CLIMATE CHAOS: Arctic Sea Ice Could Face Worst Losses On Record -YALE

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"Temperatures in the Siberian Arctic reached record averages in June, with some areas seeing rises of as much as 10C (18F), according to EU data.

The Arctic is believed to be warming twice as fast as the global average."

BBC News, July 10, 2020

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE TEMPERATURE RISES 5 DEGREES C?

 This is clearly not good news as the loss of the Arctic Sea ice by 2030 or earlier is expected to raise the global average temperature by another 5-6 degrees* Celsius; potentially putting us up to 7-8 degrees C over the 1750 baseline.  These numbers are becoming comparable to the Permian Extinction that occurred nearly 250 million years ago.

THE PERMIAN EXTINCTION

*Siberian Arctic reports temperatures 10 degrees higher than last year; curvilinear increase pattern already.

  "greenhouse gases in the model until ocean surface temperatures in the tropics had risen by 10 degrees Celsius (20 degrees Fahrenheit), the conditions driven by the global warming that was occurring at the time."

Read  More -Mongabay

WHO SURVIVES?

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Moreover, as the ice melts; methane is released unabated  -  making the Arctic the driver of global climate change and not just a passenger on the train into the abyss.

"As the various Arctic climate feedbacks show, we are fast approaching the stage when climate change will be playing the tune for us while we stand by and watch helplessly, with our reductions in CO2 emissions*having no effect in the face of, say, runaway emissions of methane.'   Read  More

Peter Wadham

* this, of course, makes clean, alternative and renewable energy sources completely redundant

Loss of the Arctic ice would also cause the Greenland ice sheet to melt and  Scientists estimate this would raise sea levels by 20 feet.* This would be a disaster for coastal cities such as NewYork, New Orleans, Miami, and Los Angeles among many others. It would also bring about an unprecedented economic collapse and with it various social and political malignancies.

Naturally agricultural and fishery products will be profoundly impacted leading to serious short and long-term food shortages. Expect natural resource wars as a consequence  - possibly nuclear - as everyone including governments become more desperate.

*Should the Antarctic Continental Icecap also melt it is estimated that sea levels would rise 200 feet; however, that would likely be the least of our problems.

Furthermore, many nuclear power stations are located near the ocean shores and would be in considerable peril. There are over 450 nuclear plants in the world and those near these ocean shorelines should be promptly risk assessed by governments as to the consequences of rising sea levels and shut down and decommissioned if the exposure to an imminent disaster is too great. This naturally puts another nail in the coffin for any future expansion of this industry under exponential and abrupt climate change conditions or other circumstances.

OR OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES

At the same time, recent scientific research indicates and confirms that we are already in the midst of the sixth mass extinction and ecological collapse with 100's more vertebrates at-risk. Given the evidence related to the further Arctic melting and the corresponding release of methane, we will face runaway climate change that, as noted above, falls outside of any possible human control by way of CO2 - hence, these at-risk species would also be doomed.  This thereby causes a domino effect that will cause other even more adaptive species to go extinct-ultimately leading to the extinction of all large mammalian vertebrates, in short order, given the rapidity of the exponential climate changes and ecological collapse.  

Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction

"The ongoing sixth mass species extinction is the result of the destruction of component populations leading to eventual extirpation of entire species. Populations and species extinctions have severe implications for society through the degradation of ecosystem services. Here we assess the extinction crisis from a different perspective. We examine 29,400 species of terrestrial vertebrates and determine which are on the brink of extinction because they have fewer than 1,000 individuals. There are 515 species on the brink (1.7% of the evaluated vertebrates). Around 94% of the populations of 77 mammal and bird species on the brink have been lost in the last century. Assuming all species on the brink have similar trends, more than 237,000 populations of those species have vanished since 1900. We conclude the human-caused sixth mass extinction is likely accelerating for several reasons. First, many of the species that have been driven to the brink will likely become extinct soon. Second, the distribution of those species highly coincides with hundreds of other endangered species, surviving in regions with high human impacts, suggesting ongoing regional biodiversity collapses. Third, close ecological interactions of species on the brink tend to move other species toward annihilation when they disappear—extinction breeds extinctions. Finally, human pressures on the biosphere are growing rapidly, and a recent example is the current coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic, linked to wildlife trade. Our results reemphasize the extreme urgency of taking much-expanded worldwide actions to save wild species and humanity’s crucial life-support systems from this existential threat. " 

PNAS - Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich, and Peter H. Raven

June 10, 2020

The melting of the Arctic ice field is the greatest emergency and challenge that humanity has ever faced in its short history; previous world wars, space exploration, and a missile crisis - pale profoundly in comparison. The urgency is unprecedented because if we fail to deal with this very soon - then we lose any chance of mitigating exponential climate impacts and that could then turn the current sixth mass extinction into another truly Permian event quickly destroying over 95% of life on this planet.  No vertebrate species will have dispensation from such consequences.

