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America’s Irreplaceable Immigrants

Photo by Tim Mossholder is licensed by Unsplash
Photo by Tim Mossholder is licensed by Unsplash

America’s Irreplaceable Immigrants

By Robert Hunziker



Every day when breakfast is served, Americans come face to face with the impact of immigrant workers without whom breakfast items would be too expensive for everyday consumption and/or if short on time, the nearest drive-through fast-food establishment, cars lined up for blocks, would charge an arm and a leg for a simple egg, cheese, and sausage sandwich. Without immigrant workers, costs will skyrocket beyond the reach of many Americans. And thankfully, undocumented immigrants are safer for US citizens than their own neighbors.

“A NIJ-funded study examining data from the Texas Department of Public Safety estimated the rate at which undocumented immigrants are arrested for committing crimes. The study found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half (1/2) the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter (1/4th) the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.” (Source: Undocumented Immigrant Offending Rate Lower Than U.S.-Born Citizen Rate, National Institute of Justice, September 12, 2024)

“Substantial research has assessed the relationship between immigration and crime. Numerous studies show that immigration is not linked to higher levels of crime, but rather the opposite.” (Debunking the Myth of the ‘Migrant Crime Wave,’ Brennan Center for Justice, May 29, 2024)

In that regard, there’s been some chatter initiated by Texas Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales about 13,000 immigrants convicted of homicide. “A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said the data sent to Gonzales is being misinterpreted, and goes back four decades, long before the Biden administration.” (Source: More Than 13,000 Immigrants Convicted of Homicide Are Living Outside Immigration Detention in the U.S. ICE Says, NBC News, Sept. 28, 2024)

Immigrant laborers get their hands dirty when nobody else will. They are absolutely essential to the food supply chain, e.g., according to the Migration Policy Institute they are 30% of crop production workers across the country. In some instances, their numbers dictate survival of a basic food industry.

Some food production enterprises will cease to function without immigrant workers, e.g., 64% if Nebraska’s meat processing workers are immigrants. No immigrants, no steaks.

“Foreign workers make up about 68% of the workforce on American hog farms. Immigration is a key part of pork production, and many producers rely on foreign labor because it’s difficult to find a local workforce.” (Source: Immigration in the Swine Industry: Hiring Foreign -Born Labor, Pork Information Gateway). Moreover, immigrants make up 40% of the overall meatpacking workforce. No immigrants, no pork.

California supplies 33% of America’s vegetables and 75% of America’s fruit and nuts via a workforce dominated 65% by immigrants. They are at the core of the food supply chain to America. Additionally, California is America’s 4th largest beef producer, and the state is America’s dairy leader. Immigrants do 2/3rd of California’s agricultural work, supplying America’s all-important food chain. Without immigrants, breakfast costs will skyrocket beyond the reach of everyday Americans. Food inflation will eat America alive.

Iowa is one of America’s top pork and corn producers. A recent article in Bleeding Heartland, an independent website about Iowa politics, entitled Anti-Immigration Plans Could Have Unintended Consequences for Iowa AG d/d August 29, 2024: A major cattle producer in Sioux County claims: “If all of Sioux County’s immigrant labor left tomorrow, we’d have a huge problem. … We don’t have the people to replace them.” Moreover, according to the article: “It is not simply a matter of replacing immigrant labor with workers born in the United States. It is difficult finding people who want to do the backbreaking work of mucking out manure, hauling bedding for the animals, and moving thousands of pounds of feed for them every day.” No immigrants, no beef.

Bleeding Heartland’s article followed on the heels of a reversal of mean-spirited, lowbrow legislation: “In a victory for immigrant communities and families, on June 17 a federal district court in Iowa issued a preliminary injunction to block SF 2340, one of the worst, most far-reaching immigration laws ever passed in the state of Iowa.” According to Emma Winger, deputy legal director, American Immigration Council: “Sadly, we are still seeing copycat laws and proposed measures that would cause irreparable harm for immigrant families, including in Arizona, Texas, and Oklahoma. These types of laws create absolute chaos and human suffering and have no place in our legal system.” (Source: Iowa Blocks Hateful Anti-Immigrant Law, American Immigration Council, June 17, 2024)

And beyond the basic necessities of food supply, industry increasingly relies upon migrant workers. For example, in Ohio: Unions, Businesses Eye Migrants to Fill Labor Gaps in Ohio Reuters, May 2, 2024: “Help accessing immigrant communities to find workers to hire has been among the top three requests the Columbus Chamber of Commerce has fielded from local businesses in recent years, said Kelly Fuller, the chamber’s vice president of talent and workforce development.”

In the U.S., the expansion of the labor force via immigrants has kept the economy growing and consumer spending up without driving inflation even higher. According to Brookings Institution economist Tara Watson: “Immigration is bolstering a U. S. workforce that would otherwise be set to decline as the baby boomer generation retires. And especially in some fields, we have long-run structural needs that Americans are just not going to fill,’ Watson said, pointing to a lack of home health aides and other direct care workers,” Ibid.

In Charleroi, Pennsylvania David Barbe of Fourth Street Foods claims: “We operate 26 production lines for sandwiches, dinner, and breakfast bowls.” Out of 1,000 employees, 700 are immigrants on the assembly line. “The hours are long and monotonous, and Barbe says he gets almost no local applicants.” (Source: Charleroi, Pennsylvania, Business Owner Says Immigrant Population Works Jobs Americans Do Not Want, CBS News, September 18, 2024)

Pennsylvania thrives on newfound immigrants: “It is hard to overstate the importance of entrepreneurship since new businesses are the main driver of job growth in the United States. Immigrants play a particularly important role in this—founding businesses at far higher rates than the U.S. population overall. Today, millions of American workers are employed at immigrant-founded and immigrant-owned companies.” Pennsylvania claims 70,200 immigrant entrepreneurs paying $13 billion in taxes with $4.4 billion paid to social security and 650,200 total immigrant workers in the labor force. (Source: Immigrants in Pennsylvania, American Immigration Council)

Immigrants may be a political football that is easy to kick around but ironically, America’s biggest risk of becoming a third world country is loss of immigrant labor, resulting in grocery store shelves become increasingly empty, restaurants using paper plates/plastic forks to replace migrant help, and local farmer’s markets experiencing vicious, sometimes deadly, street fights by local citizens over scarce precious food items.

America’s Economic Growth Depends Upon Immigrants

“Immigrant workers are responsible for 88% of labor force growth in America since 2019.” (Source: Immigrants Will Be America’s Only Source Of Labor Force Growth, Forbes, October 16, 2024).

Labor force growth is crucial to economic growth, raising living standards for all citizens. According to the Dallas Fed: “While technological advances and incentives for investment will contribute to productivity growth, immigration will be vital to propping up labor force growth… The United States would have experienced no labor force growth during the past five years without immigrants and their children. Between 2018 and 2024, the number of workers with U.S. parents declined by 1.3 million, while the number of immigrants and children of immigrants in the U.S. labor force grew by 5.4 million,” Ibid.

America’s colleges and universities hold a special status in the eyes of the world: “Immigrant-origin students are the fastest growing group of students in higher education, driving over 90 percent of the domestic enrollment growth at U.S. colleges and universities from 2000 to 2022.” (Source: Immigrant-Origin Students in U.S. Higher Education – September 2024, Higher Ed Immigration Portal, Oct. 1, 2024)

Immigrants have never been more important to America’s growth and future. Immigrant labor does the backbreaking work that regular Americans refuse, the backbone of America’s food chain and industrial assembly lines. They do hard work in a quiet reserved manner. They are irreplaceable and the single most crucial factor to America’s future economic growth, which would stagnate without their resourcefulness and dedication to hard work.
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This article was originally published on October 25, 2024 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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The Shriveling Mighty Amazon River Drying Out

Photo by Bruna Leite is licensed by Unsplash
Photo by Bruna Leite is licensed by Unsplash

The Shriveling Mighty Amazon River Drying Out

By Robert Hunziker

Fossil fuel CO2 emissions are taking the world’s time-honored ecosystems, like the world-famous Amazon River, down onto their knees. The problem is greenhouse gases like CO2 and CH4 trap heat and excessive levels, like we’ve been experiencing, create extreme heat; it’s a direct connection that’s destroying the world’s legendary ecosystems. Over time, the biosphere rejects human meddling by undercutting these wondrous natural systems that support human life. The conclusion is too dreadful to discuss.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is so alarmed that it’s calling for “Urgent Action.”

According to Celeste Saulo, secretary general of the WMO: ““Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change. We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems, and economies. Melting ice and glaciers threaten long-term water security for many millions of people. And yet we are not taking the necessary urgent action.” (Source: Climate Warning as World’s Rivers Dry Up at Fastest Rate for 30 Years, The Guardian, October 7, 2024)

If there’s any doubt about the reality of climate change as a threat, the mighty Amazon River is a real time testament flashing warning signals of deep trouble. Large regions of the 4,000-mile waterway are disappearing right before our eyes because of global warming’s most lethal weapon, drought!

Devastating drought is clobbering portions of the world’s most famous river, a vital commercial superhighway that delivers goods throughout the South American continent: “The Amazon is both the world’s largest river by volume and the longest river system, emerging in the Peruvian Andes and crossing five countries before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. It is home to a rich variety of aquatic life, like piranhas and pink river dolphins. In some areas, the river is still very deep — up to 400 feet — and can accommodate ocean liners.” (Source: A Changing Climate is Scorching the World’s Biggest River, The New York Times, October 8, 2024)

Like elsewhere throughout the world, average temperatures in South America are rising beyond safe limits and abnormal severe droughts ensue. Regions of the Amazon have seen temperature rises of 2°C since the 1980s or the maximum before triggering several enormous problems, such as warned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Well, we now know that the IPCC was correct to warn of serious problems as oil producers spew out enormous quantities of CO2 blanketing the atmosphere. The Amazon River is living, and dying, proof of the CO2-global warming-drought connection.

