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Global Warming Did The Unthinkable

Image by NOAA
Image by NOAA is in the Public Domain.

Global Warming Did The Unthinkable

By Robert Hunziker

Jungfraujoch’s foreboding temperatures this September at the top of the world in Switzerland at 2.25 miles altitude alarmed glaciologists.

If anybody has lingering doubts about global warming’s strength of power to directly impact Earth’s ecosystems, think again. Antarctica, at the bottom of the world, experienced record high temperatures during its winter, as record high temperatures were also recorded at the top of the world in the Swiss Alps, where it’s always icy cold. As it happened, both the top and the bottom of the world hit record high temperatures, simultaneously, give or take a few days. There’s no known record of this ever happening before.

It’s proof positive that global warming is powerfully impacting the entire planet, simultaneously, and it’s happening horrifyingly fast! Too fast to justify petty, phony claims amongst some Americans, with a voice, that global warming’s nothing more than “natural events, the climate always changes, not to worry, blah, blah, blah!” Oh, please, grow up!

But maybe people should be in the streets demonstrating to pull out all the stops to prevent the inevitable, which is self-advertised in full-living descriptive color as both ends of the planet go off course in ballistic fashion within several days of each other. The upshot is global warming (heat) has become Top Dog of the Earth System, pushing aside Goldilocks’ not-too-hot-not-too-cold tenure over the past several thousand years of the Holocene Era. The problem: Goldilocks was a sweetheart. But global warming is a mean-spirited bully, without heart.

Jungfraujoch is the tallest SwissMetNet station in Switzerland at 11,715 feet. Temperatures above 0° Celsius (32°F) for eight straight days in the month of September shocked glaciologists. That had never happened before in its 90-year history of official recordings.

The Jungfraujoch environment, according to its web page: “Icy air sweeps your face, snow crunches underfoot, and the panorama almost takes your breath away: on one side the view of the Swiss Mittelland towards the Vosges, on the other the Aletsch Glacier, lined with four thousand metre peaks. Standing on the Jungfraujoch 3,454 metres above sea level, you can feel it with your first step: this is a different world.”

Glaciologists say this new zero-degree record at extreme altitude is an ominous sign. Of serious concern, Switzerland has ~1,500 ice giants that don’t fancy a lot of heat. Those ice giants have faithfully served as the world’s most trustworthy water towers ever since humans first huddled in caves during the Stone Age a couple million years ago. Now, those wondrous glaciers are at risk of meltdown within only one century after a couple million years of steady work.

Not only did Jungfraujoch register 8-straight days over zero, but at the higher altitude of 5,298 metres Swiss MeteoSwiss reported record temperatures over the zero-degree limit.

“The zero-degree limit is a key meteorological indicator particularly in mountainous regions, as it ‘affects vegetation, the snow line and the water cycle and so has considerable impact on the habitats of humans, animals, and plants alike.” (Source: Climate Records tumble as Switzerland Swelters in Heatwave, Swissinfo.ch, August 22, 2023)

Swiss glaciers have lost one-third of ice volume in only 20 years. The next twenty could be crucial. According to Daniel Farinotti, glaciologist at ETH Zurich: “With a zero-degree isotherm far above 5,000 metres, all glaciers in the Alps are exposed to melt — up to their highest altitudes. Such events are rare and detrimental to the glacier’s health… if such conditions persist in the longer-term, glaciers are set to be lost irreversibly,” Ibid.

“Since the pre-industrial era, the temperature in Switzerland has increased by almost 2° Celsius, well above the global average. At this rate, half of the 1,500 Alpine glaciers – including the majestic Aletsch glacier, a UNESCO heritage site — will disappear in the next 30 years. And if nothing is done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, all glaciers in Switzerland and Europe risk melting almost completely by the end of the century.” (Source: Why Melting Glaciers Affect Us All, Swissinfo.ch, October 11, 2022)

All of which is a good primer on what to expect if the world average hits 1.5°C and then 2°C, both of which look doable based upon the rapidity of greenhouse gas emissions, for example, CO2 and methane both setting new world records in July 2023.

And it’s also instructive to note, the world is not uniform, e.g., according to Copernicus Climate Change Service: Extreme Heat, Widespread Drought Typify European Climate in 2022, April 20, 2023: “The C35 data show that the average temperature for Europe for the latest 5-year period was around 2.2°C above the pre-industrial era (1850-1900). In 2022 all hell broke out through0ut the EU with water deliveries by truck to 100 thirsty communities in France/Italy and major riverway barges sputtering in mud. It was an “end of the world” type of experience that they muddled through. Of special concern, 75% of Spain’s land risks desertification because of global warming’s severe drought.

Glaciers worldwide are being hit, getting thinner and thinner in the Himalayas and the Andes where hundreds of millions of people depend upon glaciers for hydro power, irrigation, and drinking water. The situation in Europe is horribly problematic as the water flow of major commercial rivers like the Rhône, Rhine, Danube, and Po decrease, especially in summer months because of severe drought that hammered the EU. This has already, at times, seriously impaired commercial barge traffic in Europe, and lo and behold, nuclear power plants are targets of global warming. France’s 56 nuclear reactors were impacted within the past two years. Marine life as well as nuclear reactors depend upon a constant flow of cold water for existence. However, when global warming makes life in an ecosystem nearly impossible, marine life moves, reactors cannot.

A new report on Himalayan glacier loss shows a melt rate 65% faster from 2010 t0 2020 than in the prior decade, 2000-10. That’s big-time acceleration for enormous chunks of ice. That finding adds to “a growing body of evidence that the consequences of climate change are speeding up, and that some changes will be irreversible.” (Source: Snow and Ice in the Hindu Kush Himalaya Are Fast Disappearing, with Grave Implications for People and Nature, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, icimod.org, 2023)

The Hindu Kush Himalaya provides freshwater for 2 billion people. At current melt rates, almost all of the glacial volume will be gone this century.

Peak Water

Researchers say the mountain glacier systems will reach a point by 2050 when the glaciers have shrunk so much that the meltwater starts dwindling. It’s called a turning point “peak water.”

Meanwhile, melting glaciers spur natural disasters of epic proportions, cascading disasters of flooding and huge landslides like sudden shocks to the system, like earthquake events. Furthermore, there is already evidence of loss of biodiversity habitat, especially butterflies have gone extinct in the Hindu Kush Himalaya. Frogs and other amphibians are on the short list to go next. Scientists expect a quarter of plants and animals to be “wiped out” over the coming decades with the Indian segment of the Himalayan mountains hit extremely hard. (Source: Sunita Chaudhary, ecosystems researcher, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development).

As previously mentioned, Antarctica has joined the “it’s never happened before” party. The ice continent, as large as the U.S. and Mexico combined, is the coldest continent on Earth with a mean annual interior temperature of -71F. However, in the dead of winter, the Antarctic Peninsula, an 800-mile extension of the Antarctic continent, temperatures hit 32°F (Source: It’s Even Hot in Antarctica, Where it’s Winter, Vox, July 13, 2023). Which happened shortly before zero C at Jungfraujoch, as the top of the world and the bottom of the world coincided in extreme once-in-a-lifetime events, which researchers believe may become a trend, thereby losing the once-in-a-lifetime status, with the ramifications best not discussed herein. They’re too extensive and exhausting!

By now, it has become obvious that Earth’s climate system is askew, out of balance, and rapidly changing the face of the planet. Some knowledgeable people believe the best course of action is to learn to adapt to this rapidly changing environment because it does not appear that fossil fuel emissions are going anywhere but up, up, up, like they have for decades, higher every year, but for various legit reasons, do not count on CO2 capture/sequestration (CCS) or direct air capture (DAC) to bail us out of a worldwide heat jam, in part, because the scale is way beyond humongous, meaning the problem is as big as the planet is large, and that’s really, really big. Meanwhile, emissions continue to feed into more destructive global warming events, testing the mettle of humans, as fossil fuel emissions (the heart and soul of global warming) increasingly choke a planet that’s already sputtering.

COP28

All of which is supposed to be discussed amongst the nations of the world at the upcoming COP28 (UN Climate Change Conference) to be held in Dubai, November 30 – December 12, 2023, but there are serious reservations about the venue and the host and the participants as expressed in a letter sent by Freedom Forward and signed by 200 organizations: 200+ Organizations Call on Governments to Address UAE Human Rights Abuses Ahead of COP28 Climate Negotiations with the subtitle: Letter to COP28 participating Governments Regarding United Arab Emirates (UAE) Human Rights Violations and Climate Concerns, September 13, 2023.

The opening paragraph: “We write as a global network of organizations with grave human rights concerns regarding the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) host of the 2023 Cop28 to be held by the rulers of a repressive petrostate, and overseen by an oil executive, is reckless, represents a blatant conflict of interest, and threatens the legitimacy of the whole process.”

Meanwhile, the history of UN meetings to fix the planet is not encouraging: For example, in 2015, 193 countries agreed to UN Sustainable Development Goals, aka: Global Goals. As of August 2023, after 8 years of dalliance, not one of the goals looks set to be achieved. (Nature, 9/12/2023).

As a result of the failure of sustainable development goals and for that matter, any and all such goals, a new research report indicates that Earth’s life support systems have been so damaged that the planet is “well outside the safe operating space for humanity.” To come back to a safe space, two key actions are required: (1) stop fossil fuel burning (2) end destructive farming. (Source: Earth Beyond Six of Nine Planetary Boundaries, Science Advances, Sept. 13, 2023)

Alas, like the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Paris ’15 climate goals to achieve net zero have mostly bombed.

COP28/Dubai is weeks away. They expect a record turnout of up to 80,000 participants, claiming: “COP28 is poised to shape the course of international climate action.” Hmm.
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This article was originally published on September 15, 2023 © 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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Japan’s Insane Immoral, Illegal Radioactive Dumping

Photo by Yves Alarie on Unsplash
Photo by Yves Alarie on Unsplash

Japan’s Insane Immoral, Illegal Radioactive Dumping

By Robert Hunziker

Japan cannot possibly outlive the atrocity of dumping radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean. In fact, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) is an example of how nuclear meltdowns negatively impact the entire world, as its toxic wastewater travels across the world in ocean currents. The dumping of stored toxic wastewater from the meltdown in 2011 officially started on August 24th, 2023. Meanwhile, the country restarts some of the nuclear plants that were shut down when the Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant exploded.

Fukushima’s broken reactors are an example of why nuclear energy is a trap that can’t handle global warming or extreme natural disasters. Nuclear is an accident waiting to happen, for several reasons, including victimization by forces of global warming.

According to Dr. Paul Dorfman, chair of the Nuclear Consulting Group, former secretary to the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Internal Radiation, and Visiting Fellow, University of Sussex: “It’s important to understand that nuclear is very likely to be a significant climate casualty. For cooling purposes nuclear reactors need to be situated by large bodies of water, etc. …” Essentially, global warming is nuclear energy’s Waterloo; it has already seriously endangered France’s 56 nuclear reactors with partial shutdowns because of extreme global warming. Nuclear reactors cannot survive global warming. See “the nuclear energy trap” link at the end of this article.

