US Marine Press Takes on Hothouse Earth

Image by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash — Seal of the Navy image by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

US Marine Press Takes on Hothouse Earth

By Robert Hunziker

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.

This article was originally published on July 1, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

June 29, 2022July 25, 2022

CO2 Removal?

Photo by Jasmin Sessler on Unsplash — Photo by Jasmin Sessler licensed by Unsplash

CO2 Removal?

By Robert Hunziker

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?

Photo: Warming (Effetto Serra) by Roberto Rizzato is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

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.

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

June 28, 2022July 25, 2022

China’s Stubborn Coal Addiction

Photo of a smokestack by veeterzy on Unsplash — Photo by veeterzy on Unsplash

China’s Stubborn Coal Addiction

By Robert Hunziker

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.

Photo: Piece of coal in front of a coal firing power plant by Adrem68 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 — Piece of coal in front of a coal firing power plant by Adrem68 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

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.

This article was originally published on June 24, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

June 15, 2022July 25, 2022

The Overshoot Dilemma

Photo by Kelly Sikemma; Unsplash — Image by Kelly Sikkema; Unsplash

The Overshoot Dilemma

By Robert Hunziker

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.

This article was originally published on June 14, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

June 10, 2022July 25, 2022

Polar Scientist Explains Peril of Thwaites

Photo: Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, by sjrankin is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0. — “Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica” by sjrankin is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Polar Scientist Explains Peril of Thwaites

By Robert Hunziker

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.

Photo: Interview with Ted Scambos by NSIDC is licensed under CC BY 2.0. — “Interview with Ted Scambos” by NSIDC is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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.”

Photo: "Camp on Thwaites Glacier" by NSIDC is licensed under CC BY 2.0. — “Camp on Thwaites Glacier” by NSIDC is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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 21^st 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.

Recommended reading: How Trump Damaged Science – and Why it Could Take Decades to Recover, Nature, October 5, 2020.

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 June 10, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

June 8, 2022July 25, 2022

John Kerry’s Global Fix-it Campaign

Photograph Source: John Kerry, U.S. Embassy Dhaka from Bangladesh – Public Domain — Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry Visits Bangladesh, by U.S. Embassy Dhaka, Public Domain

John Kerry’s Global Fix-it Campaign

By Robert Hunziker

“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.

Photo: "John Kerry" by Center for American Progress Action Fund is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0. — “John Kerry” by Center for American Progress Action Fund is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

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 475 billion 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.

Photo: António Guterres — António Guterres at the EP, by European Parliament, CC-BY-4.0: © European Union 2021– Source: EP.

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.

This article was originally published on June 3, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

June 8, 2022June 9, 2022

A Letter from India

Map of India - Image Source: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2022 – European Space Agency, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO — 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 24^th). 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.

Photo: Amazing Great Barrier Reef, by Studio Sarah Lou is licensed under CC BY 2.0. — Amazing Great Barrier Reef, by Studio Sarah Lou is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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.

Robert Hunziker can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

This article was originally published on June 1, 2022 © Counterpunch

May 27, 2022May 27, 2022

India – Birds Drop Out of the Sky, People Die

Photograph Source: Tony Hisgett – CC BY 2.0

India – Birds Drop Out of the Sky, People Die

By Robert Hunziker

In case you have lingering doubts about the reality of human-caused global warming, hop on an airplane to parts of India or Pakistan and spend a few days. And, as long as you’re there, maybe be a good citizen and pick up a few of the dehydrated birds that drop out of the sky. Then, use the syringe you brought along to feed it some water before it dies in your hands.

And, maybe do the same for some of the people sprawled out on the roadside before they die right before your eyes. After all, people are already dying from the humid heat. Maybe you could help them survive and while at it maybe bring along that friend who’s a climate denier for help saving some lives. It’s good for his or her soul to open their eyes to reality.

According to a recent Business Insider article: Birds Are Falling From the Sky in India as a Record Heatwave Dries up Water Sources, May 14th, 2022. And, it’s not just a few random instances: “Vets in an animal hospital in Ahmedabad said they had treated thousands of birds in recent weeks,” Ibid.

According to Yale Climate Connections: “The nearly ‘unsurvivable’ heat is increasingly as the result of human-caused climate change.”

