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The Ocean Heat Bomb Ignites

Ocean Heat Anomaly Map 2020 by NOAA is in the public domain.
Ocean Heat Anomaly Map 2020 by NOAA is in the public domain.

The Ocean Heat Bomb Ignites

By Robert Hunziker

-For the first time that scientists can recall, sea surface temperatures that always recede from annual peaks are failing to do so, staying high-

Global warming and extensive overfishing have damaged ocean ecosystems well beyond recognition from only a few decades ago. Still, on its own accord, the ocean stood tall for over 3 billion years. But, alas, in less than one human lifetime it is teetering like never before, and credible studies claim the world’s oceans could be devoid of life within only three decades. This is one of the most troubling transformations of all time, nothing compares to it, absolutely nothing!

The ocean heat bomb is all about the impact of global warming and overfishing, neither of which is high enough on to-do lists of countries to help sustain ecosystems. It should be noted that Wall Street’s embrace of going green for a profit won’t come close (not enough scale soon enough) to solving the global warming problem, but there’s plenty of green to be made. By all appearances, the love affair with fossil fuels is a permanent fixture, according to IEA data, fossil fuels constitute ~80% of energy over the past 50+ years with no change as of 2023. And a reality check: “Big banks and investment firms have joined the ranks of companies making ‘net-aero’ pledges. But their huge stakes in oil and gas projects are undermining their climate promises.” (Source: How Wall Street’s Fossil-Fuel Money Pipeline Undermines the Fight to Save the Planet, Fortune, February 2, 2023)

Moreover, as if an overheated ocean is not enough of a headache, overfishing is totally out of control, nearly wiping out several species, e.g., over 11,000 sharks killed per hour at risks of extinction in part for a brew of tasteless shark fin soup.

The oceans are a gigantic heat sponge, absorbing 90% of planetary heat, enabling life to go on within its 10,000-yr Goldilocks Holocene cycle, not too hot not to cold. But times are changing very rapidly. For the first time that scientists recall, sea surface temperatures that always recede from annual peaks are failing to do so, staying high “with scientists warning that this underscores an underappreciated but grave impact of climate change.” (Source: Record Sea Surface Heat Sparks Fears of Warming Surge, Phys.org, May 4, 2023)

“Year by year ocean warming is increasing at an absolutely staggering rate,” Jean-Baptiste Sallée, Research Scientist, CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research), Ibid.

Scientists are now warning that human-generated greenhouse gases are demonstrably exposing the worst possible scenario with the ocean turning into a global warming “heat bomb.” What goes around comes around. It appears that the ocean heat bomb has ignited.

According to US NOAA observatory recordings, in early April 2023 average surface temperatures of the oceans, excluding polar waters, hit an all-time high of 21.1°C (70°F). More than a passing interest, that all-time high might be goosed much higher by an upcoming El Niño weather phenomenon, triggering the ocean heat bomb by loading more onto the climate system. As such, the 2022 unprecedented disaster year, whacking every continent with destabilizing floods, droughts, heat, and fire may be bush-league when compared to what’s in store for 2023-24.

For perspective, it’s important to recall that 2022 was influenced by La Niña, a natural cooling cycle, yet near-record heat consumed the planet. La Niña didn’t help, which can only register as a telling disappointment. According to NASA, if the cooling impact of La Niña.is factored into the equation, 2022 was the warmest year on record.

The most immediate consequence of too much ocean heat will be more severe marine heatwaves which are comparable to terrestrial wildfires of rainforests. These underwater fire-equivalents degrade/destroy underwater kelp forests, e.g., West Coast Pacific kelp losses, and Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching, while also negatively altering key life-giving nutrients and oxygen needed for all sea life. Poof, the basic ingredients of a major ecosystem gone! This comes as the world’s oceans are already reeling from overfishing, chemical/plastic pollution, and acidification whilst overly stimulated by too much heat.

The ocean heat bomb threatens the lifeblood of civilization in a multifaceted manner and is expected to push back at some juncture by transferring heat back out. Could this spark a runaway overheated planet? Of course, it’s not only the human heat machine at work; it’s also human insatiableness, a glutinousness that ignores sustainability, destroying world fishing stock with remarkable speed and efficiency as the modern fishing fleet literally clobbers sea life.

The Overfishing Dilemma

Overfishing is a direct threat to future human consumption of sea food. According to research conducted by The World Counts (a source for ‘state of the planet’ real time data): “The world’s oceans could be virtually emptied for fish by 2048. A study shows that if nothing changes, we will run out of seafood in 2048. If we want to preserve the ecosystems of the sea, change is needed.”

The four-year study of 7,800 marine species concluded that the long-term trend is clear and predictable. It’s on a steep downward slope.

“Almost 90 percent of global marine fish stocks are now overfished, and wild capture fisheries struggle without sound regulatory frameworks and strong enforcement… Globally, data on fishing and fish stocks are insufficient to support proper management. A concerted national and international effort is needed to collect, analyze, and interpret fishing data for policymaking.” (Source: Life Below Water, The World Bank, 2017)

Nevertheless, according to The World Counts: As for fish stocks, roughly 80% of world fisheries are overly exploited, depleted or in state of collapse. Worldwide, 90% of large predatory fish, e.g., sharks, tuna, marlin, and swordfish are already gone. For example, according to the International Tuna Conservation Commission, the stock of Atlantic bluefin tuna has plummeted to 13% from its 1950 level. And according to Sci/Dev.net and the UN Food & Agri Org, Pacific bluefin tuna is estimated to be 4%-t0-5% of its 1950 levels.

The ocean’s problems are known. The solutions escape authorities. Today’s world fishing fleet has enough capacity to cover four (4) Earth-like ocean systems. It’s high tech and eerily similar to strip-mining on land. According to Canadian journalist Michael Harris, we are “using the black magic of technology to make a desert of the sea.” (Source: When Too Many Boats Chase Too Few Fish, PEW Trust, October 19, 2022)

Almost totally unregulated, the oceans are open prey for massive technologically advanced fishing fleets that literally scoop up everything, tossing aside bycatch, e.g., sharks. Mostly, these are Chinese vessels that prowl the seas. The Overseas Development Institute claims China’s distant-water fishing fleet has 17,000 vessels. The United States distant-water fleet numbers 300.

“Having depleted the seas close to home, the Chinese fishing fleet has been sailing

farther afield in recent years to exploit the waters of other countries, including those in West Africa and Latin America, where enforcement tends to be weaker as local governments lack the resources or inclination to police their waters. Most Chinese distant-water ships are so large that they scoop up as many fish in one week as local boats from Senegal or Mexico might catch in a year.” (Source: How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet is Depleting the World’s Oceans, YaleEnvironment360, August 17, 2020)

According to the IUU (Illegal, Unreported, Unregulated) Fishing Index, China is ranked as the world’s worst abuser of sea laws, especially shark finning. China’s gigantic refrigerated vessels referred to as “Motherships” upload the catch of the Chinese fleet, thus allowing an entire fleet of trawlers to fish 24/7 without returning to port for weeks on end.

The ocean heat bomb fuse has been ignited. The question is whether it can be extinguished before it’s too late. The most likely answer is: No, it cannot be extinguished, not because it is impossible but rather because there is no coordinated worldwide plan to do so. After all, it’s underwater where nobody sees, and statistics about the status of ocean fishing stock are suspect and subject to considerable conjecture and easily criticized.

Where is a credible world coordinated plan to sustain ocean ecosystems? Where is a credible world coordinated Marshall Plan-type of concerted effort to combat global warming with the funding in place and the wherewithal to make a difference? These do not exist in the face of abundant factual evidence of a planet that’s screaming “help me!”

However, there simply is not enough focus or enough scale committed to control or ameliorate the deleterious impact of human-caused global warming that’s changing the climate 10xs faster than seen in any paleoclimate study of Earth’s history going back a billion years. Furthermore, cleaning up the mess is an overwhelming task from the get-go.

Meanwhile, greenhouse gases set new records by the year, every year without fail. “The observations collected by NOAA scientists in 2022 show that greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at an alarming pace and will persist in the atmosphere for thousands of years, said Rick Spinrad, Ph.D., NOAA administrator.” (Source: Greenhouse Gases Continued to Increase Rapidly in 2022, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, April 5, 2023)

Year-over-year, there’s more and more degradation, more and more greenhouse gases, more and more lip service to “hold the line at 1.5°C” by toothless global conferences, and more and more distortions of the truth, which is at epidemic levels. Distorting the truth has been, and still is, one of the biggest impediments to addressing the global warming issue.

In the recent past, telltale evidence of a profound change in how society approaches existential issues reared its ugly head four days following Donald Trump’s inauguration, which boldly and falsely claimed “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration.” Immediately thereafter sales of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949) rocketed by 10,000%, making it a No. 1 bestseller overnight. People sensed a putrid rot lingering in the air, burning nostrils.