TEPCO’s treacherous act of dumping radioactive water into a wide-open ocean is a deliberate violation of human decency, as it clearly violates essential provisions of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) General Safety Guide No. 8 (GSG-8).

Japan should be forced to stop its diabolical exercise of potentially destroying precious life. Shame on the IAEA and shame on the member countries of the G7 for endorsing this travesty. They’ve christened the ocean an “open sewer.” Hark! Come one, come all, dump your trash, open toxic spigots, bring chemicals, bring fertilizers, bring plastic, bring radioactive waste that’s impossible to dispose… the oceans are open sewers. It’s free! Yes, it’s free but only weak-minded people would allow a broken-down crippled nuclear power plant to dump radioactive waste into the world’s ocean. It is a testament to human frailty, weakness, insipience, not courage.

According to Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D. Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, TEPCO’s ALPS-treated Radioactive Water Dumping Plan Violates Essential Provisions of IAEA’s General Safety Guide No. 8 (GSG-8) and Corresponding Requirements in Other IAEA Documents, June 28, 2023: “The IAEA is an important United Nations institution. Like the rest of the Expert Panel, the author of this paper has been reluctant to criticize the IAEA. Yet, its outright refusal to apply its own guidance documents in full measure is stark. Its constricted view of the dumping plan has allowed it to evade its responsibilities to many countries. Its eagerness to assure the public that harm will be “negligible” has been carried to the point of grossly overstating well-known facts about tritium. The serious lapses of the IAEA in the Fukushima radioactive water matter have made criticism unavoidable.”

“Greenpeace rejects Japan’s claim that all nuclear isotopes except tritium have been removed from the wastewater. It claims that at least one other radioactive isotope, Carbon-14, remains, and that many more, including Strontium 90 and Cesium 137, remain as yet untreated in most of the storage tanks.” (Source: Richard Broinowski, More Fallout from Fukushima, Pearls and Irritations, July 8, 2023)

Japan is signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea: “Japan’s policy to release wastewater into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a violation of Japan’s obligations under UNCLOS Article 192, which requires state parties to ‘protect and preserve the marine environment.’ Additionally, Japan’s pollution of the marine environment from land-based sources violates UNCLOS Article 207.” (Source: Victoria Cruz-De Jesus, Preserving the Sea in a Radioactive World: How Japan’s Plan to Release Treated Nuclear Wastewater into the Pacific Ocean Violates UNCLOS, American University International Law Review, Vol. 27, Issue 4, 2023)

Adding insult to injury, Japan considered several available waste disposal measures that, in part, would have complied with portions of its treaty obligations under UNCLOS Article 192 and Article 207 but ultimately settled for the cheapest, easiest, most convenient, yet most harmful, policy, dumping it into the Pacific Ocean, which conveniently is “right next door.” Japan could have chosen (1) geosphere injection or (2) underground burial as options that lessen the risks of nuclear waste released into the environment, or they could build more storage tanks. But both #1 and #2 options are considerably more expensive.

As a result, Japan’s outrageous disregard for nature has only served to highlight the insanity surrounding nuclear energy: “The Japanese Government and TEPCO falsely claim that discharge is the only viable option necessary for eventual decommissioning. Nuclear power generation, which experiences shutdowns due to accidents and natural disasters, and perpetually requires thermal power as a backup, cannot serve as a solution to global warming.” (Source: Japan Announces Date for Fukushima Radioactive Water Release, Greenpeace International Press Release, August 22, 2023)

According to Greenpeace, which has strong expertise in nuclear energy: “As of 8 June 2023, there were 1,335,381 cubic meters of radioactive wastewater stored in tanks, but due to the failure of the ALPS (Advanced Liquid Processing System) processing technology, approximately 70% of this water will have to be processed again. Scientists have warned that the radiological risks from the discharges have not been fully assessed, and the biological impacts of tritium, carbon-14, strontium-90 and iodine-129, which will be released in the discharges, have been ignored,” Ibid.

It seems inconceivable, but true, at a time when the world’s oceans are confronted with immense stress (1) inordinate record-setting heat (2) illegal overfishing to the point of near exhaustion of major fishing stock (3) human trash accumulating in vast swirls of rotting garbage, e.g., the Great Pacific Garbage Patch three times the size of France; plus four more major garbage patches in the oceans (4) rampant levels of agricultural pesticides and fertilizers, (5) tons of plastic and (6) industrial discharges. In the face of so much stress, Japan has the nerve to add toxic radioactive muck from a crippled nuclear power plant. Oh, please!

“For years, we have looked at the ocean as a dumping ground. Because it was out of sight and out of mind, we have treated it like a universal sewer.” (Jean Michel Cousteau, St. Petersburg Times) Cousteau has spent a lifetime fighting to expose ocean abuse, saying it needs to stop “if marine life, and therefore everything on the planet, is going to survive.” Alas, Japan is violating everything Cousteau ever stood for.

As a result of indiscretions, will Japan essentially self-destruct its economy as boycotts of products follow in the footsteps of its blatant disregard for the health of the ocean?

China has banned all seafood from Japan, calling the release a “selfish and irresponsible act.” Chinese social media registered 800,000,000 views on Weibo, filled with anger. China is Japan’s largest buyer of seafood accounting for one-half of Japan’s seafood exports.

Major Japanese cosmetics manufacturers have seen sales drop along with public share prices as Chinese internet users began compiling lists of Japanese brands to boycott, attracting 300,000,000 views on Weibo. The boycott could be a “trigger for Chinese consumers to switch away from Japanese premium cosmetics brands,” said Wakako Sato, an analyst for Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co. (Source: Controversial Fukushima Nuclear Waste Plan Spurs Chinese Boycott of Japanese Cosmetics, Time, June 22, 2023)

On Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, users have circulated lists of Japanese brands ranging from cosmetics to food and beverages. urging people not to buy those products.

South Korea and Hong Kong are banning Japanese seafood from Fukushima and nine other prefectures. North Korea’s Foreign Ministry called the release a “crime against humanity,” which Japan can only view as the most humiliating insult of all time.

Is Japan setting a dangerous precedent? According to the New York Times, d/d August 22, 2023: “If Japan dumps its tainted Fukushima water in the ocean, what’s to stop other countries from doing the same?” Indeed, this may be one of the most deadly consequences of TEPCO’s dumping, with G7 approval.

“We’ve seen an inadequate radiological, ecological impact assessment that makes us very concerned that Japan would not only be unable to detect what’s getting into the water, sediment and organisms, but if it does, there is no recourse to remove it… there’s no way to get the genie back in the bottle,” marine biologist Robert Richmond, a professor with the University of Hawaii, told the BBC’s Newsday programme.” (Source: Fukushima: What are the Concerns Over Waste Water Release? BBC News, August 25, 2023)

TEPCO admits to some level of radiation when it releases water from storage tanks. According to a CNN news article, Japan claims other countries are also guilty of releasing tritium-laced water into the ocean. So, why can’t they also do it? However, this misses the point that nobody should be allowed to release radioactive water into the oceans. Furthermore, TEPCO’s concentrations, with 60 highly toxic radioactive isotopes, hopefully treated by ALPS (Advanced Liquid Processing System) processing technology, makes other dumpers look like pipsqueaks. Even worse yet, Greenpeace/Japan, and others, have strong reservations about the effectiveness of ALPS, and consider: Who’s measuring?

The U.S. National Association of Marine Laboratories, with over 100 member laboratories, issued a position paper strongly opposing the toxic dumping because of a lack of adequate and accurate scientific data in support of Japan’s assertions of safety.

And regardless of Japan’s attempts to downplay the dumping as inconsequential, it has been scientifically established that even very low doses of radioactivity bio-accumulate in the human body, as well as in marine life, over time leading to physical deterioration because of DNA damage.

“At high doses, ionizing radiation can cause immediate damage to a person’s body, including, at very high doses, radiation sickness and death. At lower doses, ionizing radiation can cause health effects such as cardiovascular disease and cataracts, as well as cancer. It causes cancer primarily because it damages DNA, which can lead to cancer-causing gene mutations.” (Source: National Cancer Institute)

How is it possible to justify dumping any amount of radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean? Is the world’s consciousness so low, so lacking a moral compass, that it’s okay to dump the most toxic material on the planet into the oceans?

Stop destroying the oceans!

And please contemplate the dire ramifications of the nuclear energy trap

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This article was originally published on September 8, 2023 © 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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Mega Risks Threaten Earth

Photo by Javier Miranda on Unsplash
Photo by Javier Miranda on Unsplash

Mega Risks Threaten Earth

By Robert Hunziker

The Council for the Human Future, which is a dedicated group of intelligent well-informed people, has identified ten Mega Risks to Earth. As it happens, all ten risks are threatening the planet all at the same time. Consequently, the board of the Council has called for an Earth System Treaty. This may be one of the most unique efforts to organize the world community under a banner of identification of serious mega risks to the planet’s life-support system.

“Humanity created its current dire trajectory. It is now time to change course with a binding global treaty designed to empower individuals, institutions, and policymakers, and through this shared effort, reduce the existential threats to civilization. The Earth Systems Treaty is potentially a major step forward, a step towards a healthy future for all.” (Paul R. Ehrlich, Emeritus Professor, Stanford University)

Two issues are key to the way forward: (1) focusing on the Mega Risks to take coordinated constructive measures, or (2) ignore Mega Risks as if they’re harmless science fiction, a fantasy world not to be concerned about; it’ll go away. There are no other options. Now is the time when people must decide which option to take. The Earth System has never been more vulnerable. For the first time, the direct impact of global warming and vulnerability of degraded ecosystems have become nightly TV news, almost every night!

Studies have shown that climate change puts most people into one of two camps: (1) believing in the science or (2) casting it off as essentially science fiction, ignoring the issue. But beware grasshopper, reality often follows in the footsteps of science fiction. In that regard, this article will take a step forward, or maybe a step backwards, depending upon perspective, into the world of the Twilight Zone, created by Rod Sterling in the 1960s for an interesting retrospective on science fiction foretelling the future.

The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) was an American science fiction TV series about people experiencing strange problems, for example: The Midnight Sun, Episode 75, November 1961: “At twenty minutes to midnight, it is 110 °F (43 °C) and sunny as high noon. Norma and Mrs. Bronson try to support each other as they watch life as they know it erode around them. The streets are deserted, water usage is limited to an hour a day, and their electricity is gradually being turned off. Food and water are scarce, and the sea has dried up. A radio presenter announces that the police have been moved out of the city and that citizens must defend themselves against looters, then angrily goes off script before being forcibly taken off the air.”

