This article, originally posted by the Woods Hole Research Centre on August 3rd 2020, states that the “Worst case” for CO2 emissions scenario is actually the best match for assessing the climate risk, impact by 2050.
The RCP 8.5 CO2 emissions pathway, long considered a “worst case scenario” by the international science community, is the most appropriate for conducting assessments of climate change impacts by 2050, according to a new article published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The work was authored by Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) Risk Program Director Dr. Christopher Schwalm, Dr. Spencer Glendon, a Senior Fellow at WHRC and founder of Probable Futures, and by WHRC President Dr. Philip Duffy.
Long dismissed as alarmist or misleading, the paper argues that is actually the closest approximation of both historical emissions and anticipated outcomes of current global climate policies, tracking within 1% of actual emissions. “Not only are the emissions consistent with RCP 8.5 in close agreement with historical total cumulative CO2 emissions (within 1%), but RCP8.5 is also the best match out to mid-century under current and stated policies with still highly plausible levels of CO2 emissions in 2100,” the authors wrote. “…Not using RCP8.5 to describe the previous 15 years assumes a level of mitigation that did not occur, thereby skewing subsequent assessments by lessening the severity of warming and associated physical climate risk.”
Four scenarios known as Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) were developed in 2005 for the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report (AR5). The RCP scenarios are used in global climate models, and include historical greenhouse gas emissions until 2005, and projected emissions subsequently. RCP 8.5 assumes the greatest fossil fuel use, and a resulting additional 8.5 watts per square meter of radiative forcing by 2100. The commentary also emphasizes that while there are signs of progress on bending the global emissions curve and that our emissions picture may change significantly by 2100, focusing on the unknowable, distant future may distort the current debate on these issues. “For purposes of informing societal decisions, shorter time horizons are highly relevant, and it is important to have scenarios which are useful on those horizons. Looking at mid-century and sooner, RCP8.5 is clearly the most useful choice,” they wrote.The article also notes that RCP 8.5 would not be significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that “we note that the usefulness of RCP 8.5 is not changed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Assuming pandemic restrictions remain in place until the end of 2020 would entail a reduction in emissions of -4.7 Gt CO2. This represents less than 1% of total cumulative CO2 emissions since 2005 for all RCPs and observations.”
“Given the agreement of 2005-2020 historical and RCP8.5 total CO2 emissions and the congruence between current policies and RCP8.5 emission levels to mid-century, RCP8.5 has continued utility, both as an instrument to explore mean outcomes as well as risk,” they concluded. “Indeed, if RCP8.5 did not exist, we’d have to create it.”
On June 17, 2020, a Siberian town registered a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest ever recorded above the Arctic Circle. High temps across the region are driving impacts of great concern to scientists, firefighters, and those who maintain vulnerable Arctic infrastructure, including pipelines, roads, and buildings.
The Siberian heat flowed over the adjacent Arctic Ocean where it triggered record early sea ice melt in the Laptev Sea, and record low Arctic sea ice extent for this time of year. While 2020 is well positioned to set a new low extent record over 2012, variations in summer weather could change that.
The heat has also triggered wildfires in Siberia, releasing 59 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in June and drying out the region’s tundra. Some blazes are known as “zombie fires” possibly having smoldered underground all winter between 2019 and 2020.
Also at risk from the rapid rise in warmth is civil and military infrastructure, built atop thawing permafrost. As Siberia heated up this year, a fuel tank at a Russian power plant collapsed, leaking 21,000 tons of diesel into the Ambarnaya and Dadylkan rivers, a major Arctic disaster. Worse could come as the world continues warming.
The record-setting heat wave that swept through Arctic Siberia in June has yielded a wide-range of deleterious effects in the expansive polar and sub-polar region, triggering raging wildfires, thawing permafrost, and now, spurring the rapid melt-out of Arctic sea ice.
Last month, Siberian temperatures spiked, reaching a record average more than 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than normal, according to recently released data from the European Union. The remote town of Verkhoyansk in northeast Siberia recorded a reading of more than 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) on June 17, the highest temperature ever recorded north of the Arctic Circle.
Under this metaphorical blow torch, ice extent in the seas that border Siberia has plummeted in recent days, pushing the Arctic region as a whole into the record books. Between July 2 and July 7, sea ice extent across the Arctic Ocean went from being at its fifth lowest extent for this time of year since satellite record-keeping began in 1979, melting into first place, slightly below even the calamitous year of 2012 which eventually saw sea ice hit a record low at the end of the summer melt season in September.
