How Many 'Muricans Will Respond To The Global Climate Strike Today? Or Will They Just Shop Til They Drop?

From topmost image panel: Climate protesters last month during global strike; most recent reading of CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa observatory; Middle: Climate -spawned wildfire in California. Bottom: Brain afflicted with parasitic (bladder) worms and another person suffering from a filiarisis worm infection. Both of these will become more frequent as global warming ramps up in temperate countries.


Even as I write this two things diametrically opposite are happening: 165 million Americans are set to shop until they drop for bargains on Black Friday - and millions are set to demonstrate in a global climate strike around the world.   The strikes in dozens of cities are part of a global movement started last year by Swedish school girl, Greta Thunberg.  She has taken heat, no pun intended, from the knuckle dragger low IQ segment of the populace (mainly Trump worshipping, white conservative males) but has continued her mission undaunted by the disparaging apes.

Meanwhile,  5 million citizens of Sydney, Australia are choking from toxic plumes spawned by 150 wildfires related to global warming induced drought.  This is not new. In January, 2013 wild fires spawned in the midst of the hottest summer on record engulfed Tasmania with searing images including that below:


See e.g.

A Vision of Humanity's Near Future?

With world leaders gathering in Madrid next week for their annual meet and greet  over how to avert a climate catastrophe, the latest assessment issued by the United Nations said Tuesday that greenhouse gas emissions are still rising dangerously and failure to control emissions will lead to "climate chaos".  But that's more or less a bland euphemism. In fact, we are more likely facing a climate catastrophe given how long the rising CO2 and ocean effects have been lowballed.  Last month, by way of example ocean temperatures broke a record.  Further, over the last half century 90 percent of warming has been in the oceans, leading to higher acidification, with loss of corals and mnow threatening the survival of plankton as well - the primary oxygen generators for the planet.

According to the latest UN report, known as "Emissions Gap Report":

“The summary findings are bleak."    

This given that countries have failed to halt the rise of greenhouse gas emissions despite repeated warnings from scientists, with China and the United States, the two biggest polluters, further increasing their emissions last year.  The result, the authors added, is that “deeper and faster cuts are now required.”

Pathetically, the international climate negotiations, scheduled to begin next week, are not even designed to ramp up pledges by world leaders to cut their own countries’ emissions. That deadline is still a year away - allowing another major spike in CO2 concentration. .  This year’s meetings are instead intended to hammer out the last remaining rules on how to implement the 2015 Paris climate accord, in which every country pledged to rein in greenhouse gases, with each setting its own targets and timetables.

Newsflash, that 'ship' has sailed into the sunset and no longer viable! We already know the limits and targets set in the Paris Accord are too weak by a factor  of at least two.  Meaning that even if they were universally adopted and enacted (and enforced ) immediately it would not be sufficient to stave off a climatic catastrophe (stage 1 of such) in 11  years.  See e.g.
:
Climate report understates threat

Excerpt:

So far, average temperatures have risen by one degree Celsius. Adding 50 percent more warming to reach 1.5 degrees won’t simply increase impacts by the same percentage—bad as that would be. Instead, it risks setting up feedbacks that could fall like dangerous dominos, fundamentally destabilizing the planet. This is analyzed in a recent study showing that the window to prevent runaway climate change and a “hot house” super-heated planet is closing much faster than previously understood.

Global greenhouse gas emissions have grown by 1.5 percent every year over the last decade, according to the latest  annual assessment. The opposite must happen if the world is to avoid the worst effects of climate change, including more intense droughts, stronger storms and widespread hunger by mid-century. To stay within relatively safe limits, emissions must decline sharply, by 7.6 percent every year, between 2020 and 2030, the UN report warned. (The media claim that  2015 "emissions adjustments" have avoided the 4C increase is belied by the feedback potential cited in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' link above.)

