Collapse

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28962153

Tony Blair has called for the government to change course on climate, suggesting a strategy that limits fossil fuels in the short term or encourages people to limit consumption is “doomed to fail”.

In comments that have prompted a backlash within Labour, the former prime minister suggested the UK government should focus less on renewables and more on technological solutions such as carbon capture.

Blair said people were “being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal”. He said “any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail”.

The paper itself, written by the TBI’s Lindy Fursman, said net zero policies were now “increasingly viewed as unaffordable, ineffective or politically toxic”.

https://archive.ph/K6RLl

For a more sane on this topic, see: Preparing for a New Cultural Paradigm with Jean-Marc Jancovici

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29411776

What was once considered rare has become alarmingly common, as climate change accelerates the frequency and severity of such events,” said an editorial in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn. The country “remains woefully unprepared for the escalating climate crisis”, it said.

Abstract

Humid heatwaves are a growing risk to human and animal health, especially in tropical regions. While there is established research on dry-bulb temperature heatwaves, greater understanding of the meteorological drivers of extreme humid heat is urgently needed. In this study, we find that recent rainfall is a key control on the occurrence of humid heatwaves in the tropics and subtropics and its effect is regulated by the energy- or moisture-limited state of the land surface. In moisture-limited environments, heatwaves are likely during, or immediately after, enhanced rainfall. In energy-limited environments, heatwaves are likely after suppression of rainfall for two days or longer. The nature of the threat to health from heat stress varies by environment. It depends on local adaptation to temperature or humidity extremes, as well as vulnerability to absolute or anomalous extremes. Early warning systems, which reduce exposure and vulnerability to weather extremes, can benefit from this understanding of humid heatwave drivers, highlighting the possibility of predicting events using satellite-derived rainfall and surface moisture data.

Summary

Background

Rising global atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations and surface temperatures could negatively affect rice yields and nutritional quality; however, their effects on arsenic accumulation in paddy rice have not been assessed concurrently. We aimed to assess the impact of increases in CO2 and temperature (individually and in combination) on arsenic concentrations in rice, characterise soil properties that might influence arsenic uptake, and model the associated risks of cancer and other health outcomes due to increased arsenic exposure.

Methods

For this modelling study we performed in-situ multi-varietal trials using Free-Air CO2 Enrichment platforms with and without supplemental temperature to examine the bioaccumulation of arsenic in paddy rice and the underlying biogeochemical mechanisms from 2014 to 2023. We modelled dietary inorganic arsenic exposure and the associated risks of cancer and non-cancer health outcomes via rice consumption for seven of the leading rice-consuming countries in east and southeast Asia.

Findings

Concomitant increases in CO2 and temperature resulted in a synergistic increase of inorganic arsenic in rice grain. The observed increase is likely to be related to changes in soil biogeochemistry that favoured reduced arsenic species. Modelled consumption of rice under these conditions resulted in projected increases in inorganic arsenic exposure and lifetime cancer and health risks for multiple Asian countries by 2050.

Interpretation

Inorganic arsenic exposure and the associated health consequences might increase in rice grain grown in flooded systems with mid-century climate projections. The current assessment reinforces the urgent need for mitigation of arsenic exposure in rice relative to near-term climate change.

Global average surface temperatures shattered all-time records in 2023 at 1.45 ± 0.12 °C above pre-industrial levels (WMO 2024). Worsened by climate change-induced drought, Canadian wildfires burned 18.5 million hectares, nearly three-times more land area than in any previous year on record (NRC 2023). Parts of the Amazon River reached their lowest levels in 120 years of data-keeping and, in places, recorded surface water temperatures near 40 °C (Rodrigues 2023). The world has reached the threshold of a 1.5 °C increase in global average surface temperature and is only beginning to experience the full consequences.

Methane (CH4) is the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide. It contributed 0.5 °C of warming in the 2010s relative to the late 1800s—two-thirds as much warming as CO2 (IPCC 2021). It is also far more potent than CO2 ton for ton, with a global warming potential (GWP) >80 and 30 times more than CO2 for the first twenty years and century after release, respectively (Forster et al 2021).

Methane is rising faster in relative terms than any major greenhouse gas and is now 2.6-fold higher than in pre-industrial times. Global average methane concentrations reached 1931 parts per billion (ppb) in January of 2024 (Lan et al 2024). Annual increases in methane are also accelerating for reasons that are debated. Global methane concentrations rose by 15, 18, 13, and 10 ppb each year from 2020 through 2023, respectively, the second, first, fourth, and fourteenth largest increases since the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) methane time series began in 1983 (Lan et al 2024).