Here’s a snippet from the Yale Climate Connections article entitled India and Pakistan’s Brutal Heat Wave Poised to Resurge: “Inferno-like temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius (122°F). The heat, when combined with high levels of humidity – especially near the coast and along the Indus River Valley – will produce dangerously high levels of heat stress that will approach or exceed the limit of survivability for people outdoors for an extended period.”

According to the prestigious UK Met Office: “The blistering heat wave in northwest India and Pakistan was made over 100 times more likely because of human-caused climate change.” (Source: Climate Change Has Made India’s Heat Wave 100 Times More Likely, UK Weather Service Says, CNBC, May 18, 2022.)

The extraordinary blistering heat has prompted Umair Haque, a British economist (former blogger for the Harvard Business Review, but he attended University of Oxford, London Business School, and McGill University) to write a special article about the scenario entitled: The Age of Extinction Is Here — Some of Us Just Don’t Know It Yet published in Eudaimonia and Co, May 2022 in which he describes a world that has “already crossed the threshold of survivability.”

Umair has friends in the Indian Subcontinent. So, he hears first hand what’s happening without the filter of a news organization. Here’s one quote: “The heatwave there is pushing the boundaries of survivability. My other sister says that in the old, beautiful city of artists and poets, eagles are falling dead from the sky. They are just dropping dead and landing on houses, monuments, and shops. They can’t fly anymore.”

Here’s some more reporting from the streets, as related to Umair: “The streets, she says, are lined with dead things. Dogs. Cats. Cows. Animals of all kinds are just there, dead. They’ve perished in the killing heat. They can’t survive.”

People spend all day in canals and rivers and lakes. Some people line the streets passed out at the edge of life or death. He suggests the death count will not be known for some time and many probably won’t be counted.

Here’s an interesting take from Umair’s perspective: “You see, my Western friends read stories like this, and then they go back to obsessing over the Kardashians or Wonder Woman or Johnny Depp or Batman. They don’t understand yet. Because this is beyond the limits of what Homo sapiens can really comprehend, the Event. That world is coming for them, too.”

He claims: “We are at the threshold of the Cataclysm. Some of us are now crossing over to the other side, of a different planet, one that’s going to become unlivable. This isn’t ‘going to happen’ or ‘might happen,’ it is actually happening now.”

Here’s one more quote: “At 50 degrees, which is where the Subcontinent is now, life dies off. The birds fall from the sky. The streets become mass graves. People flee and try to just survive. Energy grids begin to break. Economies grind to a halt.”

Umair claims civilization collapses somewhere between 50 -60 degrees Celsius. “Nothing works after that point.” Animals die and systems shut down, economics crater, inflation skyrockets, people grow poorer, fascism erupts as a consequence. People become frightened and turn to fundamentalist religion or authoritarian rule to “give them answers.” The regular old economics and politics don’t work any longer. Sound familiar?

Death by humid heat in India equates to the tolling of bells, slowly, repeatedly, as black flags flutter along the distant horizon. Another one has died and another, and one more, and another and another, as the monotonous tolling becomes an atrocious irritation.

Postscript: It’s in every bird falling from the sky, every animal dropping dead from the heat, every democracy being shredded by lunatics, in all the deaths we will never count. Our systems — all of them — economic, social, political — are beginning to fail. (Umair Haque)

Robert Hunziker can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

May 20, 2022May 20, 2022

The Biomass Peril

Holzpelletieranlage Wels by Stefan Kasmanhuber licensed by CC BY-SA 3.0 — Holzpelletieranlage Wels by Stefan Kasmanhuber ( CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Biomass Peril

By Robert Hunziker

Woody biomass, or burning trees to produce renewable energy, is spreading beyond the shores of Europe, where it’s wildly popular and outpacing solar and wind. It’s headed for Japan and South Korea, where subsidies for woody biomass displace funding for solar and wind. Umm, what’s wrong with this picture?

In order to know specifically what’s wrong it’s pertinent to take notice of the factual details about the integrity of woody biomass to discover whether it’s truly one of the biggest blunders of the 21st century.

Woody biomass is not a viable solution for global warming mitigation purposes. It has been the subject of considerable scientific debate with several voices expressing alarm over the absurd concept of burning trees to reduce global emissions. It’s shocking!

Nevertheless, it is happening right under our collective noses and fully endorsed by the European Union (EU) yet the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not endorse it. This is proof-positive that absurdity knows no limits.

After this article was written and before it was posted the EU Environment Committee voted to amend the European Union’s stance on woody biomass. It appears the EU is scrambling to save face. See more details at the end of this article.