According to Bernardo Flores, Federal University of Santa Catarina/Brazil, all signs point to more impossible-to-deal-with temperatures coming down the pike. Already, back-to-back years of severe drought have scorched the Amazon. According to Dr Ane Alencar, director of science at IPAM Amazônia, “The river’s had no chance to recover,” Ibid.

Climate scientists are dumbfounded by the onset of rivers of the world drying up at the fastest pace in modern history. Ominously, major rivers are hitting new lows at the same time as major reservoirs drop dangerously low. Last year more than 50% of global river catchment areas hit abnormally low levels with “most being in deficit.” It’s deadly serious global warming at work that was seen to a lesser extent in 2021 and 2022. The Amazon, Mississippi, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Danube, Loire, Mekong, and several others have been hit with abnormally low conditions over the past three years.

Deceivingly, there’s a rhythm to the onset of drought and floods not necessarily hitting consecutively year after year but every-other-year or every-third-year, like once-in-100-year floods compressed in time. Massive disasters are no longer once every 100-years. They recur every few years. For example, according to NASA, since 2000, severe drought hit Brazil every 5 years like clockwork but now it’s back-to-back. Nobody knows what to expect next. It’s literally “hold one’s breath” as to the survivability of the world’s biggest most famous river, easily spotted from outer space.

Like the Sword of Damocles, a scourge of drought threatens the world like never before. For example, two years ago in Europe: “In places, the Loire can now be crossed on foot; France’s longest river has never flowed so slowly. The Rhine is fast becoming impassable to barge traffic. In Italy, the Po is 2 metres lower than normal, crippling crops. Serbia is dredging the Danube. Across Europe, drought is reducing once-mighty rivers to trickles, with potentially dramatic consequences for industry, freight, energy and food production.” (Source: Europe’s Rivers Run Dry as Scientists Warn Drought Could be Worst in 500 Years, The Guardian, Aug. 13, 2022).

China in the same year: “The impact of the drying Yangtze has been enormous. In Sichuan, a province of 84 million people, hydropower makes up about 80% of electricity capacity. Much of that comes from the Yangtze River, and as its flow slows down, power generation has dwindled, leaving authorities there to order all its factories shut for six days. The province is seeing around half the rain it usually does and some reservoirs have dried up entirely, according to state news agency Xinhua.” (CNN)

The Hydrological Cycle

According to WMO, rising temperatures have dramatically altered the hydrological cycle of the world, it has accelerated and become unpredictably erratic. Society is facing growing issues of either too much or too little water. On the one hand, warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, with atmospheric rivers cascading bucket-loads of water, creating flash floods. Conversely more heat brings on evaporation and drying of soils leading to severe drought. It’s all heat related. The planet has more heat than the hydrological system can handle. Meanwhile, the world’s water towers, e.g., European Alps, are melting away, threatening commercial rivers and adequate potable water supplies.

Yet, in the face of abrupt damaging climate change, fossil fuel companies have publicly declared their intentions to crank up oil and gas production like never before, quadrupling production from newly approved projects by 2030 (Global Energy Monitor), the outlook for world natural resources like the Amazon River and the Amazon rainforest is beyond shaky. It’s dreadful. And everybody has good reason to be nervous about too much CO2 and other greenhouse gases altering the most significant sources of ongoing life on the planet. There are way too many things going wrong, like over-heated sea waters generating big and bigger hurricanes, to ignore the necessity of getting off fossil fuels as soon as possible.

The WMO is calling for Urgent Action by the nations of the world. Everybody knows what needs to be done.
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This article was originally published on October 11, 2024 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Climate Week/NYC – Oh Well!

Photograph of the by the NASA EPIC Team is in the public domain.
Photograph of the by the NASA EPIC Team is in the public domain.

Climate Week/NYC – Oh Well!

By Robert Hunziker

Climate Week/NYC September 22-29, 2024, is underway and expects 100,000 attendees for cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and expensive rooms in NYC’s ultra-expensive hotels amidst breast-pounding speeches and promises to fix civilizations’ biggest threat to continued existence. For over 30 years, climate change conference commitments to do something constructive have been embarrassing flops. What will Climate Week/NYC come up with to fix a broken climate system that’s been decades in the making?

People attuned to the changing climate know only too well that the planet is starting to come apart at the seams where it counts most, away from urban settings like NYC and countryside towns in America. It happens at the fringe of civilization where nobody lives, and the change is chilling. It’s where climate change struts its stuff before clobbering civilization at an unpredictable future date. This strutting where nobody lives in the hinterland inadvertently seduces society into a false sense of climate change security, not to worry nothing going on in my backyard. But the evidence of a very rambunctious worldwide climate system that’s already starting to go haywire is everywhere to be found away from NYC. And it spells danger ahead.

For example, new research on global warming’s impact on West Antarctica concludes risk of 13 feet of sea level rise by 2100. This is substantially higher than any estimates heretofore by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and it puts several of the world’s coastal megacities underwater way ahead of 2100. And scientists like Katey Walter Anthony (link to a Yale Climate Connections video with balanced view of permafrost methane risks) research professor at University of Alaska, Fairbanks conducting field work in Siberia and Alaska permafrost, uncovered thousands upon thousands of thermokarst lakes bubbling methane, CH4, into the atmosphere in the wilderness where nobody lives. Permafrost covers a quarter of the northern hemisphere land surface and contains twice the amount of carbon than is currently present in the atmosphere. These are climate changes that nobody sees but warn of danger ahead, and they are happening in real time today.

As a prelude to the momentous Climate Week/NYC occasion, billed as a major climate change event, big players in the arena like John Kerry and Al Gore came out swinging ahead of time. They are uniformly disgusted with results of prior climate change conferences. Nobody is doing what they promise to do and oil producers are all-in for massively increasing production, forget commitments to cut back by 2030. Nobody cares. It’s basically, blah, blah, blah, ignore climate change but charge ahead with rapid fossil fuel growth plans and let greenhouse gases like CO2 do whatever they do to the climate system, who cares?

Here’s a sampling of name-recognition statements before the doors opened for Climate Week/NYC: John Kerry, the US former climate envoy: “We made an agreement in Dubai to transition away from fossil fuels. The problem? We aren’t doing that. We’re not implementing. The implications for everybody, and life on this planet, is gigantic.” (Source: Kerry Gives Scathing Rating on Climate Action: ‘Is There a Letter Underneath Z?’ The Guardian, September 23, 2024)

Meanwhile, in the real world, apart from the fantasy world of Climate Week/NYC, wealthy countries are handing out new oil and gas exploration leases hand over fist despite COP28 talks in Dubai last year to cut back production of emissions by 2030, blah, blah, blah. According to António Guterres, secretary general of the UN: “In signing such a surge of new oil and gas licenses, they are signing away our future,” Ibid.

According to Al Gore: “Many people felt it was a great victory to have that language about transitioning away from fossil fuels, I felt that too. But now look at the agenda for this year’s COP and they’ve completely ignored that. The climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis, the fossil fuel industry is the wealthiest and most powerful industry in the history of the world. They fight ferociously to stop anything that would stop consumption of fossil fuels. They are way better at capturing politicians than emissions,” Ibid.

“A weariness with seemingly endless, fruitless meetings about the climate crisis – there have been annual UN talks on this for nearly 30 years – and a litany of unfulfilled promises is particularly grating for the small island states most vulnerable to the impacts of floods, droughts and heatwaves, despite themselves only emitting minuscule amounts of greenhouse gases, “Ibid.

According to Philip Davis, prime minister of the Bahamas: “I’m tired of talks, I want to see some action. We have been talking about climate change for 29 years now where are we today? For the first time in one whole year, we have been over 1.5C – that should shake us. I’m not listening now, I want to see some action, real action,” Ibid.

Many readers interpret articles like this one as too negative, not holding out enough hope that technology will save the day by removing excess CO2 from the atmosphere (extremely doubtful) or some other miraculous event like fusion technology, mimicking the sun, that really works, saving the day (decades away) or renewables like solar and wind coming to the rescue. Meaning, we should put a positive spin on the human connection to combating climate change, blah, blah, blah!

Well, after 30 years of UN climate conferences, inclusive of all of the nations of the world assembled together to address the issue, and after 30 years of promises by 195 countries to fix it, carbon CO2 emissions (which must be reduced as priority number one) have never been higher throughout human history and global mean temperatures of +1.5°C above pre-industrial for 12+months running 2023-34 have exceeded the limit 195 nations promised not to exceed at Paris ’15, and with oil companies publicly admitting production levels are ramping up considerably higher than Paris ’15 commitments, 30 years of promises are going backwards faster than ever before.

In fact, the two key issues in all climate change conferences for the past 30 years, i.e., CO2 emissions and global mean temperatures, are accelerating much faster than ever before, setting new all-time records in 2024. It’s not difficult to see why global warming is rapidly accelerating to dangerous levels because of excessive CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels. Recent acceleration has doubled and tripled historical rates. This spooky increase has occurred over only the past couple of years.

The numbers tell the story: (the origins of climate change/global heat)

August 2024 global temperature relative to 1880-1920 @ +1.56°C warmest August on record.

Atmospheric CO2 (Aug. 2024) 422.72 ppm vs. 419.56 ppm (Aug. 2023) = +3.16 ppm. Historical comparisons: (1) 2000-year CO2 change +1.26 ppm (2) 1990-year CO2 change +1.14 ppm (3) 1960-year CO2 change +0.71 ppm.

Annual CO2 released into atmosphere from burning fossil fuels: 9 billion metric tons (1960) vs. 37.4 billion metric tons (2023)

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This article was originally published on September 27, 2024 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Amazon Death Rattle

Photo by Andrew Tom is licensed by Unsplash
Photo by Andrew Tom is licensed by Unsplash

Amazon Death Rattle

By Robert Hunziker

The Amazon rainforest is in deep trouble. Labeling it a “crisis” however seems too hackneyed and not descriptive enough because the devastation is beyond description.