The Global Carbon Project updates its Global Methane Budget (GMB) every few years (Saunois et al 2016, 2020, 2024). The GMB integrates results of: (1) bottom-up (BU) estimates based on process-based models for estimating wetland surface emissions and atmospheric chemistry, inventories of anthropogenic emissions, and data-driven extrapolations, and (2) top-down (TD) CH4 emission estimates based on atmospheric observations and an inverse-modeling framework. Here, we summarize new estimates of the GMB based on the new GMB (Saunois et al 2024). We estimate CH4 sources and sinks for the periods 2000–2002 and 2018–2020, as well as for the most-recent year (2020), the last year that full global TD and BU methane datasets are available. We compare 3 year-average estimates to smooth the inter-annual variability signals from climatic variability such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) that influence natural emissions from wetlands and other ecosystems, as well as from the chemical sink.

We provide insights on data for methane sources and sinks globally and for the geographical regions and economic sectors whose emissions have changed the most since 2000. We also provide additional data on changes in recent years using satellite-based inversions using the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) (e.g. Yu et al 2023).

Abstract

The growth rate of the atmospheric abundance of methane (CH4) reached a record high of 15.4 ppb yr−1 between 2020 and 2022, but the mechanisms driving the accelerated CH4 growth have so far been unclear. In this work, we use measurements of the 13C:12C ratio of CH4 (expressed as δ13CCH4) from NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network and a box model to investigate potential drivers for the rapid CH4 growth. These measurements show that the record-high CH4 growth in 2020–2022 was accompanied by a sharp decline in δ13CCH4, indicating that the increase in CH4 abundance was mainly driven by increased emissions from microbial sources such as wetlands, waste, and agriculture. We use our box model to reject increasing fossil fuel emissions or decreasing hydroxyl radical sink as the dominant driver for increasing global methane abundance.

Jem Bendell is the originator of the concept of Deep Adaptation.

For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, Wiki summarizes Deep Adaptation as:

Deep Adaptation is a concept, agenda, and international social movement. It presumes that extreme weather events and other effects of climate change will increasingly disrupt food, water, shelter, power, and social and governmental systems. These disruptions would likely or inevitably cause uneven societal collapse in the next few decades. The word “deep” indicates that strong measures are required to adapt to an unraveling of industrial lifestyles, following prior usages such as deep ecology. The agenda includes values of nonviolence, compassion, curiosity and respect, with a framework for constructive action.

Article excerpt:

Many of us are lucky that societal collapse is still only a concept. It can be our way of understanding the increasing difficulties we experience, or the increasing damage to the natural world, or can describe a future breakdown of basic services in our societies. However, for some people the collapse of basic systems for living has been happening for a long time. Moreover, some people are experiencing the daily risk of being killed, the pain of hunger, grieving loved ones, and coping with trauma from regular bombing and displacement. A military-induced collapse of society is one that could be stopped, unlike the wider collapse that unfolds due to environmental and other factors. Therefore any such volitional collapse is something we could try to prevent, or reverse. It is something that calls for our attention and action. That is especially so if our taxes are funding part of it or our financial savings are benefiting from it.

What I have just written seems self-evident. It should not need explaining. Therefore, it is heartbreaking that a few people who made the reduction of harm from societal collapse a major theme in their lives have been blocking people with a similar perspective from discussing how we might help people in need, with no transparency about that censorship, which means we develop a mistaken impression of the response of our fellow man. I am writing about it here because I think that with your help this situation can change, and with it, both systems and cultural dynamics will improve in the Deep Adaptation communities and movement.

In addition to wider calls to action, Jem is asking those in support to sign a statement that he has created. If you would like to do so, you may sign up for his mailing list and he will provide a link via email.

Everything is dependent on the power network.

Abstract

Rising carbon dioxide emissions are provoking ocean warming and acidification1,2, altering plankton habitats and threatening calcifying organisms3, such as the planktonic foraminifera (PF). Whether the PF can cope with these unprecedented rates of environmental change, through lateral migrations and vertical displacements, is unresolved. Here we show, using data collected over the course of a century as FORCIS4 global census counts, that the PF are displaying evident poleward migratory behaviours, increasing their diversity at mid- to high latitudes and, for some species, descending in the water column. Overall foraminiferal abundances have decreased by 24.2 ± 0.1% over the past eight decades. Beyond lateral migrations5, our study has uncovered intricate vertical migration patterns among foraminiferal species, presenting a nuanced understanding of their adaptive strategies. In the temperature and calcite saturation states projected for 2050 and 2100, low-latitude foraminiferal species will face physicochemical environments that surpass their current ecological tolerances. These species may replace higher-latitude species through poleward shifts, which would reduce low-latitude foraminiferal diversity. Our insights into the adaptation of foraminifera during the Anthropocene suggest that migration will not be enough to ensure survival. This underscores the urgent need for us to understand how the interplay of climate change, ocean acidification and other stressors will impact the survivability of large parts of the marine realm.