Nineteen Eighty-Four remains the go-to source for people when “truth is mutilated… language distorted… power is abused… and when we want to know how bad things can get.” (Source: Nothing but the Truth: The Legacy of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Guardian, May 19, 2019)

Just think how unfortunately coincidental it is that (1) Orwell (2) global warming (3) overfishing and (4) Trump, the avatar of disinformation, should intersect at the same moment in history. The upshot is people question the credibility of facts and refuse to accept the truth when it matters most, thus crippling a public understanding of crucial scientific studies that should educate, not distract.

As a result, the world community doesn’t seem to know which way to turn next. It’s directionless and possibly paralyzed by the overwhelming scope of a very sticky climate problem that’s starting to haunt existence. Additionally, most people don’t live where climate change shows up first and thus find it difficult to accept the reality of the danger. For example, who lives on the Siberian permafrost or Antarctica or Greenland. Until only recently, daily life has not been impacted by the hidden reality of a fierce and rapid changing climate system afar from urban life which has only recently started encroaching upon on all continents, in 2022. Then, for the first time, the public finally saw and/or felt the impact of global warming’s influence, as trucks delivered drinking water to more than 100 parched towns and villages in the world’s most developed countries France and Italy and commercial barges sputtered in mud on commercial waterways of the Rhine, the Danube, the Po, whilst flash floods in China leveled 9,000 homes (payback for concrete supplanting wetlands) and trapped subway riders with water up to their chins. These eye-popping events happened in 2022. None of it is normal.

Meanwhile, according to a recent interview of Noam Chomsky in Boston Review: The Proto-fascist Guide to Destroying the World, “A brutal class war has devastated much of the world and led to tremendous anger, resentment, contempt for institutions… The United States is leading the way to a kind of proto-fascism.”

A primary target of proto-fascism is intelligentsia’s handwringing over climate change.

“In recent years, right-wing populists have positioned themselves as Europe’s staunchest defenders—against immigration and threats to national sovereignty; against pandemic restrictions and the influence of global institutions; and against what they regard as national governments’ hysteria over climate change, which populists have described as ‘degenerate fearmongering ‘at best and ‘totalitarian’ at worst.” (Source: The Far-Right View on Climate Politics, The Atlantic, August 10, 2021)

The populist right, or in Chomsky’s words proto-fascists, claim green policies such as fuel taxes and decarbonization incentives represent an elitist attack on the lives of regular people, thus telegraphing the issue beyond its root cause of human-generated greenhouse gases like CO2, which is becoming too obvious for outright dismissal. In similar fashion, they’ll brush off the overfishing issue, assuming it ever rings a bell with mainstream America, which is doubtful.

How is it possible to assemble a worldwide collective effort to tackle the thorny issues of climate change when disinformation muddies the waters beyond recognition?

And when is it too late to do anything?

And, at its root cause, what’s fundamentally wrong with a socio-economic system that causes, and choses to ignore, ecosystem imbalances leading to collapse?

A major scholarly study of the cause/effect of dangerous ecosystem imbalances concludes: “The evidence is clear. Long-term and concurrent human and planetary wellbeing will not be achieved in the Anthropocene if affluent overconsumption continues, spurred by economic systems that exploit nature and humans. We find that, to a large extent, the affluent lifestyles of the world’s rich determine and drive global environmental and social impact. Moreover, international trade mechanisms allow the rich world to displace its impact to the global poor. Not only can a sufficient decoupling of environmental and detrimental social impacts from economic growth not be achieved by technological innovation alone, but also the profit-driven mechanism of prevailing economic systems prevents the necessary reduction of impacts and resource utilization per se. (Source: Thomas Wiedmann, et al, Scientists’ Warning on Affluence, Nature Communications, June 19, 2020)

In other words, neoliberal capitalism’s premise that a profit-driven free market best serves society needs a major overhaul, maybe go in reverse. Evidence of its failure to

account for and respect and husband a livable planet is found throughout the world with out-of-the-ordinary heat, floods, fires, and drought on every continent, all of it beyond anything normal, beyond anything resembling a normal occurrence in nature. Ipso facto, Milton Friedman’s richly decorated legacy (Neo-Liberalism and its Prospects, 1951 and The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, 1970) enacted by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher is a bust!

Neoliberalism’s not working for the planet!

There’s gotta be a better way.

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on May 12, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Nuclear War on Edge

Photo by Ra Dragon on Unsplash
Photo by Ra Dragon on Unsplash

Nuclear War on Edge

By Robert Hunziker

Nuclear war is unthinkable, but also uncontrollable once a spark is lit. There’s no turning back once that big misstep occurs. Indeed, the film Dr. Strangelove (Director Stanley Kubrick, 1964 Columbia Pictures) is all about what could happen if the wrong person pushes the wrong buttons, as US Air Force General Jack Ripper (George C. Scott) sends his bomber wing to destroy Russia to prevent a commie plot to pollute Americans.

According to a recent article: Is Nuclear War More Likely After Russia’s Suspension of the New START Treaty? Nature, March 7, 2023: “The world has lurched a step closer to the prospect of nuclear war, say researchers, after Russia declared last month that it would suspend its participation in its last major nuclear arms treaty with the United States.”

Additionally, on March 25th, 2023, Reuters: Putin Says Moscow to Place Nuclear Weapons in Belarus.

Also, January 2023- BBC News- India and Pakistan Came Close to Nuclear War: Pompeo.

All of which begs the question of what is the impact of thermonuclear explosions in war and what is the likelihood in today’s disoriented world? The ramifications of exploding thermonuclear warheads are described in some detail herein, as if a reality.

“In 2023 we find ourselves facing a risk of nuclear conflict greater than we’ve seen since the early eighties. Yet there is little in the way of public knowledge or debate of the unimaginably dire long-term consequences of nuclear war for the planet and global populations,” (Source: Public Awareness of ‘Nuclear Winter’ Too Low Given Current Risks Argues Expert, University of Cambridge, Feb.14, 2023)

Nobody expects a nuclear war to really happen. It simply cannot happen. Right?

Well, not so fast, atomic bombs were dropped on masses of people, e.g., Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, both direct hits, tens of thousands of dead. And thus, are today’s leaders, who are armed with nuclear arsenals, any less impetuous than leaders of 75 years ago? Maybe but maybe not.

“On dozens of occasions because of human error or technical miscue or active threat, the world has come dangerously close to the brink of nuclear conflagration… it is a terrifying history of which most people remain ignorant.” (Julian Cribb, How to Fix a Broken Planet, Cambridge University Press, 2023.)

“There is an urgent need for public education within all nuclear-armed states that is informed by the latest research. We need to collectively reduce the temptation that leaders of nuclear-armed states might have to threaten or even use such weapons in support of military operations… if we assume Russia’s nuclear arsenal has a comparable destructive force to that of the US – just under 780 megatons – then the least devastating scenario from the survey, in which nuclear winter claims 225 million lives, could involve just 0.1% of this joint arsenal.”(Cambridge)

Because of the real threat, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock to its most threatening level ever at only 90-seconds to midnight largely because of multiple risks of a nuclear event out of the Ukrainian/Russian war zone. Along those lines, The Bulletin published an article explaining the impact of nuclear explosions, entitled: Nowhere to Hide, How a Nuclear War Would Kill You – and Almost Everyone Else.

A synopsis of that telling article follows herein:

Within microseconds of a nuclear blast, X-ray energy is released as a superheated fireball with temperature and pressure, like the Sun, so extreme that all matter is rendered into a hot plasma of nuclei and subatomic particles. As for example, today’s US nuclear arsenal of Minuteman III missiles with W87 thermonuclear warheads carry the destructive force of a fireball that will grow to more than 2,000 feet diameter, emitting light so intense that it’ll ignite fires at great distances. The thermal flash will cause first-degree burns at up to 8 miles from ground zero.

Thereupon, a super-powerful Blast Wave hits, traveling faster than the speed of sound with enormous destructive capability, destroying/flattening houses, and gutting skyscrapers causing massive numbers of fatalities, all in less than 10 seconds. The Blast Wave gives rise to a mushroom cloud of deadly radioactive split atoms, which drop out of the mushroom cloud as wind carries it across the landscape, exposing post-war/post-blast survivors to lethal and/or near-lethal doses of ionizing radiation. These lethal effects last days-to-weeks.

Today’s nuclear warheads are 10-times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped in Japan in the 1940s. As such, a direct hit on NYC would kill 1,000,000 people within 24 hours along with more than 2,000,000 serious injuries.

A regional war, for example, between India and Pakistan, involving 100 1.5-kiloton nuclear devices launched at high population sites would kill 27,000,000 people quickly. By way of contrast, and beyond regional war, an all-out nuclear war between, say Russia and the US, with over 4,000 100-kiloton nuclear warheads, at a minimum, would kill 360,000,000 quickly. Two years thereafter the nuclear war famine would likely be 10 times as deadly a force as the original bomb blasts.

Incomprehensively, according to The Bulletin, some military/policy circles, as of today, believe that a limited nuclear war can be successfully fought and won. But that line of reasoning presupposes a limited nuclear war that does not morph into an all-out thermonuclear battle possibly engineered by a revengeful/maddened leader, like General Ripper of Dr. Strangelove. If the abominable fantasy of a crazed general/leader of a regional contest were to morph into an all-out exchange, it would likely bring in its wake the death of more than one-half of the human population on the planet.