The term “carbon neutral,” which is not the same as “zero carbon” and not a scientific term, but glorified by the EU when used to distinguish a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions really means this: “Someone else, at some other time, removes carbon, so I can emit more.” (Quote by Dr. William Moomaw, IPCC co-author of several reports)

If you’re worried about the deleterious impact of global warming, DUCK! You’re about to get hit right between the eyes as woody biomass emits as much CO2 as coal, or more. And, it’s popular. Developed countries like it better than coal. It’s cheaper than building solar or wind, and it’s easy, and it helps countries meet the Nationally Determined Contributions at the heart of the Paris Agreement. Here’s how: Stop shoveling coal into the furnace and replace it with woody biomass chips, Eureka! The lights go on!

But, there’s a catch: Woody Biomass is one of Runaway Global Warming’s favorite accomplices. It’s a stealthy renewable faux source emitting tons of excessive amounts of CO2 that people mistakenly think is just fine, whereas coal has a dirty image but emits less CO2 than woody biomass.

Contrary to popular opinion by proponents of woody biomass, replanting trees to offset CO2 emitted by burning woody biomass is not true (not even close to true), more on this later.

Furthermore and contrary to statements by forest biomass companies: “Despite claims from forest biomass proponents, the IPCC does not even assess, let alone support, the use of forest bioenergy and BECCS as a climate solution and has not determined that biomass is essential to addressing climate change. (Source: What the IPCC Really Says About Forest Biomass & Climate Change, National Resources Defense Council –NRDC- Nov. 9, 2021)

According to the NRDC report on the IPCC position: “Cutting and burning forests in the southeastern United States – the leading global region for wood pellet manufacturing – leads to a net shift of carbon from the land to the air that lasts for decades,” Ibid. That’s horrible news for the woody biomass industry, which is growing like a weed, spreading across the globe.

Bottom line, major developed countries the use woody biomass operate under the pretense that they are meeting carbon reduction goals under the guidelines of IPCC AR6 when in fact they are amplifying global warming.

That results in a hopeless scenario where nobody knows what to believe. The only reliable data points are CO2 levels from independent entities like NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory in Hawaii managed by NOAA scientists and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. For example, the CO2 weekly average for May 8th was 421.13 ppm versus 418.34 ppm one year ago. That’s a rapid rate of increase +2.79 ppm, which is far above the historical average, which means annual CO2 emissions are truly rapidly escalating. This has extremely negative ramifications for ecosystems, biodiversity loss, the climate system, and last but not least, Homo sapiens, the main protagonists of this Greek tragedy

And, oh yes, speaking of global warming, especially to the shrilly denier charlatans, it is notable that worldwide drought is on a chilling rampage. Name any continent, except Antarctica, which has its own problems, and destructive drought is there. For specific references, Google: (1) World Drought Gets Worse, Cities Ration, May 9, 2022 (2) Adapting to Drought, May 3, 2022 (3) Dangerous Heat Across the Globe, January 24, 2022 (4) Drought Clobbers the World, August 27, 2021.

The Woody Biomass Growth Industry

Woody biomass, a multi-billion dollar world market is growing from its major base in the EU and UK by spreading to Japan and South Korea. Those two economic powerhouses are rapidly adopting it as a solution to meet greenhouse gas emission mitigation standards by flipping coal usage to woody biomass tree burning.

Yikes! Don’t they know (their scientists or engineers or somebody knowledgeable) that woody biomass will increase CO2 emissions, the same as coal, and then some?

The only way they’ll legitimately meet their emission targets is by illegitimately (cheating) using fancy accounting principles which of course is the modus operandi, stating that woody biomass is carbon neutral and of course they’ve got the EU imprimatur to prove it. Even better yet as for falsifying records, the EU does not recognize CO2 emissions from woody biomass, and it is largely ignored by the IPCC. So, why count it? Yes, it is true that for some inexplicable reason (maybe the carbon neutral ruse) the EU does not understand that burning trees emits CO2, same as coal. Hence, it’s easy to falsify records about achieving targets towards net zero by 2050.

