Time to talk about the rapid collapse of Earth's major ecosystems which humans rely on for decent survival.
This terrifying Ecological Catastrophe of climate chaos & extinctions is the biggest news story in human history, but most journalists have been ignoring it for DECADES.
So sick of reading how +1.5C of global warming by around 2026-2027 will represent a grave threat to global food security and even risk the liveability of the planet can't journalists focus on something else for a change?
1. The IPCC says agriculture will be at high risk at 2C (likely by 2035-2049), however, risks of simultaneous crop failure 'increase disproportionately between 1.5 and 2°C, so surpassing the 1.5°C threshold will represent a threat to global food security.'sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
2. We're at 1.3/1.4C today using a 1750 baseline, which means 1.5°C by 2023-2027 should be expected.
But even using the more conservative 1850 baseline, we see that 1.5°C by 2026-2032 should be expected.
It's 2021 and some very smart people are blithely carrying on as if global warming wasn't accelerating.
"unequivocal indicators that global warming is now with us and accelerating." (2020)phys.org/news/2020-07-h…
The measurement of ocean heat content is considered one of the most effective ways to show how fast Earth is warming, and the world's oceans are 'warming at a rapidly increasing pace'. (2020)
1/ 'At 412 ppm and rising, ...temperature rises of 3-4C are likely now locked in.
"It's like a crazy experiment: 'Let's take that CO2 that took 100 million years to be sequestrated and put it back—instantly, on a geological timescale—in the atmosphere and see what happens"
2/ 'Earth has seen sustained concentrations of carbon dioxide was even higher than 400 ppm, but it took millions of years for those increases to occur.
Manmade greenhouse gas emissions, on the other hand, have boosted CO2 levels by more than 40% in a little over 150 years.'
3/ 'The last time that CO2 hit 400 parts per million (ppm) Greenland was ice free and trees grew at the edge of Antarctica.
..400 ppm was last surpassed 3 million years ago during the Late Pliocene, when temperatures were several degrees Celsius higher'..
"..the monthly data suggests that emissions have almost come back to 2019 levels now.”
As usual this corporate media article refuses to mention the threat of global crop failures as we approach 2C and Arctic sea ice destruction disrupts the jet stream.
Emissions must stop rising in 2021 for a fair chance of decent human survival.
Emissions must plummet towards zero in the years 2021-2029 for a fair chance of decent human survival.
Emissions are likely to keep rising in 2021.
2/
We are in a profound Ecological Catastrophe caused by the human activities of industrial capitalism. Economic growth has proved to be extraordinarily destructive. Technology will not prevent our predicament from becoming impossible to handle.
Economic growth is destructive. The economy is causing a mass extinction and the collapse of Earth's major ecosystems. Degrowth looks like the only logical alternative if we want decent survival.