Science fiction has a way of becoming reality. For example, some say that “Space Station V” of 2001: A Space Odyssey was inspiration for the International Space Station (ISS).

And 40 years before the introduction of the iPad, Dr. David Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole crew members of Discovery One in 2001: A Space Odyssey held “newspads” in their hands that Samsung would later claim as the original tablet featured in the film 40 years before arrival of the first iPad in 2010. Eventually, Samsung lost its claim in a lawsuit against Apple.

In the 1990 film Total Recall, Douglas Quaid (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) jumps into a driverless car to escape pursuit by bad guys. The car is driven by an onboard satellite navigation system, which is at the forefront of driverless vehicles today.

And most amazing of all, Star Trek’s “beam me up, Scotty” via dematerialism and conversion back to rematerialization is now a reality but not with humans. Quantum entanglement allows for teleporting balls of energy known as photons with two entangled particles far away from each other remaining connected with actions performed by one affecting the other. This happens faster than the speed of light. It’s true! Einstein referred to quantum entanglement as “spooky action at a distance.”

Today’s Earth System Mega Risks are real even though seemingly science fiction because of the near impossibility of mentally accepting the most-difficult-of-all-consequences, i.e., loss of inhabitable land because of a rapidly changing climate system. Indeed, who can accept the reality of a deadening planet right under their feet, for example, massive drought caused by global warming has put 75% of Spain’s surface area at risk of desertification. As such, the devastation of mega risks requires a universal treaty to confront reality and to do something positive.

This article is an abbreviated version of the Mega Risks, as identified by the Council. The full list resembles science fiction simply because it does not seem real to people. Nobody wants to believe the worst can happen. But truth is stranger than fiction. The threats posed by mega risks are real and active and advanced, e.g., major commercial waterways throughout the world like the Rhine and Danube and Loir have been threatened because of severe drought, which is far-reaching, for example, the Panama Canal was forced to reduce shipping traffic (August 2023) because or severe drought conditions and experienced huge traffic jams with dozens of ships backed up at both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. World drought hits world shipping!

Of additional ‘remarkable’ interest, one of the items found in the list of Mega Risks is Mass Delusion. After all, it’s a hollow world without regard for reality: “The inability of people to understand the deadly threats that now confront us all is the greatest barrier to global action for a safe human future. Disinformation, lies, and false beliefs pose an existential risk to our survival.” (Source: The Mega Risks by The Council for the Human Future, Prof. John Hewson – Chair, Prof. Bob Douglas, Prof. Robyn Alders, Julian Cribb)

In large measure, Mega Risks revolve around the human footprint, which has grown so large that it now consumes 1.75 earths. Yes, humans are using the equivalent resources of more than one planet to survive. The human ecological footprint crossed the line into biocapacity deficit way back in the late 1970s. The planet no longer regenerates fast enough to carry the necessary ecological assets to support human life because of unsustainable excessive demand plus ecosystem abuse, misuse, and degradation. In other words, the planet is running on reserves built up over millennia and will one day be running on fumes… to be followed by the threat of mass extinction. It’s indisputable that Earth’s resources are finite especially as biocapacity regeneration is overwhelmed by human demand in concert with reckless misuse and disregard for ecosystems.

For example, the oceans are a dumping ground for plastics and chemicals and toxic radioactivity and have been nearly drained of life: According to the Marine Stewardship Council, depletion of fish stocks is the most urgent threat to the world’s oceans. Ninety-three percent (93%) of the world’s major marine fish stocks are classified as fully exploited, overexploited, or significantly depleted. “Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is a pervasive, far-reaching security threat.” (Source: Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing, United States Coast Guard, 2022)

It’s obvious that sustainable fishing plus putting a stop to using the ocean as an open sewer, especially dumping radioactive toxicity (Japan’s Fukushima*), as well as ecological sustainable farming, as well as sustainable use of all natural resources is the only way forward, but it does not have strong enough sponsorship, in fact, quite the opposite! There is no sponsorship that’s powerful enough to make a positive impact that’s meaningful for nature and its ecosystems, not enough to save the planet from proactive mega risks. There are many NGOs that support nature, like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, nevertheless, widespread collapsing ecosystems still tell a sorrowful tale.

*Why should anybody anywhere in the world be permitted to discharge large quantities of contaminated toxic water that’s been filtered for ‘most radioactive particles’ directly from a broken-down nuclear power plant into the ocean under any circumstances?

It’s never been more important to address the issue of global warming, especially in consideration of the repercussions, for example, Electricite de France SA threatened (August 21st) to reduce nuclear output (70% French electricity) as a heat wave affecting a large part of the country warmed rivers used for cooling its reactors. Ergo, connecting the dots: too much heat diminishes nuclear power capability which threatens home and business air conditioning needed to escape the same heat that cripples the nuclear power plants, a vicious circle. Global warming is nuclear power’s nemesis (beware of the nuclear energy trap).

The Council for the Human Future is aware of the risks and intends to create enough awareness in the world to help maintain a functioning Earth System. The Council does not pretend to have all the answers but does know it is important to create an awareness and a vehicle to expand knowledge of what can be done. As things stand, there is no formal worldwide organization other than The Council for the Human Future exclusively dedicated to itemizing the full panoply of mega risks to the planet with a mission of organizing humanity under one umbrella to do something constructive.

Yes, at first blush, it seems pretentious that a handful of people can save the planet, but as Margaret Mead famously said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Please sign the petition to Save a Habitable Earth for our Children. It’s never been more important. People are signing up every hour.
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This article was originally published on September 1, 2023 © 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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America’s Likely Civil War?

Photo by Garry T on Unsplash
Photo by Garry T on Unsplash

America’s Likely Civil War?

By Robert Hunziker

Across America, whispers softly speak about whether there’s an undeclared civil war. Well, maybe yes, maybe no, but what are the signals? What about January 6th hand-to-hand combat on the steps of the nation’s capitol with 136 (injured) police officers, was it civil unrest or incipient civil war?

Those questions are answered by Barbara F. Walter, Professor of Political Science/University of California/San Diego, who works with a CIA task force and recently gave a TED talk: Is the US Headed Towards Another Civil War?

As explained in Dr. Walter’s speech, civil wars are surprisingly common throughout the world. Since 1946, there have been 250 civil wars. But America hasn’t had one in over 150 years. When it did, 1861-65, it was brutal with 620,000 dead which is equivalent to the total fatalities of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII, and the Korean War combined.

Unexpectedly, civil wars happen out of the blue catching people at work, on vacation, or shopping at the local mall totally by surprise. Barbara Walter, an analyst of civil wars for over 30 years, interviewed a family that experienced the Bosnian civil war of 1992: Berina Kovac, a mother living in Sarajevo: “In the months and weeks leading up to the civil war, life seemed normal; She went to work. She took weekend holidays with her husband. They went to the weddings of their friends. But then one night in March of 1992, when she was home with her newborn son, the lights suddenly went out. And then, she said, you started to hear machine guns.”

Dr. Walter has interviewed members of Hamas on the West Bank, ex-Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, FARC in Columbia, observed from the Golan Heights Syria’s civil war, driven the streets of Zimbabwe during the military coup against Robert Mugabe and been interrogated by Myanmar’s junta. In 2017, the CIA asked Barbara Walter to serve on The Political Instability Task Force with a goal of creating a model for what ingredients foretell of ethnic conflict and civil wars. Fascinatingly, predicting civil wars is very possible. Solid data exists as to when and where conflicts will break out. You’ve just got to know where to find it.

There are 38 different factors that lead to civil war. Some are obvious like income inequality. But only two factors are highly predictive of an upcoming civil war:

  1. Whether a country is an anocracy is the first and most predictive factor. An anocracy is “partial democracy,” meaning a government that is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic. It’s something in-between, e.g., Hungary today, where they hold democratic elections, but whoever wins can do whatever they want to do; that’s an anocracy.
  2. Whether citizens in these anocracies form political parties around identity rather than around ideology is the second key factor. In other words, instead of joining a party because you are liberal or conservative, a capitalist or communist, i.e., an ideology, you join because you are black or white, Christian or Muslim, Serb or Croat, or worship a personality, i.e., an identity.

If countries have those two features, The Task Force categorizes those countries as high risk of political violence and candidates for civil war and inclusion on The Watchlist, a formal document that is sent to the White House.

During The Task Force meetings that Dr. Walker attended, they discussed countries of the world, but never the US because the CIA is not legally allowed to monitor the US or its citizens. Therefore, it can never be put onto The Watch List.

Nevertheless, as a private citizen not representing The Task Force, she clearly sees the danger factors, flashing brightly, emerging at a surprisingly fast clip right here in the United States of America. It’s getting dangerous, fast.

For starters, US democracy has been downgraded three times in the past six years: (1) in 2016 because international election monitors considered the 2016 election free but not fair because of Russian meddling (2) in 2019 because the White House refused (anocracy) to comply with Congress requests for information (3) 2020 when Trump refused to accept his loss and actively attempted to overturn the results. Thus, the US qualified for The Watch List as an anocracy before the occurrence of January 6th but not listed and sent to the White House, as heretofore explained.

Moreover, it is also known who starts civil wars. It is not the poorest people or the most oppressed by government. The initiators of civil wars are groups that were politically dominant but in decline. Hmm.

For example, Iraq’s Sunnis held key positions under Saddam Hussein. When the US toppled Saddam, they also threw Sunnis out of positions. Thereafter, Sunnis started the civil war. This has happened with established political parties in Yugoslavia and elsewhere around the world as former dominant political parties’ revolt to the point of full-fledged civil war.

Whereas, in the US, militias have arisen primarily of white men that feel threatened by the changing identity of the country by “others” with dark complexions. A perfect setup for identity politics. These white men predominated the march on the capitol on January 6th. Demographic change is the determining force for them as the country is rapidly changing to a majority of non-whites, like what’s occurring in Europe.

Along parallel lines, as a significant catalyst, if climate change continues to cause citizens from the global South to migrate north, all the English-speaking white-majority countries will continue to experience the same dynamics. According to Barbara Walter, how the US handles this dynamic is closely watched by its allies in the world.

Going forward, Americans can (1) allow this dynamic to tear the country apart or (2) they can use it to come together to fight back by creating a truly multiethnic, multi-religious democracy. How can this be done?

It’s imperative to address the two big risk factors that lead to civil war, i.e., anocracy and identity politics. In that regard, the rule of law is fundamental to addressing the issue. It must be firmly established and firmly executed as a check on anocracy. And assure equal access to every citizen’s right to vote and improve the quality of government services.

Business interests can play a crucial pivotal role. Past instances of inchoate civil war have been short-circuited by business interests coming into play to fight anocracy. Thirty years ago, it looked like South Africa was headed for civil war as Black South Africans protested White apartheid. The business community stepped into the fray and demanded real democracy because years of economic sanctions pressured their bottom lines. They chose profits over apartheid which brought immediate reform in South Africa.