The high growth rate of atmospheric CO2 in 2023 was found to be caused by a severe reduction of the global net land carbon sink. Here we update the global CO2 budget from January 1st to July 1st 2024, during which El Niño drought conditions continued to prevail in the Tropics but ceased by March 2024. We used three dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs), machine learning emulators of ocean models, three atmospheric inversions driven by observations from the second Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) satellite, and near-real-time fossil CO2 emissions estimates. In a one-year period from July 2023 to July 2024 covering the El Niño 2023/24 event, we found a record-high CO2 growth rate of 3.66~±~0.09 ppm~yr−1 (±~1 standard deviation) since 1979. Yet, the CO2 growth rate anomaly obtained after removing the long term trend is 1.1 ppm~yr−1, which is marginally smaller than the July--July growth rate anomalies of the two major previous El Niño events in 1997/98 and 2015/16. The atmospheric CO2 growth rate anomaly was primarily driven by a 2.24 GtC~yr−1 reduction in the net land sink including 0.3 GtC~yr−1 of fire emissions, partly offset by a 0.38 GtC~yr−1 increase in the ocean sink relative to the 2015--2022 July--July mean. The tropics accounted for 97.5% of the land CO2 flux anomaly, led by the Amazon (50.6%), central Africa (34%), and Southeast Asia (8.2%), with extra-tropical sources in South Africa and southern Brazil during April--July 2024. Our three DGVMs suggest greater tropical CO2 losses in 2023/2024 than during the two previous large El Niño in 1997/98 and 2015/16, whereas inversions indicate losses more comparable to 2015/16. Overall, this update of the low latency budget highlights the impact of recent El Niño droughts in explaining the high CO2 growth rate until July 2024.

The vast Anthropocene reshaping of the planet that is now under way extends to water as well as land. The Three Gorges dam project on the Yangtze River in China impounds so much water that it has measurably slowed the rotation speed of the Earth. Oil extraction from the Alberta tar sands uses more than 200bn litres of fresh water a year: this is abstracted from the Athabasca River, rendered toxic – and then injected back into aquifers by way of “disposal”. Europe has the most obstructed river system of any continent, with more than 1m barriers fragmenting flow and only a handful of free-running waterways remaining.

It has long been in the interests of power to deem nature dead, in preparation for its extraction, conversion and consumption. This systematic de-animation process has been accelerated to calamity speed by the new US administration. Trump’s inaugural address was obsessively focused on “land”; his speech a bingo card of 19th-century settler-Christian tropes glorifying first the subjugation then exploitation of the continent’s “resources”, natural and human: manifest destiny, the “untamed wilderness”, the “frontier hypothesis”. At his Senate confirmation hearing, Doug Burgum – the new interior secretary – described public lands and waters as “America’s balance sheet”, which he would “unleash” for “economic activity

This brief article discusses the possibility of near-term human extinction (NTHE) and reviews the scientific evidence supporting the case that NTHE may come to pass.

From the article,

The combined effects of the exponential rise of global heating, paired with the chaotic and uncontrollable momentum of cascading positive feedback loops in the climate caused by crossing irreversible tipping points, are already driving global temperatures to a difference of geological proportions before the end of this decade.

. . .

Just one major event could effectively eradicate the now fatally precarious conditions of human habitat on this planet and swiftly seal our fate into extinction.

The article addresses the following questions / points:

• Is near-term human extinction really possible?

• How soon is “near-term”?

• Is there any scientific research supporting the case for near-term human extinction?

• Where we are — a snapshot

• Sudden events likely to cause human extinction

• Scientists’ final warnings fall on deaf ears

• Final note on science and "certainty"

This is collapse-related because, with the rapidly approaching collapse of industrial civilization (considered by many to be the only realistic scenario we are looking at in the near-future), the possibility for near-term human extinction skyrockets.

We are locked into a trajectory of planetary annihilation and show no signs of slowing.

Further detail in providing an overview of our collective circumstance is continued in the article.