Accordingly, the post-blast nuclear winter scenario would bring a quick drop in land temperatures with massive widespread agricultural collapse. New research into the advent of a nuclear winter scenario demonstrates much more severe longer-lasting damage than earlier studies.

A regional nuclear war, for example between India and Pakistan crazily bombing one another, would lead to widespread firestorms so powerful in cities and industrial areas that it would cause severe global climatic change, disrupting all forms of life for decades. For example, with India and Pakistan each launching 100 warheads it would emit a stratospheric injection of five million tons of soot or pulverized superheated dust, heating the stratosphere, and forcing serious ozone depletion, whilst cooling land surface under the cloud of soot.

Once the injections of soot hit the atmosphere, they’ll stay for months-to-years, blocking sunlight and rapidly decreasing land temperatures. In turn, stratospheric temperatures increase by up to 30°C within four years, thereby causing more loss of ozone and removing its protective shield against excessive ultraviolet radiation thus burning-up vegetation as well as humans, in fact, most life on Earth, as loss of the all-important ozone layer leads to a tropical UV index above 35 within three years, which will last for four years. According to the US EPA, a UV index of 11 is categorized as “extreme danger,” severely damaging humans as well as inhibiting photolysis reaction needed for leaf expansion and plant growth.

Moreover, a large-scale nuclear winter, e.g., a US-Russia war, would cause below freezing temperatures throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere, even during summer. Under the circumstances, global temps will drop by 8°C, bringing the onset of a mini-ice age. Meanwhile, global ocean temperatures would drop by 3.5°-to-6.0°C. depending on the scale of warfare, resulting in a marine food web deficiency as total available seafood production suffers a 20-40% drop, at a minimum, and stays at reduced levels for at least four years.

According to a recent meeting of the UN Security Council d/d March 31, 2023, the risk of nuclear weapons use is higher than at any time since the Cold War.

“Risks of a direct military confrontation between the two nuclear powers, Russia and the United States, are steadily growing, the TASS news agency quoted a senior Russian diplomat as saying on Tuesday.” (Reuters, April 25, 2023)

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

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

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El Nino Threatens Unparalleled Heatwaves

Photo by Raphael Wild on Unsplash
Photo by Raphael Wild on Unsplash

El Niño Threatens Unparalleled Heatwaves

By Robert Hunziker

Can the world handle a climate that exceeds the far-reaching excesses of 2022 when the entire world turned upside down with unprecedented flooding, fires, and drought?

NOAA and climate researchers in Germany and China believe an El Niño, starting in 2023-24, is in the works. El Niños equate to more heat throughout the planet.

Buckle-up! El Niño could increase ocean temps by 2°-to-4° Fahrenheit, impacting the planet’s entire climate system, and it’s coming on top of the whackiest, hottest, boldest climate year (2022) in recorded history as paradoxically La Niña in 2022, which is supposed to help cool the planet, didn’t help!

In 2022, the planet set heat records, drying up major commercial waterways (Po, Danube, Rhine), extreme severe drought necessitated water delivery by trucks (France, Italy, Chile), fires burned down entire towns (California), as record heat killed thousands (India). None of 2022’s record-setting fires, heat, floods, and droughts were normal. In fact, it was especially abnormal, happening in the face of a La Niña, which is part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern when the sea surface temperature across the eastern equatorial part of the central Pacific Ocean is typically lower (cooler) by 3° to 5 °C (5.4°to 9°F). But a cool La Niña didn’t do the job!

Now an El Niño (warmer-to-hotter) event is on tap for some time in 2023/24, likely lasting 2-5 years. The ramifications will be worldwide. According to Prof Bill McGuire, at University College London, UK: “When [El Niño arrives], the extreme weather that has rampaged across our planet in 2021 and 2022 will pale into insignificance.” (Source: El Niño Is Coming—and the World Isn’t Prepared. Wired, Dec. 24, 2022)

El Niño could very easily provide a preview of life at 1.5C, which is widely considered a line-in-the-sand not to be crossed before triggering tipping points that’ll far exceed the challenges of a record-setting hot year in 2022. The last El Niño in 2016 was the hottest year ever recorded, but not surprisingly, the oceans ever since then have accumulated much more heat over these past 6 years, now with enough to make 2016 look tame. This next El Niño could be a gut-punch, and the world is not prepared, not even close.

NOAA believes the odds favor El Niño starting this year. Researchers in Germany and China have suggested it could be “a strong one.” As a result, climate scientists are worried about a more-powerful-than-ever strain on sensitive ecosystems like the Great Barrier Reef and the Amazon rainforest, especially as they are already in a fragile state.

The risks are big: “It’s very likely that the next big El Niño could take us over 1.5C,” according to Prof Adam Scaife, the head of long-range prediction at the UK Met Office. “The probability of having the first year at 1.5C in the next five-year period is now about 50:50… We know that under climate change, the impacts of El Niño events are going to get stronger, and you have to add that to the effects of climate change itself, which is growing all the time. You put those two things together, and we are likely to see unprecedented heatwaves during the next El Niño.” (Source: Warming of Unprecedented Heatwaves as El Niño Set to Return in 2023, The Guardian, March 2021).

A strong El Niño, similar to 2015/16, could bring on permanent damage to ecosystems. Back in 2015-16, the Great Barrier Reef experienced its most devastating coral bleaching ever as marine heat killed more than one-half of the corals in the northern portion of the reef. Moreover, even in the La Niña (cooling) year of 2022 it was still hot enough to cause massive bleaching.

Meanwhile, the Amazon rainforest is very near a critical tipping point of no return as it struggles with global warming and deforestation. The last El Niño killed 2,500,000,000 trees, which temporarily turned one of the world’s largest carbon-capturing ecosystems into a source of carbon emissions. Such an unfolding tragedy requires no preamble to understand the enormity of risks when tampering with the planet’s most significant hydrosphere, releasing billions of tons of moisture into the atmosphere with key worldwide impact.

That same 2015-16 El Niño brought severe drought to Indonesia with massive wildfires in forests, emitting vast stores of carbon into the atmosphere. And the same El Niño was behind a massive bout of melting in Antarctica in January 2016 as a sheet of meltwater formed across the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest ice shelf of Antarctica.

Yet, it cannot be emphasized enough that 2015-16 was merely a warning of what was to come with increasing levels of greenhouse gases like CO2 and Ch4 and N2O. As of February 2023, according to the US EPA: “Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels have significantly increased since 1900. Since 1970, CO2 emissions have increased by about 90%, with emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes contributing about 78% of the total greenhouse gas emissions increase from 1970 to 2011. Agriculture, deforestation, and other land-use changes have been the second largest contributors.”

And according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: “Greenhouse gases continued to increase rapidly in 2022… Carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide rise further into uncharted levels… 2022 was the 11th consecutive year CO2 increased by more than 2 ppm, the highest sustained rate of CO2 increases in the 65 years since monitoring began. Prior to 2013, three consecutive years of CO2 growth of 2 ppm or more had never been recorded.” (Source: US EPA, April 5, 2023)

Clearly, greenhouse gases are out of control more so than at any other time in human history in the face of a climate system that’s unmistakably burping, coughing, wheezing, burning, and dying. The great iconic masterpieces of nature like the Amazon rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef are sickly and turning against nature. This is not normal.

All of which leads to a distinct possibility of an upcoming extreme topsy-turvy climate scenario in the face of a very weak, in fact feeble-minded, discordant world leadership, which is a toxic combination that is certain to be fatal, as dire circumstances require unity of purpose, not discord.

Meanwhile, as the oceans absorb increasing levels of planetary heat, there’s evidence that El Niños are starting to affect El Niños leading to Super El Niños. “Over the last 40 years or so, the world has seen some of the strongest El Niños on record.” (Source: A Looming El Niño Could Give Us a Preview of Life at 1.5C on Warming, Grist, Feb. 24, 2023).

As greenhouse gases like CO2 emitted by cars, trains, planes, and industry increase by the year, Super El Niños will start to affect Super El Niños, bringing in its wake Super-Super El Niños with devastating consequences never considered possible. Then what?

There is only one logical solution to hopefully counter this fierce impending risk. The world must convert to renewables and initiate carbon removal techniques as quickly as possible, but what are the prospects remains an open question? What on earth can discordant leadership accomplish?

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

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

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Disturbing Sea Level Studies

Photo by Arif Rasheed on Unsplash
Photo by Arif Rasheed on Unsplash

Disturbing Sea Level Studies

By Robert Hunziker

For decades, climate scientists have been sounding the alarm that unless the nations of the world stop emitting greenhouse gases global warming will bring dangerous consequences. Rather, greenhouse gases, like CO2, have escalated to new highs year-over-year without hesitation.