The magnificent rainforest is morphing into a tinder box that’s trapped in the worst drought of all time. According to MapBiomas, an all-time record amount of land is charred and smoldering as 180,000 fires this year, over 50,000 current, light up Brazil, potentially threatening major cities Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

An estimated 20% of the Brasilia National Forest burned just last week.” (ABC News, 9/10/2024)

What’s happening in the Amazon may strike people as routine fires that news outlets have been covering for years. Nothing could be further from the truth. Historically, there’s nothing routine about this. Today’s fires are an unnerving example of a trend that is unique to modern-day society. Historically, over millennia, the Amazon rainforest did not experience massive take-down wildfires that incinerated all life forms.

“The Amazon evolved for millions of years without fire… its plants and animals lack the necessary adaptation….” (Source: Amazon Rainforest Fires: Everything You Need to Know, College of Natural Resources, North Carolina State University, September 23, 2019)

Making matters far-far worse than any previous fires and a chilling new development: “Almost half of the fires in the Amazon burned pristine forests, according to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. That is far from typical. It means fighting deforestation in the Amazon is no longer enough to stop fires. This matters because it shows that the fire-control practices in some of the world’s most biodiverse places are not working. And that threatens myriad forms of life, including us.” (Source: The Fires That Could Reshape the Amazon, The New York Times, September 17, 2024)

From Canada to Siberia to Brazil the world is on fire. When forests burn, they emit CO2. Therefore, wildfires convert carbon-sequestering trees into CO2 belching monsters in competition with gas-powered automobiles. This is global warming feeding on itself.

As a result, forest fires are getting worse. Burned-out forests in 2023 topped all previous years by a record-smashing +24%. “The latest data on forest fires confirms what we’ve long feared: Forest fires are becoming more widespread, burning at least twice as much tree cover today as they did two decades ago.” (Source: The Latest Data Confirm Forests Fires Are Getting Worse, World Resources Institute, August 13, 2024)

Global warming has turned lethal. In Brazil, a drought that began last year has become the worst on record, according to national disaster monitoring agency Cemaden. “In general, the 2023-2024 drought is the most intense, long-lasting in some regions and extensive in recent history, at least in the data since 1950,” according to Ana Paula Cunha, a drought researcher with Cemaden. (Source: South America Surpasses Record for Fires, Reuters, September 13, 2024)

According to Rachael Garrett, Professor of Conservation/University of Cambridge: “Deforestation of the Amazon has led to a reduction in rainfall in Brazil, throwing the ecosystem off balance and causing a loop of drought and devastating wildfires now impacted by the worst drought in memory.” (Source: Brazil Experiencing Record-Breaking Wildfires as Persistent Drought Affects the Amazon Rainforest, ABC News, September 14, 2024)

Global warming has become more than the mighty Amazon can handle, turning charcoal black, smothering smoke. This one-and-only world gem directly influences global hydrology from the cornfields of Iowa to the crest of the Tibetan Plateau 15,000 km away; it is literally at the heartbeat of the planet and suffering, in early stages of a massive die-off. Loss of the rainforest will bring a different world, a foreign world that nobody wants to recognize.

“According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), there were over 65,000 fire hotspots by the end of August 2024—the highest number for this period since 2005.” (Source: 2024 Marks the Worst Year for Amazon Fires Since 2005, Rainforest Foundation, 2024) Worse yet, of the fire hotspots, over 38,000 were recorded in August alone, an increase of 120% compared to the same month last year with 17,373 fire hotspots.

Since time immemorial, healthy rainforests don’t burn. Fires in healthy forests do not turn catastrophic. They remain low intensity and stay close to the ground, removing debris, small trees, and woody shrubs in the understory. The Amazon rainforest, when healthy, is shrouded by misty fog in a warm climate with lots of rain, up to 260 inches per year. But global warming has taken that description away. Recurring droughts are killing the rainforest, setting the stage for massive wildfires. NASA claims droughts come so frequently that large regions of the rainforest no longer recover. This is not normal. In a word, it is frightening.

A high-end collaboration of 80 scientists claims trees in western and southern Amazon face serious risk of dying because of global warming-induced droughts. (Source: Amazon – How Will it Cope with Drought? University of Leeds, April 26, 2023)

“Wildfires in the Amazon are choking swaths of Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador with smoke leading to evacuations, school closures, canceled flights and a dire threat to plant and animal life in the region… An estimated 20% of the Brasilia National Forest burned just last week.” (Source: ‘Out of Control’ Fires Ravage the Amazon Region, ABC News, September 10, 2024) This is so far beyond normal that it doesn’t even compute.

“The fires in California or the fires in Europe, those aren’t the same as the fires in South America. There’s an enormous difference — the loss of biodiversity,’ says Guillermo Villalobos, a political scientist focusing on climate science at Bolivian nonprofit Fundación Solon. ‘Forests like the Amazon are historically tropical forests, meaning they’ve never burned, they’ve never coexisted with the fire. This is terribly tragic for the ecosystem and the world. The Amazon is in its worst state of the last 50 years,” Ibid.

The statement “tropical forests never burned” tells a horrific tale that is impossible to ignore. Human activity has lit a devasting scorching change to nature that’s sparked by the advent of CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels, which causes excessive global warming, which is crushing the Amazon rainforest with recurring droughts that NASA says repeat so often that the once-mighty forest no longer recovers, no longer regrows. If fossil fuel emissions continue at current rates, the rainforest is destined to die. And the world will change like the remaking of a Hollywood science fiction film.

Science fiction writers have written stories about dying planets, like Dune, where inhabitants of the planet Arrakis wear “stillsuits” that recycle body moisture. Interestingly, Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel was one of the first to take environmental concerns seriously and became a rallying point for the environmental movement of the late 1960s and 70s.

Now, fifty years later, fiction like Dune turns real right before our eyes. But where’s an environmental movement as strong, as effective, as pro-active as the 1960s and 70s on progressive legislation protecting the environment? It’s disappeared.

Alas, in the face of raging forests fires around the world, we’re going backwards on environmental protections, for example, the Supreme Court is stripping environmental legislation of the 1960s-70s: “The Supreme Court is effectively axing a major component of the Clean Water Act, rolling back 50 years of wetland protection in a declaration of war against nature by changing a word in the text of the Clean Water Act. Seldom, if ever, will repercussions of a Supreme Court decision be so far-reaching and detrimental to life for the planet. It’s a dagger strike deep into the heart of the world’s most significant life source. Justice Samuel Alito “changing the text of the Clean Water Act” is guaranteed to bring forth much, much worse flooding, especially along coastlines as sea levels rise from global warming; it’ll engender new sources of pollution of streams and lakes and bring on huge losses in biodiversity and crush the beauty of nature displaced by concrete, asphalt and development. Most importantly, aquifers depend upon wetlands for replenishment.” (Source: Supremes Declare War on Wetlands, May 29, 2023)

According to the Sierra Club: “The Supreme Court’s decision will open millions of acres of wetlands—all formerly protected by the Clean Water Act—to pollution and destruction.”

Even Justice Brett Kavanaugh took exception, “scolding” Samuel Alito for “taking liberties with congressional law,” Ibid.

Stop CO2 emissions. Stop deforestation.

We’re methodically killing the planet. The planet cannot count on life support coming to its rescue. Hmm, the planet is life support.

But life support is burning.
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This article was originally published on September 20, 2024 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Antartica’s Deep Vulnerability Exposed

Photo by James Rathmell is licensed by Unsplash.
Photo by James Rathmell is licensed by Unsplash.

Antarctica’s Deep Vulnerability Exposed at 11th Scientific Conference

By Robert Hunziker

The 11th Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research conference was held in Pucón, Chile August 19-23, 2024. Fifteen-hundred academics, researchers, and scientists specializing in Antarctica met to share cutting-edge research. Reports at the conference exposed new dimensions of the Antarctic risk profile that should move the world’s leadership posthaste to mitigate society’s self-destructive dependence on fossil fuels.

Antarctica is starting to carry the brunt of too much CO2 leading to too much heat, leading to unstable ice sheets. And it’s happening much, much faster than anybody thought possible. This is a relatively new development that could have far-reaching consequences.

For example, Gino Casassa, glaciologist, head of Chilean Antarctica Institute commented: “Current estimates show sea levels rising by 4 meters (13 feet) by 2100 and more if emissions continue to grow.” (Source: Scientists in Chile Question if Antarctica Has Hit a Point of No Return, Reuters, August 28, 2024)

Thirteen feet higher won’t suddenly appear in 2100. It builds up over decades. Assuming emissions “continue to grow”, as warned by Dr. Casassa, you’ve gotta wonder, with 13 feet by 2100, what will 2035, or 2050, look like? That’s right around the corner.

Sea level rise is one of the most challenging fields in science and thus produces the most complex results. For example, in comparison to Casassa’s estimate of 13 feet by 2100, a recent study: What Are the Best – and Worst – Case Scenarios for Sea Level Rise? MIT Climate Portal, June 12, 2024: “By 2100, we could see as little as 8 inches of additional sea level rise, or over 6 feet—based partly on how much we continue to pollute the climate, and partly on how the oceans respond to climate change that’s already baked in… despite the enormous stakes for the future of humanity, it remains frustratingly difficult to know how much sea level rise is in store for us. All we know for sure is that taking strong and immediate action to control our greenhouse gas emissions gives us the best chance to avoid meters of sea level rise. ‘The difference between the low-end projections and the high-end projections is many trillions of dollars in infrastructure, and hundreds of millions of people losing their homes,’ Minchew says (Brent Minchew, MIT geophysicist) ‘But we don’t have a good answer to which one of those scenarios is more likely.”

The biggest concern echoed throughout the conference hall: “Antarctica is changing faster than expected.” For example: “Extreme weather events in the ice-covered continent were no longer hypothetical presentations, but first-hand accounts from researchers about heavy rainfall, intense heat waves and sudden Foehn (strong dry winds) events at research stations that led to mass melting, giant glacier breakoffs and dangerous weather conditions with global implications,” Ibid.

A hot topic was whether Antarctica has reached a tipping point, a point of accelerated, irreversible sea ice loss, especially West Antarctica where the Thwaites Doomsday Glacier is located. But scientists have yet to determine whether current observations indicate a ‘temporary blip” or a “downward plunge of sea ice.” Nevertheless, by all appearances, it’s advanced far enough for “plunging sea ice” to raise very serious concerns.