As of July 9, sea ice extent in the global Arctic sits at just 8.310 million square kilometers (3.2 million square miles). If that melting momentum carries forward (and nobody knows if it will), 2020 could nab the title of the lowest ice extent year come September — with unknown long-term ramifications for the Arctic and the global climate.
An exceedingly abnormal spring and early summer in Siberia is thought to be largely responsible for 2020’s sudden surge downward. “The ice is opening up quite quickly and dramatically. It’s now at a record low in the Laptev Sea off northern Siberia,” says Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
Published by Gloria Dickie on 10 July 2020. You can read the full article and images here:
Forests hold the climate together. They are also at extreme risk due to global warming, drought, and other ecological stresses created by industrial civilization. New research shows that forests may be “hanging by a thread.” This excerpt from a recent peer-reviewed article in Science magazine details some of the threats to forests. Despite the academic language, it paints a frightening picture of the near future.
Trees are the living foundations on which most terrestrial biodiversity is built. Central to the success of trees are their woody bodies, which connect their elevated photosynthetic canopies with the essential belowground activities of water and nutrient acquisition. The slow construction of these carbon-dense, woody skeletons leads to a slow generation time, leaving trees and forests highly susceptible to rapid changes in climate.
Other long-lived, sessile organisms such as corals appear to be poorly equipped to survive rapid changes, which raises questions about the vulnerability of contemporary forests to future climate change. The emerging view that, similar to corals, tree species have rather inflexible damage thresholds, particularly in terms of water stress, is especially concerning. This Review examines recent progress in our understanding of how the future looks for forests growing in a hotter and drier atmosphere.
Temperature and Atmospheric CO2
No tree species can survive acute desiccation. Despite this unambiguous constraint, predicting the death of trees during drought is complicated by the process of evolution, whereby the fitness of tree species may benefit equally from traits that either increase growth or enhance drought resilience. Complexity arises because improving either of these two beneficial states often requires the same key traits to move in opposite directions, which leads to important trade-offs in adaptation to water availability. This conflict promotes strategic diversity in different species’ adaptations to water availability, even within ecosystems.
Understanding how the diversity of tree species will be affected by future droughts requires a detailed knowledge of how the functions of different species interact with their environment. Temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration are fundamental elements that affect the water relations of all tree species, and the rapid rise in both of these potent environmental drivers has the potential to markedly change the way trees behave during drought. The future of many forest systems will be dictated by how these atmospheric changes interact with tree function.
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Rising temperature and drought
Ultimately, the impact of elevated CO2 on forest trees is likely to come down to the intensity of the CO2-associated temperature rise and its effect on trees’ water use. This is because the distributions of tree species, in terms of water availability, broadly reflect their intrinsic tolerance of water stress. In other words, species from rainforests to arid woodlands face similar exposure to stress or damage during periods of drought.
Hence, any increase in the rate of soil drying caused by elevated temperatures is likely to lead to increasing damage to standing forests during drought. Improved tree WUE could ameliorate the temperature effect, but this argument remains highly debatable because most reports of improvements in tree WUE with rising atmospheric CO2 refer to intrinsic WUE, a value that converts to real plant water use only with a knowledge of leaf temperature and atmospheric humidity.
Thus, rising atmospheric temperature and the associated increase in evaporative demand is likely to reverse the improvements in tree WUE that are proposed to result from higher CO2. Recent evidence suggests that this is the case, with observations of reduced global tree growth and vegetation health associated with enhanced evaporative gradients and warming temperatures.
Predicting Tree Mortality
Tree mortality is most commonly observed when drought and high temperature are combined, likely owing to the compounding effects of the increased evaporative gradient and the increased porosity of leaves at high temperature. The inevitable rise in the intensity and/or frequency of such events as global temperatures climb has already been associated with an increase in tree mortality globally , especially in larger trees which raises a grave concern about the capacity of existing forests to persist into the future. Establishing the magnitude of this threat is an important challenge that requires a fundamental understanding of how water deficit leads to tree mortality.
Much research has focused on the possible mechanisms behind tree death during drought. Possible mechanisms primarily include vascular damage, carbon starvation, and enhanced herbivory . These studies reveal the complex nature of tree death, where the moment of death is difficult to pinpoint or even define. Although it remains difficult to connect cause and effect at the point where drought injury becomes lethal, strong and consistent correlational data from trees suffering mortality or growth inhibition across the globe point unequivocally to the plant water transport system as a fundamental axis dictating the long-term survival of trees .