The business community can also help solve identity politics by investing in communities that have been left behind via globalization and trade agreements like NAFTA. And they can invest in better health care and higher minimum wages. Thus, recreating a working class middle-class that has hope for the future and not left defenselessly openly vulnerable to demagogic threats to tear down the establishment that caused their plight. In other words, the establishment needs to rescue the middle class instead of rejecting it with stupid thoughtless shallow policy decisions, e.g., shipping good-paying jobs to the lowest common denominator of wages elsewhere in the world. In other words, cancel neoliberalism’s globalization destructive forces.

Additionally, there’s a short-term fix that is easily overlooked but crucial for early success in combating civil war. It is necessary to regulate social media but not interfere with free speech. Which is an extremely delicate subject, but the focus is algorithms that broadcast incendiary, divisive information. Algorithm data makes non-human, often anti-humanity, decisions about what users want to see on a platform. “Hu, the Harvard researcher, argues that for many systems, the question of building a ‘fair’ system is essentially nonsensical, because those systems try to answer social questions that don’t necessarily have an objective answer.” (Source: Rebecca Heilweil, Why Algorithms Can Be Racist and Sexist, Vox, Feb. 18, 2020)

In an August 2019 internal memo leaked in 2021, Facebook admitted that “the mechanics of our platforms are not neutral”, concluding that in order to reach maximum profits, optimization for engagement is necessary. In order to increase engagement, algorithms have found that hate, misinformation, and politics are instrumental for app activity. As referenced in the memo, “The more incendiary the material, the more it keeps users engaged, the more it is boosted by the algorithm.” (Sources: TikTok is Prompting Users to Follow Far-Right Extremist Accounts, MediaMatters for America, March 26, 2021 -and- Study: False News Spreads Faster Than the Truth, MIT, March 8, 2018)

YouTube has been identified as spreading radicalized content. Al-Qaeda and similar extremist groups have been linked for recruitment videos and engaging with international media outlets. (Source:  Murthy, Dhiraj. Evaluating Platform Accountability Terrorist Content on You Tube, American Behavioral Scientist, May 1, 2021)

“The U.S. department of Justice defines ‘Lone-wolf’ (self) terrorism as “someone who acts alone in a terrorist attack without the help or encouragement of a government or a terrorist organization”. Through social media outlets on the internet, ‘Lone-wolf’ terrorism has been on the rise, being linked to algorithmic radicalization. (Source: Lone Wolf Terrorism in America, Office of Justice Programs. November 2, 2022)

For clarification, according to Walter: People can put whatever they want onto social media, known as free speech, but it is crucial to inhibit algorithms that amplify hate speech across the country. This has been a key driver in America’s unwelcomed skirmish with a clear and dangerous threat of full-throttled civil war.

On a legal basis, algorithms are free to continue generating clicks like crazy which builds revenues for social media companies. Section 230 has its backside covered.

Section 230 Protective Shield

The Communications Decency Act of 1996, Section 230 states: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Therein protecting media from liabilities or being sued because of third-party content and reducing a company’s incentive to remove harmful content or misinformation, allowing social media companies to maximize profits through pushing radical content without legal risks.

“The Supreme Court has passed up a closely watched opportunity to clarify the scope of the federal liability shield known as Section 230 that protects internet companies from most legal claims over content posted by users… In a pair of rulings Thursday morning, the justices rejected lawsuits seeking to hold tech giants like Google and Twitter liable for terrorism-promoting content on their platforms. And the court nixed the suits without issuing any sweeping pronouncements on the immunity provision that has come under increasing fire from Republicans and Democrats.” (Source: Twitter, Google Win Big at Supreme Court, Politico, May 18, 2023)

As recently as November of 2022, the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security stated: “Social media platforms have played an increasing role in the spread of extremist content that translates into real world violence, due in part to business models that incentivize user engagement over safety.”

The social networking megaphone (Internet) may be the single most provocative, yet most protected, contributor to full-throttle civil war even as social media companies claim efforts to filter as much as possible… with algorithms?

“In this report, we set out to lift the curtain and show how algorithms work in practice. We developed and tested algorithmic models in the areas of offensive speech detection and predictive policing. We quickly found that automated hate speech detection is unreliable.” (Source: Bias in Algorithms: Artificial Intelligence and Discrimination, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2022.)

According to Dr. Walter, every interviewee informed her: “They did not see it coming.” Nobody advertises the onset of civil war, no blaring sirens or blasting horns or ringing bells. It just happens.

Meanwhile, many people feel ill at ease, anxious, sensing something that they cannot put their finger on, things are not quite right, a national angst reflected by mass human behavior. According to an American Psychological Association poll, nearly 40% of Americans have considered moving to another country because of the political environment and 70% are stressed-out because of violence, mass shootings, and gun violence. The national psyche is weak and vulnerable at the same time as signs of anocracy and identity politics grow stronger.

Barbara Walter’s final words: “We have to be brave enough to fight for real democracy… because only by fighting for democracy can we ensure that we will truly get peace.”
———
This article was originally published on August 25, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Al Gore vs Oil-Rich-Dubai, Host of COP28

Photo by Li-An Lim on Unsplash
Photo by Li-An Lim on Unsplash

Al Gore vs. Oil-Rich Dubai, Host of COP28

By Robert Hunziker

Al Gore, former US VP, recently held a TED talk in anticipation of COP28, the upcoming Conference of the Parties, aka: UNFCCC or 2023 United Nations Climate Conference, November 30th – December 12th, 2023, to be held at Expo City, Dubai. It increasingly looks to be a freakish show of multi-dimensional illusions and fakery that the world of climate science is falling for. After all, a crowd of 80,000 is expected to gather to resolve the climate crisis hosted by an active climate crisis participant named Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

It should be noted that COPs have been annual events since 1995 when CO2 emissions were 21 Gt, which is 21 billion metric tons (for perspective purposes, according to NASA, one gigaton equals 10,000 fully loaded US aircraft carriers). The scorecard since then is not at all impressive. Global CO2 emissions have gone up every year without fail following every COP for nearly three decades, currently at 36 Gt. That’s up 70% since COPs started. This is getting to be tiresome. In other words, COPs somehow mysteriously serve to accelerate carbon emissions. Maybe stop COP. After all, these are very expensive affaires that increasingly serve as photo ops for prime ministers and presidents, kinda like the Red Carpet for the Oscars.

Al Gore’s TED speech d/d August 2023: What the Fossil Fuel Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know. FYI- Al gets very heated when discussing the oil industry. FYI2- Al delivers an upbeat ending to his TED speech by explaining how society can get out of the global heat jam, and he highlights good things that are already happening. Good news is found in the final minutes of his 25:44 talk and in his opening remarks.

Before commencing on a tirade about the insanity of holding climate change talks in one of the world’s oil kingdoms with prospects that oil sheiks are going to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes, a synopsis of Al Gore’s encouraging words:

At one point when discussing mitigation efforts, he says: “So, will we succeed?”

Al’s answer: “Amazingly good news… What if we could stop the increase in temperatures?”

Response to his own query: “Yes, we can.”

Accordingly: “If we get to true net zero, astonishingly, global temperatures will stop going up with a lag time of as little as three to five years. They used to think that positive feedback loops would keep that process going. No, it will not! The temperatures will stop going up. The ice will continue melting and some other things will continue, but we can stop the increase of temperatures. Even better, if we stay at true net zero in as little as 30 years, half of all the human caused CO2 will come out of the atmosphere into the upper ocean and the trees and vegetation.” (footnote: Success depends upon several “ifs”.)

Therefore, according to former VP Gore: People should “not be vulnerable to despair” because humans have “a will to act.” Moreover, “the will to act is itself a renewable resource.” Accordingly, as further stated: We have everything we need and proven deployment models to reduce emissions 50% by 2030. It will require (1) more solar and wind (2) more regenerative agriculture (3) more EVs (4) more charging stations (5) more energy storage (6) more green hydrogen (7) and more electrolyzers to produce it.

Renewables already account for 90% of all new electricity generation installed each year, worldwide. In fact, renewable energy ascends nearly vertical on a graph. For example, just seven years ago, there was one Gigafactory. There are now 195 Gigafactories and another 300 in the pipeline. Gigafactories produce batteries for electric vehicles. Indeed, it is true, renewables are a growth industry. Just ask Wall Street, which handsomely profits.

But, according to the International Energy Agency, in the face of all that good news, the rapid growth rate mentioned by Al Gore is lagging the timeline needed to hit net zero emissions by 2050: “To achieve this, annual renewable energy use must increase at an average rate of about 13% during 2023-2030, twice as much as the average over the past 5 years.” (Source: Renewables, International Energy Agency, IEA, July 11, 2023)

Not only is the current scale of renewables off center, too slow, but COP28 is likely to deceive the public about the intentions of the oil industry, which puts a very big question mark on all assumptions of net zero achievement. However, before VP Gore castigates oil magnates, he heaps praise on America’s (Biden’s) Inflation Reduction Act, which he calculates will directly and indirectly be worth up to $1.2 trillion in renewable benefits, and both Australia and Brazil have turned very pro-renewable with more aggressive installations directed at net zero emissions. As noted by Gore, there is plenty of good news, e.g., China reaching its goals ahead of schedule, but here’s the catch: “In spite of this progress, the emissions are still going up and the crisis is still getting worse faster than we are deploying the solutions.” (this is the most direct, honest assessment by VP Gore in his TED speech).

For over 50 years fossil fuels have consistently been >80% of world energy supply. “Global energy demand rose 1% last year and record renewables growth did nothing to shift the dominance of fossil fuels, which still accounted for 82% of supply, according to the industry’s Statistical Review of World Energy.” (Source: Renewables Growth Did Not Dent Fossil Fuel Dominance in 2022, Report Says, Reuters, June 26, 2023)

To solve the persistent problem of excessive fossil fuel emissions, Gore suggests looking at the obstacles, which includes unrelenting opposition by the fossil fuel industry. Even though many people think they are onside and trying to help, he begs to differ: “Let me tell you … on every piece of legislation at every level of government, they’re in there with their lobbyists and revolving door colleagues doing everything possible to slow down progress. They have used fraud on a massive scale; they’ve used falsehoods on an industrial scale, and they’ve used their legacy political and economic networks… to capture the policy-making process.” (Al Gore)

Gore also mentions a direct hard-hitting statement by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres: “The fossil fuel industry is the polluted heart of the climate crisis.”

As stated by Gore, for decades the fossil fuel companies have had the damning evidence of poisonous fossil fuels yet decided to lie to the public to make more money. “It’s as simple as that.” And now they have seized control of the COP process, especially this year’s COP in Dubai. Concern has been building about this for quite some time. Last year in Egypt, the fossil fuel interests had more delegates at COP than the combined delegations of the 10 most affected climate-impacted countries. Which can only be categorized as an upside-down climate conference.