Now, new climate studies are exposing the results of decades of a couldn’t-care-less world interwoven within a deadly entrapment of free-market dictates of “not to worry, the market will handle it.” It hasn’t!

Ergo, the price for decades of jaded indifference is starting to run very high and maybe irreversible with a sea level calamity poised to spring loose, catching the world unprepared.

Two major new studies paint a sobering picture of unexpected sea levels well beyond anybody’s expectations. Indeed, the world is not braced for this:

  1. According to an article in The Guardian d/d April 10, 2023: “What experts are calling a dramatic surge in ocean levels has taken place along the US south-eastern and Gulf of Mexico coastline since 201o. (referenced study: Jianjun Yin, Decadal Acceleration of Sea Level Rise Along the U.S. East and Gulf of Mexico During 2010-2022… Journal of Climate, March 2, 2023)
  2. Another new study: Christine L. Batchelor, et al, Rapid, Buoyancy-Driven Ice-Sheet Retreat of Hundreds of Metres Per Day, Nature, April 5, 2023 demonstrates nightmarish rapid sea level rise based upon events in the past when ice sheets retreated in pulses of almost 2,000 feet per day during the end of the last ice age. Conditions today may be similar.

As reported by Inside Climate News, the Batchelor study has alarmed climate scientists, especially glaciologists at the top of the field like Eric Rignot (more to follow) and according to Frazer Christie, polar scientist at Scott Polar Research Center/University of Cambridge: The study showed ice sheet retreat rates up to 20 times faster than previously measured anywhere else: “It’s probably likely, in my opinion, that this rapid buoyancy driven course of retreat, could be all that’s needed to set in motion a chain of events that spirals into a more runaway style of retreat.” (Source: Global Warming Could Drive Pulses of Ice Sheet Retreat Reaching 2,000 Feet Per Day, Inside Climate News, April 5, 2023)

The Batchelor study claims that “pulses of sea level rise could also be much greater than the long-term average rates currently projected by climate models… during past geological intervals of rapid warming, there’s evidence of sea level increasing at a rate of up to 20 inches per decade during episodes of rapid sea level ice sheet disintegration,” Ibid.

According to Eric Rignot, glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine and Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: “This is an important study revealing that we have not seen anything yet in terms of how fast an ice sheet can retreat dynamically, not just melting away, but falling apart… This is not a model. This is real data. And it is frankly scary, even to me. These data should keep us awake at night,” Ibid.

Christine Batchelor, geophysicist, and a marine geology researcher at University of Newcastle said that prior studies along the Antarctic Peninsula showed a similar pattern of seafloor ridges near Larsen Ice Shelf suggesting an ice sheet retreat of up to 150 feet per day for 90 days or 6 miles of retreat per year.

The infamous Thwaites (Doomsday) Glacier in West Antarctica has an ocean-bottom that matches the Batchelor study earmarked as a “danger zone” “which has a relatively flat area just a few kilometers inland of where it is currently… so it would be a good candidate of where you might see a pulse of rapid retreat in the future,” Ibid.

According to the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration: Thwaites is losing ice faster than at any time in the past 5,000 years. And based upon an article in Scientific American d/d November 1, 2022: “Two expeditions to the Thwaites Ice Shelf have revealed that it could splinter apart in less than a decade, hastening sea-level rise worldwide.”

The Batchelor study showed the fastest rate of ice sheet retreat on record, but accordingly, depending upon “the level of warming” even faster rates are possible. This may be what is happening today. According to US climate.gov: Today’s global warming is much faster than warm periods between ice ages over the last million years.

Rignot claims: “During the time period when these events were recorded, sea level was rising 4 meters (13 feet) per century… That is 10 times what we have today. Are you scared yet? Well, you should be,” Ibid.

Meanwhile, the Jianjun Yin, University of Arizona study published in Journal of Climate: “Provides an alarming new assessment of a key ingredient of the escalating climate emergency, particularly in popular but vulnerable areas of the US where millions of people live.” (Source: Miami and New Orleans Face Greater Sea-Level Threat Than Already Feared, The Guardian, April 10, 2023)

Scientists have detected “a dramatic surge in ocean levels” along the US south-eastern and Gulf of Mexico coastlines since 2010, an increase of 5in. This is more than double the global average. The entire region is feeling the impact of sea-level acceleration. Climate scientists claim the surge is unprecedented and amplified by internal climate variabilities. Already, stories of cascading shoreline homes as well as physical movement of houses more inland occur regularly at the Outer Banks, North Carolina.

These are some of the first known studies to identify an actual surge in sea levels over the past decade as well as paleoclimate evidence of rapid pulses of ice sheet retreat and likely disintegration that are well beyond projections of sea levels by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC.

A certain level of wistfulness follows in the footsteps of these studies that depict a worsening, as well as absolutely frightening, global warming scenario that’s hastening the collapse of ice sheets that clearly and impactfully threaten modern-day civilization. But based upon blasé reactions by the world at large, it’s treated lightly, almost like it’s not reality. If it were otherwise, accepting a very harsh reality, major nations of the world would be pulling out all the stops to do whatever is necessary. Alas, this is not happening, not even close.

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

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

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Ozone Troubles, Once Again

Photo by Louis Reed on Unsplash
Photo by Louis Reed on Unsplash

Ozone Troubles, Once Again

By Robert Hunziker

NASA: “Without ozone, the Sun’s intense UV radiation would sterilize the Earth’s surface.”

It was 36 years ago in panic mode when the world came together like never before unanimously agreeing to ratify The Montreal Protocol, banning CFCs. This was done to protect ozone (O3), which is a widely-dispersed layer of molecules at 10-30 miles in the stratosphere that shields humanity from dangerously harsh UV Sun radiation.

Appallingly, a similar issue is happening once again, as chlorine atoms have been turned loose to feast on precious life-saving ozone molecules. According to a recent study published in Nature Geoscience, from 2010-2020 five principal chlorofluorocarbons -CFCs- reached record-high levels in 2020 in the stratosphere. Scientists believe the increase is likely due to leakage from production of chemicals meant to replace CFCs, but unanswered questions remain outstanding.

“This shouldn’t be happening,’ says Martin Vollmer, an atmospheric chemist at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology in Dübendorf who helped to analyze data from an international network of CFC monitors. “We expect the opposite trend, we expect them to slowly go down.” (Source: ‘This Shouldn’t be Happening’: Levels of Banned CFCs Rising, Nature, April 3, 2023)

So far, the good news is that current levels of CFCs do not yet appear to be threatening the ongoing healing process of the ozone layer. Yet, this finding serves to emphasize the importance of detection and broadcasting the facts, as it must be isolated and stopped as soon as possible. Also, it should be noted that there is a 3–5-year lag time before the presence of CFCs interact with ozone molecules. Thus, the hard-core evidence is not yet completely available.

“It’s highly likely that manufacturing plants are accidently releasing three of the chemicals — CFC-113a, CFC-114a and CFC-115 — while producing replacements for CFCs. When CFCs were phased out, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) were brought in as substitutes. But CFCs can crop up as unintended by-products during HFC manufacture… The rise in the levels of the two other CFCs is a mystery: “CFC-13 and CFC-112a should not currently be used or produced,” Ibid.

Detection of CFCs in the atmosphere is a challenging issue because few CFC monitoring stations are found over the continents of Africa and South America where chemical production is not even close to being adequately monitored. Meanwhile. chemical companies continue to develop various types of CFC substitutes. Scientists are now suggesting: “The world might need to think differently about HFCs and perhaps even the next generation of refrigerant chemicals known as hydrofluoroolefins, HFOs, which can also emit CFCs,” Ibid. Or it may be necessary to amend the Montreal Protocol to address the issue.

The current problem: A Global Monitory Laboratory study analyzed five CFCs that have no real current uses, starting at the point of total global phase-out in 2010. By 2020, “all five gases were at their highest abundance since direct measurements began.” (Source: Ozone-depleting CFCs Hit Record Despite Ban: Study, PHYS.ORG, Earth Sciences, April 3, 2023) In common-speak terminology, CFCs are chemicals that gobble up ozone molecules in the atmosphere like a Packman game gone berserk sans a controller.

According to Science News, by 2012, 25 years following The Montreal Protocol, the ozone hole was at its smallest in decades. Hooray, humanity saved itself from itself and the likelihood of worldwide outbreaks of deadly skin cancer as well as insurmountable survival issues, e.g., toasted-to-a-crisp low-yielding food crops throughout the planet. As it happens, the endgame from loss of the ozone layer is rapid acceleration of the dreaded extinction event.

Emitting chlorofluorocarbons -CFCs- into the atmosphere is an insidiously dangerous proposition simply because one (only one) chlorine atom can destroy up to 100,000 atmospheric ozone molecules (Source: Basic Ozone Layer Science, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency).

Moreover, CFCs not only gobble up the ozone layer, but according to Global Carbon Project, they are also a greenhouse gas that traps heat up to 10,000 times more than CO2.