What is clear is the rate of change, unprecedented, nothing compares. According to Liz Keller, a paleoclimate specialist at Victoria University of Wellington/New Zealand; ‘”You might see the same rise in CO2 over thousands of years, and now it’s happened in 100 years,” Ibid. Which is a prime example of today’s human-generated climate change working >10 times faster than nature on its own.

That one factor is what confuses those who argue “oh yeah, the climate always changes, so what?” However, there’s regular climate change in nature, like they allude to, which takes centuries to develop and then, there’s turbo-charged climate change, like we’ve got now that takes decades, not centuries, thanks to human-generated excessive CO2 thrusts from burning fossil fuels.

Climate change has become a straight-forward function of human activity.

Hopefulness

According to some reports at the conference, “the worst-case scenarios can be avoided by dramatically reducing fossil fuel emissions.” Specifically, regarding mitigation, Mike Weber, a paleoceanographer, University of Bonn, who specializes in Antarctic ice sheet stability: “If we keep emissions low, we can stop this eventually. If we keep them high, we have a runaway situation and we cannot do anything.”

On the other hand, there is evidence that ecosystems may already be exceeding boundaries, e.g., Mathieu Casado, a paleoclimate and polar meteorologist at France’s Climate and Environment Sciences Laboratory claims dozens of ice core collected throughout the ice sheet have allowed him to reconstruct temperature patterns in Antarctica dating back 800,000 years. The last time the planet was as warm as today, 125,000 years ago, sea levels were 6-to-9 meters (20-to-30 feet) higher with a large contribution coming from West Antarctica. Ipso facto, with temperatures today as warm as 125,000 years ago causing seas to be 20-30 feet higher, then every coastal megacity should be/will be flooded, which begs the obvious question of “how long do these things take to play out?” And, more importantly, how do we get CO2 and temperatures back down?

Speakers at the conference made special note of the extraordinary speed and amount of carbon -CO2- being pumped into the atmosphere, unprecedented, causing rapid global warming. There’s no previous paleoclimate record of CO2 hitting the planet with such ferocity and large scale and so suddenly. This recalls Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick that famously said it all with one vertical image.

The hockey stick graph is a visualization of the average temperature of the Northern Hemisphere over the past 500 to 2000 years. Because of the spectacular hockey stick concept, Professor Mann became an overnight target of right-wing charlatans and fossil fuel attempts to destroy him. They failed: A Jury in February 2024 awarded Mann more than US$1 million in a lawsuit that accused two conservative commentators of defamation for challenging his research and comparing him to a convicted child molester.

“The Hockey Stick achieved prominence in a 2001 UN report on climate change and quickly became a central icon in the ‘climate wars.’ The real issue has never been the graph’s data but rather its implied threat to those who oppose governmental regulation and other restraints to protect the environment and planet.” (Foreword by Bill Nye, The Hockey Stick and The Climate Wars by Michael E. Mann)

In that regard, with parts of West Antarctica hanging by a very big thread, timing couldn’t be worse as the climate wars heat up once again: Bloomberg News headline: Right-Wing Populist Backlash Is Threatening Climate Fight d/d June 20, 2024: “The green revolution is in trouble. The rise of the nationalist right in much of the Western world has placed huge question marks over commitments to transition out of fossil fuels to fight climate change. Donald Trump in the US and other populist politicians have vowed to jettison low-carbon policies and downplayed the impact of global warming.”

Antarctica has rapidly become a dangerous climate change symbol of major concern and nail-biting as it serves to verify Mann’s early warnings. Global warming has become humanity’s number one challenge for survival of the species. Mann’s Hockey Stick is an amazing analog of 8 billion people sucking up oil from the planet, belching out CO2 in hockey stick fashion, vertically, up, up, and away into an increasingly overloaded CO2 atmosphere that weighs on planetary heat.

Reality

Meanwhile, as stated numerous times in articles like this one, the oil and gas industry has publicly brushed aside concerns about climate change. Looking ahead to the future, it’s full bore, full speed ahead with record-setting fossil fuel production and record-setting CO2 on a very full agenda of oil and gas production to 2030 and beyond.

“The world’s fossil-fuel producers are on track to nearly quadruple the amount of extracted oil and gas from newly approved projects by the end of this decade, with the US leading the way in a surge of activity that threatens to blow apart agreed climate goals.” (The Guardian, March 28, 2024). Questioning whether West Antarctica, especially the Doomsday Glacier, can survive the onslaught of fossil fuel interests looking the other way as right-wing interests threaten anything and everything green.

According to Mike Weber, paleoceanographer, University of Bonn, who specializes in Antarctic ice sheet stability, regarding fossil fuel CO2 emissions: “If we keep them high, we have a runaway situation, and we cannot do anything.”

We’re keeping ’em high.

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This article was originally published on September 13, 2024 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Humans Rescue Doomsday Glacier?

Photo by Bruce Warrington is licensed by Unsplash.
Photo by Bruce Warrington is licensed by Unsplash.

Humans Rescue Doomsday Glacier?

By Robert Hunziker

It was only 3 years ago when a group of distinguished climate scientists led by Erin C. Pettit (Oregon State University) said Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf of the Thwaites Glacier/Antarctica, aka: Doomsday Glacier, could collapse “within as little as 5 years.” (Source: C34A-07 Collapse of Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf by intersecting fractures, American Geophysical Union, December 15, 2021)

Assuming they nail it, what happens around the year 2026? Sea levels start rising more than previously but nobody is sure by how much as millions of people could be impacted by flooding. According to the Pettit study: “TEIS (Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf) has the potential to increase the contribution of Thwaites Glacier to sea level rise by up to 25%.” TEIS buttresses one-third of the world’s widest glacier at 75 miles across. It is a big deal, a very big deal. All of which prompts the question whether it further destabilizes all of Thwaites? The answer seems to be “yes, it probably would.”

However, there are studies only two years later (2023) that claim the loss of Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf will not impact sea level rise as much as suggested by the Pettit study. For example: Limited Impact of Thwaites Ice Shelf on Future Ice Loss From Antarctica., Geophysical Research Letters, 2023.

Today, there is plenty of research about Thwaites that runs the gamut from a UN climate change panel’s worst-case scenario that collapse would cause global sea levels to drastically rise by three feet by 2070, 10 feet by 2100 to a recent study by Dartmouth College researchers, which disputes the UN panel’s modeling, claiming Thwaites will not see that type of collapse this century. Yet, the Dartmouth report “says retreat is still dire.” (Source: Study Finds Highest Prediction of Sea-Level Rise Unlikely, Dartmouth.edu, August 21, 2024)

The Doomsday Glacier is located at the northern edge of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet. It drains into the Amundsen Sea. And it is big! It’s the world’s widest glacier at 75 miles across. And it is one of the most talked about glaciers in the world. It has its own study group: The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, which consist of UK and US scientists investigating one of the most unstable glaciers in the world. For perspective purposes, there are more than 500 named glaciers in Antarctica and many thousands more not named. But Thwaites stands out as the most notorious and most celebrated glaciology superstar.

Thwaites Glacier is like a sore that does not heal; it constantly throbs, drawing attention because it is a real threat to every coastal megacity on the planet. Alas the newest news is that ocean temperatures are skyrocketing, suddenly turning straight up like never before, starting within the past two years. In turn, that’s what works underwater at loosening up Thwaites for collapse. For example, a NYT headline d/d February 27, 2024, says it all: “Scientists Are Freaking Out About Ocean Temperatures.” And, there’s this: Live Science d/d May 21, 2024: Warm Ocean Water is Rushing Beneath Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier,’ Making Collapse More Likely.

With record-breaking ocean temperatures at rates nobody expected, how long will it take for the Doomsday Glacier to melt completely? According to Eric Rignot, Senior Research Scientist NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, when interviewed by USA Today d/d May 20th, 2024: “It will take many decades, not centuries… part of the answer also depends on whether our climate keeps getting warmer or not which depends completely on us and how we manage the planet.”

But low-lying metropolises like Miami Beach are not as concerned about melting taking “many decades, not centuries” as they are concerned about which decade starts the major melting process. This is where the rubber meets the road for low-lying megacities of the world, according to a UN report: New York City, Cairo, Mumbai, Jakarta, Shanghai, Copenhagen, London, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Lagos, and Los Angeles are all at risk.

So, which decade does it start with full force? Nobody knows but Thwaites is tipsy. That much is known, and that’s why Thwaites has its own study group. Conceivably, the initial decades of collapse could be disastrous.

The risks of collapse have never been higher. Here’s why: Climate change mitigation efforts across the globe have been feeble as CO2 and global warming in parallel have set new all-time higher records in both 2023 and 2024. These are the highest records in human history. People that truly understand the implications are extremely edgy about the prospects of unexpected climate-related shocks over the near-term, meaning not 2050 and not 2100 and not some distant fantasy, but within society’s current generations.

Forget Net Zero Emissions by 2050 (“NZE”), that’s a crapshoot that creates false hope.

“Despite many pledges and efforts by governments to tackle the causes of global warming, CO2 emissions from energy and industry have increased by 60% since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed in 1992… pledges by governments to date – even if fully achieved – fall well short of what is required to bring global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050 and give the world an even chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C.” (Source: Net Zero by 2050, International Energy Agency, 2024) This report also claims: “As the major source of global emissions, the energy sector holds the key to responding to the world’s climate challenge.” The report offers solutions.

In that regard, of special note and concern, according to Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial for the first time in human history for a 12-month period from July 2023 to June 2024, when it averaged 1.64°C. According to the UN climate report, sustained temperatures above 1.5C pre-industrial triggers major tipping points like breakdown of ocean circulation systems and others, but that one alone is all it takes for all hell to break lose.