Making matters even more exasperating, this year’s host (Dubai) has appointed the president of COP28 despite blatant conflict of interest. It’s the CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (DNOC) Dr. Sultan Al Jaber. For reference purposes, DNOC’s emissions are larger than ExxonMobil. How is it possible for climate scientists to attend an event to halt CO2 that’s hosted by the CEO of one of the world’s largest emitters of CO2?

According to former VP Gore: Dhabi National Oil Company “has no credible plan whatsoever to reduce emissions.” In fact, they plan to increase their emissions via increased fossil fuel production by as much as 50% by 2030. This matches the time frame when the world is attempting to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030. It’s a massive clash of interests, as climate scientists from around the world attend COP28 in the backyard of massive CO2 emissions and plans to increase production by 50%.

Paradoxically, Dr. Jaber oversees both. Yes, he’s in charge of reducing emissions as well as increasing emissions. Al Gore’s response to that peculiar setup: “Wait a minute, do you take us as a bunch of fools?” In fact, the fossil fuel industry has captured the COP process and is intentionally slowing it down, period! Gore: “We need to do something about it.”

Last year at COP, the petrostates vetoed any references to a “fossil-fuel phase-down” in COP resolutions. Since that’s reality, then why hold COP in the first instance? Climate scientists shouldn’t be used as pawns to promote oil industry trickery.

Al Gore: “The climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis.” There’s no other way to look at it.

The newest scam by the fossil fuel industry is a storyline that fossil fuels are not the problem; it’s the emissions that are the problem. Umm- Duh! They recommend capturing the emissions and everything will be hunky dory. For example, Abu Dhabi claims they reduced emissions from oil and gas production from 2005-2014 by 99.2% even as they produced more of both. Climate Trade (which launched the first Carbon API in the world) measures these things: Here’s the truth, “By 2030, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company’s grand plan for Carbon Capture and Sequestration will capture only 1.4% of current emissions.” (TED talk @ 11:46)

Gore’s outburst regarding Abu Dhabi National Oil’s sleight of hand: “Do they think we don’t see what they’re doing… don’t understand what they’re doing?”

Moreover, here in the US, the EPA gave US utilities a regulatory mandate to either stop burning coal or capture the emissions. But capture’s not that simple: According to the EPA’s own description of carbon capture: “It’s technologies that are not economically or technically feasible for widespread use.”

The technology for CCS has been around for 50 years, but the cost has never declined. Whereas, usually as technologies develop and improve over time, costs per unit decrease. According to a study by Oxford University, CCS is what’s classified as a “non-improving technology.” It’s not readily available for “cost-effective practical use.” And now petrostates talk about direct air capture, which, by the way, uses huge amounts of energy. Energy companies claim DAC gives them an excuse to never stop producing oil. More to the point, they’ll never stop producing as long as this fabrication is publicly accepted.

In strong opposition, Gore showed a photo of a DAC unit in Iceland, which will be enhanced enough in 7 years so that each DAC unit will be able to capture 27 seconds worth of annual emissions. (TED talk 15:00) Are you kidding me!!!

On a cost-effective basis, DAC is not credible. Moreover, the biggest obstacle to DAC is physics, CO2 makes up ~0.035% of the air, meaning DACs will vacuum the other 99.96% to get ~0.035% out of the air. (TED talk 16:00) Oh, please! It’s a bad joke and cannot possibly meet the scale required just to keep up with current emissions.

Meanwhile oil companies are using DAC to effectively gaslight the public.

DAC is a sizeable task that’s nearly impossible to fully comprehend and in fact impossible to wrap arms around because it’s the planet that’s at issue; it’s really big! The scale of infrastructure that’s required to make a significant difference is beyond a Marshall Plan prototype, which would be a blip on direct air capture’s radar. According to renowned physicist Klaus Lackner, director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, to stay abreast of current emissions: “If you built a hundred million trailer-size units you could actually keep up with current emissions.” (Source: Elizabeth Kolbert, Can Carbon-Dioxide Removal Save the World? The New Yorker, Nov. 20, 2017) End-to-end 100,000,000 units will circumnavigate the planet 44 times. Oh, sure!

According to The World Benchmark Alliance and the Carbon Disclosure Project: “The oil and gas sector has made almost no progress towards the Paris Agreement goals since 2021… There has been little advance in oil, and alarmingly, even some decline in oil and gas companies’ progress on limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.”

The host of COP28, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, is rated as one of the least responsible of all the oil and gas companies. “It no longer voluntarily reports any emissions data… it scores an anemic 3.8 on a 1-to-100 scale for transition plans.”

The global allocation of capital is another major obstacle to overcoming a very sticky climate disaster scenario that’s already unfolding right before our eyes. As it happens, global warming embarrassingly arrived too early to the party. Meanwhile, last year governments around the world subsidized fossil fuel by more than one trillion dollars. And since Paris ’15, the 60 largest global banks have committed $5.5T to fossil fuel investments. Confusingly, 49 of the 60 banks signed net zero pledges… Why?

Al Gore did not mention the grueling fact that the climate system has already gone off the rails way earlier than expected. Realistically, how much time is left?

And when will the Conference of the Parties toss out, or ignore, if that’s possible, special interests, e.g., oil companies lurking behind every curtain, and thereafter base policy decisions upon science, which would be a positive change in COP’s approach to tackling the biggest threat since an asteroid slammed into the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico?

Boycott COP28!
———
This article was originally published on August 18, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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‘Project 2025’ Will Goose Up Global Heat

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

‘Project 2025’ Will Goose Up Global Heat

By Robert Hunziker

The Far-Right takeover of the Republican Party has readied a battle plan for 2025 that will crucify commitments to fight global heat, namely: Project 2025 / Presidential Transition Project, a 920-page formal proposal to take over and reconstruct government via abandonment and/or defunding of federal agencies that protect the nation’s health and environment.

Project 2025’s call to arms: “The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before.” (Source: The 2025 Presidential Transition Project, A Note on “Project 2025” Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise) Cultural Marxism?

“That ‘cultural Marxism’ is a crude slander, referring to something that does not exist, unfortunately does not mean actual people are not being set up to pay the price, as scapegoats to appease a rising sense of anger and anxiety. And for that reason, ‘cultural Marxism’ is not only a sad diversion from framing legitimate grievances but also a dangerous lure in an increasingly unhinged moment.” (Source: Samuel Moyn, professor law and history Yale, The Alt-Right’s Favorite Meme is 100 Years Old, The New York Times, November 18, 2018)

Project 2025 wants to “save the country” by marshalling forces on “day-one” of a newly elected Republican administration, pulling the plug, deconstructing/destroying the administrative state. The Heritage Foundation, which compiled the plan, intends to speak for the people of the nation via enactment of Project 2025 hitting the ground running on the day of the swearing-in of the next Republican president, anticipated January 2025 in a hopeful repeat of the Republican idealized presidency of 1981-89 when Ronald Reagan served as “the embodiment of the ideas and principles Heritage holds dear.” (Source: Reagan and Heritage: A Unique Partnership, The Heritage Foundation, June 7, 2004)

Heritage Foundation’s enduring influence strikes hard, but at times subtly, hidden, secretively far and wide throughout America’s political landscape, like a sponge soaking up and spewing out agenda for all of America, school boards, local, state, and federal positions of influence over lives of Americans, often times, whether they know it or not. So therefore, is Heritage positive or negative for the country? Hmm. Regardless, no other NGO’s clout compares, as Heritage buys, with hard (and dark) dollars, governmental policy as easily as shopping at Costco.

Therefore, as a result, and certainly inclusive of Heritage, America harks back to the feudal vassal socio-economic system of a 1,000 years ago, a simplistic lifestyle with the monarch providing defense for vassals that, in turn, obey the monarch’s every wish/command, rugged individualism reigns supreme, overlaying governmental functionaries not required. Grin and bear it, you’re on your own, buster!

Project 2025 has its sights set on the Biden Inflation Reduction Act with massive volleys of canon fire loaded, cocked, and directly aimed at Biden’s plans to reduce emissions and fund clean energy. “More than 350 right-wing thinkers” (hmm, really?) contributed to Project 2025 tactics designed to (1) block wind and solar power from the electrical grid (2) gut the EPA (3) eliminate the Dept. of Energy’s renewable energy offices (4) prohibit universal adoption of California’s tailpipe standards (5) transfer federal environmental duties to states (6) increase fossil fuel infrastructure.

Project 2025 is the consummate antithesis of Paris ’15, and so much more by taking a baseball bat to the federal bureaucracy and shifting very tenuous authority to individual states. In Project 2025’s own words: “If enacted, it could decimate the federal government’s climate work, stymie the transition to clean energy and shift agencies toward nurturing the fossil fuel industry rather than regulating it.” (Source: Project2025@Prjct2025. Jul 28) Once again, repeating the obvious, it’s the primo absolute perfect antidote to Paris ’15.

Essentially, Project 2025 is a major fundamental shift in government, moving federal agencies away from public health protection and environmental regulations that interfere with free market capitalism, under a manifest plan: Why should government dictate policy to the free market? With Project 2025, this impediment of federal government regulation over free enterprise is severely reduced or removed, for example, gutting the Dept. of Energy via huge cuts in key divisions that pertain to clean renewable energy and cuts to the DOE’s Grid Development Office, stopping grid expansion of renewable resources; meanwhile, natural gas infrastructure will be expanded???

But if renewables are evil (no federal support) and natural gas is good (gobs of federal support) then where and how is a distinction drawn between governmental influence “hands on” versus “hands off” don’t tread on me? So then, is Project 2025 a case study in contradictions?

Moreover, the plan adheres to a long-standing feudalistic practice of snitching to gain favor with the mighty monarch. One proposed snitch idea offers incentives to untrained non-professional vassals that “identify scientific flaws and research misconduct.” This incentivizes opponents of governmental regulations to target research. For example, challenging EPA regulations about risks to public health from industrial pollution. Proposal 2025 will turn the screws ever harder by requiring scientific studies to be “transparent and reproducible,” making it nearly impossible to produce credible analyses of public health issues that require private data that cannot legally be disclosed to the public. Ipso facto, critical scientific studies that could/should protect the public are hog-tied and tossed into a humongous dust bin.

Already, Project 2025 is assembling thousands upon thousands of vassals that will dependably follow orders, with razor-sharp salutes, starting day-one. This is a powerful overwhelming surprising departure from the leadup to the 2016 presidency election: “Project 2025 is not a white paper. We are not tinkering at the edges. We are writing a battle plan, and we are marshalling our forces,” Ibid. A battle plan including 20,000+ combatant black shirts.

In tacit support of Project 2025, GOP presidential candidates, when queried about global warming, express indifference: The World is Burning from a Record Heat Wave. GOP Presidential Candidates are Shrugging, The Hill, July 19, 2023. No guts, no opinion.