A major concern is the current “rapid upward trend” of CFCs, which will likely negatively impact both the ozone layer as well as enhance global warming at a time when the most prominent greenhouse gases, meaning carbon dioxide (CO2) methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are already at their highest levels in human history whilst global warming continually sets new record highs. It’s a dangerous cocktail that could blindside all of humanity.

Meanwhile it’s worth taking note of the year 2022 for a peek at the first time in human history that’s best described as, “we’ve never been here before.” Global warming’s impact has always been most prominently found at the fringes of civilization, e.g., Siberian permafrost, the Arctic, Antarctica, Tibetan Plateau, the Great Barrier Reef. But, who lives there?

The year 2022 changed everything. A new era of global warming officially started. Global warming came into every living room and onto every TV set on every continent. Paradise, California a town of 27,000 burned to the ground like smoldering matchsticks as the state suffered 7,667 wildfires; UK temperatures exceeded 40C for the first time ever while less than 5% of homes have air-conditioning (never needed it); China’s longest strongest heatwave on record at 260 locations for 70 days with power supply outages and water cutbacks at some key major cities like Guangzhou (15M) and Shenzhen (13M); Japan’s hottest heatwave in over 150 years of record-keeping; India (15,000 heat deaths) unprecedented pounding heatwaves; Western Australia hottest 50.7C (123F) ever; floods ravaged Pakistan (1,739 dead), parts of China (9,000 homes washed away), Germany; severe drought nearly caused complete unnavigable status for the world’s most famous iconic commercial rivers, Rhine, Danube, Po, Yangtze, Mississippi; drinking water delivered by truck to over 100 towns and communities in France and Italy; America’s largest reservoirs within several feet of dead pool status; Santiago (5.6M) rationing water. All of which is only a sampling of the year 2022.

None of the record-setting fires, heat, floods, and droughts of 2022 were normal. Nothing was normal; it was all unprecedented. This has never happened before. If 2022 was a trailer or preview, one can only hope that the full-length feature is never released. It was the year of “we’ve never been here before.”

Additionally, CFCs once again threaten the ozone layer, but that’s indeterminate for now. The ozone layer is the planet’s major line of defense from burning alive. Meanwhile, the ozone molecule’s biggest enemy, or CFCs, have unrelenting power at 10,000 times CO2’s impact on global warming’s binge, rampage, turmoil, which started in earnest in 2022.

What’s the world going to do?

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

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

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Trump Rot at the EPA

Photo by Mike Marrah on Unsplash
Photo by Mike Marrah on Unsplash

Trump Rot at the EPA

By Robert Hunziker

A new report by the EPA’s internal watchdog has exposed Trump administration appointees that meddled in the agency’s science to weaken “the toxicity assessment of PFASs.” If not for the Biden administration, which discovered this egregious complicity by political appointees and the chemical industry to weaken standards of toxicity, Americans would be unnecessarily exposed to dangerous chemicals beyond the abhorrent levels of exposure already extant.

Shortly after taking the oath of office, Trump grabbed a baseball bat and waddled over to EPA, eviscerating the agency created under President Richard Nixon’s administration in 1970 to protect the country from too much toxicity and carefree abuse/dumping anything and everything into the environment, e.g., Lake Erie considered a “dead lake” in the 1960s.

Trump chased many EPA senior scientists out, some fled to France. “The nation’s top environmental agency is still reeling from the exodus of more than 1,200 scientists and policy experts during the Trump administration.” (Depleted Under Trump, a ‘Traumatized’ E.P.A. Struggles With its Mission, The New York Times, Jan. 23, 2023)

As research continues to expose the dangers of PFASs, it’s become the new symbol of toxicity in America. A recent study by Environmental Working Group scientists uncovered disturbing levels of PFASs in America’s freshwater fish found throughout the country from coast-to-coast. Every citizen of America is already subject to exposure to this dangerous chemical that Trump wanted to let loose beyond established principles of science on the public.

According to numerous studies, PFASs accumulate in human tissue, showing up years later potentially as testicular, kidney, or pancreatic cancer, weakened immune systems, decreased fertility, endocrine disruption, elevated cholesterol, increased risk of asthma, thyroid disease, and puzzling weight gain.  PFAS chemicals have contaminated drinking water for nearly one-half of America’s population. American cases of chronic illnesses at nearly 50% of the general population support that fact.

According to the EPA: “PFAS are a group of manufactured chemicals that have been used in industry and consumer products since the 1940s because of their useful properties. There are thousands of different PFAS, some of which have been more widely used and studied than others… PFAS can be present in our water, soil, air, and food as well as in materials found in our homes or workplaces.”

While the Trump administration feverishly worked to weaken the foundation of EPA rules and regulations, the EU was considering a much stronger stance on PFASs. According to the Health and Environment Alliance/Europe: “PFAS pollution is out of control and exposure to several forever chemicals have been linked to an array of adverse health impacts, from liver damage to reduced response to routine vaccination by children and certain cancers. PFASs have contaminated the entire planet and are found in the bodies of most people around the globe.”

Meanwhile, according to an expose in The Guardian d/d March 23, 2023, regarding the Trump administration: “Scientists say the episode is part of larger rot at the agency.” EPA scientists claim that several employees “willingly worked with the Trump appointees to weaken the assessment.” Ibid. EPA insiders claim career staff worked hand-in-glove with industry to weaken EPA standards.

“The controversy centered around a 2021 toxicity report for PFBS, a type of PFAS compound that is toxic at low levels. Research has linked the chemical to kidney disease, reproductive problems and thyroid damage, and it has been found throughout the environment,” Ibid.

“In its recent report, the EPA’s office of inspector general described ‘unprecedented’ interference by former Trump-appointed EPA chief Andrew Wheeler and other political appointees, who ordered the alteration of the PFBS toxicity value just as the assessment was about to be published in late 2020,” Ibid.

Trump changes would have resulted in less costly but insufficient cleanup by industry allowing “higher levels of the chemicals in the environment.” Scientists say it would have put human health at risks that could otherwise be prevented.

It’s nearly impossible to overstate how significant it is to the health and welfare of the country that Biden defeated Trump for the presidency. In February 2021, the Biden administration pulled the Trump-based EPA assessment, declaring it was “compromised by political interference as well as infringement of authorship” and republished the assessment using what it said is “sound science” and declared the issue resolved.

The election of Trump opened a doorway to a mecca of interference by industry in cahoots with politically appointed Trump EPA administrators to water-down long-established regulations by the EPA that were specifically constructed to safeguard Americans. Now, Trump wants to be president once again.

Can the environment vote?

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on March 24, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Amazon Rainforest Destabilizes the World

Photo by Vlad Hilitanu on Unsplash
Photo by Vlad Hilitanu on Unsplash

Amazon Rainforest Destabilizes the World

By Robert Hunziker

A new 40-year study discovered the eye-opening fact that what happens in the Amazon Rainforest impacts the entire Earth system. This puts an exclamation point on the fact that the Amazon Rainforest, the planet’s most crucial source of life support, is in deep trouble mainly because of massive deforestation.

The Amazon River Basin is the world’s largest rainforest, larger than the next two largest rainforests combined, the Congo Basin and Indonesia, and roughly the size of the forty-eight contiguous United States covering 40% of South America including parts of Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana Suriname and French Guiana.

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF): “The Amazon is of vital importance because people around the world, as well as locally, depend on the rainforest. Not just for food, water, wood and medicines, but to help stabilize the climate—around 76 billion tonnes of carbon is stored in the Amazon rainforest., The trees in the Amazon also release 20 billion tonnes of water into the atmosphere per day, playing a critical role in global and regional carbon and water cycles.”

The 40-year study links Amazonian deforestation to reduced Tibetan snows and Antarctic ice loss. Both carry serious consequences, respectively, loss of nature’s water towers for millions of people as sea levels rise everywhere.

The study analyzed 40 years of air temperatures, concluding that the climate of the planet is a function of several disparate forces that interact such that a new planetary state hostile to life may be underway. The study analyzed hourly near-surface temperatures accumulated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast across a global grid of 65,000 locations for a 40-year cycle.

Specifically, the study demonstrated how air temperature changes in one region rippled through the climate system to affect temperatures in other parts of the globe. For example: “Deforestation in the Amazon likely influences the Tibetan Plateau via a convoluted 20,000-kilometer (12,400-mile) pathway driven by atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. The study suggests that a healthy, functioning Amazon is crucial not only for the regional climate in Brazil, but for the whole Earth system.” (Source: Claire Asher, Amazon Deforestation Linked to Reduced Tibetan Snows, Antarctic Ice Loss: Study, Mongabay Series, March 8, 2023).

They’ve identified potential tipping points of the major planetary ecosystems that could trigger one after another, thereby changing life in multitudes of undesirable ways. The catalyst appears to be the Amazon Rainforest.

According to Jingfang Fan, Earth System Scientist at Beijing Normal University and the Potsdam Institute, several tipping elements of the planet could trigger one after another in a massive cascade of uncontrollable events, i.e., the Amazon Rainforest biome, the East and West Antarctic ice sheets, Arctic permafrost, and the Great Barrier Reef.