In all fairness, it should be noted that coal usage does not burn trees, which actually makes it a better solution than woody biomass (P.S.-this article does not endorse coal): “All of this wood burning is putting intensifying pressure on global forests — which are desperately important for the tremendous amounts of carbon they store.” (Source: COP 26: E.U. is Committed to Forest Biomass Burning to Cut Fossil Fuel Use, Mongabay, November 2022)

Several recent studies have exposed false claims that woody pellets are manufactured from “waste wood or residues such as limbs, tops, scraps, or rotted trees.” Analyses of woody biomass operations in Canada (BC) and the US (southern states), in some cases, showed the vast majority of material consists of boles or tree trunks, not scrap waste material.

According to the Southern Environmental Law Center: “Despite industry claims, most of the wood used to manufacture pellets is not waste wood or residues – like limbs, tops, scraps, or rotten trees. Instead, the vast majority of material harvested for these wood pellet facilities were tree trunks or boles.” (Source: New Study Confirms Harmful Impacts of Biomass Industry, Southern Environmental Law Center, March 28, 2022)

A study of Canada’s Inland Temperate Rainforest at the site of a major woody biomass manufacturer: “According to the NGO Sustainable Biomass Program, the use of whole logs has ballooned from 6% in 2019 to 50% in 2020 (Ed.-SBP claims 36% in an updated statement). Still, satellite imagery by the Living Atlas of the World “confirmed a shift to whole trees.” Furthermore, a 2021 Google Image shows log piles around the wood-pellet plant that are equivalent to four soccer fields, which is an eye-opening 6xs the area of wood residuals on the property. (Source: Burning Up: The Controversial Biofuel Threatening BC’s Last Inland Rainforest, The Whale, 2022)

According to the Environmental Paper Network, a global coalition of forest advocates that tracks biomass, demand for pellets in Japan will rise to 9 million metric tons annually by 2027, up from 0.5 million metric tons in 2017. South Korea will hit 8.2 million metric tons annually by 2027, up from 2.4 million metric tons in 2017. That Asian combination is close to future demand predicted for both the EU and the U.K.

The South Korean government subsidy for biomass is so substantial that the country will reduce investment in wind and solar to make room for woody biomass, which is a prime example of out-and-out insanity at work.

Henceforth, Woody Biomass will meaningfully contribute to excessive greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to heating up the planet. Global warming is the only winner in this race to the bottom of upside down global warming mitigation craziness.

Even more perplexing, in the face of the EU not recognizing CO2 emissions from burning woody biomass, in November 2021 more than 100 nations agreed at the Glasgow UN climate summit to: “reduce global deforestation as a primary climate-mitigation strategy.” Yet, doesn’t woody biomass include chopping down trees, which works against the 100-nation declaration?

“Forest advocates have been arguing for years that burning wood for energy on an industrial scale, a practice virtually nonexistent little more than a decade ago, poses a host of environmental threats while undermining effective global warming mitigation efforts, these include: (1) increased deforestation (2) elevated carbon emissions (3) loss of carbon sequestration capacity and (4) adverse biodiversity impacts,” Ibid.

Woody Biomass proponents claim they replant trees to replace chopped down trees. So, no harm done as the newly planted trees will absorb the CO2 from burned trees. Wrong!

According to John Sterman (MIT), a biomass expert, the carbon released today by burning wood pellets “will take 44-to-104 years to be reabsorbed by new tree plantings,” Ibid.

That should be reason enough, standing alone as one primary fact about the negative impact, to abandon woody biomass altogether.

But there is more: Making matters even worse, wood pellets produce more emissions per unit of energy than carbon-intensive coal because wood isn’t as energy dense as coal, which is one more reason why coal is better than woody biomass.

“Increasing biomass burning for energy in place of coal [fails] to reduce emissions at the smokestack and actually increases them,” according to Peg Putt, a leader of the Environmental Paper Network in Australia. “Also, where forest biomass from natural forests is burnt, it is depleting the carbon stocks of those forests and undermines their potential to sequester carbon during the vital period for emissions reductions between now and 2050,” Ibid.

It’s nearly impossible to find a worse approach to fixing global warming than substituting woody biomass for coal. Maybe tar sands?

Facts About Woody Biomass:

“The wood pellet industry is a monster out of control… Burning wood puts out more carbon dioxide per unit of electricity produced than coal does.” (Bill Moomaw, emeritus professor Tufts University and co-author of several IPCC reports – 2019 Mongabay interview).