The World Meteorological Organization reported on Monday that emissions of three major greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — have all swelled in the atmosphere since the mid-18th century.  According to Alden Meyer, director of policy and strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists:

“We are sleepwalking toward a climate catastrophe and need to wake up and take urgent action,” 

The world’s 20 richest countries, responsible for more than three-fourths of worldwide emissions, must take the biggest, swiftest steps to move away from fossil fuels, the report emphasized. The richest country of all, the United States, however, has formally begun to pull out of the Paris accord.

Meanwhile, a vast swath of American consumers are oblivious to all this, more focused on getting their new HDTV on 'Black Friday'.  One might say, fiddling while the (new) Rome burns - or is about to.

Were the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica to melt, sea levels would rise by an estimated 225 feet worldwide. Few orthodox pundits expect that to happen anytime soon, but many of us believe at the current rate of CO2 increase it may well be by 2100.  . In any case, those ice sheets now look a lot more fragile than they did to the climate change panel in 1995, when it said that little change was expected over the next hundred years.

In the years since, data has shown that both Greenland and Antarctica have been shedding ice far more rapidly than anticipated. Ice shelves, which are floating extensions of land ice, hold back glaciers from sliding into the sea and eventually melting. In the early 2000s, ice shelves began disintegrating in several parts of Antarctica, and scientists realized that process could greatly accelerate the demise of the vastly larger ice sheets themselves. And some major glaciers are dumping ice directly into the ocean.

By 2014, a number of scientists had concluded that an irreversible collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet had already begun, and computer modeling in 2016 indicated that its disintegration in concert with other melting could raise sea levels up to six feet by 2100, about twice the increase described as a possible worst-case scenario just three years earlier. At that pace, some of the world’s great coastal cities, including New York, London and Hong Kong, would become inundated. 

This year, a review of 40 years of satellite images indicate that the East Antarctic ice sheet, which was thought to be relatively stable, may also be shedding vast amounts of ice.  As the seas rise, they are also warming at a pace unanticipated as recently as five years ago. A warmer ocean means more powerful storms, and die-offs of marine life, but it also suggests that the planet is more sensitive to increased carbon dioxide emissions than previously thought.

By the early 1990s, climate scientists completed more precise studies of ice cores extracted from the Greenland ice sheet. Dust and oxygen isotopes encased in the cores provided a detailed climate record going back eons. It revealed that there had been 25 rapid climate change events like the Younger Dryas in the last glacial period.  The evidence in those ice cores  - many of them originally studied by Univ. of Alaska climate researcher Prof. Gunther Weller (at the Geophysical Institute) -

Prof.  Gunther Weller (1987) at Geophysical Institute 

was articulated in several papers in the 1980s,  showing the most rapid warming in the Arctic.  His work and that of colleagues  has disclosed that over the past 800,000 years the CO2 concentration of  300 ppm was never crossed until after the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the burning of fossil fuels.  Prof. Weller's work was also critical in highlighting the phenomenon of "Arctic amplification".  In papers and seminars delivered at the GI over 1985-1990 he pointed out that a much warmer Arctic translated to a much more unstable polar region with more frequent intrusions ("waves")  of polar air.  This would  lead to frigid temperatures in parts of the U.S. such as we've seen the past few years.  In one seminar he described it "almost like moving the Arctic to the continental U.S."

Such ice core measurements have since proven pivotal in overturning the conventional wisdom. As the science historian Spencer Weart put it:

“How abrupt was the discovery of abrupt climate change? Many climate experts would put their finger on one moment: the day they read the 1993 report of the analysis of Greenland ice cores. Before that, almost nobody confidently believed that the climate could change massively within a decade or two; after the report, almost nobody felt sure that it could not.”

In 2002, the National Academies acknowledged the reality of rapid climate change in a report, “Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises,” which described the new consensus as a “paradigm shift.” This marked  a reversal of its 1975 report.

The melting of permafrost has also defied expectations.   See e.g.

More Rapid Permafrost Melting Triggers Emergency C...