Forests on a Thread
The massive woody structure of trees provides mechanical support for their photosynthetic crowns; however, the matrix of microscopic threads of water that is housed within the porous woody cells of the xylem is even more fundamental to tree survival. These liquid threads provide a highly efficient mechanism to transport large quantities of water over long distances under tension, from the roots to the leaves. Relying on this passive pathway to replace the water transpired by leaves has the major drawback that the internal water column in trees becomes increasingly unstable during times of water stress, as the tension required to draw water from the soil increases.
The water transport system in plants lies at center of interactions between rainfall, soil water, carbon uptake, and canopy dehydration, which makes xylem hydraulics an obvious focus for understanding and predicting the thresholds between tree death or survival during exposure to drought and heat stress. Xylem vulnerability to cavitation varies markedly among species, not only indicating sensitivity to water deficit but also enabling the quantification of functional impairment if trees are not immediately killed by drought.
The characteristics of tree species that are classically associated with adaptation to water availability—such as rooting depth, water storage, stomatal behavior, root and canopy area, and leaf phenology—can be predictably integrated to determine how plant water content will respond to environmental conditions. The combination of environmental conditions with biological attributes results in a highly tractable framework for understanding the dynamics of mortality or survival during slow dehydration.
Modeling forest mortality in the future
Modeling provides the most credible view of how forests may cope with different intensities of future global warming, with most models suggesting large-scale mortality, range contraction, and productivity loss through this century under the current warming trajectories. Greater precision as to the nature and pace of forest change is urgently needed, requiring dedicated work on key knowledge gaps that limit model precision accuracy. These gaps are apparent in even the basic physiological processes of trees, such as stomatal behavior, tree water acquisition, and interactions between water and carbon stores in trees.
Critical components such as the dynamic connection between trees and the soil are highly simplified inmodels owing to a lack of knowledge about water transfer and storage in the roots under conditions of water stress. The triggering of mortality is also highly oversimplified because the negative feedbacks likely to operate during acute tree stress are difficult to capture in a model. Avoiding this complexity, a commonly used proxy for lethal water stress is the point of 50% xylem cavitation in stems.
Although this threshold is not strictly correct (because trees can survive with a 50% impairment of water transport capacity), it does provide a readily measurable indication of rapid vascular decline incipient to complete failure of the vascular connection between roots and leaves. More-precise understanding of the post-drought transition to recovery or tree death is needed to accurately represent the legacy effects of drought in large-scale models.
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Additional Disturbances
Predicting or modeling the impacts of drought on forest communities is also complicated by interactions between changes in climate and interactions with other disturbance agents, such as fire, insects and pathogens, or logging . The catastrophic wildfires that have affected Australia in 2019 and 2020, after years of extreme drought, is just one such example of drought-fire interactions. Such interactions are also affecting forests in North America, Amazonia , and elsewhere .
Increases in vapor-pressure deficit and temperature during drought dry out fuel, thereby increasing fire activity and the area that is burned. Drought-fire interactions may also cause tipping points and shifts among vegetation types in areas such as the southwestern Amazon. There, tree mortality is elevated during intense fires experienced in drought years , resulting in altered microclimatic conditions and grass invasion into the understories, which further increases flammability and fire risk.
What is electric power worth? The coal power industry is responsible for an incredible amount of suffering and death via air, soil, water pollution and land destruction. This is not to mention the gathering climate crisis apocalypse. This piece, by DGR South Asia organizer Salonika, discusses the cost of coal.
Reliance Power Accident in India Claims Six Lives
By Salonika
Amidst the increasing number of Covid-19 cases in India and talks from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on reopening selective industries, an accident in a coal-fired power plant washed away six people (three children, two men, and one woman), in Singrauli district in India . Three of them have been found dead, while three are still missing and presumed to be dead.
The flood was caused by the failure of a dam holding back “fly ash” sludge at the power plant owned by Reliance Power. Bodies were found as far as five kilometers (more than 3 miles) from the site of accident.
What Is Fly Ash?