More than 500 scientists & economists signed a letter addressed to: (1) President Joseph Biden, (2) EU President Ursula Von der Leyen, (3) Charles Michel, President of the EU Council, (4) Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga and (5) So. Korean President Moon Jae-in: “We urge you not to undermine both climate goals and the world’s biodiversity by shifting from burning fossil fuels to burning trees to generate energy.” (Source: 500+ Experts Call on World’s Nations to Not Burn Forest to Make Energy, Mongabay, February 16, 2021)

The letter from the 500 scientists and economists states: “Overall, for each kilowatt hour of heat or electricity produced, [burning] wood initially is likely to add two to three times as much carbon to the air as using fossil fuels, refuting the policy and industry claims of zero emissions.”

Nearly 800 scientists and academics, including two Nobel laureates and three winners of the US National Medal of Science, signed a similar letter in 2018.

Under the EU’s second Renewable Energy Directive (REDII) — tolerated by the United Nations under the Paris Climate Agreement — emissions from burning forest biomass are not counted at all. This one shocking fact is nearly impossible to read without falling to one’s knees in utter disbelief.

In Europe 42,210 people signed a petition to end EU support for “fake renewables,” i.e., burning trees is not a climate solution. (Source: EU Bioenergy, News, January 25, 2021) The petition did not influence the EU decision to continue championing woody biomass.

In the UK, the Drax Group converted 4 of 6 coal-generating units to biomass, powering 12% of UK electricity for 4 million households. The Drax biomass plant has an enormous appetite for wood, e.g., in less than two hours an entire freight train of wooden pellets goes up in smoke. That could be up to 12 freight train loads of wood pellets going up in smoke every 24 hours. That’s an amazing image to behold!

According to Drax’s PR department, the operation has slashed CO2 by over 80% since 2012, claiming to be “the largest decarbonization project in Europe.” (Source: Biomass Energy: Green or Dirty? Environment & Energy – Feature Article, Jan. 8, 2020)

Yet, when scientists analyze Drax’s claims, they do not hold up. Not even close! When wood pellets burn, Drax assumes the released carbon is recaptured instantly by new growth. That is a fairy tale. John Sterman (MIT), a biomass expert, claims the carbon released today by burning wood pellets “will take 44-to-104 years to be reabsorbed by new tree plantings.”

An article entitled The “Green Energy” That Might Be Ruining the Planet appeared in Politico, March 2021: “Here’s a multibillion-dollar question that could help determine the fate of the global climate: If a tree falls in a forest—and then it’s driven to a mill, where it’s chopped and chipped and compressed into wood pellets, which are then driven to a port and shipped across the ocean to be burned for electricity in European power plants—does it warm the planet? Most scientists and environmentalists say yes.”

“Burning wood puts out more carbon dioxide per unit of electricity produced then coal does.” (Source: Humanity’s Mortality Moment, @ 25:00 on video, ScientistsWarning.TV, December 11,2019)

Carbon is emitted in the biomass combustion process, resulting in a net increase of CO2 (Columbia University study)

Woody biomass power plants actually produce more global warming CO2 than fossil fuel plants (Earth Institute).

Europe now generates more energy from burning wood than from wind and solar combined, even though solar produces 100 times as much power per acre as biomass. Please reread that!

“The whole thing boils down to the obvious fact that burning things emits carbon quickly and re-growing things to sequester carbon takes a long time,” according to Mary Booth, director of the Partnership for Policy Integrity, a US-based environmental nonprofit. “In other words, climate change will have wreaked havoc long before those young trees mature into an ecosystem that holds as much carbon as the one they replaced.” (Source: Burning Up: The Controversial Biofuel Threatening BC’s Last Inland Rainforests, The Whale, 2022)

After this article was written, the EU Parliament’s Environment Committee voted to reduce “eligibility of heat and power from burning trees and other forest biomass as counting toward the EU’s renewable energy targets, and largely ending renewable energy subsidies for forest biomass, with certain exceptions.” (Source: European Parliament’s Environment Committee Recommends Curtailing Burning Forest Biomass for Renewable Energy, Forest Defenders Alliance, May 17, 2022)

NGOs are concerned by the amount of wood that would still be burned under the agreement. Lina Burnelius, Project Leader at Protect the Forest Sweden, said: “We are afraid that this half-step will be celebrated as some sort of victory, when in reality more than half of the biomass burned will, under this proposal, still receive subsidies and still not be included in the emissions statistics. The gap between what the science shows is needed and what’s been put on the table is severe,” Ibid.

