Ben See Profile picture
Aug 18, 2019 9 tweets 4 min read Read on X
The world’s largest sources of freshwater will be severely depleted by 2029, with catastrophic consequences for all of humanity.

[THREAD]
Timebomb:

Regions most sensitive to changes in climate include humid and wet areas, such as the Amazon, Indonesia and parts of central Africa. In some of these areas, it could take *less* than 10 years for climate change to fully impact groundwater flows.
carbonbrief.org/climate-change…
Groundwater response times:

The map below:

Yellow shows areas where groundwater is likely to fully respond to stresses in under 10 years. ⚠️

Light green shows where the response time is 10-100 years.

Dark green & blue: 100 to over 10,000 years.

Also👇
Areas with the shortest groundwater response times include wet, humid regions: the Amazon, the Congo Basin, Indonesia, and low-lying regions, such as the Asian mega-deltas and the Florida Everglades.

2 billion living with absolute water scarcity by 2025👇
Finite:

The water that supplies aquifers and wells for billions of people is mostly a non-renewable resource that could run out in many places.

Just 6% of the groundwater around the world is replenished and renewed within a "human lifetime" of 50 years.cbc.ca/news/technolog…
Today, nearly three and a half billion people struggle with severe water scarcity for 3 months of the year.

The #EcologicalEmergency is right now, and has been going on for decades. Time for meaningful international solidarity - that means system change.

Most over-stressed is the Arabian Aquifer System, which supplies water to 60 million people in Saudi Arabia & Yemen; the Indus Basin aquifer in northwest India & Pakistan is the second-most threatened; the Murzuk-Djado Basin in northern Africa the third. nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/07/w…
Today:

🔺1.9 billion people live in countries facing extremely high water stress

e.g India, Pakistan, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE

🔺Another 2.5 billion people face high levels of water stress
The likelihood of conflict:

'most regions of the world face significant hydropolitical vulnerabilities that, in a number of hot-spot basins, may turn into serious water conflict in the decades to come'

The rapid pace of climate breakdown is a key threat.link.springer.com/chapter/10.100…

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More from @ClimateBen

Jul 18
BREAKING:  climate scientists fear the worst after discovering Earth's plants and soils stopped absorbing CO₂ last year 🧵
1. 'Collapse of the land carbon sink in 2023..

plants and soils absorbed almost no CO2 last year'

'we may see a rapid acceleration of CO2 and global warming.. unforeseen in future climate models projections'

'ugly consequences'



arxiv.org/abs/2407.12447
2. Organise political and economic system change now to protect species and everyone.

Thread:
Read 7 tweets
Jul 16
BREAKING: scientists confirm rapid deoxygenation of oceans, lakes, rivers, and streams is now a threat to the stability of life on Earth 🧵
1. 'ongoing deoxygenation presents a major threat to the livelihoods of large parts of society and for the stability of life on our planet'

Causes of oxygen loss:

global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions

input of nutrients as a result of land use

phys.org/news/2024-07-l…
2. 'Planetary boundaries represent thresholds in major Earth system processes that are sensitive to human activity and control global-scale habitability and stability

critical oxygen thresholds are being approached at rates comparable to other.. processes'
Read 4 tweets
Jul 2
An amazing news story totally ignored by state-corporate media: according to even the most conservative and optimistic consensus assumptions there had to be 'immediate action' years ago at the very latest with emissions peaking and falling by now to avoid utterly catastrophic 2C.
Image
For 1.5C, 2025 greehouse gas emissions would be 20-30% lower than 2020 levels, and between 10-20% lower for 2C.

Emissions are higher than ever in July 2024.

This Extinction Economy means 2.5/3°C by the 2040s or soon after.
Read 4 tweets
Jul 2
BREAKING: scientists warn we're beginning to feel the effects of a geologically instantaneous 21st century shift into extreme and unsurvivable conditions 🧵
1. 'We are starting to feel the effects of transitioning to a hothouse climate (ΔT  +4-5 °C) in a geological instant'

The global change happening now is potentially like the Permian extinction which occurred in just a few centuries.

phys.org/news/2018-09-e…
2. "In my view it is impossible to survive that sort of change (4°C by 2100). That is beyond human physiology. But that is the trajectory we are on now.. No matter what we do with all the whiz-bang technology.. physiologically we cant survive that."

News?
Read 5 tweets
Jun 28
BREAKING:  scientists now all agree humanity faces a global food supply catastrophe in roughly a decade or two 🧵
Biodiversity destruction/extinction disaster plus 2, 2.5 or even 3°C of warming by 2048.

This means severe sustained global impacts on food systems by 2035-2050 with conditions so extreme scientists can't prove they're survivable.


carbonbrief.org/analysis-what-…
phys.org/news/2023-09-h…
IPCC SRCCL report: Risks to land-related human systems and ecosystems Fig SPM 2
Even establishment climate scientists who organise consensus views (and often downplay catastrophe) show we can anticipate 2.1°C by (2035- ) 2050 at which point impacts become too severe to manage.



Climate is just one factor.
🧵:
ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/…

IPCC SRCCL report: risks to land-related human systems and ecosystems
Read 10 tweets
Jun 21
Scientists now know today's capitalist economic system can't limit global warming to well below 2°C meaning human adaptation will not be feasible as the conditions for modern agriculture disappear forever in the coming years. Most scientists accept this. Some aren't ready yet. 🧵
Officially, CO2 emissions would have needed to be reduced by a staggering 70% in the 2020s to limit global warming to well below 2°C (when CDR fails). This is obviously not feasible: economic growth has left us with record high emissions approaching 2025.

carbonbrief.org/guest-post-emi…
CO2 is now at around 428 ppm and rising, suggesting Earth is 'locked into rises of 3C-4C in the next few centuries.'

And biodiversity destruction is accelerating.

Change this Extinction Economy now while it's still too late.
dumptheguardian.com/science/2019/a…
Read 8 tweets

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