Fly ash, along with bottom ash and “scrubber sludge”, is a by-product of burning pulverised coal. Coal ash consists of heavy metals (like arsenic, boron, lead, mercury) that are known to be carcinogenic and cause liver and kidney diseases. Mercury levels in blood samples near the Singrauli region were found to be six times greater than what is considered safe.
We know that fly ash is a global problem. Much of the fly ash produced from coal power stations is disposed of (stored) in landfills or ponds. Ash that is stored or deposited outdoors can eventually leach the toxic compounds into underground water aquifers. Once water is contaminated it affects the health of the water courses and wildlife.
Fly Ash Accidents
Given the hazardous nature of coal ash, it is usually mixed with water to keep it from blowing away and stored in an artificially created pond. Accidents occur when a breach in the dam causes the fly ash pond water to leak. Such accidents are not uncommon. This is the third incident of the type in Singrauli district (which hosts over a dozen such pond dykes) in the past 8 months: one happened in Essar Power Plant on August, and the other in NTPC plant on October.
Fly ash accidents can also completely wipe out natural biodiversity in rivers and streams, killing fish, crayfish.
The Reliance Power accident.
In this particular case, speculations have been raised that the accident was caused by a heavy accumulation of fly ash in the pond. Due to the economic lockdown (as a result of the coronavirus), the waste materials could not be disposed. However, official reports reveal that the project responsible for the fly ash pond were sent repeated warnings for upgrade by the state government. A 2014 investigation reported a saturation of thermal power plants in the entire area and warned of potential damage.
Although India has delineated plans for scientific disposal and 100% utilization of fly ash since 1999, it has not yet been successful. Slurries have previously been dumped directly into water bodies used as sources of drinking water by locals. Local people have been fighting for resettlement rights of the people displaced by the thermal power project, and against the associated environmental pollution. In this case, suspicion has been raised regarding a planned sabotage in order to let the toxic waste run into the local water bodies.
The local authorities have declared that “strictest possible action” will be taken. Most likely, a minor fine will be given to the company. Meanwhile, Reliance Power has declared that the plant would continue to run normally.
What Are The Problems With Continuing Use of Coal Power Plants?
In this case, there is clear evidence of the company disregarding regulatory policies. Meanwhile, regulatory policies in most countries do not adequately address the risks associated with the storage of coal ash—let alone the existential risks of climate change. For example, in United States the Environmental Protection Agency under the Trump Administration loosened regulations on storage and disposal of coal ash in 2018. If put in place, these loosened regulations will increase instances of toxic waste being leaked into local water bodies, harming both human and natural communities.
The 100% utilization policy in India mandates all of coal ash to be used in what is termed “beneficial uses”. One prime example of these include mixing the coal ash with concrete. The associated health risks of living in a house built with coal ash has not been properly studied yet. It is likely that the risks would only be manifested as harmful to health years later, making it difficult for the cause to be determined.
From a biophilic perspective, the existence of coal ash itself is problematic. Coal ash is a byproduct of a coal power plant, and is multiple times more toxic than coal in its natural form, which would in itself provide a strong argument for stopping the creation of coal ash in the first place. However, driven from a growth imperative, coal power plants have become an integral part of the industrial civilization. From such a perspective, the repetitive failures of the storage ponds to contain the toxic material becomes a “necessary evil.” Generally, the health risks associated with toxification are limited to a small group of people, whereas the benefits are enjoyed by a larger group of (often privileged) individuals. In this case, all the major industries in Singrauli district are power plants: the human and natural communities there currently face the dire consequences of a third breach in the past year.
We cannot count on these industries or on the government to regulate themselves. They will have to be shut down by people’s movements.
Salonika is an organizer at DGR South Asia based on Nepal. She believes that the needs of the natural world should trump the needs of the industrial civilization.
Not all of us can on the front lines. But we can all contribute.
If we are going to ask people to take on substantial personal risk in pursuit of ecological justice, then we need to provide those revolutionaries with the training, legal, and financial resources they need. We need your help to do this.
Throughout history all resistance movements have faced ruthless enemies that had unlimited resources. And, unlike the past, now everything’s at stake.
Here’s your opportunity to fund the resistance. Join those of us who cannot be on the front lines in supporting the struggle for life and justice. Your help literally makes our work possible.
This excerpt comes from the Introduction to Dahr Jamail‘s book, The End of Ice. Dahr Jamail is an award winning journalist and author who is a full-time staff reporter for Truthout.org. His work is currently focusing on Anthropogenic Climate Disruption.