While in office, Trump unwound more than 100 existing environmental regulations, setting a record for dismantling federal agencies. Project 2025 is perfectly sculpted for his return with sledgehammer in hand to pummel federal agencies with much more gusto than before!

Still, a hard question remains whether Americans will vote to goose-up global heat.

Will they?

——

This article was originally published on August 11, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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The Nuclear Energy Trap

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash
Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

The Nuclear Energy Trap

By Robert Hunziker

Nuclear reactors are directly in the line of fire of global warming.

In fact, nuclear reactors cannot survive global warming. But that’s only the start of serious issues with the world’s newly found love affair with nuclear energy. This article examines the likelihood of nuclear energy as a fix it for global warming, or is it a victim?

The world is turning to nuclear energy as one solution for raging global warming, which has been in the news on a real time basis drying up commercial rivers, depleting major reservoirs and spreading wildfires like there’s no tomorrow. Yet, that’s only a sampling of global warming knockoffs. Significantly, it’s getting worse by the year, and there are some who wonder how much worse before the climate system literally implodes with destructive capacity beyond Hollywood’s wildest imagination.

In consequence, nuclear energy’s popularity is on the rise in concert with rising global temperatures. The hotter it gets the more supporters jump on the bandwagon, but there are plenty of reasons to believe it’s a fool’s paradise. History will likely judge this worldwide movement for nuclear energy as one of the biggest traps of all-time. Nevertheless, the nuclear energy trap is coming onstream faster and faster and without much opposition. Maybe there should be some.

A Gallup survey found 55% of U.S. adults in support of nuclear energy, which is the highest in over a decade. The Biden administration views nuclear as a key climate solution to net zero. Japan is restarting its idled plants and plans on building more as it commences the absolute insanity of releasing radioactive toxic water in storage tanks at Fukushima’s TEPCO nuclear plant directly into the readily available, right-next-door Pacific Ocean, as its neighbors squeal and many smart scientists squirm. Meanwhile, China, with 24 nuclear energy plants currently under construction, ambitiously plans to build at least 150 new reactors over the next 15 years. India is planning to commission 20 reactors by 2031. Worldwide, 60 new reactors are under construction.

Nuclear energy is on the move at a time when more and more exposure of cancer cases and deaths become public knowledge, as follows:

  • A BBC Future Planet article d/d July 25, 2019, The True Toll of the Chernobyl Disaster: “According to the official, internationally recognized death toll, just 31 people died as an immediate result of Chernobyl while the UN estimates that only 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the disaster. In 2005, it predicted a further 4,000 might eventually die as a result of the radiation exposure… Brown’s research, however, suggests Chernobyl has cast a far longer shadow.”
  • “The number of deaths in subsequent decades remains in dispute. The lowest estimates are 4,000; others 90,000 and up to 200,000.” (Source: Janata Weekly: Cuba and the Children of Chernobyl, May 7, 2023)
  • According to an article in USA Today d/d February 24, 2022, What Happened at Chernobyl? What to Know About Nuclear Disaster: “At least 28 people were killed by the disaster, but thousands more have died from cancer as a result of radiation that spread after the explosion and fire. The effects of radiation on the environment and humans is still being studied.”

In time, Fukushima will reflect statistics, often times second-third-fourth generations.

According to Chernobyl Children International, 6,000 newborns are born every year in Ukraine with congenital heart defects called “Chernobyl Heart.”

The newest nuclear energy craze is Small Modular Reactors to be built and installed throughout the world. Thereby, the entire planet could easily go nuclear energy at every mining site, on every ship, and every favorite shopping mall or telephone booth. Just imagine a world filled with small nuclear energy plants! No problem, until there is one.

Meanwhile, America’s left is onboard the let’s go-for-it nuclear cruise ship. The acid test of America’s left-leaning greenish advocates suddenly in favor of nuclear energy is leftist-leaning California, the birthplace of America’s anti-nuclear movement, which decided to extend the life of Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor, the state’s last nuclear energy plant, rather than close it down. Beyond this shift of allegiance to nuclear in greenish California, National Public Radio ran a report on the outbreak of support for nuclear, August 30, 2022, entitled: Why Even Environmentalists are Supporting Nuclear Energy Today.

But on a cautionary note, nuclear energy has an adversarial voice that’s difficult to ignore: “Multiple and unexpected failures are built into society’s complex and tightly coupled nuclear reactor systems. Such accidents are unavoidable and cannot be designed around.” (Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents, Princeton University Press, 1999)

The widespread rousing excitement over nuclear energy is a trap. In part because global warming is the kiss of death for reactors. Global warming and nuclear energy clash, incompatible, mutually destructive. Global warming is the enemy of nuclear energy, out to destroy it by drying rivers and overheating ocean waters amidst rising seas that cascade onto shoreline reactors a la Fukushima. Reactors only survive at the mercy of cool waters, and they’re seriously challenged/damaged by increasing levels of ocean surges. Nuclear reactors are not drought-tolerant, which is one of global warming’s biggest weapons.

The truth about nuclear energy’s fallibility is enunciated in a recent interview with one of the world’s leading experts Dr. Paul Dorfman, chair of the Nuclear Consulting Group, former secretary to the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Internal Radiation, and Visiting Fellow, University of Sussex, who said: “It’s important to understand that nuclear is very likely to be a significant climate casualty. For cooling purposes nuclear reactors need to be situated by large bodies of water, which means either by the coast or inland by rivers or large water courses. Sea levels are rising much quicker than we had thought and inland the rivers are heating up, potentially drying up, and also subject to significant flooding and flash-flooding and inundation. The key issue for coastal nuclear is storm surge, which is basically where atmospheric conditions meet high tide, which is essentially what happened in Fukushima.” (Source: Interview of Dr. Paul Dorfman, Nuclear Energy Is Already a Climate Casualty, Hot Globe, July 19, 2023)

“In recent years, nuclear plants across Northern Europe have been forced to shut down or reduce output because seawater became too warm to safely cool the reactor cores. Over the past decade, the Millstone energy plant in Connecticut saw a series of shutdowns on hot summer days until regulators raised the temperature limit of its cooling waters by 5 degrees Fahrenheit.” (Source: Nuclear Energy Plants are Struggling to Stay Cool, Wired, July 21, 2022)

France is an example of nuclear energy going wrong. The French Court of Auditors’ Report on the Safety and Operation of France’s Fifty-six (56) Reactors recently highlighted an increasingly unstable supply of water necessary for the country’s cooling reactors. (Source: Climate Change, Water Scarcity Jeopardizing French Nuclear Fleet, Balkan Green Energy News, March 24, 2023)

In France, Loire River is the longest river in the country at 625 miles. As of early 2023, global warming had clobbered the river, some areas completely dry with flow rate down to 1/20th of normal. Some of the country’s nuclear energy plants depend upon the river for cooling purposes. To date, forced shutdowns have only occurred in the summer, but France’s Court of Auditors warned that such events are likely to become 3-to-4 times more frequent unless global warming somehow subsides, yet France’s environmental minister thinks 4°C is on the horizon for the country. Moreover, for the first time since 1980, France has been a net importer of electricity, losing its 40-year net exporter status as its celebrated nuclear energy capability (70% electricity for France) caved-in to global warming.

Since water-cooled (95% of the 436) conventional nuclear energy reactors are vulnerable to global warming, then is a molten salt reactor a magical solution?

Answer: No, it is not!

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published a detailed analysis of molten salt reactors entitled: Molten Salt Reactors Were Trouble in the 1960s – and Remain in Trouble Today, June 20, 2022. The lengthy article traces the attempted development of molten salt reactors dating back to the 1950s. The various avenues of experimentation with halting results consumes paragraph after paragraph. For example, here’s one excerpt: “These problems remain relevant. Even today, no material can perform satisfactorily in the high-radiation high-temperature, and corrosive environment inside a molten salt reactor. In 2018, scientists at the Idaho National Laboratory conducted an extensive review of different materials and, in the end, could only recommend that ‘a systematic development program be initiated.’ In other words, fifty years after the molten salt reactor was shut down, technical experts still have questions about materials development for a new molten salt reactor design.”

In conclusion, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists claims that if molten salt reactors are constructed, they are unlikely to operate reliably and would result in various safety and security risks and would produce several different waste streams, all of which require extensive processing and serious disposal challenges. Accordingly, according to the Bulletin: “Investing in molten salt reactors is not worth the cost or the effort.”

If not large-scale reactors, will Small Modular Reactors (“SMR”) save the day?

According to a 2021 article in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: SMRs are at an early stage of development and are speculative technologies. It will take at least a decade to get them off drawing boards into serious production and longer to determine if they really work according to plans. It’s too slow and too costly to meet climate deadlines.

Stanford News published a SMR study: Stanford-led Research Finds Small Modular Reactors Will Exacerbate Challenges of Highly Radioactive Nuclear Waste. The study concludes that SMRs will generate more radioactive waste than conventional nuclear energy plants. “Our results show that most small modular reactor designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30 for the reactors in our case study.” (Stanford)

A SMR analysis by Bent Flyvbjerg, the leading global academic in megaproject failures and successes, consulted on over 100 mega projects: Nuclear Fallacy: Why Modular Reactors Can’t Compete With Renewable Energy, Cleantechnica, February 18, 2023.

Then, to satisfy the overwhelming popularity to go nuclear, are any modern “advanced” nuclear reactor designs worth pursuing?

Answer: No. According to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists: Report Finds That ‘Advanced’ Nuclear Reactor Designs Are No Better Than Current Reactors— and Some Are Worse, March 18, 2021. The 140-page report highlights studies of (1) sodium-cooled reactors (2) molten salt-fueled reactors (3) high-temperature gas-cooled reactors and whether they meet the requirements of (a) safer (b) more secure (c) lower risk of nuclear proliferation and terrorism than the existing fleet of nuclear reactors. None of the three satisfactorily passed the study.

Additionally, the report analyzed unsubstantiated claims developers are making about designs and using little hard evidence to advance their causes. For example, Bill Gates’ statements about the 345-megawatt Natrium claiming it will produce less nuclear waste and be safer than conventional light-water reactors. The UCS report found the sodium-cooled fast reactor Natrium to be less “uranium-efficient,” and it would not reduce the amount of waste, and it’s subject to serious safety problems not at issue with conventional light-water reactors, e.g., sodium coolant can burn when exposed to air or water, and its fast-reactor could experience uncontrollable energy increases leading to rapid core melting, which is the overriding bane of nuclear energy.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists: Timing is another killer of contemporary designs. According to requirements to be met by federal regulators, it could take up to 20 years and billions of dollars to commercialize non-light-water reactors, fuel cycle facilities, and related infrastructure. Timing, timing, timing is everything when it comes to meeting the necessity of reaching net zero emissions as global warming is not waiting around for solutions. It is accelerating like never before as stated by Dr. James Hansen (Columbia University): “There has been a staggering increase in Earth’s energy imbalance.” Hansen’s formula supporting that statement points to a distinct possibility of 1.5C right around the corner. Which begs the question: How long does it take to plan, approve, build, and commission a nuclear reactor? Oh, well!