Meanwhile, over the past decade biomass power plants established solid operations in the U.K., the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, and Sweden. Asia is the new growth market, including Japan and South Korea with India ramping up and African nations looking to get involved.

“The result of this soaring demand: Trees are being stripped from old growth forests, boreal forests and/or native hardwood forests in Canada, Eastern Europe, the U.S. Southeast and Russia; and cut in tropical forests in Vietnam and Malaysia, all to produce wood pellets.” (Source: COP26: Surging Wood Pellet Industry Threatens Climate, Say Experts, Mongabay, Nov. 9, 2021)

By all appearances, woody biomass is an unstoppable behemoth initiated by the EU, which is now scrambling, as it tries to undo a monster of its own creation.

Forget about achieving net zero anytime this lifetime. Woody biomass is on the rise!

Robert Hunziker can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

May 9, 2022May 9, 2022

World Drought Gets Worse, Cities Ration

Photo by Md. Hasanuzzaman Himel on Unsplash

World Drought Gets Worse, Cities Ration

By Robert Hunziker

The planet is wheezing, coughing and sputtering because of vicious attacks by worldwide droughts aided and abetted by global warming at only 1.2C above baseline. Some major metropolises are rationing water.

What’ll happen at 1.5C?

It’s not as if droughts are not a normal feature of the climate system. They are, but the problem nowadays is highlighted by reports from NASA and NOAA stating that earth is trapping nearly twice as much heat is it did in 2005 described as an “unprecedented increase amid the climate crisis.” This trend is described as “quite alarming.”

The planet trapping heat at double the rate of only 17 years ago is off-the-charts bad news and reason enough for the world’s leaders to go all-in on global warming preventive measures, and then hope and pray that it’s not too late.

Throughout Earth’s history drought has been a normal feature of climate change, but that’s the past. Droughts are no longer normal features. They are much, much more severe and longer lasting, for example, America’s drought in the West is ongoing for 20 years, the worst in 1,200 years, and it’s taken Lake Mead water levels down to 1937 when it first started filling up.

On a worldwide basis, drought’s impact on water reservoirs on every continent is chilling. Agricultural yields are suffering.

Undoubtedly, the utter failure by the world’s political leaders to respect 30-50 years of public warnings by scientists to “get off fossil fuels ASAP” is coming home to roost. When will the general public fight back and throw out climate change denial politicians along with their motley shrilly charlatans?

Along those lines, in an historic judgment, a Belgian court ruled that Belgium’s climate failures violate human rights, stating that public authorities broke promises to tackle the climate issue. 58,000 citizens served as co-plaintiffs in the case. To wit: “By not taking all ‘necessary measures’ to prevent the ‘detrimental’ effects of climate change, the court said, Belgian authorities had breached the right to life (Article 2) and the right to respect for private and family life (Article 8).” (Source: Drought: The New Global Calamity? The Kashmir Monitor, June 30, 2021)

A major study of soil moisture drought in Europe during the period from 1766 to 2020 led to the conclusion that recent drought events brought the “most intense drought conditions for Europe in 250 years: “We conclude that Europe should prepare adaptation and mitigation plans for future events whose intensity may be comparable to the previous event, but whose duration (and partly their spatial extent) will be much greater than any event observed in the last 250 years.” (Source: The 2018-2020 Multi-Year Drought Sets a New Benchmark in Europe, American Geophysical Union, 15 March 2022)

An international team, led by the University of Cambridge… found that after a long-term drying trend, European drought conditions since 2015 suddenly intensified, beyond anything in the past two thousand (2,000) years.

Eastern Europe is feeling the impact of serious drought. A report from the Atlantic Council in 2021 “emphasized the impacts of drought on Ukraine’s grain exports, noting that they had ‘fallen sharply year-on-year during the current season due to smaller harvests caused by severe drought conditions.’ When an agricultural power as important as Ukraine suddenly starts producing and exporting much less food, it is a recipe for social dislocation, human suffering, and political unrest, both inside the country and beyond.” (Source: Extreme Drought Is Crashing Food Production Whether Russia Invades or Not, The Nation, Feb. 17, 2022)

According to the European Commission: “A severe drought has been affecting northern Italy and the Po River basin in particular.” (Source: Drought in Northern Italy – March 2022: GDO Analytical Report, European Commission) In Northern Italy, “Most of the reservoirs are below the minimum historical values… stored energy as of March 2022 is 27.5% less than the 8-year minimum. Both agricultural yield and costs for power are negatively impacted. That -27.5% is 27.5% below the 8-yr minimum!