Human Rescue Plan

The gravity of the global situation is only too obvious when a group of glaciologists feels compelled to organize a plan to “Save the Doomsday Glacier” led by John Moore, Research Professor, Arctic Centre, Lapland University/Finland. Within the next two years the group intends to test a prototype fixit in a Norwegian fjord. ultimately installing a giant submarine curtain, up to 50 miles across, that seals off glaciers like Thwaites from Antarctic warm currents. The costs for erecting a curtain across the Amundsen Sea would be $80 billion to see if human intervention really works in the most challenging, treacherous region of the world.

“The proposal calls for a series of giant overlapping plastic or fiber curtains tethered to concrete foundations. To hold the warm current at bay, the curtain would stretch for 50 miles across the entrance to the Amundsen Sea and extend upwards for much of the 2,000 feet from the sea floor to the surface.” (Source: Fred Pearce, As ‘Doomsday’ Glacier Melts, Can an Artificial Barrier Save It? YaleEnvironment360, August 26, 2024)

Thus, human ingenuity is called into action for one of the biggest assignments of all time. Equally significant to the herculean human effort to put a big human thumb in the Antarctic dyke, is the significance of what this says about how far and how fast global warming has progressed. And, even more important, what’s to stop it? And how many doomsday scenarios can humanity handle?

Thwaites is not only a threat, but also an omen, a forewarning of what’s to come.

Every year 195 nations gather for their annual UN climate meeting to make declarations about what’s happened and what they plan on doing, but no tangible results since 1992 when they started. Instead, CO2 and global temps are setting new record highs by the year every year. This is directly opposite the stated objectives of UN climate conferences ongoing for over 30 years.

The next meeting this November is in Baku, Azerbaijan, an oil and gas country, similar to last year’s meeting in Dubai. And since oil and gas CO2 emissions are the principal cause of global warming, which, in turn, is the reason Thwaites threatens coastal megacities with flooding; why are oil and gas producing countries the focus for holding meetings about the problems of global warming?

Have Oil Producers hijacked UN climate conferences?

Answer: Yes, they have hijacked UN COPs (Conference of the Parties). Oh please! It’s blatantly obvious. COP28 was held in Dubai. The serving president of the climate conference COP28 was Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, who’s chair of Dhabi National Oil Company and who publicly stated there is “no science” behind calls for a phase out of fossil fuels. But he conveniently overlooks reams, and reams, of long-standing scientific evidence of CO2 emissions directly linked to global temperature levels. It’s established science, period.

As of today, there are plenty of public statements by the fossil fuel industry that it has decided to ignore the climate change issue and move ahead full blast with increased production. This is reality. For example, The Guardian d/d April 2024: World Set to Quadruple Oil and Gas Production by 2030, Led by New US Projects. Fasten seat belts it’s blast-off time, meaning hotter and hotter, faster and faster, as Thwiates totters.

One can only hope that (1) geoengineering massive glaciers (how many more are there and will it even work?) and (2) geoengineering to remove CO2 from the atmosphere (extremely questionable as to proficiency of scale?) can save the day because an overkill of CO2 emissions is coming like there’s no tomorrow. Oh, by the way, the fossil fuel industry is also banking on technology to save the day.

But there are as many question marks as there are hopeful proposals and too little certainty. Alas, the world is riddled with sharp divisions over: (1) reality of climate change (2) how to tackle the biggest threat in human history (3) and, then, there’s this: Bloomberg News headline: Right-Wing Populist Backlash Is Threatening Climate Fight d/d June 20, 2024: “The green revolution is in trouble. The rise of the nationalist right in much of the Western world has placed huge question marks over commitments to transition out of fossil fuels to fight climate change. Donald Trump in the US and other populist politicians have vowed to jettison low-carbon policies and downplayed the impact of global warming.”

Meanwhile, the global-warming-timebomb is ticking faster than ever, working overtime, not waiting for some kind of universal resolution for the only issue, other than nuclear, that threatens to bring our own self-destruction.

The Thwaites protective curtain will hopefully be in place sometime by 2040, hmm.

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This article was originally published on September 6, 2024 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Tipping Points – Where Things Stand

Photo by Roxanne Desgagnés is licensed by Unsplash
Photo by Roxanne Desgagnés is licensed by Unsplash

Tipping Points – Where Things Stand

By Robert Hunziker

Major planetary boundaries that support life are at risk of collapse. This is happening at speeds that climate scientists never thought possible. What are the consequences and what, if anything, can be done?

Johan Rockström, Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, Germany recently gave a 20-mimute TED speech: The Tipping Points of Climate Change. He is a world-class climate scientist specializing in planetary boundary frameworks. Of note, Dr. Rockström is one climate scientist that other scientists pay attention to when he talks.

A summation of what should be categorized as “one of the most important speeches of 2024” is included herein.

It’s fair to say that he views recent abrupt Earth system changes as profoundly disturbing and far beyond the boundaries of what climate science expected. In fact, climate scientists have never seen such rapid transition of what’s normally a slow-moving Earth system now in the wrong direction so rapidly that it’s threatening the existence of key ecosystems that make today’s life possible.

In his words: “The planet is now in a place where we’ve underestimated risks. Abrupt changes are occurring way beyond realistic expectations in science.” It was fifteen years ago when he introduced a planetary boundary framework composed of nine earth system processes to determine the stability, resilience, and life support on planet Earth.

Then, ten years ago 195 countries signed the Paris ’15 climate agreement.

And in 2019, five years ago, the signatories to Paris ‘15 entered the most decisive decade of this generation where their choices this decade determine the future for all generations on Earth.

The scientific state of the planet as of August 2024:

!) We’ve reached 1.2°C mean surface temperature above pre-industrial. This is the warmest in 100,000 years.

2) We touched 1.5°C as an annual mean temperature in 2023.

3) The biggest worry is evidence of an “acceleration of warming.” Over the past 50 years, the rate of warming was 0.18C per decade from 1970 to 2010 but from 2014 onward it’s been 0.26C per decade, or +45%, and if this course continues, we’ll crash thru 2C within 20 years and hit 3C by 2200, a disastrous outcome, caused by humans.

4) But it’s much more than CO2 that’s at issue. Several things are undermining the stability of the planet. For example, over-consumption of fresh water, the 6th mass extinction of species, abusing freshwater systems with nitrogen phosphorus, etc.

A combination of factors has disrupted the Earth system by spreading chaos across the planet, droughts, floods, heat waves, disease patterns, human-caused massive storms, 40°C (104°F) life-threatening heat across all continents in the year 2023. In Mecca, 52°C (126°F) hit over 1,000 worshipers who lost their lives at the Hajj pilgrimage in June 2024. At current rates, by 2050 expect an 18% economic loss of GDP or $38 trillion per year. The abrupt change in Earth systems is starting to hurt in human social costs and economic costs.

And it is happening at only 1.2°C mean surface global temperature. But we’re on a path to 2.7C this century. Will floods, droughts, and heat waves get worse? Without immediate mitigation efforts, yes.

As far back as 3,000,000 years the planet never exceeded 2C. We’ve been living in “The Corridor of Life.” It’s all we’ve got.

Alas, the risks are even more serious. There are two major risks to the planetary system: 1) buffering capacity 2) crossing tipping points. And both are moving in the wrong direction much faster than anybody thought possible.

Buffering capacity is Earth’s ability to dampen shocks and stress, e.g., soaking up greenhouse gases that impact nature on land and ocean. Mother Earth has been very, very forgiving, as 53% of CO2 from fossil fuels have been soaked up by intact nature on land and sea. However, there is increasing scientific evidence of “widening cracks in this system.”

For example, land absorbs 31% of CO2 of greenhouse emissions, but the boreal forests in Canada and temperate mixed forests in Germany and Russia are all starting to lose carbon uptake capacity. More alarming yet, the latest science shows part of Amazon rainforest, the richest biome on terrestrial land, has already tipped and in parts of the forest it is no longer a carbon sink. It’s becoming a carbon source. Yet, the Amazon is vital to the health of the planet, playing a critical role in the global carbon cycle and water cycle and responsible for absorbing billions of tons of emissions. This unique one-of-a-kind force of nature is at risk like never before.

But what’s most cause for concern is the ocean. It absorbs 90% of the heat caused by human-induced climate change. This is well understood. But what’s really worrying is the latest data on temperature all-across the ocean. It has been getting warmer and warmer since 1980. Then, suddenly, out of the blue, in 2023 temperatures went completely off the charts at 0.4C above the warmest temps of all previous years.

What’s happening?

Scientists do not know what’s happening, but it is off the charts and continuing in that same direction in 2024.

Searching for answers, the number one candidate is “energy imbalance caused by humans.” The imbalance is enormous, for example, in one year alone the heat equivalent of 300-times the entire global electricity system is absorbed by the Earth system.

Meanwhile, scientists question whether the ocean is losing its resilience, at risk of releasing heat back into the atmosphere, thus self-amplifying the warming process. Science does not have answers for this, but something totally unprecedented in this regard may be happening right before our eyes.

Here’s what is known for certain… The ocean is sounding the alarm.

The planetary system is now at a point where we’re forced to ask the following questions: Are we are risk of pushing the planet out of the basin of attraction or the stability of the planet where we’ve been since the last ice age? Are we headed to unstoppable Hot House Earth with self-amplified warming and losing life support?

The bigger question is: What could take us there?

The answer is “crossing over tipping points” takes us there.

Crossing tipping points references the big systems (a) Greenland (b) the ice sheets (c) overturning of heat in the North Atlantic (d) the Amazon rainforest, by pushing them too far, thus tipping over from a state that helps us to a state of self-amplifying in the wrong direction. This is taking the planet from a mode of cooling and dampening to self-amplifying and warming.

There are 16 tipping systems that regulate the climate system. Five of these tipping systems are what’s referred to as ground zero in the Arctic connection thru the ocean via the AMOC of the Atlantic overturning heat all the way down to Antarctica. We depend upon this big biophysical system for stability of the planet. At what temperatures is this at risk of tipping?

For the first time, we have an answer. The average temperature at which 5 of 16 are likely to cross the tipping point is at 1.5C, including (1) the Greenland ice sheet (2) West Antarctica ice sheet (3) abrupt thawing permafrost (4) losing all tropical coral reefs and (5) collapse of the Bering Sea ice. The two major ice sheets hold 10M (33-feet) of sea level rise.