According to Teng Lui, Ph.D., at Beijing Normal University: “This is the first time that the (mathematical) theory of complex networks has been applied in the context of (far distant) tipping points… We found that the Amazon Rainforest exhibits significant teleconnection with other tipping elements,” Ibid.

The study identified “strong correlation” between temperature anomalies in the Amazon and the Tibetan Plateau, roughly 15,000 kilometers (9,300 miles) apart. The data affirmed anomalously warm temperatures in Amazon and Tibet coincided over the past 40 years. Moreover, the study identified the same relationship with the Amazon and Antarctica. (Source TC Liu, et al, Teleconnections Among Tipping Elements in the Earth System, Nature Climate Change, 2023)

“Teleconnections describe remote connections between components of the complex climate system and reflect the transportation of energy or materials on global scale. The great-circle distances of teleconnections are typically thousands of kilometres,” Ibid.

Indeed, the study supports prior studies suggesting that a healthy, or conversely unhealthy, ecosystem in the Amazon is not only impactful for the region but equally for the entire Earth system.

Of major concern, according to the World Wildlife Fund, as of 2022, thirty-five percent (35%) of the Amazon Rainforest is either totally lost or highly degraded. This fact is supportive of calling for a worldwide cooperative effort to take whatever remedial steps necessary, including a halt to human deforestation.

Another study: Amazon Against the Clock: A Regional Assessment on Where and How to Protect 80% by 2025 published by the Amazon Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information, more all-inclusive than the WWF study, claims 26% of the entire Amazonian territory shows evidence of deforestation and degradation of which 20% is categorized as irreversible and 6% highly degraded. According to the study: “Of the nine countries that make up the Amazon basin, Brazil and Bolivia have the largest amounts of destruction and, as a result, ‘savannization is already taking place in both countries.”

“In the February 2020 edition of Science Advances, Professors Thomas Lovejoy, senior fellow of the United Nations Foundation, and Carlos Nobre, climate scientist from the Institute of Higher Studies of the University of São Paulo, warned that the loss of just 20 to 25 percent of the rainforest could send the Amazon to a point of no return, marking an unstoppable transition to a drier, savanna-like ecosystem.” (Source: The Amazon Approaches Its Tipping Point, The Nature Conservancy, August 20, 2020). Dr. Thomas Lovejoy (1941-2021) and Dr. Carlos Nobre have long been considered the world’s leading experts on the Amazon.

“There are already some solutions being implemented under the principle that nature and people can thrive together. For example, in São Félix do Xingú in the Brazilian state of Pará, TNC supports a project called Cacau Mais Sustentavel. One of its objectives is to assist local farmers in adopting more sustainable practices, such as planting native cocoa trees in previously degraded lands to avoid further deforestation. Such agroforestry systems entail planting crops and native trees side by side to reforest degraded lands,” Ibid.

Meanwhile, in a stark contrast to the forces of nature, the massive rainforest is undergoing massive commercialization: (1) 600 infrastructure projects on rivers (2) twenty new highways planned (3) four hundred operating or new dams in planning stages, and (4) large-scale mining operations. (WWF)

According to Living Amazon Report 2022, World Wildlife Fund publication, November 8, 2022: “The situation has begun to show signs of nearing a point of no return: (1) Seasons are changing (2) Surface water is being lost (3) Rivers are becoming increasingly disconnected and polluted, and (4) Forests are under immense pressure from increasingly devastating waves of deforestation and fire.”

Statista claims: “In 2022, more than 145,000 wildfire outbreaks were reported in the Legal Amazon region in Brazil.” As a rule, fires do not naturally occur in humid, dripping-wet rainforests.

Fire and the human footprint behind it are challenging 30% of the world’s most precious species whilst upsetting the balance of nature across the world by wantonly degrading the biggest domino of the planet.

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on March 17, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Solar Mitigation Battleground

Photo by Teemu Paananen on Unsplash
Photo by Teemu Paananen on Unsplash

Solar Mitigation Battleground

By Robert Hunziker

A battle over how to protect the planet from overheating is heating up.

Academics are coming out of the woodwork, forming coalitions, issuing declarations. A subdued debate over the merits versus demerits of solar geoengineering (SRM) has been ongoing for years. Now battle lines are forming.

The SRM controversy is coming to a head, in part, because of a small two-person startup company named Make Sunsets launching weather balloons filled with reflective sulfur particles off the coast of Baja, California with the bold idea of testing whether it is realistic to reflect sun radiation back to outer space and thus help prevent overheating of the planet. Interestingly, they expect to profit by selling credits. As such, Make Sunsets has become a bit of a renegade actor serving as an unwelcomed catalyst for academics to come to grips with the issue. But looked at from another angle, it’s a welcomed catalyst for an issue that must be sorted out as soon as possible, regardless of Make Sunsets presence.

After all, the White House has already directed a study of SRM (solar radiation management). On October 13, 2022 the White House announced funding of a five-year research plan: “One of the most controversial plans to fight climate change, utilizing technology to artificially modify the planet’s climate” or in plain English geo-engineering by spraying fine aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight away.

The White House Request for Input to a Five-Year Plan for Research on Climate Intervention itemized, as follows: “The report shall include: (1) the definition of goals in relevant areas of scientific research; (2) capabilities required to model, analyze, observe, and monitor atmospheric composition; (3) climate impacts and the Earth’s radiation budget; and (4) the coordination of Federal research and investments to deliver this assessment to manage near-term climate risk and research in climate intervention.”

Obviously, Make Sunsets has jumped the gun and rattled several significant cages, especially in the face of unanswered questions about the risks of artificially tinkering with the climate system. But, then again, is geo-engineering a by-product of fossil fuel CO2 emissions, even if not by design? If yes, it implies that fossil fuel CO2 ‘unintentional geo-engineering’ should be viewed as the direct opposite of SRM. CO2 traps heat. SRM reflects heat. This would mean that fossil fuel-generated CO2 emissions demonstrate what geo-engineering can accomplish, which is an enormous planetary headache, if misdirected.

In 2021, in Sweden, Harvard University’s outdoor Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment was halted on the spot by opposition forces. Their experiment was only aiming to test the behavior of stratospheric aerosols. Harvard’s failed attempt is a prime example of SRM’s steep uphill battle to establish credibility.

Within the past several months an opposition group to all SRM experimentation issued a declaration supported by several hundred well-known, high-level academics, social scientists, and natural scientists: We Call for an International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering.

According to their (Non-Users) proclamation: “There are growing calls in recent years for research on ‘solar geoengineering’, a set of entirely speculative technologies to reduce incoming sunlight on earth in order to limit global warming. Our initiative stands against such emerging initiatives to explore planetary techno-fixes as a climate policy option. Solar geoengineering deployment at planetary scale cannot be fairly and effectively governed in the current system of international institutions. It also poses unacceptable risk if ever implemented as part of future climate policy. A strong political message from governments, the United Nations and civil society is urgently needed.”

The Non-Users claim SRM risks are poorly understood and can never be fully known. It could disrupt basic weather patterns to the detriment of agriculture. Also, it works against commitments for mitigation of CO2 emissions, as ultra-pro-fossil fuel interests deflect critics: “No sweat, SRM can handle it.” But, so sorry fossil fuel hopefuls, that’s not true, not even close. Furthermore, there is no dependable global governance system in place to regulate SRM deployment. In point of fact, Make Sunsets renegade behaviour proves total lack of governance.

Non-Users demand a closed-end agreement: “In sum, an International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering would be timely, feasible, and effective. It would inhibit further normalization and development of a risky and poorly understood set of technologies that seek to intentionally manage incoming sunlight at planetary scale. And it would do so without restricting legitimate climate research. Decarbonization of our economies is feasible if the right steps are taken. Solar geoengineering is not necessary. Neither is it desirable, ethical, or politically governable in the current context.”

Meanwhile, the maybe-go-for-it side is pushing to explore the possibilities of SRM, involving an equally prestigious high-level group led by one of the world’s leading climate scientist, James Hansen of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. According to Hansen: “We have no right to ban the right to search for a solution for the mess we created… The fact that major international climate assessments are ‘always a few decades behind’ when it comes to estimating just how hot it will get makes more research even more urgent.” (Source: 60 Scientists Call for Accelerated Research Into ‘Solar Radiation Management’ That Could Temporarily Mask Global Warming, Inside Climate news, February 27, 2023)

According to this pro-SRM group: “Even with aggressive action to reduce GHG emissions it is increasingly unlikely that climate warming will remain below 1.5-2°C in the near term. This is because reversing current warming trends will require a significant reduction in the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, which significantly lag behind reductions in emissions due to their long atmospheric lifetime. Notably, even 1.5-2°C of warming brings with it significant risks to human, ecological, and global economic systems and may be sufficient to cross the threshold of earth system ‘tipping points.”

The pro-group cautiously concludes: “While we fully support research into SRM approaches, this does not mean we support the use of SRM. Uncertainties in how SRM implementation would play out in the climate system are presently too large to support implementation.”