In conclusion, the Union of Concerned Scientists recommends: “The DOE and Congress should consider spending more research and development dollars on improving the safety and security of light-water reactors, rather than on commercializing immature, over-hyped non-light-water reactor designs.”

As usual in cases with extremely difficult circumstances dealing with nature there are no easy answers but plenty of traps. In that regard, is nuclear energy a Trojan Horse for devastating global warming?

——

This article was originally published on July 28, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Antarctica’s Threatening Winter

Photo by henrique setim on Unsplash
Photo by henrique setim on Unsplash

Antarctica’s Threatening Winter

By Robert Hunziker

In the dead of winter, the Antarctic Peninsula, an 800-mile extension of the Antarctic continent, temperatures hit 32°F. (Source: It’s Even Hot in Antarctica, Where it’s Winter, Vox, July 13, 2023)

Global warming has been on a hot streak, accelerating its record-setting impact on the planet over the past couple of years. And even though it’s winter down below, Antarctica has joined the party. The icy continent, as large as the U.S. and Mexico combined, is the coldest continent on Earth with a mean annual interior temperature of -71F.

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), despite mid-winter conditions, Antarctica’s sea ice is at record lows, in fact 17% below average for this time of year. Alas, only recently, within the past few years, scientists believed East Antarctica, the mother ship of the continent, solid, unwavering, the coldest place on Earth nearly impregnable to any kind of crash for the foreseeable future. But that theory has been tossed out because it does not hold up any longer: In a First, an Ice Shelf Collapses in East Antarctica, The New York Times d/d March 25, 2022.

Over the decades, ice shelf collapse in East Antarctica was not a concern. On the other hand, West Antarctica’s geological setting is a different story with brand-name glaciers Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier tipsy, threatening, under scrutiny.

Yet, in 2022 the Conger Ice Shelf/East Antarctica bit the dust. “The Conger collapse is the first observed in East Antarctica since the era of satellite imagery began in 1979, said Catherine Walker, a glaciologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts,” Ibid.

All of which prompts a very logical query as to whether coastal cities of the world support a coordinated plan to rein-in fossil fuel usage, the root cause of planetary heat that ultimately brings flooding to coastal cities. Umm- No such plan exists. Glaciologists privately say the full extent of the tipsy dynamics of ice sheets are not included in models for sea level rise, e.g., missing from IPCC calculations. However, if included, projections of sea levels increase by up to 200% over current projections (Eric Rignot, senior research scientist NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory). That’s very big trouble.

Antarctica is starting to succumb to global heat much earlier than expected. It’s overwhelmed by the human footprint emitting greenhouse gases with abandon, for example, human CO2 emitted into the atmosphere: (a) 5 billion tons in 1950 (b) 25 billion tons in 2000 (c) 37 billion tons in 2022.

As a result, Greenland slumps in a hyper melt mode. Coincidentally, at the same time as Greenland slumps, America’s congressional Republican Party threatens big cuts to climate funding in President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that allocated $375B to fight global warming. They want to cut climate funding at the same time as global heat celebrates all-time hotness across the world. The paradox is too obvious to ignore. Yet, paradox or contradiction, as it were, may not be strong enough language to fully explain the depths of degeneracy.

In sharp contrast to America’s helpless misinformed, the China Meteorological Administration’s Blue Book on Climate Change rolled out only recently. Here’s what China says: “It is essential for us to unite with the international community to confront climate change. On the one hand, we need to strengthen our scientific understanding and continue conducting in-depth research on climate change. Besides this, we must actively adapt to climate change by enhancing our capacity to cope with climate risks and disasters. Most importantly, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through various means to mitigate climate warming. We can start by taking action on an individual level and collaborating with society as a whole to alleviate the impact of climate change.” (Source: Extreme Heat Events in China Ever More Frequent: Blue Book, Global Times, July 2023)

China’s “breath of fresh air” is in sharp contrast to America’s Republican-backed initiative of 17 amendments whacking Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, demonstrating the preposterousness of shallow infantile blabber versus mature adult foresight.

Meantime, according to very smart scientists: “Greenland’s melt rate has gone into hyperdrive in the past few years.” (Source: ’Devastating’ Melt of Greenland, Antarctic Ice Sheets Found, Phys.org, April 20, 2023) Its average melt rate from 2017-2020 was +20% more per year than at the start of the decade and an astounding seven (7) times more than the 1990s. That’s super-duper speed for a big chunk of ice perceived as stationary. It should scare the living daylights out of the mayors of the world’s ten most vulnerable coastal cities, e.g., New York City, Miami, Bangkok, Amsterdam, Ho Chi Minh City, Cardiff, New Orleans, Manila, London, and Shenzhen.

“The new figures ‘are pretty disastrous really,’ said study co-author Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute,” Ibid.

“This is a devastating trajectory,’ said U.S. National Snow and Ice Center Deputy Lead Scientist Twila Moon, who wasn’t part of the study,” Ibid.

Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization reported Antarctica sea ice at record lows in the middle of winter (record lows in the winter???). According to Marilyn Raphael, Antarctica sea ice analyst at UCLA: “It’s not something that we should be comfortable with. It shouldn’t be as warm as it is. If that warming continues, it will make things go akilter.” (Source: It’s Even Hot in Antarctica, Where It’s Winter, Vox, July 13, 2023)

Antarctica going “akilter” refers to its significance to the rest of the planet. After all, it is home to 190 feet of frozen sea level rise. As if that’s not enough, what happens in Antarctica reshapes weather patterns around the world, and come to think of it, worldwide weather patterns are already in a tizzy. Antarctica determines ocean currents that destine important nutrients to nourish global fisheries, and it directly influences atmospheric circulation patterns for clouds, rainfall, and temperatures throughout the planet. All of that is already akilter.

“The sea ice and atmosphere and ocean… We just haven’t quite seen the size of the changes that are coming,” Jeremy Bassis, professor of Climate and Space Sciences, University of Michigan, “Ibid.

All of which brings to surface a very big question mark about 1.2°C above pre-industrial. According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, annual average global temperature reached 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial in 2022. Well, excuse me, but if East Antarctica’s cracked, West Antarctica’s shaky, the Peninsula’s warm, and Greenland’s in hyper meltdown, then what’s gonna happen if the world approaches the 1.5C upper limit suggested by the IPCC? More to the point, what’s gonna stop it?

According to James Hansen, the world’s leading climate scientist: “There has been a staggering increase in Earth’s energy imbalance.” (Source: James Hansen, El Nino and Global Warming Acceleration, June 14, 2023). Hansen’s dot-plot graph appears to put 1.5°C smack dab into the mid/late 2020s. That’s way-way ahead of the IPCC’s schedule. Ergo, if the worldwide climate disaster scene of 2022/23 is what happens at 1.2C, then what happens at 1.5C?

By now, everybody’s aware (well, almost everybody) since the start of the 21st century, human-generated global warming has overtaken, overwhelmed nature’s true course. A prime example: The Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica was stable for 60 years of observation until all-of-a-sudden in 2015-2020 it retreated by 18 miles in only five years in celebration of its two-year birthday of CO2 crossing over 400 ppm for the first time in human history, May 2013. (Source: Thwaites and Pine Island Glacier are Losing Ice Faster Than at any Time in the Past 5000 Years, The International Thwaites Collaboration, June 30, 2022)

Beware of the Antarctic summer!

This article was originally published on July 21, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Climate Poison Pills in Congress

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

Climate Poison Pills in Congress

By Robert Hunziker

Republican lawmakers in the US Congress are unabashedly pro-global warming: “Bring it on! We’ve got air conditioners in our cars, offices, and homes… no sweat!” Not one Republican in Congress voted for the nation’s most inclusive climate bill of all time, the Inflation Reduction Act, not one Republican vote.

Meanwhile, here we go again, this coming fall, with Congress in another deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown. They must pass several spending bills by September 30th when current funding expires or face another ugly quasi-default situation. Leading up to this white-knuckle drop-dead deadline, Republican lawmakers have armed themselves with a plethora of “climate poison pills” inserted into spending proposals. They hope to trim the budget by hammering climate funding.

They want to stop Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act dead in its tracks, and climate change is a prime target for massive cuts, to hell with global warming. They don’t buy into the climate change/global warming song and dance routine, as they like to reference it.

According to the Clean Budget Coalition, a watchdog group of advocacy nonprofits, at least seventeen (17) “poison pill” amendments have been issued to block clean energy funding. A poison pill is an amendment that weakens a legislative bill’s effectiveness and/or destroys its chances of passing.

This brings into focus a Republican Party that purportedly represents the interests of its constituents by torpedoing bills that mitigate global warming, consequently, eliminating green jobs in red states funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. There are lots of them. (Source: Red States to Reap the Biggest Rewards from Biden’s Climate Package, Bloomberg News, April 25, 2023)

Accordingly, “red states will receive $337B in investments for large solar, wind, and storage projects, Democratic states $183B” (Bloomberg News), making revenue assumptions more inclusive and beyond the Inflation Reduction Act of $375B as the act multiplies private initiatives.

An analysis by the Rocky Mountain Institute, extending beyond renewable projects within the Inflation Reduction Act, red states will receive investments of $623B compared to $354B for blue states between now and 2030, assuming companies and consumers adopt clean technologies to meet national targets.

However, a new amendment proposal prohibits the federal government from buying electric vehicles. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) explains it, as follows: “The military is no place to experiment with untested technology… The combat readiness and training of soldiers and equipment is jeopardized by the compelled use of electric vehicles.” (Source: As Budget Talks Heat Up in Congress, Republicans Ramp Up Attacks on Climate Spending, Inside Climate News, July 11, 2023)

Another amendment would prohibit R&D funding for EV charging infrastructure or solar panels within the National Defense Authorization Act.

Another demands the Defense Dept. terminate any contracts for electric non-combat vehicles.

Another amendment blocks the Biden executive order for federal departments to reach net-zero emissions by 2045 and reduce emissions by 50% by 2032.

Another amendment blocks all U.S. funding under the Paris climate agreement to help developing countries.

US Representative Paul Gosar, DDS, proposed his own solution in an October 10, 2021, tweet: “Even if climate change were real (it isn’t) there’s obviously solutions these ‘top scientists’ are ignoring. I have an ice maker in my basement. It can make gallons of ice cubes in a day. Can’t we just make a few million of these machines and replace this allegedly melting ice?”