Featured image: a rapidly melting glacier on Tahoma (Mt. Rainier), by Max Wilbert.
Our planet is rapidly changing, and what we are witnessing is unlike anything that has occurred in human, or even geologic, history. The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, both greenhouse gases, has been scientific fact for decades, and according to NASA, “There is no question that increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response.” Evidence shows that greenhouse gas emissions are causing the Earth to warm ten times faster than it should, and the ramifications of this are being felt, quite literally, throughout the entire biosphere. Oceans are warming at unprecedented rates, droughts and wildfires of increasing severity and frequency are altering forests around the globe, and the Earth’s cryosphere—the parts of the Earth so cold that water is frozen into ice or snow—is melting at an ever-accelerating rate. The subsea permafrost in the Arctic is thawing, and we could experience a methane “burp” of previously trapped gas at any moment, causing the equivalent of several times the total amount of CO2 humans have emitted to be released into the atmosphere. The results would be catastrophic.
Climate disruption brings with it extreme weather, too, such as hurricanes and floods. For instance, a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, leading to an increase in the frequency of severe major rain events, such as Hurricane Harvey over Houston during the summer of 2017, which dropped so much rain that the weight of the water actually caused the Earth’s crust to sink two centimeters.
Earth has not seen current atmospheric CO2 levels since the Pliocene, some 3 million years ago. Three-quarters of that CO2 will still be here in five hundred years. Given that it takes a decade to experience the full warming effects of CO2 emissions, we are still that far away from experiencing the impact of all the CO2 that we are currently emitting. Even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions, it would take another 25,000 years for most of what is currently in the atmosphere to be absorbed into the oceans. Climate disruption is progressing faster than ever, and faster than predicted. Seventeen of the eighteen hottest years [now, eighteen of the nineteen hottest years] ever recorded have occurred since the year 2001. The distress signals from our overheated planet are all around us, with reports, studies, and warnings increasing daily. Every single worst-case prediction made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) about the rise in temperatures, extreme weather, sea levels, and the increasing CO2 content in the atmosphere have fallen short of reality. Countless glaciers, rivers, lakes, forests, and species are already vanishing at a pace never seen before, and all of this from increasing the global mean temperature by “only” 1°C above preindustrial baseline temperatures. According to some scientists, it could rise as much as a 10°C by the year 2100.6
A study led by James Hansen, the former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warned that even staying within a 2°C temperature-warming limit has caused unstoppable melting in both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. This will raise global sea levels by as much as ten feet by the year 2050, inundating numerous major coastal cities with seawater.7 New York, Boston, Miami, Tampa, New Orleans, Jakarta, Singapore, Osaka, Tokyo, Mumbai, Kolkata, Dhaka, and Ho Chi Minh City are only a few examples of cities that will, sooner or later, have to be moved or abandoned to the sea.
Mountaineering in today’s climate-disrupted world is a vastly different endeavor than it used to be. Glaciers are vanishing before our eyes, having shrunk to the lowest levels ever recorded, and they are now melting faster than ever. In North America, 70 percent of the glaciers in western Canada are projected to be gone by 2100. Montana’s Glacier National Park will most likely not have any active glaciers by 2030. The Matanuska Glacier’s ancient ice is, by now, rapidly vanishing. Dramatic changes are occurring even in the planet’s highest and coldest places. Even Mount Everest (Sagarmatha/Chomolungma) is transforming, as thousands of glaciers across the Himalayas will likely shrink by up to 99 percent by 2100. A child born today will see an Everest largely free of glaciers within her lifetime.
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Before embarking on this book, I already knew the extent to which human-caused climate disruption had advanced. I had lived in Alaska for a decade beginning in 1996 and had spent time on the glaciers there. As early as the late nineties, large portions of the holiday season would go by in Anchorage without any snow on the ground, the waterfalls that my climbing friends and I had used for ice climbing barely froze some winters, and we could see the glaciers we used to traverse to access peaks shrinking from year to year. But I wasn’t aware of what was happening in the oceans and the rain forests. I wasn’t aware of the rise in sea levels and the changing climate’s impact on biodiversity.
I started reporting on the environment and climate in 2010, and since then I’ve published more than one hundred articles about climate disruption and given many lectures and radio interviews on the subject. This work established the foundation of my research, so by the time I began my field research for this book, I knew what to expect: that humans had already altered planetary climate systems. That is why, rather than the more commonly used “climate change,” I prefer to use the term “anthropogenic (human-caused) climate disruption.” Without question, the human race is responsible.