(Editorial: According to Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial for the first time in human history for a 12-month period from July 2023 to June 2024, when it averaged 1.64°C)

In all, the more science learns about the climate system, the higher science discovers the risks. We’ve got a planet that’s smack dab in the midst of a high-level danger zone.

For example, the Amazon basin risks tipping into savannah, over time. Currently, the risk is loss of the forest system; tipping can occur at 1.5-2C, assuming loss of 20-25% of forest cover. It’s currently at 17% deforestation. This is very close to a tipping point when there is no turning back.

What must be done to avoid what increasingly looks inevitable?

According to the IPCC, to stay under 1.5C (sustained annually over a few years) we need to operate within the global carbon budget. But all that remains of that budget is 200B tons of CO2. Yet, 40B tons is emitted per year giving 5 years.at current emissions rates before we hit overbudget. Moreover, the IPCC says a pathway for a safe landing is to reduce emissions by 7% per year for a safe landing to net zero by 2050.

(Editorial- that’ll take some serious work: Global CO2 emissions are blasting off to the upside and not looking back)

Status of Atmospheric CO2 (Mauna Loa):

August 2, 2024 – 424.76 ppm

August 2, 2023 – 421.52 ppm

One-year change: 3.24 ppm

1960-year change: 0.71 ppm

Meanwhile, we’ve already overloaded the climate system with gases and other problems that inevitably lead to a period of overshoot. Therefore, society must be prepared for breaching 1.5C between 2030 and 2035 or within 5-to-10 years.

There are two main messages; 1) buckle up- we know 100% for sure it means more droughts, more floods, more heat waves, more human reinforced storms, more disease over one generation, plus, in time. 2023 which was the warmest year on record will be looked back on as a mild year, 2) why would the planet come back to 1.5 after an overshoot?

The health of the planet must be kept intact. We must have a planet that can continue to absorb 50% of CO2 without crossing tipping points. But, of special note and caution, there is no holding to 1.5C by only phasing out fossil fuels. More needs to be done like coming back to nature’s biodiversity and maintaining all the planetary boundaries of nature.

We are at a pivot point for either transforming the world for the better or going over the edge… which will it be.?

We must govern the entire planet…we have the solutions, i.e., (1) rapid transition away from fossil fuels (2) transitioning to a circular business model (3) transitioning to healthy diets (4) scaling regeneration and restoration of marine systems, forests, and wetlands.

Already of serious concern, starting from 2020, emissions had to be cut in half by 2030 to stay out of trouble but halfway into the decade and emissions are steeper than ever. This is what really concerns scientists.

In summation, scientists have issued warnings for years and years, but now even those warnings look too conservative. Problematically, it is obvious that none of the prior warnings were embraced by the 195 countries that committed to mitigate emissions at Paris ’15 UN climate agreement. Since 2015, atmospheric CO2 has steadily climbed, year-by-year, never down, to all-time highs as global mean temperatures sets new records by the month.

The evidence is clear: Paris ’15 has not made a dent in global warming, which is currently cruising up, up and away, all-time records and accelerating with nothing standing in its way. In fact, since 195 countries agreed to tackle the issue, emissions and temperatures have done the opposite of what they agreed to by increasing at the fastest rates in human history.

The Paris ‘15 plans to mitigate emissions are so far behind schedule that it’s questionable whether it’s achievable. What’s to stop emissions and temperatures from getting worse and sea level from flooding coastal megacities? Eight of the world’s top ten megacities are coastal.

Solution: Opportunity is a prerequisite for a solution and 195 nations opportunistically meet once per year at a UN climate conference. Maybe they’ll adopt an agreement to control greenhouse gas emissions that’s meaningfully enforceable. Voluntary doesn’t work.

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This article was originally published on August 23, 2024 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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The Future of Our World by Noam Chomsky

A portrait of linguist Noam Chomsky in 2015
A portrait of linguist Noam Chomsky in 2015 by Augusto Starita is licensed by CC BY-SA 2.0

The Future of Our World by Noam Chomsky

By Robert Hunziker

Noam Chomsky (95) famous dissident and father of modern linguistics, considered one of the world’s leading intellectuals, is recovering from a stroke he suffered at age 94 and now living with his wife in Brazil. According to a report in Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now d/d July 2, 2024, this past June Brazilian President Lula personally visited Chomsky, holding his hand, saying: “You are one of the most influential people of my life” personally witnessed by Vijay Prashad, co-author with Noam Chomsky, The Withdrawal (The New Press).

Indeed, Noam Chomsky is established as one of the most influential intellectuals of the 21st century.

A pre-stroke video interview with Chomsky conducted at the University of Arizona is extraordinarily contemporary and insightful with a powerful message: What Does the Future Hold Q&A With Noam Chomsky hosted by Lori Poloni-Staudinger, Dean of School of Behavioral Sciences and Professor, School of Government and Public Policy, University of Arizona.

Chomsky joined the School of Behavioral Sciences in 2017 and taught “Consequences of Capitalism.”

This article is a synopsis of some of Chomsky’s responses to questions, and it includes third-party supporting facts surrounding his statements about the two biggest risks to humanity’s continual existence.

What Does the Future Hold?

Question: geopolitics, unipolar versus multipolar

Chomsky: First there are two crises that determine whether it is even appropriate to consider how geopolitics will look in the future: (1) threat of nuclear war (2) the climate crisis.

“If the climate crisis is not dealt with in the next few years, human society is essentially finished. Everything else is moot unless these two crises are dealt with.”

(This paragraph is not part of Chomsky’s answer) Regarding Chomsky’s warning, several key indicators of the climate crisis are flashing red, not green. For example, nine years ago 195 nations at the UN climate conference Paris ‘15 agreed to take measures to mitigate CO2 emissions to hold global warming to under 1.5°C pre-industrial. Yet, within only nine years of that agreement amongst 195 nations, according to Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial for the first time in human history for a 12-month period from February 2023 to January 2024 and now fast approaching danger zones. Obviously, nations of the world did not follow their own dictates, and if not them, who will?

Paleoclimatology has evidence of what to expect if the “climate crisis,” as labeled by Chomsky, is not dealt with (The following paragraph is also not part of Chomsky’s answer): “While today’s CO2-driven climate change scenario is unprecedented in human history, similar circumstances existed in the geological record that give us an idea of what to expect in the way of global sea level rise, and the process that will get us there. About 3.2 million years ago, during the Pliocene epoch, CO2 levels were about 400 ppm (427 ppm today) and temperatures were 2-3°C above the “pre-industrial” temperatures of 1850-1880. At the same time, proxy data indicate global sea level was about 52 feet (within a 39-foot to 66-foot range) higher than today.” (Source: The Sleeping Giant Awakens, Climate Adaptation Center, May 21, 2024)

Maybe that is why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) strongly suggests keeping temperatures ideally below 1.5°C and certainly not above 2.0°C pre-industrial.

Chomsky on World Power: Currently the center of world power, whether unipolar or multipolar is very much in the news. This issue has roots going back to the end of WWII when the US established overwhelming worldwide power. But now the Ukraine war has the world very much divided with most of world outside of the EU, US and its allies calling for diplomatic settlement. But the US position is that the war must continue to severely weaken Russia.

Consequently, Ukraine is dividing the world, and it shows up in the framework of unipolar versus multipolar. For example, the war has driven the EU away from independent status to firm control by the US. In turn the EU is headed towards industrial decline because of disruption of its natural trading partners, e.g., Russia is full of natural resources that the EU is lacking, which economist have always referred to as a “marriage made in heaven,” a natural trading relationship that has now been broken. (footnote: EU industrial production down 3.9% past 12 months)

And the Ukrainian imbroglio is cutting off EU access to markets in China e.g., China has been an enormous market for German industrial products. Meanwhile, the US is insisting upon a unipolar framework of world order that wants not only the EU but the world to be incorporated within something like the NATO system. Under US pressure NATO has expanded its reach to the Indo-Pacific region, meaning NATO is now obligated to take part in the US conflict with China.

Meantime, the rest of the world is trying to develop a multipolar world with several independent sectors of power. The BRICS countries Brazil, Russia, India, China, Indonesia, South Africa, want an independent source of power of their own. They are 40% of world economy that’s independent of US sanctions and of the US dollar.

These are developing conflicts over one raging issue and one developing issue. Ukraine is the raging issue; the developing issue is US conflict with China, which is developing its own projects in Eurasia, Africa, Middle East, South Africa, S9uth Asia, and Latin America.

The US is determined to prevent China’s economic development throughout the world. The Biden administration has “virtually declared a kind of war with China” by demanding that Western allies refuse to permit China to carry out technological development.

For example, the US insist others do not allow China access to any technology that has any US parts in it. This includes everything, as for example, Netherlands has a world-class lithographic industry which produces critical parts for semi-conductors for the modern high-tech economy. Now, Netherlands must determine whether it’ll move to an independent course to sell to China, or not… the same is true for Samsung, South Korea, and Japan.

The world is splintered along those lines as the framework for the foreseeable future.

Question— Will multinational corporations gain too much power and influence?

Chomsky suggests looking at them right now… US based multinationals control about one-half of the world’s wealth. They are first or second in every domain like manufacturing and retail; no one else is close. It’s extraordinary power. Based upon GDP, the US has 20% of world GDP, but if you look at US multinationals it’s more like 50%. Multinationals have extraordinary power over domestic policy in both the US and in other capitalistic countries. So, how will multinationals react when told they cannot deal with a major market, like China?

How does this develop over future years? The EU is going into a period of decline because of breaking relationships in trade and commercial business with the East. Yet, it’s not sure that the EU will stay subordinate to the US and willingly go into decline, or will the EU join the rest of the world and move into a more complex multipolar world and integrate with countries in the East? This is yet to be determined. For example, France’s President Emmanuel Macron (2017-) has been vilified and condemned for saying that after Russia is driven out of Ukraine, a way must be found to accommodate Russia within an international system, an initial crack in the US/EU relationship.