Of course, none of this comes as a surprise. One year ago, Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which contained the nation’s first-ever comprehensive climate legislation, allocating $375B on decarbonization and climate resilience over 10 years, not backed by one Republican vote, zero Republican votes in the House and zero in the Senate. Now, they want to take their Republican opposition to climate policy one step further by undermining/compromising last year’s legislation.

The House State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, under the leadership of Subcommittee Chairman Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) advanced its fiscal 2024 spending bill on June 23rd including a prohibition of funding for “envoys not authorized by Congress or confirmed by the Senate.” Ipso facto, John Kerry’s position as Climate Czar will be eliminated along with his office budget of $16.7M, annually.

The Clean Budget Coalition’s Deanna Noel responded: “The disgraceful poison pill riders are nothing short of corporate giveaways to the corrupt fossil fuel industry.” (Source: Republicans Take Aim at Climate funds in Spending Bills, The Register-Herald, July 11, 2023)

What’s going on with the lack of convincing congressional support to fight climate change as global warming clobbers the planet like never before? Elizabeth Kolbert explained the root cause in The New Yorker: “After Citizens United, according to the report (ed.-Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis) ‘Bipartisan activity on comprehensive climate legislation collapsed.” (Source: Elizabeth Kolbert, How Did Fighting Climate Change Become a Partisan Issue? The New Yorker, August 14, 2022)

The 2010 Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case ruled that corporations and wealthy donors could, effectively, pour unlimited amounts of cash into electioneering. And guess what happened next? They bought a bunch of sell-outs, easy-to-buy, off-the-shelf baby-kissers. Ever since Citizens United, “billionaires are sponsoring candidates like prized racehorses.” (Source: Politics for Sale, Brennan Center for Justice, October 18, 2022) They own them.

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is a prime example, and an answer to why so many grovel at Trump’s feet: “Thiel is a particularly alarming example. Through massive donations to super PACs, which Citizens United brought to the fore, he’s using his riches to force his fringe views into mainstream political discourse. He’s supporting candidates who spread the false claim that fraud decided the 2020 election. And his money doesn’t just force a certain type of candidate into the public eye — it also silences Thiel’s ideological opponents. By working to defeat the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump, for example, Thiel has deterred others from speaking out against the former president. Few politicians can afford to ignore Thiel and the threat his money holds,” Ibid.

That is today’s American politics at work. For three-years-running America’s highest-ranking politicians focused on phony voter fraud claims, not one shred of evidence so far, in the face of the most treacherous climate in human history, where funding cuts are now proposed.

This article was originally published on July 14, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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The Greenland Threat Escalates

Photo of polar bear swimming by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The Greenland Threat Escalates

By Robert Hunziker

Will the world’s major coastal cities, such as NYC, survive escalating global heat conditions in Greenland? And what if both Greenland and Antarctica follow the recent very disturbing pattern of the world’s oceans? For the first time that scientists can recall, sea surface temperatures that always recede from annual peaks are failing to do so, staying high.

Climate change is getting dangerously worse, which is becoming a more common statement among scientists. Ecosystems are starting to fail right before our eyes. For example, in 2022 Europe experienced a big scare with temporary loss of full service for navigable commercial waterways, like the Rhine, and loss of potable water in regions of France and Italy, necessitating water delivery by truck to over 100 communities, with much of Asia experiencing similar issues, especially China and India.

Suddenly, the world is a different place, a description that fits Greenland, especially August 14th, 2021, when it rained at Summit Station, 10,551 feet elevation. There’s no previous record of rainfall at the 2-mile summit. It was one more unprecedented climate event. More on Greenland and coastal cities follows herein.

According to the IPCC 6th Assessment Report: “There is high confidence that climate change has already caused irreversible losses in terrestrial, freshwater and coastal and open ocean marine ecosystems.” Still, climate scientists continue pumping out reports about those same irreversible losses, but frustration mounts as reports pile on top of reports in the face of negligible efforts by the 195 signatories to Paris ‘15.

It’s not surprising that climate scientists are becoming street protestors.

Scientists Rebel

In December 2021 an offbeat science article called for scientists to stop feeding research into a bottomless pit of inaction: “The science-society contract is broken. The climate is changing… The tragedy of climate change science is that at the same time as compelling evidence is gathered, fresh warnings issued, and novel methodologies developed, indicators of adverse global change rise year upon year.” (Source: Bruce C. Glavoic, et al, The Tragedy of Climate Change Science, Climate and Development, Vol 14, Issue 9, 2022)

Furthermore: “We therefore call for a halt to further IPCC assessments. We call for a moratorium on climate change research until governments are willing to fulfil their responsibilities in good faith and urgently mobilize coordinated action from the local to global levels. This third option is the only effective way to arrest the tragedy of climate change science,” Ibid.

“Over 1,00o scientists from 25 countries staged protests last week following the release of IPCC’s new report.” (Source: Scientists Stage Worldwide Climate Change Protests After IPCC Report, Smithsonian Magazine, April 13, 2022).

At the American Geophysical Union meeting in December 2022, which is the largest annual meeting of scientists, activists’ scientists unfurled a banner that read: “Out of the lab & into the streets,” demanding rapid deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 to avoid catastrophic climate effects, meaning all hell will break lose. But maybe it’s already breaking lose? In fact, in many respects it is already breaking lose.

Greenland is starting to come apart at the seams right before our eyes, threatening to impact the world’s most prominent cities: New York City, Miami, Bangkok, Amsterdam, Ho Chi Minh City, Cardiff, New Orleans, Manila, London, and Shenzhen are the 10 most vulnerable cities for sea level rise. Based upon the following chart of Greenland melt extent, capturing only a short duration in time, the famous cities must hope this ominous graph, June 28th, is nothing more than an aberration that dissipates soon. A nearly vertical spike of ice sheet melt extent can be seen on the chart from Jason Box, climatologist, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland,.

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Surely the radical spike up does not forecast new higher levels down the road, as it naturally dissipates, but what if it does not dissipate, similar to sea surface temperatures that always recede from annual peaks but failed to do so, staying high? Then, seawalls become mandatory.

“Sea surface temperatures (SST) have risen 5 degrees Celsius above normal during June. This is the warmest they have been in more than 170 years for this time of the year.” (Source: North Atlantic Marine Heatwave ‘Beyond Extreme’, Down to Earth, July 5, 2023)

Already, the combined ice mass loss for Greenland and Antarctica has been accelerating, fast and faster, from 116 billion tons per year in the late 1990s to 410 billion tons per year 2017-2020, which comprises the most recent data set. That’s a 250% increase in one decade, which is piping hot for a colossal block of ice. At that rate, it’s probably a good idea to start building seawalls, forget the plans, just build.

Meanwhile, the 10 coastal cities should keep their collective fingers crossed that the spike up doesn’t portend the future, like the recent experience with ocean heat, which demonstrated major, maj0r unwelcomed changes in climate behavior. If so, the word “trouble” takes on new meaning for some of the world’s biggest cities. In fact, The Economist declared Greenland a “goner” a couple of years ago: The Greenland Ice Sheet Has Melted Past the Point of No Return, The Economist, April 25th, 2020.

However, the problem runs deeper yet. A recent study of icesheets shows that the current generation of sea level rise modeling that’s commonly used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and policymakers is too conservative, unintentionally lowballing, missing data that changes the complexion from a cautionary yellow to a red alert.

According to the study, the hidden interior of the Greenland ice sheet is destabilizing because of millions of hairline cracks that cause hydro-fracking that satellite observations and previous studies have not yet recognized. (Source: David M. Chandler, et al, Widespread Partial-Depth Hydrofractures in Ice Sheets Driven by Supraglacial Streams, Nature Geoscience, June 2023)

The implications of the Chandler study are profound as the hydrofractures occur far from crevasse fields and melt lakes where science ordinarily finds such occurrences. Over time tiny hairline cracks grow into giant gaping maws large enough to swallow a cathedral. Ice sheet stability is compromised.

Beyond the Chandler study, other recent studies reveal vulnerabilities that are not yet factored into sea level expectations by the IPCC or policymakers. For example (1) warm ocean currents are flowing under ice shelves in Greenland and Antarctica, destabilizing, undercutting outlet glaciers (2) Abnormal levels of rainfall in Greenland, including regions where, in unprecedented fashion, it’s never rained before, accelerate surface melt (3) foreign surface materials darken Greenland’s ice sheet and absorb more solar radiation, accelerating melt. And (4) Is Antarctica included in IPCC calculations for sea levels, or did they not have enough data points to include it? I think not. Meantime, the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica are already teetering, like listing ships at sea. Nobody knows for sure how soon a crash happens, maybe Thwaites, the alleged Doomsday Glacier, hmm.

An international collaboration of 65 polar scientists established in 2011, named Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-Comparison Exercise -IMBIE- to reconcile measurements of ice sheet mass balance. It’s supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. According to an April 20, 2023, press release: Since the early 1990s there has been a fivefold increase in melting of ice sheets. A five-fold increase is beyond disturbing, whatever that may be.

Underestimating sea level rise by the IPCC and policymakers is exposed in study-after-study, for example Eric Rignot, senior research scientist NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and professor, University of California, co-led a study of the Petermann Glacier, Greenland which proved that the melt rate at the junction of the ocean with grounded ice is much more vigorous than expected. Their finding potentially doubles projections of sea level rise. (Source: Enrico Ciraci, Eric Rignot, et al, Melt Rates in the Kilometer-Size Grounding Zone of Petermann Glacier, Greenland, Before and During Retreat, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 2, 2023)

Doubling sea level rise is difficult to fathom and would be nearly impossible to handle, especially with nobody planning for it to happen.

“These ice-ocean interactions make the glaciers more sensitive to ocean warming,’ said senior co-author Eric Rignot, UCI professor of Earth system science and NASA JPL research scientist. ‘These dynamics are not included in models, and if we were to include them, it would increase projections of sea level rise by up to 200 percent – not just for Petermann but for all glaciers ending in the ocean, which is most of northern Greenland and all of Antarctica,” Ibid.\

Based upon numerous requests for a shorter-term forecast of likely sea level rise, an analysis was undertaken by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Geological Survey, expecting significant sea level rise over the next 30 years, by region. They projected 10 to 14 inches (25 to 35 centimeters) of rise on average for the East Coast, 14 to 18 inches (35 to 45 centimeters) for the Gulf Coast, and 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) for the West Coast. (Source: NASA Study: Rising Sea Level Could Exceed Estimates for U.S. Coasts, NASA- Global Climate Change, November 1, 2022)

The wild card in NASA’s calculations is whether “the accelerating rate of sea level rise detected in satellite measurements from 1993 to 2020 – and the direction of those trends” used to determine future sea levels remains the same or accelerates beyond initial baseline calculations.

What can be done?

The answers for what can be done are in the public domain. Indeed, what can be done is all about when, or if it will be done, which is the real issue.

“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” (Robert Swan, one of the world’s greatest explorers, first to walk both the North and South Poles)

This article was originally published on July 7, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.