My original aim with this book was to provide a view of what was happening around the world: from the heights of Denali to the Great Barrier Reef; from the remote, windswept islands in the Bering Sea to the Florida coast. I wanted to explore how the forests across the western United States were impacted by drought and wildfire and investigate what was happening to the Amazon, the largest rain forest on Earth. Knowing that most people will likely never visit most of these places, I hoped to bring home to the reader the urgency of our planetary crisis through firsthand accounts of what is happening to the glaciers, forests, wildlife, coral reefs, and oceans, alongside data provided by leading scientists who study them.
The reporting in this book has turned out to be far more difficult to deal with than the years I spent reporting from war-torn Iraq. But I have come to realize that only by sharing an intimacy with these places can we begin to know, perhaps love, and certainly care for them. Only by having this intimacy with the natural world can we fully understand how dramatically our actions are impacting it.
In Nepal, the sacred mountain Machhapuchchhre rises abruptly on the eastern boundary of the Annapurna Sanctuary. As a child, I came across a photograph of this peak in a geography textbook and was immediately captivated by its majesty. Shaped like a fish’s tail, the knife-edged ridge that forms its summit is a seemingly paper-thin line of rock that drops precipitously on either side, causing the apex of the peak, which is nearly half a mile higher than the top of Denali, to be one of the more dramatic summits anywhere. It is a masterpiece of nature.
The Nepalese believe Machhapuchchhre is sacred to Shiva, one of the primary deities of Hinduism, who is known as both “the Destroyer” and “the Transformer” and believed to be without form—limitless, transcendent, and eternally unchanging. The mountain is forbidden to climbers, and to this day no human has ever stood atop that summit. I believe this is a just decision, and I have always wished more parts of Earth could be placed out of human reach.
Staring at that picture as a youth, time would cease to exist. I fell in love with Machhapuchchhre, and in the process I became enraptured with all mountains. When I was ten years old, I saw the Rocky Mountains of Colorado for the first time, their silhouettes against the setting sun, and I was awestruck. In the fall of 1995, I traveled to Alaska and drove a short way into Denali National Park and Preserve. When the afternoon clouds parted to reveal the majesty of Denali’s summit, my first inclination was to bow in wonderment. A year later I moved to Alaska and trained myself in the mountaineering skills I needed to access these sanctuaries that stand far from the violence, speed, and greed of our increasingly dystopian industrial society. The Scottish American naturalist, author, philosopher, and early wilderness-preservation advocate John Muir captured my feelings precisely: “I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.”
A glacier is essentially suspended energy, suspended force. It is time, in that sense, life, frozen in time. But now, these frozen rivers of time are themselves running out of time. The planet’s ecosystems, now pushed far beyond their capacity to adapt to human-generated traumas and stresses, are in a state of free fall. Similar to how I watched hundreds of years of time compressed into glacial ice flash before my eyes in a matter of seconds as I fell into the crevasse, Earth’s species, glaciers, rivers, lakes, and forests are, in the blink of a geologic eye, falling into oblivion.
Modern life has compressed time and space. Through air travel or instantaneous communication and access to information you can traverse the globe in a matter of hours or gain knowledge nanoseconds after a question is posed. The price for this, along with everything we want, on demand, all the time, is a total disconnection from the planet that sustains our lives.
I venture into the wilds and into the mountains in large part to allow space and time to stretch themselves back to what they were. The frenetic pace of contemporary life is having a devastating impact on this planet. Humans have transformed more than half the ice-free land on Earth. We have changed the composition of the atmosphere and the chemistry of the oceans from which we came. We now use more than half the planet’s readily accessible freshwater runoff, and the majority of the world’s major rivers have been either dammed or diverted.
As a species, we now hang over the abyss of a geoengineered future we have created for ourselves. At our insistence, our voracious appetite is consuming nature itself. We have refused to heed the warnings Earth has been sending, and there is no rescue team on its way.
The term “Anthropogenic Climate Disruption” is used to highlight the origins of current climate change in human activities, as opposed to other climate changes that have occurred in human history. Melting of the glaciers is one such effect of the Anthropogenic Climate Disruption.It can, in turn, cause problems like climate migration, rising sea level, etc. Learn more about the issue in Dahr Jamail’s book, The End of Ice.