For decades we have known that at some point we would have to face the challenge and urgency of this situation - yet we did nothing?. Call it cognitive dissonance, human nature, procrastination, politics, or just plain stupid- it doesn't matter what term or explanation is used; there are now no other options - the grim reaper is already at our door and the urgency has never been greater...  

 YALE STUDY

By Bob Henson | Monday, July 20, 2020

Baked by midsummer sun,

 Arctic sea ice could face 

worst losses on record

A period of tranquil weather paves the 

way for potential trouble later this summer.

READ MORE

T.A.McNeil, BAdmin, CMA, CA

CEO&FOUNDER

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What should we do in response to the key messages of Planet of the Humans? Love it or hate it, there’s no escaping some inconvenient truths in this controversial film released by Michael Moore. Join us as we examine those truths, consider the necessary course corrections, and identify actions we can take now – to avoid terminating or greatly harming human civilization.

Our panel will share insights about the film and what they believe are the key take-aways. They’ll discuss the roles of overpopulation, overconsumption, and economic growth in the most serious environmental crises we face. Most importantly, they’ll pick up where the film leaves off: discussing what we can and should do if this film motivates us to act. See the movie free for a limited time.

 

Kristine Mattis

An interdisciplinary environmental scholar with a background in Biology and Earth System Science, Kristine has worked as a medical researcher, a science reporter for the congressional record in the U.S. House of Representatives, and a science teacher. She holds a PhD in Environment and Resources. Her writing encompasses issues of social and environmental justice, public health, risk, and science.

 

Dave Gardner

Co-host of the GrowthBusters podcast about sustainable living; co-host of The Overpopulation Podcast; director of the documentary GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth; host of the syndicated radio series, Conversation Earth; and executive director of World Population Balance.

 

Erika Arias

Co-host of the GrowthBusters podcast about sustainable living; co-host of The Overpopulation Podcast; Programs & Engagement Coordinator for World Population Balance, and a childfree researcher and advocate

 

Brian Czech

Executive director of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE). With a Ph.D. in renewable natural resources, his specialties intersect ecological economics, conservation biology, and public policy. The author of several books, Czech recently edited Best of The Daly News: Selected Essays from the Leading Blog in Steady State Econ

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The Big Guy is RIGHT #POTH;

'I think the big crisis of our times is that our minds have been manipulated to give power to illusions'. — Vandana Shiva

Climate Crisis: Our Ecological Dysfunction Has a Marketing Problem (and it’s not Michael Moore)

I first heard of Jeff Gibbs’ contentious film Planet of the Humans (POH) sometime last year. Like millions of others, I viewed it just recently. Over the past week, the scathingly negative reviews I discovered disheartened but did not surprise me. While the film may present outdated statistics about so-called renewable energy technologies (which should have been revised to reflect current trends), while it may clumsily cobble together disparate aspects of the ecological effects of our species on the planet, and while it utilizes what may be characterized as calculating imagery to evoke emotional resonance (as all films do), the crux of Gibbs’ argument should not be discarded and deserves discussion: that we cannot achieve ecological sustainability without addressing the role of humanity’s overproduction and overconsumption.

It seems to me that people who watch this film project onto it what they want to see, much like they did with Advertising Age’s Marketer of the Year, President Obama, during his 2008 campaign. Rather than view the film for what it is, they see it through their personal lens. My lens is, at my core, that of a biologist, which means what I see concerns life and the preservation of life on this planet. What I see is that our ecological dysfunction is not merely one of climate crisis, but of the totality of human disruptions that impair the health of all organisms and ecosystems.

Compartmentalization and reductionism: “To a man with a hammer, everything is a nail”

Some critics of the film are proving to be as disingenuous as they purport the filmmakers to be. The film may be facile at times, but so are many of the critiques. Myopia on the topics of renewables and population (which I will discuss further down) overlooks the heart of the film: that we cannot continue to increase our economic growth and resource use on a finite planet; that we are leaving a morass of waste and pollution in our wake that is killing all life on the planet, including us; that our high-tech solutions to maintain our over-consumptive way of life have not done any good in terms of mitigating our colossal environmental emergencies; and that overexploitation of natural resources is a major problem that we refuse to address.