This is ground that has remained frozen for at least two consecutive years and covers around a quarter of the exposed land mass of the Northern Hemisphere. As recently as 1995, it was thought to be stable. But by 2005, the National Center for Atmospheric Research estimated that up to 90 percent of the Northern Hemisphere’s topmost layer of permafrost could thaw by 2100, releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.  Janice and I experienced melting permafrost's effect first hand while visiting Fairbanks, Alaska in March, 2005. There, we witnessed the collapse of a 150' high ice tower  (part of an ice design exhibition) which was traced to melting permafrost below.  We also noted the displacement of the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline - again from melting permafrost- while on a snowmobile expedition, e.g.

Most appalling, if  the Trump administration has its way, even the revised worst-case scenarios may turn out to be too rosy. In late August, the administration announced a plan to roll back regulations intended to limit methane emissions resulting from oil and gas exploration, despite opposition from some of the largest companies subject to those regulations. More recently, its actions approached the surreal as the Justice Department opened an antitrust investigation into those auto companies that have agreed in principle to abide by higher gas mileage standards required by California. The administration also formally revoked a waiver allowing California to set stricter limits on tailpipe emissions than the federal government.

One wonders how many Americans will pause to think of all this as they go on their merry buying sprees today. Also, how many will be mindful that the products they purchase will have direct further impacts on the rapidly destabilzing climate.  I mean, who gives a damn about parasitic worms invading one's brain when there are deals at Best Buy to be had?

See also:

The California Wildfires - A Preview Of The Runaw...

And:

Environmental Policy

The New Normal

And:

Environmental Policy | Sustainability

Eating Well Without Destroying the Climate

Can Billions Eat Without Destroying The Environment? NO.

Much attention has been focused on the recent IPCC report on the dire manifestations of even worse global warming by 2040, e.g.

Climate report understates threat

That report, in the words of Erik Solheim - quoted by WaPo writer Margaret Sullivan in a recent piece ('Earth's Fate Is All That Matters Now') :

"Is like a deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen. We have to put out the fire."

But will we? CAN we?  With the deniers still in full dispute mode, that may be too big an ask.

Another report - bearing an equally grave message -   published last Wednesday in the journal Nature,  has received far less attention. The report featuring 23 authors hailing from Europe, the U.S., Australia and Lebanon - reviewed the many components of the global food system and how they interact with the environment. One of the primary takeaways was that transformation of the existing food system is just as critical as controlling the increase in CO2 tied to climate change. This is given that the planet will hold as may as 9.5 billion to 10 billion people by 2050. Right now the population is  7..6 billion, meaning we are talking about an additional 2 billion mouths at least.

Will they get enough to eat? Will the existing system be able to deliver given what we know about it? Not really!  As in the case of the IPCC report there is the chasm between what needs to be done to save a dire situation and what most likely will be done.  Many are preaching the need for carbon taxes given the ominous United Nations report — prepared by The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change.  But this still isn't enough to stave off the worst warming,  likely to be closer to 4 C more by 2050.  That will require putting 500m autos out of commission in the next two years. Anyone likely to do that? Any nation?  Hardly!

Similar constraints and plain human cussedness and obstinacy stand in the way of having the food to feed an additional 2 billion or so by 2050.

For example, with the current demand for meat and animal protein, some 70 percent of the world's fresh water is already used for agriculture - much of it for meat consumption, Already, half the planet's ice -free land surface is devoted to livestock or the growing of food for those animals - not humans.  This is an area equal to North and South America combined, according to Katherine Richardson, Director of the Sustainable Science Center at the University of Copenhagen.

To give an idea of the water intensity of typical livestock based production, A 1/3-pound burger requires 660 gallons of water. Most of this water is for producing beef. Meanwhile,  one pound of beef requires 1,799 gallons of water, which includes irrigation of the grains and grasses in feed, plus water for drinking and processing.

It doesn't take a Mensa member to see this is totally unsustainable in a world faced with 25% more humans in barely 30 years.

This is critical given the current demand for food is increasing more rapidly than the population. So by the time the population hits even 9 billion we will be in serious trouble.

