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.
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👇
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'
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'
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.