In the US, according to the Palmer Drought index, severe-to-extreme drought is affecting 38% of the contiguous US as of March 2022. That’s almost as bad as it ever gets. More than 50% of the country registers as moderate-to-extreme. As a result, the US Bureau of Reclamation is scrambling to retain/add/cheat/steal enough water for America’s two largest reservoirs Lake Powell and Lake Mead to keep hydropower supplying electrical power to 5M and water to 40M. Rationing to some of seven SW states has already started. Is that the eye-opener of all eye-openers? Answer: Yes.

Historic drought has literally changed the landscape in parts of South America: “Until 2020, there was plenty of water, swamps, stagnant lakes and lagoons in Argentina’s Ibera Wetlands, one of the largest such ecosystems in the world. But an historic drought of the Parana River dried much of it out; its waters are in the lowest level since 1944. Since January it has been the stage of raging fires.” (Source: Climate Change Brings Extreme, Early Impact to South America, phys.org, March 1, 2022)

Chile is experiencing such a horrendous record-breaking drought (13 years) that the capital city Santiago, population 6M, is rationing water. The city will experience rotating water cut-offs of up to 24 hours at a time in a four-tier alert system with public service announcements so residents can prepare for no water. “This is the first time in history that Santiago has a water rationing plan due to the severity of climate change, It’s important for citizens to understand that climate change is here to stay. It’s not just global, it’s local,” according to Claudio Orrego, governor of the Santiago metropolitan region. (Source: Chile Announces Unprecedented Plan to Ration Water As Drought Enters 13th Year, The Guardian, April 11, 2022)

In SE Asia the Mekong River serves as the waterway for the livelihood of 65M people. This is the fourth year of drought. According to the Ministry of Water Resources river conditions are the worst in 60 years. For example, in Cambodia water capacity for crop irrigation is at only 20%. Upstream dams in China and Laos also negatively add to the impact of severe drought conditions.

In China the port city of Guangzhou (pop 15M) and Shenzhen (pop 12.5M), which links HK to mainland China, have put residents on notice to cut (reduce) water consumption between January and October of 2022, as the main water source, the East River (down 50%) experiences the most severe drought in decades. (Source: China’s Southern Megacities Warn of Water Shortages During East River Drought, Reuters, December 8, 2021)

In Africa, a brutal drought in Ethiopia and Kenya has caused three million livestock dead and 30% of household herds have died in Somalia. According to the UN, the worsening drought in the Horn of Africa puts 20M people at risk. Rampant migration follows in the footsteps of severe drought, e.g., Central America’s Dry Corridor.

As nation/states fail to adequately address the global warming issue with Plan A, which is attacking the source, or cutting fossil fuel emissions, it becomes increasingly urgent to go to Plan B, which is adapting to the unforgiving climate system exhaust (cough-cough) of a failed Plan A.

In 2021, the Netherlands hosted the first-ever Climate Adaptation Summit (CAS 2021), highlighting adaptation measures as crucial for minimizing extreme weather events and improving water security.

The facts surrounding the current status of CO2 emissions (at all-time highs over the past millennium) and plans for expansion by the fossil fuel industry over the course of this decade, i.e., China & India building new coal plants like crazy and oil companies planning to spend billions for new oil and gas expansion, dictate that adaptation to an unpredictably challenging destructive climate system is an absolute necessity because global warming ain’t gonna get fixed.

It is noteworthy that Dr. James Hansen’s (Columbia University) most recent monthly temperature update states:

“Note monthly temperature anomalies on land now commonly exceed +2°C (+3.6°F), with the Arctic anomaly often exceeding +5°C (+9°F).”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forewarned that +2°C is the upper limit where the climate system starts to get real crazy; however, at today’s overall planet temperate of +1.2°C above baseline trouble is already evident, e.g., the worst droughts in centuries found on every continent with some major cities either rationing water or suggesting voluntary cutbacks. And, oh yeah, food prices are just starting to skyrocket.

Frankly, human ingenuity must take over on local and regional bases to work towards “adaptation to a rambunctiously changing climate,” and, of course, lots of luck. Interestingly, some of America’s biggest western cities have learned to adapt to severe drought, as discussed in some detail in the article: “Adapting to Drought” (May 3, 2022).

Robert Hunziker can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.