Added to the problem is the fact that one of the primary reservoirs for CO2 - rain forests - are inexorably being cleared for more crop land. So while more space is rendered to feed human livestock, and humans, less is available for CO2- absorbing trees in forests.

Not even mentioned yet is the amount of current food waste which translates into massive water waste we can ill afford.

Seven years ago a  study released  by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). showed roughly 1.3 billion tons of food was either lost or wasted globally due to inefficiencies throughout the food supply chain.  According to the report, industrialized and developing countries wasted or lost roughly the same amount of food each year – 670 million and 630 million tons respectively. But while rich countries wasted food primarily at the level of the consumer, the main issue for developing countries was food lost due to weak infrastructure – including poor storage, and inadequate processing and packaging facilities that lack the capacity to keep produce fresh.

 At the time it had been made evident that food losses mean lost income for small farmers and higher prices for poor consumers in developing countries. Now we also know the exent to which food waste and losses mean wasted water resources as well. 

According to a report  published in Plos One  6 months ago, Americans alone wasted over 25 percent of their food between 2007 and 2014.   Researchers at the US Department of Agriculture analyzed eight years of food dat  to see where food is wasted and also what members of the public say they do at meal times.  About 150,000 tons of food is tossed out in US households each day, equivalent to about a third of the daily calories that each American consumes. Fruit and vegetables were the most likely to be thrown out, followed by dairy and then meat.

This waste was also found to have an environmental toll, with the volume of discarded food equivalent to the yearly use of 30 m acres of land and 4.2 trillion gallons of irrigated water. Rotting food not only denies nutrition to a vast population that needs it but also clogs up landfills and releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Let us also note, for the record and in terms of the new Nature paper, that ruminants such as cows are prodigious generators of methane as they digest food.   Thus, the Nature report notes that greenhouse gas emissions from the global food system could be reduced significantly if people curb red meat consumption and instead follow a diet based on fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes.

In effect, the report emphasized a "synergistic combination of measures will be needed to limit environmental damage" especially as the world population dramatically increases.

But can this be done? One contributor to the Study, Johan Rockstrom, insists:

"Feeding humanity is possible. It is just a question of whether we can do it in an environmentally responsible way."

To which I concur, for the present population, but not for the one projected in 2050.  If we keep eating heavily protein -based diets, especially now in the U.S. and China (which has derived a new taste for pork and beef amongst its middle class millions) there is no way in hell that 9.5 billion can be adequately fed in 2050. Far less doing so without terminating whatever is left of the environment by then.

Interestingly, the Nature report is mostly agnostic on the issue of GMO crops and foods in the food supply. This is incredible given now even another physician - Dr. Erika Schwartz - has weighed in against them in her book, 'Don't Let Your Doctor Kill You'.  Well, in her particular chapter it could have been headed 'Don't Let Monsanto Kill You', i.e. with its glyphosate -riddled GMOs that engender all manner of cancers, other health issues.

Curiously, the report also takes no position on population growth - which is remarkable in itself. That is given that unless global population is stabilized no change in food production or efficiency will be able to feed the additional billions.  We may not like to admit it, but in terms  of adequate resources this planet does have a human carrying capacity.

The projections now are for at least 9.5  billion people by 2050, and an 80 percent probability of 12.3 billion on Earth by 2100. Simply put, there simply aren't the resources to support even the lower addition. At root, the issue is sustainability - especially for water which is needed for crops. NO water, no crops to feed a growing population. The graphic below puts this into perspective;                                               

The interpretation of the graph (upward) is straightforward. By June, 2030 TWO full Earths - that is,  the resources therein - will be needed to support the then population. Already we are at 1.7 Earths. Every year Global Footprint Network raises awareness about global ecological overshoot with its Earth Overshoot Day campaign. Earth Overshoot Day is the day on the calendar when humanity has used up the resources that it takes the planet the full year to regenerate.

Given the report's omission of such hard realities it is evident to me that no, billions cannot eat without destroying what's left of the environment - and by 2050 the extra billions may not have enough to eat, period.

See also:

Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits | Nature