Therefore, the outlook for SRM as an effective weapon to ameliorate global warming is cloudy at best and could be a decade, or more, in the making. According to the Hansen group: “Since decisions on whether or not to implement SRM are likely to be considered in the next one to two decades, a robust international scientific assessment of SRM approaches is needed as rapidly as possible. Notably, much of the fundamental research needed to assess SRM interventions would also address existing knowledge gaps about our atmosphere and climate, such as how particulate pollution is already affecting clouds and how much this effect has been countering the warming from GHG increases – which continues to be the largest source of uncertainty in how humans are presently affecting climate.”

Indeed, there are influential climate scientists on both sides of the SRM debate. According to University of Oxford climate physicist Raymond Pierrehumbert, SRM should never be considered until after reaching net zero carbon emissions: “But we’re not even on a downward trajectory for emissions yet… In a world where you’re continuing to pump out CO2 and then using solar radiation management is a clear death spiral… the idea that there could be effective governance for solar radiation management is just ludicrous… especially with the tech sector driving the push for solar radiation management experiments,” Ibid.

What is known about SRM is that it (1) would not by itself slow the buildup of greenhouse gases and (2) would not stop ocean acidification, two crucial negatives that must be dealt with in an orderly manner. It would, however, temporarily mask the warming but once SRM activity stops, there will likely be a significant warming rebound, thereby exacerbating global warming. In other words, like manufacturing a product on a conveyor belt, it must be continually fed material, or once aerosols halt, it will bring on rapid heating. Then, what?

There are no easy answers.

How about mirrors? See: MEER– “Cooling the planet with surface reflectors.”

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on March 10, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Climate Code Red Analysis and Sea Level Warnings

Photo by Jieun Lim on Unsplash
Photo by Jieun Lim on Unsplash

Climate Code Red Analysis and Sea Level Warnings

By Robert Hunziker

Climate Code Red, a very thorough and well-respected source on climate change/global warming, recently issued a three-part study on where things stand with the climate system via looking through the rearview mirror at 2022 and reflecting that charred image into the future: Faster, Higher, Hotter: What We Learned About the Climate System in 2022 by David Spratt, Research Director, Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, Feb. 20, 2023.

For starters, several aspects of global warming are at all-time highs, for example, coal use is at an all-time high and not surprisingly all three of the major greenhouse gases CO2, CH4, and N2O hit record highs in 2022. According to the Global Carbon Project: Carbon emissions from fossil fuels hit a new record of 37.5B tons. Topping off these all-time records, the International Energy Agency expects fossil fuel emissions to possibly peak in 2025 but remain at a “high plateau at a high level” for a decade or more with no significant decline expected in the foreseeable future. Good luck with Net Zero.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessments: “There is no longer a credible path to holding warming below 1.5°C without massive immediate cooling interventions, which are not on any policymaking agendas.” Moreover, the experts quoted in the Code Red study believe anything less than 1.5°C is already out of reach.

Not only is the 1.5°C target unachievable, but it’s unachievable regardless of almost any foreseeable mitigation efforts. This fact is also emphasized by the UK publication The Economist, which discussed the lag effect of greenhouse gases, to wit: “But greenhouse-gas emissions do not cause an instantaneous rise in global temperatures, and neither does cutting them result in instantaneous cooling. Instead, it will take decades for today’s policy efforts to result in measurable impacts on global temperature.” (Source: Emissions Slashed Today Won’t Slow Warming Until Mid-Century, The Economist, July 11, 2022)

The Economist article dovetails with the opinion of James Hansen, Earth Institute, Columbia University, who is one of the planet’s leading authorities on global warming: “Global warming of at least 2°C is now baked into Earth’s future.”

Code Red goes on to remind people that, according to paleoclimate evidence, the last time CO2 kevels were similar to today’s with temperatures at 1.2°C and up to 3°C sea levels fluctuated by 20-40 meters, or equivalent to 65-130 feet. Of course, this is a frightening number that readers prefer to gloss over, or forget, but so sorry, it’s factual, it happened and could happen again. Although numbers of 65-130 feet won’t occur during the current generation; it’ll take much longer. Nevertheless, we’re not worried about 65 feet. It’s only the first few feet that’ll sufficiently flood the world’s largest coastal cities, like Mumbai and Miami. By the time 65 feet rolls around, who knows what’ll be happening.

Code Red claims that even sharp reductions in emissions will not be enough to avoid 2°C, or higher temperatures because of record-breaking fossil fuel forecasts. According to Will Steffen, executive director, Australian National University Climate Change Institute, it’s a mistake to assume we can even stabilize at 2°C. “Rather, it’s a signpost on a road to a hotter planet.”

Moreover, “When projections in late 2021 showed future warming of around 2.7°C, Potsdam Institute Director Johan Rockström said: ‘I barely even want to talk about 2.7°C… If we go beyond 2°C, it’s very likely that we have caused so many tipping points that you have probably added another degree just through self-reinforcing changes. And that’s without even talking about extreme events.”

Of equal concern: “Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research: “If the [climate system] tipping elements interact and cascades develop, then the heating could become independent [i.e. self-sustaining] at 2°C. Whether that is the case is perhaps the most important question of science right now because it would mean the end of our civilization.”

Those statements are from climate analysts that are widely considered to be at the top of the class and should not be taken lightly. Frankly, it’s a fair statement that world leaders and the public have no idea how far along the global warming threat has progressed, especially since the start of the 21st century. After all, according to the Institute for European Environmental Policy: One-half of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since 1750 have been emitted over the past 30 years alone. Early-stage evidence of its impact is easily identified, for example, according to NASA: Antarctica and Greenland combined lost 82B tons of ice mass, on average, per year during the 1990s versus 475B tons per year during the 2010s. That’s an extraordinary statement of fact as it’s the fuel behind sea level rise, and it is expanding in short order.

According to the study, permafrost across the Arctic is beginning to “irreversibly thaw and release carbon dioxide and methane.” Alas, we’re not even at 1.5°C yet. Hmm.

The study discusses the status of the world’s major glaciers. All of them are at various stages pointing towards tipping points that could cascade ice sheets and glaciers much more rapidly than any climate models currently indicate, to wit: “Events at both poles are not properly incorporated into current climate models. The evidence suggests that sea-level rises this century will be greater than currently considered feasible by policymakers. Based upon evidence from climate history the current global average temperature increase is enough for 5–10 metres (16-33 feet) of sea-level rise in the longer term, inundating small island states, agriculturally rich alluvial deltas, and vulnerable coastal cities.”

This article covers the first two parts of Climate Code Red’s three-part series. The third will be covered later.

Sea Level Warnings

Separate from, and coincident with, the Climate Code Red article, according to several recent studies on sea level: “The time available to prepare for increased exposure to flooding may be considerably less than assumed to date,” analysis by Dutch researchers Ronald Vernimmen and Aljosja Hooijer. (Source: Worst Impacts of Sea Level Rise Will Hit Earlier Than Expected, American Geophysical Union, January 24, 2023)

New studies have concluded: (1) ice sheets that threaten to expand oceans “will likely crumble with another 0.5°C increase in global warming” (2) ice sheets “are fragile in ways not previously understood.” (Source: Climate, Ice Sheets & Sea Level: The News is Not Good, Phys.org, February 16, 2023)

The studies found flaws in prior research because of misinterpretation of satellite data and inaccurate resources regarding some underlying countries. As a result of new calculations: “The number of people threatened by sea levels has been underestimated by tens of millions,” Ibid.

A study by Jun-Young Park, Fabian Schloesser, et al, Future Sea-Level Projections with a Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean-Ice-Sheet Model, Nature Communications d/d February 14, 2023, concluded: “Our model has a threshold between 1.5C and 2C of warming – with 1.8C as a best estimate – for acceleration of ice loss and sea level increase.”

The Park-Schloesser study claims that 1.8C brings on runaway disintegration of ice sheets. This is the first known study of this kind to correlate a specific global temperature increase with more rapid acceleration of ice loss. It, therefore, begs the question of how soon 1.8C hits?

As for example, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), if all the pledges made by countries at COP26 in Glasgow, November 2021 were met, global temperatures would “hold to 1.8C.” One-hundred-twenty (120) countries pledged at Glasgow. Net Zero by 2050. But as is always true with pledges, implementation, implementation, implementation is all that counts. However, even if the 120 countries meet Glasgow commitments, according to new research, runaway disintegration of ice sheets still starts at 1.8C.

Which brings forth the report card for COP26, as of October 2022, which is not necessarily encouraging: “Progress made on COP26 commitments since Glasgow is mixed at best. But to be fair, countries and others often save up their exciting announcements for major international moments. Hopefully we are in for some nice surprises when world leaders gather in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt for COP27. The world will be watching carefully to see if countries, companies and cities back up their commitments with real action.” (Source: Where Do We Stand on COP26 Climate Promises? A Progress Report, World Resources Institute, October 13, 2022)

By the following month, November 2022, COP27 deflated all expectations. Experts on climate change give UN-sponsored COP27 an F-grade. “A collective failure,” according to The Lancet, which is the world’s highest impact academic journal.