A series of headlines from around the world, compiled by Max Wilbert and Mark Behrend. Featured image by Max Wilbert.
2019 Was the 2nd Hottest Year on Record
Global average temperature reached the 2nd highest annual level ever recorded, according to preliminary data for 2019. While the data is not yet finalized, it’s almost certain 2019 will go down as the 2nd hottest ever. The hottest five years on record have been the last five years, and we are in the final days of the hottest decade in the record.
70,000 Children Have Been Detained at the U.S. Border in 2019
As climate crisis and ecological collapse drives ever more migration, abuse at the southern border of the U.S. is escalating. One recent report finds that nearly 70,000 children have been detained in 2019:
The story lays out in excrutiating detail the emotional pain of victims of President Donald Trump’s child separation policy, focusing on, among others, a Honduran father whose three-year-old daughter can no longer look at him or connect with him after being separated at the U.S. border and abused in foster care.
“I think about this trauma staying with her too, because the trauma has remained with me and still hasn’t faded,” the father told AP.
The 3-year-old Honduran girl was taken from her father when immigration officials caught them near the border in Texas in March 2019 and sent her to government-funded foster care. The father had no idea where his daughter was for three panicked weeks. It was another month before a caregiver put her on the phone but the girl, who turned four in government custody, refused to speak, screaming in anger.
“She said that I had left her alone and she was crying,” said her father during an interview with the AP and Frontline at their home in Honduras. “‘I don’t love you Daddy, you left me alone,'” she told him.
Light Pollution is Key ‘Bringer of Insect Apocalypse’
Light pollution is a significant but overlooked driver of the rapid decline of insect populations, according to the most comprehensive review of the scientific evidence to date.
Artificial light at night can affect every aspect of insects’ lives, the researchers said, from luring moths to their deaths around bulbs, to spotlighting insect prey for rats and toads, to obscuring the mating signals of fireflies.
“We strongly believe artificial light at night – in combination with habitat loss, chemical pollution, invasive species, and climate change – is driving insect declines,” the scientists concluded after assessing more than 150 studies. “We posit here that artificial light at night is another important – but often overlooked – bringer of the insect apocalypse.”
Arctic sea ice extent for November 2019 ended up at second lowest in the 41-year satellite record. Regionally, extent remains well below average in the Chukchi Sea, Hudson Bay, and Davis Strait.
October daily sea ice extent went from third lowest in the satellite record at the beginning of the month to lowest on record starting on October 13 through October 30. Daily extent finished second lowest, just above 2016, at month’s end. Average sea ice extent for the month was the lowest on record. While freeze-up has been rapid along the coastal seas of Siberia, extensive open water remains in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, resulting in unusually high air temperatures in the region. Extent also remains low in Baffin Bay.
Gemeni Solar Project Threatens Important Habitat in Nevada
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) recently released a document identifying the severe impacts that would be inflicted on the Mojave desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) from the Gemini Solar Project, located in southern Nevada. The agency, tasked with recovering rare species headed for extinction, wrote a Biological Opinion for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency in charge of permitting the 7,100 acre Gemini Solar Project which will be located on public lands near Valley of Fire State Park, as part of its consultation process. BLM is reviewing an Environmental Impact Statement for the project.
Although the document claims that mitigation measures will make up for the impacts, the FWS claims that the Gemini Solar Project could kill or injure as many as 1,825 federally threatened desert tortoises in its 30-year operational lifespan. While the Biological Opinion assures us that the project would be heavily mitigated, it still raises dire concerns about these impacts.
The Mojave desert tortoise had declined so drastically decades ago that in 1990 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the species as federally threatened. In the year 2000 the FWS began systematically surveying desert tortoise population numbers across its range using the latest scientific methods. What they saw was continuing declines of tortoise numbers, and even population crashes. Based on these surveys the Desert Tortoise Council has recently recommended up-listing the status of the Mojave desert tortoise from a threatened status to a higher endangered status–which means an emergency to stave off extinction.
The vegetation would be mowed using 23,000 pound Heavy Duty mulchers. Because not all individual tortoises will be detected by biologists or project staff, the agency is concerned that death and injury of desert tortoises could result from excavation activities such as clearing of vegetation, and entrapment in trenches and pipes during construction. Tortoises could be crushed by heavy vehicles. The FWS claims tortoise burrows would be avoided during all this constriction and maintenance activity with equipment and vehicles over years, but we have seen tortoise home burrows crushed and caved in by such activities on other development projects.