Threat of nuclear war question: Russia suspended the START Nuclear Arms Treaty with the US and how important is this to the threat of nuclear war?

Chomsky: It is very significant. It is the last remaining arms control treaty, the new START Treaty, Trump almost cancelled it. The treaty was due to expire in February when Biden took over in time to extend it, which he did.

Keep in mind that the US was instrumental in creating a regime which somewhat mitigates the threat of nuclear war, which means “terminal war.” We talk much too casually about nuclear war. There can’t be a nuclear war. If there is, we’re finished. It’s why the Doomsday Clock is set at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s been.

Starting with George W. Bush the US began dismantling arms control. Bush dismantled the ABM Treaty, a missile treaty very significantly part of the arms control system and an enormous threat to Russia. So, the dismantling allowed the US to set up installations right at the border of Russia. It’s a severe threat to Russia. And Russia has reacted.

The Trump administration got rid of the INF Treaty, the Reagan-Gorbachev treaty of 1987 which ended short-range missiles in Europe. Those missiles are now back in place on the borders of Russia. Trump, to make it clear that we meant business, arranged missile launches right away upon breaking of the treaty.

Trump destroyed the Open Skies Treaty which originated with Eisenhower stating that each side should share information about what the other side was doing to reduce the threat of misunderstanding.

Only the new START Treaty remains. And Russia suspended it. START restricts the number of strategic weapons for each side. The treaty terminates in 2026, but it’s suspended by Russia anyway. So, in effect there are no agreed upon restraints to increasing nuclear weapons.

Both sides already have way more nuclear weapons than necessary; One Trident nuclear submarine could destroy a couple hundred cities all over the world. And land based nuclear missile locations are known by both sides. So, if there is a threat, those would be hit immediately. Which means if there’s a threat, “you’d better send’em off, use’em or lose’em.” This obviously is a very touchy, extraordinarily risky situation because one mistake could amplify very quickly.

The new START Treaty that’s been suspended by Russia did restrict the enormous excessive number of strategic weapons. So, we should be in negotiations right now to expand it, restore it, and reinstitute the treaties the US has dismantled, the INF Treaty, Reagan-Gorbachev treaty, ABM Treaty, Open Stars Treaty should all be brought back.

Question: Will society muster the will for change for equity, prosperity, and sustainability?

Chomsky: There is no answer. It’s up to the population to come to grips with issues and say we are not going to march to the precipice and fall over it. But it’s exactly what our leaders are telling us to do. Look at the environmental crisis. It is well understood that we may have enough time to control heating of the environment, destruction of habitat, destruction of the oceans which is going to lead to total catastrophe. It’s not like everybody will die all at once, but we’re going to reach irreversible tipping points that becomes just a steady decline. To know how serious it is, look at particular areas of the world.

The Middle East region is one of the most rapidly heating regions of the world at rates twice as fast as the rest of the world. Projections by the end of the century at current trajectories show sea level in Mediterranean will rise about 10 feet.

Look at a map where people live, it is indescribable. Around Southeast Asia and peasants in India are trying to survive temperatures in the 120s where less than 10% of population has air conditioning. This will cause huge migrations from areas of the world where life will become unlivable.

Fossil fuel companies are so profitable that they’ve decided to quit any sustainable efforts in favor of letting profits run as fast and as far as possible. They’re opening new oil and gas fields that can produce another 30-40 years but at that point we’ll all be finished.

We have the same issue with nuclear weapons as with the environment. If these two issues are not dealt with, in the not-too-distant future, it’ll be all over. The population needs to “have the will” to stop it.

Question: How do we muster that will?

Chomsky: Talk to neighbors, join community organizations, join activist’s groups, press Congress, get out into the streets if necessary. How have things happened in the past? For example, back in the 1960s small groups of women got together, forming consciousness-raising groups and it was 1975 (Sex Discrimination Act) that women were granted the right of persons peers under US domestic law, prior to that we’re still back in the age of the founding fathers when women were property Look at the Civil Rights movement. Go back to the 1950s, Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat on a bus that was planned by an organized group of activists that led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, big change… in 1960 a couple of black students in No. Carolina decided to sit in at a lunch counter segregated. Immediately arrested, and the next day another group came… later they became organized as SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinated Committee. Young people from the North started to join. Next freedom buses started running to Alabama to convince black farmers to cast a vote. It went on this way, building, until you got civil rights legislation in Washington.

What’s happening right now as an example of what people can do? The Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act, IRA. It’s mostly a climate change act. The only way you can get banks and fossil fuel companies to stop destroying the world is to bribe them. That’s basically our system. But IRA is not the substantial program that Biden presented. It is watered down. The original came out of Bernie Sander’s office. As for the background for that, young people, from the Sunrise Movement, were active and organizing and sat in on Congressional offices. AOC joined them. A bill came out of this, but Republican opposition cut back the original bill by nearly 100% They are a denialist party. They want to destroy the world in the interest of private profit. The final IRA bill is nowhere near enough.

Summation: Chomsky sees a world of turmoil trying to sort out whether unipolar or multipolar wins the day with the Ukrainian war serving as a catalyst to change. Meanwhile, the EU carries the brunt of its impact. Meantime, nuclear arms treaties have literally dissolved in the face of a tenuous situation along the Russia/EU borders with newly armed missiles pointed at Russia’s heartland. In the face of this touch-and-go Russia vs. the West potentially explosive scenario, the global climate system is under attack via excessive fossil fuel emissions cranking up global temperatures beyond what 195 countries agreed was a danger zone.

Chomsky sees a nervous nuclear weapons-rattling high-risk world flanked by unmitigated deterioration of ecosystems that global warming steadily, assuredly takes down for the count, as global temperatures set new records. He calls for individuals to take action, do whatever necessary to change the trajectory of nuclear weaponry and climate change to save society. Chomsky offered several examples of small groups of people acting together, over time, turning into serious protests and ultimately positive legislation.

This article covers the first 34 minutes of a 52-minute video: Noam Chomsky: About the Future of Our World.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” (Margaret Mead, anthropologist)

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This article was originally published on August 16, 2024 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Midwinter Antarctica

Photo by Jay Ruzesky is licensed by Unsplash.
Photo by Jay Ruzesky is licensed by Unsplash.

Midwinter Antarctica 50° F Above Average

By Robert Hunziker

Temperatures for the entire month of July in Antarctica were 50°F above average, but it also experienced days when temperatures spiked up to 82°F above average. Yes, Antarctica is the world’s deep freeze, and it is the dead of winter. What does this portend?

For starters, according to Michael Dukes, director of forecasting at MetDesk: “In Antarctica generally that kind of warming in the winter and continuing into summer months can lead to collapsing of the ice sheets.” (Source: Antarctica Temperatures Rise 10C Above Average in Near Record Heatwave, The Guardian, August 1, 2024)

Already, the summers of 2022 and 2023 saw unprecedented loss of Antarctic sea ice, which fell below 2 million square kilometers for the first time in the satellite record going back to 1979. Moreover, the year 2023 marked the 8th year of steep decline in sea ice. (Source: The Sleeping Giant Awakens, Climate Adaptation Center, May 21, 2024)

Antarctica is massive with total area as large as the US and Mexico combined and average ice thickness of 7,200 feet covering 98% of the continent which is 90% of the world’s ice and 70% of the fresh water of the world. There’s plenty for global warming to work with!

A primary ongoing concern is sea level rise. According to NASA, the rate of sea level rise has tripled in the 21st century.

What’s Next?

As for future expectations, there is a paleoclimate record that spells out what to expect:

“While today’s CO2-driven climate change scenario is unprecedented in human history, similar circumstances existed in the geological record that give us an idea of what to expect in the way of global sea level rise, and the process that will get us there. About 3.2 million years ago, during the Pliocene epoch, CO2 levels were about 400 ppm, and temperatures were 2-3°C above the “pre-industrial” temperatures of 1850-1880. At the same time, proxy data indicate global sea level was about 52 feet (within a 39-foot to 66-foot range) higher than today,” Ibid.

Maybe that is why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) strongly suggests keeping temperatures ideally below 1.5°C but not above 2.0°C pre-industrial, at all costs, or big trouble ensues. FYI- The IPCC looks for sustained temps above 1.5°C for several years to declare it official. And the world has already blown thru the 1.5°C barrier. Hopefully, that barrier eases up or stabilizes, but it requires cutting emissions almost immediately. Good luck with that. Global CO2 emissions are blasting off to the upside and not looking back.

Status of Atmospheric CO2 (Mauna Loa):

August 2, 2024 – 424.76 ppm

August 2, 2023 – 421.52 ppm

One-year change: 3.24 ppm

1960-year change: 0.71 ppm

CO2 affects temperature, which, according to Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), exceeded 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial for the first time in a 12-month period from February 2023 to January 2024. This is the level that 195 countries that signed onto the 2015 Paris Agreement agreed to stay below. Oops! It only took 9 years.

For the record: “The annual rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred at the end of the last ice age 11,000-17,000 years ago.” (Source: Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, Climate.gov, April 9, 2024)

That explains why it only took 9 years to hit 1.5C. Paleoclimate research of the above-mentioned Pliocene era shows a CO2 rate of increase of 0.02 ppm/annum in nature without humans around. But human influence has cranked it up to 2.80 ppm/annum (the 2023 full year rate) more than 100 times faster. Ipso facto, global warming is on a warpath.

According to Climate Adaptation Center: “Research supports the conclusion that by 2°C, virtually all of Greenland, most of West Antarctica and part of East Antarctica will be locked into long-term, irrevocable sea level rise, even if we succeed in drawing down temperatures at a later date. This is primarily because the warmer ocean will hold heat much longer than the atmosphere, and because of a number of self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms. As a result, it takes ice sheets much longer to grow back (tens of thousands of years) than to lose their ice,” Ibid.