Therefore, if countries are not enthusiastically involved in commitments to limit/cut emissions, the consequences are found far afield. For example, Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, the world’s most iconic image of global warming. According to Ted Scambos, Senior Research Scientist ESOC, University of Colorado: “Each visit underscores how fast Thwaites is changing, seeing this huge ice shelf moving towards you at about a mile every year is unsettling. And all by itself, this one glacier is big enough to impact sea level significantly,” Scambos, head of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, funded by the US and UK to a tune of $50M. How many glaciers of the world have funds dedicated to specific research, and what does this imply about the shaky status of Thwaites, which continues to alarm scientists?

Two new studies, with commentary on Thwaites, are found in Nature d/d February 15th, 2023: “Models of how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and glacier flow respond to climate change are missing some important details. Incorporating these insights should clarify how and why the ice will change in the future.” (Source: Glimpse Beneath Iconic Glacier Reveals How It’s Adding to Sea-Level Rise, Nature, February 15, 2023)

Thwaites is key to future sea level rise because it is massive and increasingly unstable. “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that sea levels will probably rise by between 38 and 77 centimetres, or 1.3 feet-to-2.6 feet, by 2100, but the collapse or melting of some of the ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic could theoretically contribute an additional metre (3.3 feet),” Ibid. Which can only be categorized as disastrous for 8 of the top 10 largest cities in the world, which are coastal.

“Thwaites Glacier is a fast-moving block of ice, the size of Florida, in the West Antarctic. Satellite studies have shown that its ‘grounding line’ — where ice attached to bedrock transitions to ice floating in the sea — has shifted 14 kilometres (8.7 miles) inland since the late 1990s, and some parts of it are retreating as fast as 1.2 kilometres (0.75 miles) per year,” Ibid.

What’s moving Thwaites’ ice sheet? Warm ocean water is melting the underside because of climate change, which has shifted wind patterns in the region, bringing warm ocean water to West Antarctica that was not there before. The water temperatures below Thwaites’ ice shelf are about 1.5C above the freezing point.

Researchers achieved the closest look ever at the underside of Thwaites Glacier as well as “the first-ever glimpse at the spot where the ice meets the land,” Ibid.

Prior field research indicated that giant fractures in the “floating ice” of Thwaites “could shatter part of the shelf within five years.” (Source: Giant Cracks Push Imperiled Antarctic Glacier Closer to Collapse, Nature, December 14, 2021) This would open an avenue for a much faster flow of glacial ice on land into the ocean, contributing to sea-level rise. Already Thwaites accounts for 4% of sea-level rise.

“If Thwaites’s eastern ice shelf collapses, ice in this region could flow up to three times faster into the sea, Pettit says. And if the glacier were to collapse completely, it would raise sea levels by 65 centimetres (2 feet),” Erin Pettit, glaciologist at Oregon State University, Ibid.

“Thwaites flows off the Antarctic continent into the Southern Ocean. At 120 kilometres (75 miles) across, it is the world’s widest glacier. Across about two-thirds of that expanse, ice flows relatively quickly into the ocean. The remaining one-third is the eastern ice shelf, where ice had been flowing more slowly. In part, that’s because the ice grinds to a halt when it reaches an underwater mountain about 40 kilometres offshore. The submerged mountain holds back the ice flow like a cork in a bottle. Earlier this year, members of the Thwaites collaboration reported that the glacier is becoming unstuck from that mountain, causing cracking and fracturing across other parts of the ice shelf,” Ibid.

Based upon what scientists observed at Thwaites, it’s amazing that the metaphor “like a cork in a bottle” describes what may be holding back much more rapid breakup of one of the world’s largest, most menacing, glaciers.

Meantime, sea level researchers deal with a target that moves up, never down, with each passing year. What’ll stop it?

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on February 24, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Posted on

Big Heat Hits Antarctica

Image Source: Rex, Wikipedia – Public Domain
Image by Rex, Wikipedia – Public Domain

Big Heat Hits Antarctica

By Robert Hunziker

A recent report out of West Antarctica is rattling scientists.

It’s all about heat, big-time heat, encroaching upon the world’s biggest chunk of ice that locks down a couple hundred feet of sea level rise. This kind of news is enough to raise the hackles of smart well-informed people, as excessive CO2 emissions spewing like crazy ever since the turn of the 21st century are now flat-out playing with fire in a very dangerous corner of the planet.

Meanwhile, regarding this very dicey situation, what will the leading nations of the world do? A Marshall Plan operation? Or nothing? Hmm. Based upon a 30-year trail of unmitigated failures by nation/states to meet commitments to cut emissions, probably nothing! But at some point in time it’ll be too late to do anything other than photos for posterity, whatever remains?

According to a highly regarded climate authority Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research: “It’s the sea melting the ice from below, it’s not atmospheric melting from above. And this is really, really worrying … and quite surprising, because up until 10 years ago, we were absolutely convinced that the Greenland ice sheet and the Arctic was the more sensitive of the two poles.” (Source, Bob Berwyn, Antarctica Researchers Report an Extraordinary Marine Heatwave That Could Threaten Antarctica’s ice Shelves, Inside Climate News, Feb. 12, 2023)

Aboard the research ship RV Laurence M. Gould, cruising along Antarctica’s west coast, according to Carlos Moffat, chief scientist, Palmer Long Term Ecological Research Program: “Even as somebody who’s been looking at these changing systems for a few decades, I was taken aback by what I saw, by the degree of warming that I saw… We don’t know how long this is going to last. We don’t fully understand the consequences of this kind of event, but this looks like an extraordinary marine heatwave,” Ibid.

If extraordinary warm conditions continue, it could bring rapid destabilization of the critical underpinnings of the global climate system, impacting ice shelves, glaciers, coastal ecosystems and ocean currents. Already, a similar pattern swept the Arctic, as it approaches a dangersome iceless state. Accordingly, an iceless Arctic is a foreboding event that no climate scientist wants, as it amplifies Greenland’s melt rate, which is already leaning on the ropes.

Honestly, the world’s icebound ecosystems are losing it so much faster than anybody ever expected. It’s very, very, very disconcerting and should motivate world leaders to do something more than simply making slick cameo appearances at UN climate conferences, 110 world leaders showed up for COP 27 in Egypt, November 2022. Yet experts on climate change give UN-sponsored COP27 an F-grade. “A collective failure,” according to The Lancet (est. 1923), which is the world’s highest impact academic journal.

According to Moffat: “These episodes of relatively rapid ocean warming that can persist for months have been occurring all over the place. They haven’t been common in this region.” Ibid.

The RV Laurence M. Gould research vessel covered an area of 600 miles length crisscrossing at the 125-mile-wide continental shelf, documenting the heat. Moffat: “It’s very difficult to warm the ocean, and so when we see these conditions, that really speaks to a very intense forcing.”

Ocean Icy Death Spiral?

The Inside Climate News article poses the question of whether an “ocean icy death spiral” may develop. Significantly, recent studies have shown an erosion of the great continent’s buffer systems that protect it from climate extremes in other parts of the world, such as (1) a protective encircling swift ocean current and (2) defined belt of jet stream winds. Evidently, these crucial buffer systems are clearly weakening. The ramifications are beyond words.

Moreover, a Nature Climate Change study 2022 showed circumpolar deep water at 1,000-to-2,000 feet warmed considerably, allowing warm water to sneak beneath unsuspecting ice sheets. Only recently a study by a team from the University of East Anglia of Thwaites Ice Shelf, one of the biggest, and alas, tipsiest in West Antarctica, showed that one ice shelf sitting next to another ice shelf exports heat to its next-door neighbor. The study found the Pine Island Glacier flowing warm water next door into Thwaites. Thus, a series of ice shelves along the Amundsen Sea impact one another when warmer waters encroach the region. This could become a self-feeding frenzy of one major ice shelf/glacier tumbling another. The Amundsen Sea Embayment and its ice shelves include, Cosgrove, Pine Island, Thwaites, and several others.

All of which prompts the question of this decade: What’s behind this threatening rapid change of the world’s most prominent complex ice ecosystem?

In part, the answer is found in tail pipes of >1.5 billion cars of the world, which, in turn, prompts: Since the start of the 21st century, global warming has been on a breakneck pace:

  1. According to NASA: Antarctica and Greenland combined lost 82 billion tons of ice mass per year in the 1990s compared with 475 billion tons per year in the 2010s, a sixfold increase in only a decade.
  2. According to the Institute for European Environmental Policy: More than one-half (½) of all greenhouse gas emissions since 1750 were emitted over the past 30 years.
  3. A comprehensive study shows the seas are rising three times (3x) faster than they were in the 1990s (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

With the aforementioned three points in mind, what’s next? Will it be stepped-up flat-out acceleration on top of current rapid acceleration (how about another 6-fold increase in ice mass loss per year?) and what then for Antarctica and Miami and does anybody really care enough to do something, anything, massively (worldwide) constructive, assuming it’s even possible, or will the Anthropocene run its course?

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on February 17, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.