On the May 1st edition of Rising, filmmaker Josh Fox, who called for an all-out ban of POH, stated, “The IPPC is telling us that we have to reduce our emissions by 50%, OK, 50% in the next ten years. That means we have to replace 50% of the fossil fuel technology in the world — or more than that — with renewable energy.” This is circular logic that assumes only one possible solution: replacement of energy sources rather than reduction of energy use. Both are possible.

Critics like Josh quibble about the inaccuracies with the carbon budgets and carbon accounting of so-called green energy because they say that the renewable energy technologies explored in the film are now much more cost-effective and efficient than what the films claim. True enough. Yet there is so much more to the picture, which is why many of these reductive scientific analyses do not suffice in terms of overall ecological sustainability. Most look at carbon and little else within the life cycle analysis (LCA) of technologies. This is partially because there do not exist clear comprehensive metrics through which to quantify ecology, though researchers continually try. I know from my own experience conducting LCAs that pertinent variables are frequently omitted, either by design (they are not or because the variable does not have reliable data or cannot be numerically quantified. Thus, LCAs do not necessarily reflect a complete picture of the whole ecological footprint of the technology. Moreover, sometimes qualitative issues are more important than quantitative. (See addendum for example.)

Critics of POH rarely if ever mention ecological and environmental health, toxic pollutants, and general resource use, perhaps because a good number of them originate from high-tech and engineering fields. They do not account for the entire diverse ecosystem, with all of its flora and fauna, that was decimated to create that mirrored solar array in the California desert, as shown in the film. Land use, habitat loss, and toxic contamination are primary drivers of our biodiversity crisis. In creating that solar playground, we might win in terms of non-fossil fuel energy, but we lose in a number of other ways that are unaccounted for. They also do not consider the socioeconomic, political, and public health costs of our continually increasing resource extraction and industrial lifestyle, nor the human rights and environmental justice issues therein.

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BLIP

Humanity's 300 year self-terminating experiment with industrialism

Since the inception of our industrial revolution, we increasingly ingenious Homo sapiens have been depleting - persistently and increasingly - the finite, non-replenishing, and increasingly scarce NNRs (nonrenewable natural resources) that enable our industrialized way of life, and our very existence.

Regrettably, because the NNR utilization behavior that enables our species' existence - and that is essential to perpetuating our existence - simultaneously undermines our existence, both our NNR utilization behavior and our resultant industrial lifestyle paradigm are unsustainable.

As a perverse consequence of our unparalleled ingenuity, we have become enmeshed in a self-inflicted, inescapable, and self-terminating "predicament" - we are doomed if we persist in our unsustainable NNR utilization behavior, and we are doomed if we do not - a predicament that will resolve itself catastrophically for humankind.

Add caption

The premise of "Blip" is that increasingly pervasive global NNR scarcity is causing faltering global human prosperity, which is causing increasing global political instability, economic fragility, and societal unrest.

This scenario will intensify during the coming decades and culminate in humanity's self-inflicted global societal (species) collapse, almost certainly by the year 2050.

"Blip" substantiates these seemingly inconceivable assertions by synthesizing the quantitative and qualitative evidence produced by hundreds of scientists, scholars, researchers, and analysts in the various physical sciences and behavioral sciences that address the origins and evolution of industrial humanity and human industrialism.

These experts produced the "dots", which are connected clearly and comprehensibly in "Blip".

We will soon discover that humanity's self-terminating experiment with industrialism represents a mere 300 year "blip" along the three million year timeline of human existence.

Dear Chris ;

Thanks so much for a copy of your recent book.  As always, excellent work.

Here are a few of my humble observations and thoughts, adding further despondency to the whole situation. 

Aggregating all NNRs from a planetary perspective, thereby creating a single theoretical planetary NNR unit to your lessons, should help clearly convey our grave circumstances, thusly causing even deeper concern among readers.

Following from the above, one could point out that it is our traditional economic theory that drove us into this abyss. And it still fails to acknowledge or understand the realities we now face in terms of certain economic collapse, particularly as NNRs diminishing returns will tie directly to the dilution and collapse of all currencies. Few will understand, it seems until it is much too late, that this is the true and primary cause of ALL Fiscal Cliffs - not our politicians, for sure.

The diminishing returns from the planetary NNR unit are also dramatically accelerated by population growth, climate change, and other related concerns. Throw into this mix, the demise of the supporting social, economic, and political frameworks, then the dark outcomes of diminishing returns get much deeper.

So, the only question to ponder now is: Where do we stand? And based on the projected extraction and consumption growth of the global NNR units, all other things being equal;   

HOW MUCH LONGER DO WE HAVE; EVEN ON A BEST CASE BASIS? 

Sincerely,

T. A. McNeil, B.Admin, CMA, CA

CEO - Founder

First Financial Insights Inc.

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