainforests do not suddenly start emitting more CO2 into the atmosphere than they absorb and the oceans, over time immemorial, do not suddenly lose 90% of large predatory fish stock in only 70 years.
None of that happened for thousands of years. But, a feverish climate system is something altogether different as the pillars of strength, the building blocks of the planet, weaken right before civilization’s eyes. The planet’s crucial ecosystems did not fail over the course of the past ten thousand (10,000) years but thrived in an ultra-forgiving not too hot, not too cold Goldilocks environment called the Holocene Era. What’s changed?
The climate has changed. Human input via excessive greenhouse gases like CO2 from cars, trains, planes and factories and power plants changed the climate, which is sadly worse than the worst predictions of scientists of only a few years ago.
According to State of the Climate in 2020 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “the planet is in worse shape than ever.”
“Climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying.” (IPCC)
“The 1.5-degree goal is on life support. It is in intensive care.” (António Guterres, U.N. Secretary General)
On May 24, 2022 India-Birds Drop Out of the Sky, People Die posted on social media. Two days later, a letter written by Pradeep Nair addressed the issues by referencing an utterly failed ecosystem in a region of India. Pradeep’s letter tells a story that needs to be told. It is a forewarning for neighboring regions, countries, and the world at large. It opens closed eyes.
Pradeep’s letter, verbatim:
Dear Robert,
Your article reads well. Thank you.
I am in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. The heat here is oppressive, as it is elsewhere across the country.
It wasn’t this bad just over a decade ago. What is alarming is that the change for the worse may be happening faster than we are willing to acknowledge. I think it changed in less than a decade, maybe five years.
Last month I had been to my parents’ home in the southern Indian state of Kerala, a tourist destination called God’s Own Country for its natural beauty.
The entire month (March-April) I was there it was hot as hell and so humid that I had boils all over my body. To add to that, untimely rains ruined our paddy crops. We usually cultivate rice in Kerala before the South Western Monsoons arrive in June.
This time the untimely rains washed away one attempt at cropping and the second time the seeds didn’t germinate at all. Elders in my family said that had never happened before.
About 25 years ago, we had moved to my home village in Kerala for a few years. A tributary of the Meenachil River (mentioned in Arundhati Roy’s Booker-winning book ‘God of Small Things’) flows by our house and we used to bathe in its water. There were plenty of fish too then.
Now the water is so dirty, greenish and full of organic matter that we don’t even dip our feet in it for fear of skin irritation. Many fish species have vanished completely.
Some time back I had seen the odd catfish stand still in the shallow waters. You could catch them with your bare hands and they won’t move because their gills or tails had rotted and were falling off. I saw some reports about the disease affecting fish. But nothing much.
It is sometimes very frustrating how we ignore the little warning signs Nature gives us.
Wish you well and stay blessed.
Pradeep Nair, Satara, Maharashtra, India
Pradeep’s statement: “It is sometimes very frustrating how we ignore the little warning signs Nature gives us” comes back around larger than ever to haunt every single person on the planet when the world’s biggest, mightiest, strongest, most vital ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef lose 10,000 years of magnificent resplendence.
Solution: Stop burning fossil fuels.
Based in Los Angeles, 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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