All of which leads to when or if Antarctic sea ice will reach a serious breaking point. This challenging supposition has possibly been answered: “What happened in the winter of 2023 shocked scientists. ‘It was completely off the rails,’ according to Ted Scambos, senior researcher at Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). ‘Throughout the 2023 austral winter, sea ice was far below any previous winter extent in the 45-year satellite record.” (Source: Has Antarctic Sea Ice Hit a Breaking Point? Earth Data, National Snow and Ice Date Center, NSIDC, July 4, 2024)

Regime Shift in Antarctica

There’s clear evidence of what’s referred to as a “regime shift” in Antarctica, to wit: “Low sea ice extent once dominated certain areas, especially near the Antarctic Peninsula, but now all sectors surrounding Antarctica are responding together. Referred to as ‘spatial coherence,’ this is yet another sign that something is shifting for Antarctic sea ice, not just in some areas, not just in some years, but on larger scales and for longer periods. These Antarctic-wide sea ice changes, together with their greater variability and persistence, are three main factors that indicate a regime shift,” Ibid.

Additionally, sea ice is taking longer to recover from low extents and the recovered ice is thinner than decades earlier. All of which is attributable to a warming planet, with Antarctica experiencing bouts of excessively high anomalous temperatures more frequently, even during winter, but winter-time temperatures do remain below freezing. Nevertheless, the major concern is the warming trend and “regime shift,” moreover, what’s not seen is most concerning, for example: A headline in Live Science d/d May 21, 2024: Warm Ocean Water is Rushing Beneath Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier,’ Making Collapse More Likely.

Indeed, it would be enormously comforting if scientists could say for sure that the prospect of collapsing ice sheets and rapidly flowing glaciers on a major scale, taking sea levels far too high, flooding coastal cities, are not a concern this century, so, no sweat, don’t worry. But they can’t say that because climate change is moving much faster than scientists’ models predict. For example, nobody in 200o or 2010 or even a few years ago foresaw a major “Antarctic regime shift” or a 12-month consecutive increase of +1.5°C above pre-industrial by 2024. In point of fact, climate change is so far ahead of schedule that it’s ridiculous.

If climate models missed identifying the shockingly rapid onset of two extremely powerful climate-altering events, signaling deep trouble dead ahead, what are they missing now?

According to Sharon Stammerjohn, senior researcher at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, INSTAAR, University of Colorado, Boulder: “Conceptually, I just see this wall of heat knocking at the door in the Southern Ocean, and it’s starting to find ways to come in,” Ibid.

Here’s what UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at World Environment Day June 5, 2024, about heat finding its way: “The truth is the world is spewing emissions so fast that by 2030, a far higher temperature rise would be all but guaranteed… The truth is we already face incursions into the 1.5-degree territory… In 2015, they said the chance of such a breach was near zero.” He calls for nations of the world to come together to halt fossil fuel emissions.

Similarly, the International Energy Agency (IEA) Declaration of 2021: “There can be no new oil and gas infrastructure if the planet is to avoid careering past 1.5C (2.7F) of global heating, above pre-industrial times.”

However, the truth is revealed only three years later, Global Energy Monitor 2024 Report: “The world’s fossil-fuel producers are on track to nearly quadruple the amount of extracted oil and gas from newly approved projects by the end of this decade, with the US leading the way in a surge of activity that threatens to blow apart agreed climate goals.”

That’ll crank up Mauna Loa’s CO2 readings to “spinning out of control” mode.

And, just for good measure: “We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas.” (Amin Nasser, Head of Aramco, speaking in Texas, March 2024).

A wall of heat hitting Antarctica is bad news and “regime shift” tells a worrisome tale. And with CO2 already cranking 100+ times faster than all history, and with fossil fuel interests on a road to madness, where does this leave Antarctica? No comment.

Still, where do things stand? There are scientists on both sides of the maxim “we are screwed,” some say, “we can still work out of this self-inflicted disaster,” but others say, “it’s already too late.” Usually, these situations end up somewhere in the middle. So, what will “we are partially screwed” look like?

Not good.

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This article was originally published on August 9, 2024 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Note: This article will also be posted on the Facing Future Now! Facebook group. If you would like to comment on this article, please go to the Facebook group and post your comments there under the article posting.

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Methane Emissions “Fastest in Decades”

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash
Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

Methane Emissions “Fastest in Decades”

By Robert Hunziker

A new study shows methane (CH4) emissions behaving like a sprinter on speed, setting decadal records. This is bad news. It’s 80-times more powerful than CO2 at trapping heat.

“Global emissions of methane, a powerful planet-heating gas, are ‘rising rapidly’ at the fastest rate in decades, requiring immediate action to help avert a dangerous escalation in the climate crisis, a new study has warned.” (Source: Global Methane Emissions Rising at Fastest Rate in Decades, Scientists Warn, The Guardian, July 30, 2024)

The new study by Drew Shindell, et al, The Methane Imperative, Frontiers in Science, July 29, 2024 discusses the methane issue and steps that must be taken to mitigate methane emissions. These steps are considered critical to meet well-advertised goals to limit global warming, which has not been limited nearly enough to count. On the contrary, it’s getting hotter by the year, every year.

Another new study underscores failures to tackle the methane problem: “New comprehensive aerial measurements show oil and natural gas producers across the U.S. are emitting methane into the atmosphere at over four times the rates estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency for those same areas based on industry-reported data. The results also show that operators are exceeding their own widely touted emissions goals eightfold.” (Source: New Data Show U.S. Oil & Gas Methane Emissions Over Four Times Higher Than EPA Estimates, Eight Times Greater Than Industry Target, Environmental Defense Fund, July 31, 2024)

“Regardless of the reasons, the emission rates are way too high. New, long-anticipated EPA rules finalized earlier this year by the Biden-Harris administration that leverage widely available, cost-effective solutions, along with methane reduction incentives included in the Inflation Reduction Act, are vital to bringing the numbers down. It is essential that states and EPA move forward with swiftly implementing these protective standards,” Ibid.

Trump has publicly stated he will destroy Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and let producers off the hook and institute policies that increase greenhouse gases. In that regard, according to Bloomberg News: “The White House’s policies have fueled plans for more than $200 billion in cleantech manufacturing investments mostly (ed. $161B) in districts with Republican lawmakers opposed (ed. all of them opposed it) to the agenda.” (Bloomberg News d/d June 20, 2024)

The past two years of heat on top of more record-setting heat is a sure sign of failure to control human-generated greenhouse gases like CH4, but more troubling yet, slowly but steadily self-reinforcing permafrost melt as well as glacial melt contribute to increasing levels of CH4 as if on automatic pilot, feeding on global warming it creates, releasing CH4. This is real danger, and it’s flashing red. Controlling CH4 emissions wherever humanly possible cannot be done soon enough. Global warming is not waiting around. This could get real messy real soon unless the brakes are put on emissions.

With global news already covering widespread overheating of the planet, which is caused by excessive levels of greenhouse gases, new news that methane (CH4) has gone ballistic should make bolder headlines because, more insidiously than CO2, it turns up the thermostat, causing all kinds of problems for human survival. Already, several regions of the world were/are on the ropes, feeling dangerous levels of heat. “The human body can only accommodate temperatures above 95 degrees with high humidity for short periods of time.” (Source: Americares)

Humans lose 80% of body heat through sweating. When both humidity and heat combined are too high, sweating becomes harder and harder until impossible to shed heat. According to a study at Arizona State University, a healthy young adult could die after six hours of 92°F with 50% humidity. (Source: Hottest Survivable Temperatures Are Lower Than Expected, Scientific American, December 12, 2023)

According to Global Methane Tracker 2024: “The concentration of methane in the atmosphere is now over two-and-a-half times greater than the pre-industrial levels. The increase has accelerated in recent years and preliminary data indicates that there was another significant annual increase in 2023.”

Earth System Research Laboratories (as of July 5, 2024)

Global CH4 Monthly Means:

March 2024 1930.75 ppb

March 1983 1645.00 ppb (when official measurements started)

The Shindell study clearly points to fossil fuels, primarily oil and gas production, and increased decomposition rates from wetlands because of global warming, which, of course, accelerates excessive levels of CH4, meaning, it’s self-reinforcing. This is evident across the vastness of Arctic permafrost covering roughly 20% of the Northern Hemisphere. It’s a time bomb that’s already ticking. And it is enormous.

Hopefully, nations of the world hurry mitigation measures because the methane curse is not just oil and gas production and wetlands in specific easily accessed regions. Several studies have exposed threats heretofore ignored where CH4 is cocked and loaded and ready to accelerate. e.g., (1) a recent study found migrating methane gas under the base of permafrost in Svalbard, Norway which has “significant implications for climate change.” (2) Arctic News d/d January 14, 2024 reported the impact of rising Northern Hemisphere ocean temperatures “… threatens to cause rapid destabilization of methane hydrates at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean and lead to explosive eruptions of methane, as its volume increases 160 to 180-fold when leaving the hydrate.”

According to some studies, triggering a climate catastrophe that slams humanity down onto the mat is within the range of possibilities: “Methane bombs – gas fields where leakage alone from the full exploitation of the resources would result in emissions equivalent to at least a billion tonnes of CO2 – represent a huge threat to the climate and have the potential to release methane levels equivalent to three decades of all US greenhouse gas emissions, a new investigation by The Guardian has revealed.” (Source: Methane Bombs’ Release 30 Years Equivalent of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Risk Triggering Climate Catastrophe, Earth.org, March 8, 2023)

Underscoring these recent studies is a haunting incomprehensible undertone of human failure to address the risks of human extinction. Once the signs become more apparent, it’ll be too late. In fact, there are some rumblings that “too late” may be right around the corner, but that’s too pessimistic, or is it? Regardless, the offset to pessimism about climate change is nobody really knows for sure when what will happen, but trends tell a story, such as radical changes in ecosystems like tens of thousands of thermokarst lakes emitting CH4 suddenly appearing in Arctic permafrost regions of Siberia and Alaska as undeniably factual and impossible to accurately measure but rapidly surfacing methane bubbles up and away into the atmosphere, defining a cloudy uncertain future.

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This article was originally published on August 2, 2024 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Note: This article will also be posted on the Facing Future Now! Facebook group. If you would like to comment on this article, please go to the Facebook group and post your comments there under the article posting.

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