After solar project construction is complete and hundreds of tortoises are dug up and raided out of their burrows, the agencies are proposing to then release them back on to this disturbed habitat. The presence of re-occupied desert tortoises on the solar site, with vehicle traffic, may result in injuries or death during routine maintenance of facilities such as vegetation trimming. Tortoises outside of the fenced solar site may also be injured or killed due to truck traffic along the transmission lines and associated access roads.
Capture and translocation (moving) of desert tortoises may result in death and injury from stress or disease transmission associated with handling tortoises, stress associated with moving individuals outside of their established home range, stress associated with artificially increasing the density of tortoises in an area and thereby increasing competition for resources, and disease transmission between and among translocated and resident desert tortoises.
Translocation has the potential to increase the prevalence of diseases, such as Upper Respiratory Tract Disease (URTD), a major mortality factor for desert tortoises. Stresses associated with handling and movement could exacerbate this risk in translocated individuals that carry diseases. Equally, desert tortoises in quarantine pens could increase their exposure and vulnerability to stress, dehydration, and inadequate food resources.
The Gemini Solar Project represents an unacceptably large threat to tortoise populations, connectivity, and high-quality habitat in the northeastern Mojave Desert. FWS appears to us to be minimizing the threat of this project and recommending mitigation measures that will fail to halt tortoise mortality and further cumulative habitat degradation.
3900 square miles of Australia (an area more than 3 times the size of Yosemite National Park) were burned during a single week of November. – New York Post, 11/26/2019
Rice Farming is Major Source of Methane Emissions
Rice farming, long believed responsible for 2.5% of carbon emissions, is now believed to emit up to twice as much — due to new farming methods that only burn the fields intermittently, rather than annually. Leaving the fields in standing water has been found to stimulate bacterial growth that adds the equivalent of 1200 coal-fired power plants in carbon emissions. – Independent (online news magazine), 09/10/2018
The Plastic Pollution Explosion
A deer found dead in rural Thailand recently had 18 pounds of plastic in its stomach. – CNN, 11/26/2019
Consumer Culture Metastasizing Across the Globe
France says that Black Friday is the worst ever American import, topping Halloween and McDonald’s. The one-day shopping frenzy is said to produce the equivalent of a truckload of textiles being dumped every second, across France. – France 24, 11/30/2019
E-Waste is Growing Fast
Electronic waste worldwide is expected to exceed 50 million tons annually by 2020. Before it becomes e-waste, producing a single computer and monitor requires 1.5 tons of water, 48 lbs. of chemicals, and 530 lbs. of fossil fuels. – “The Balance SMB (balancesmb.com), 10/15/2019
Amazon Deforestation Accelerating Under Bolsonaro
Amazon deforestation in 2019 (so far) is estimated at more than 1130 square miles, an area equal to 97% of Yosemite. – CNN, 11/14/2019
Another estimate puts Amazon deforestation at 3700 square miles thus far this year.
Sea of Okhotsk Warming Rapidly
Parts of the Sea of Okhotsk, between Siberia and Japan, are now 3° C. warmer than in pre-industrial times. Oxygen levels in the sea are down, and the Okhotsk salmon population has declined 70%, just since 2004. With colder areas of the planet reacting fastest to climate change, scientists fear that what is happening around Okhotsk is a warning for seas and sea life globally. – Washington Post, 11/12/2019
Air Pollution in India
Forty percent of school children in four of India’s largest cities have lung capacity described as “poor” or “bad,” following breathing tests. Air quality in Indian cities is consistently rated among the worst in the world. – India Times.com, 05/05/2015
Niger is Desertifying Rapidly
In Niger, an area of grasslands equal to 110,000 football fields is lost every year to desertification and erosion. Nomadic herdsmen, who have followed this lifestyle for centuries, blame climate change. Some report losing half of their herds in recent years, and say they are now being driven into cities to look for work. – France 24, 12/05/2019
30-40% of Food is Wasted for “Cosmetic Reasons”
Thirty to forty percent of American farm produce never makes it to market, due to inefficient distribution, and to discarding for cosmetic reasons. – France 24, 11/30/2019
Alaska Temperatures Caused Salmon to Have Heart Attacks
Record high temperatures across portions of Alaska caused thousands of salmon to have heart attacks and die last summer.
