Telling the Truth: The War on Climate Change is Over. We Lost

Neoliberal sparkle dust and Alice-in-Wonderland thinking is not going to leave humanity with a livable climate.

Climate disruption is an ecological emergency. A report warns B.C. could face many more fires like the devastating Okanagan Mountain Park forest fire in 2003. ((Richard Lam/Canadian Press)

Prince Edward resident Rosalind Adams didn’t pull any punches: “If you ‘green’ Canadians are going to be assholes in the climate crisis, at least tell the truth.”

Adams writes, “According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 Degrees C., to prevent climate catastrophe, global CO2 emissions must fall to about 17.6 billion tonnes annually by 2030…The global CO2 emissions must fall to about 17.6 billion tonnes annually by 2030.”

Notice, the Report does not specify what an individual country’s emissions should be. But Canadian political parties and media, hopelessly captives of Big Oil, are suggesting  that by reducing Canadian emissions by 50% by 2030, Canada would fulfill its climate responsibility—something the IPCC Report does not suggest.  

“Canadians having a carbon footprint of 10 tonnes or 7 tonnes per person by 2030 does not contribute to achieving a global average of 2.1 tonnes per person by 2030. Instead it contributes to a situation where many, many more people than us must have carbon footprints of less than 2.1 tonnes by 2030 to make up for our failure.”

In a Facebook posting, Adam writes, “So what the dominant Canadian story on the IPCC Special Report is basically saying is that it is a matter of internationally agreed upon climate science that Canada, or perhaps more importantly, North America, should maintain the privilege of having emissions levels multiple times higher than almost any other country in the world.” So much for climate justice.”

Neoliberal sparkle dust and Alice-in-Wonderland thinking is not going to leave humanity with a livable climate.

Protests by Extinction Rebellion’s seemingly inexhaustible army of activists made plenty of headlines last week. Getty Images

Extinction Rebellion’s first demand is that Governments must tell the truth—climate disruption is an ecological emergency. Governments must tell the truth and work with other institutions to communicate the urgency for change.

Greta Thunberg says, “I support Extinction Rebellion. What they are doing is good. Civil disobedience is important to show this is an emergency. We need to do everything we can to put pressure on the people in power.” 

So what does climate science tell us?

Adam Sacks explains, “Because of the vast inertial mass of oceans’ ability to absorb temperature and carbon dioxide, there is roughly a 30-year time lag between greenhouse-gas emissions and their effects. The  result of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide we see today, in the range of only 330 parts per million (ppm), are not the result of today’s concentrations of almost 390 ppm. In 2018, carbon dioxide levels reached 411 ppm at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory, the highest monthly average ever recorded. We don’t know with any accuracy what this means for future climate disruption.

The second out-of-control component is positive (amplifying) feedback loops. Feedback loops are self-sustaining, amplifying cycles. For example, global warming leads to melting glaciers which  eventually increase ocean saturation with carbon dioxide which leads to atmospheric carbon dioxide. We don’t know with accuracy when a feedback loop is triggered or how to reverse them.

The radical destabilization of life on earth, today’s floods, extreme weather swings, forest fires, typhoons and storm surges are symptoms , the result of 300 years of our relentlessly exploitative, extractive, and exponentially growing technoculture, against the background of ten millennia of hierarchical and colonial civilizations.

Another truth: You can’t bargain with the forces of nature.

To believe that our political parties will meet the level of emissions reductions that the IPCC claim are necessary, demands a level of faith way beyond belief in talking snakes and virgin birth. Better to give up dangerous magical thinking. That’s how we got here. Better to  accept that the war against the environment is over. We lost.

So what are we left with? Protecting as best we can our children’s and grandchildren’s future.

 

Extinction Rebellion demands action from Boris and warns ‘our numbers are growing’

EXTINCTION REBELLION has lashed out at the government over its slow response to their climate change protests, warning: “They’re simply not enough – we’re running out of time!”

For the past eight months, the climate change group has been protesting for Westminster to declare a climate and ecological emergency and to commit to reducing emissions down to net zero by 2025. Since taking its first public action on October 31, 2018, Extinction Rebellion has grown into a global movement with more than 360 groups across 59 countries. The group has significantly ramped up its demonstrations this year, with more than 1,000 protesters arrested at five sites across the capital in April, some of which bought public transport to a complete standstill.

The Metropolitan Police was left overstretched by the chaos, which cost the force around £16million.

Dozens more arrests, including those of a 14-year-old girl and 17-year-old boy in Westminster’s Parliament Square – were made last week at the conclusion of another Extinction Rebellion “summer uprising” aimed at causing disruption to Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds and London.

On Wednesday, demonstrators from Greenpeace tied to block the wide ceremonial avenue leading to Buckingham Palace as new Boris Johnson was being driven through it in a convoy to meet the Queen to officially soon in as Prime Minister.

But speaking to Express.co.uk, Extinction Rebellion member Zion Lights said although their message is partially getting through to the Government, there hasn’t been a quick enough response and soon it will be too late.

Climate change news: Extinction Rebellion have launched mass protests across the UK (Image: REUTERS)

The statements and promises from the Government are simply not enough and we are running out of time.— Zion Lights

The group member said: “It’s a slow process, but I think we’ve at least raised the alarm along with the school strikers.

“Although Parliament declared a climate emergency, the government is continuing with business as usual. We need to start paying attention to what scientists have been telling us for decades, and start acting on these recommendations now. The longer we wait to take drastic action the greater the risk that we trigger irreversible feedback loops and start down a road of runaway warming.” SOURCE

Arctic Bogs Hold Another Global Warming Risk That Could Spiral Out of Control

As warming brings earlier spring rains in the Arctic, more permafrost thaws, releasing more methane in a difficult-to-stop feedback loop, research shows.

A doubling of the rate of methane released in the Arctic could have consequences that climate change projections don’t currently take into account. Credit: S Hillebrand/USFWS

Increasing spring rains in the Arctic could double the increase in methane emissions from the region by hastening the rate of thawing in permafrost, new research suggests.

The findings are cause for concern because spring rains are anticipated to occur more frequently as the region warms. The release of methane, a short-lived climate pollutant more potent than carbon dioxide over the short term, could induce further warming in a vicious cycle that would be difficult if not impossible to stop.

“Our results emphasize that these permafrost regions are sensitive to the thermal effects of rain, and because we’re anticipating that these environments are going to get wetter in the future, we could be seeing increases in methane emissions that we weren’t expecting,” said the study’s lead author, Rebecca Neumann, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Washington. The study appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. MORE

2018 was a milestone year for climate science (if not politics)

The devastation from Hurricane Michael over Mexico Beach, Fla. A massive federal report released in November warns that climate change is fueling extreme weather disasters like hurricanes and wildfires. AP

…Many in the [climate scientist] community met in Washington, D.C., in December at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. “We’re not seeing cycles” in which warming is likely to go back down, says climate scientist Martin Hoerling. “We’re not seeing things that are going to revert back,” as long as greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to increase.

What about that idea that the climate has changed from the dawn of time? Climate scientist Stephanie Herring says sure, that’s technically true, but it misses an important difference happening now. “The current change that we are experiencing now is particularly alarming,” she says, “and that’s because in the history of human civilization the climate has never changed this rapidly.” For example, 20 of the warmest years on record around the planet occurred in the past 22 years, according to the WMO. MORE