'Until an El Niño event in 1982-83, mass bleaching at the scale of, say, the Caribbean basin or the Western Pacific or the Indian Ocean was unheard of. The first completely global bleaching event was in 1998..the first time the Great Barrier Reef..bleached'e360.yale.edu/features/insid…
'Thawing permafrost is an especially dangerous amplifying feedback loop because the global permafrost contains twice as much carbon as the atmosphere does today .'thinkprogress.org/dangerous-perm…
'The Amazon Tipping Point is here, say leading climate scientist Carlos Nobre and renowned conservation biologist Thomas Lovejoy.. The tipping point’s arrival could mean a rapid rainforest die-off — releasing massive amounts of carbon to the atmosphere..'news.mongabay.com/2019/12/the-ti…
'agriculture continues to absorb a disproportionate share of the damage and loss wrought by disasters. Their growing frequency and intensity, along with the systemic nature of risk, are upending people’s lives.. and jeopardizing our entire food system.'fao.org/documents/card…
Species extinction rates are 100 - 1000 times higher than normal due to capitalism impacts. Insects will likely make up the bulk of future biodiversity loss with 40% of invertebrate pollinator species – particularly bees & butterflies – facing extinction.fao.org/pollination/ba…
'more than 60% of primate species are threatened with extinction mainly due to human[CAPITALISM]activities, such as habitat loss, hunting, illegal trade, climate change and disease.' theconversation.com/primates-are-f…
'threatened species in need of immediate action to prevent them becoming extinct..'
'more than half of the species (58%).. vulnerable to potential threats, such as deforestation from extreme weather events or human activity' during capitalism. bbc.com/news/science-e…
Primates are 'essential to tropical rainforests, pollinating trees and dispersing seeds across these vital carbon stores.' theconversation.com/60-of-primate-…
Arctic permafrost contains approximately twice the amount of carbon that is currently in the Earth's atmosphere, and is releasing that carbon into the atmosphere as it thaws.
Current carbon budgets fail to account for these carbon emissions from permafrost'eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2…
“I think 2019 is regarded as a really bad year for the Brazilian Amazon. 2020 got less press and attention but it was just as bad, if not worse".
The causes of the decline of butterflies are thought to be similar in most countries, mainly habitat loss and degradation and chemical pollution. Climate change is allowing many species to spread northward while bringing new threats to susceptible species. pnas.org/content/118/2/…
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1. The Greenland Ice Sheet reached a tipping point 20 years ago
2. The temperature tipping point of the terrestrial biosphere lies within the next 20 to 30 years
3. 50% of all species may be vulnerable to thermal infertility due to climate change
4. We can still act
1. “I think it’s very important to emphasize that this loss of the ice sheet is not irreversible. We’ve witnessed a step-change that is unlikely to be reversible in the near future.." news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/09/02/gre…
The temperature tipping point of the terrestrial biosphere lies not at the end of the century or beyond, but within the next 20 to 30 years' advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/3/ea…
1. makes the tropics hard to live in or uninhabitable 2. risks Antarctic sea level rise horror in decades 3. wrecks rainforests if combined with deforestation 4. puts Arctic sea ice on road to ruin 5. endangers global food security 6. threatens unstoppable feedbacks
News?
surpassing the 1.5°C threshold will represent a threat to global food security'
The global economic system is waging a war on nature.
'And this is just what we already know about. Researchers say there are huge gaps in our knowledge of plants, and more work is needed to assess the conservation status of more species.'
Is the message from scientists "we need zero emissions by 2028 or so because of feedbacks and then climate change must be reversed somehow but geoengineering presents a danger to all life on Earth and carbon-sucking technology at scale is a fantasy"?
Love,
Ben
“If rapid emission reductions are initiated soon, it is still possible that at least a large fraction of required CO2 extraction can be achieved via relatively natural agricultural and forestry practices with other benefits,” the authors wrote.
“On the other hand, if large fossil fuel emissions are allowed to continue, the scale and cost of industrial CO2 extraction, occurring in conjunction with a deteriorating climate with growing economic effects, may become unmanageable."
What newspapers still won't scream about is when Earth system feedbacks like thawing permafrost are taken into account, emissions must be slashed to zero in the 2020s for any hope of a reasonable chance of staying below potentially totally catastrophic levels of global warming.
1.
Carbon 'budgets' for horrific 1.5-1.9°C of global warming are either tiny or non-existent according to climate scientists (nature.com/articles/s4324…) rven without the latest science on Arctic feedback loops being taken into account.
⬇️ eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2…
2.
'The tropics could become uninhabitable if we don’t limit global warming to less than 1.5°C.'
Above this, the equatorial region, which is home to around 43% of the world’s population, could see air temperatures increase beyond what humans can stand.
'Germany's coal exit plan [by 2038] falls far short of environmental recommendations. According to estimates, the European Union needs to phase out coal by 2030 to meet the 1.5C target of the Paris Agreement'