Ripple effects all over the planet
Oh and by the way it’s speeding up.
Planet-warming pollution from burning fossil fuels and other human activities has already raised global temperatures more than 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit). But the effects are particularly profound at the poles, where rising temperatures have seriously undermined regions once locked in ice.
In research presented this week at the world’s biggest earth science conference, Pettit showed that the Thwaites ice shelf could collapse within the next three to five years, unleashing a river of ice that could dramatically raise sea levels. Aerial surveys document how warmer conditions have allowed beavers to invade the Arctic tundra, flooding the landscape with their dams. Large commercial ships are increasingly infiltrating formerly frozen areas, disturbing wildlife and generating disastrous amounts of trash.
…
The rapid transformation of the Arctic and Antarctic creates ripple effects all over the planet. Sea levels will rise, weather patterns will shift and ecosystems will be altered. Unless humanity acts swiftly to curb emissions, scientists say, the same forces that have destabilized the poles will wreak havoc on the rest of the globe.
There’s a lot more in the same vein. It’s all very bad news.
I don’t think that there’s any question that there is a need for some geoengineering effort. There are scientists who claim that they are possible and will reduce global warming, but further testing is needed in order to make sure that there are no environmental damages that would lead to other sorts of global disasters.
It’s clear that a capitalist global economy is never going to lead to a change in lifestyle necessary to reduce the use of energy to a degree that will affect the rise in global warming. Humans are used to the modern things we have made possible through technology and are not going to give them up. We are going to cruise, fly, drive, use our computers, eat, reproduce, and replace everything on a regular basis even though useful life is only marginally over. And the developing world is not going to turn back as improvements to their people’s lives become available. Increasing energy use is going to be needed for those countries if we are going to reduce populations through education and connectedness to the larger world.
My feeling is that we need to have leadership that recognizes how human economies and science/technology need to drive us away from the brink in a realistic way, and continue to innovate on ways to provide technology with reduced carbon usage through efficiencies and advances in development of such things as batteries that are less reliant on the dangerous rare earth metals that pollute at mining and production.
There’s just no free lunch in anything.
We’ve been doing geo-engineering for thousands of years, one little piece at a time. I’m not crazy about huge projects that aim to fix everything in one go. Unforeseen side effects of human interventions in ecosystems have had disastrous results for native species. Think European starlings and house sparrows in North America, rabbits in Australia. We’ve barely begun to figure out how things work “normally”. An ill-informed, ill-advised, massive intervention into global systems whose scope and intricacies we do not understand could be Very Bad. I’m also afraid that any such “Big Engineering” undertakings are going to prioritize saving industrial capitalism rather than the biosphere.
If we could just scale back human impacts and stop wrecking things, nature itself can do a lot of the healing and restoration without human direction or “management.” Unfortunately, as Michael Haubrich points out above, the chances of that happening on our watch are slim to none. Even less, while we expend precious time and effort in fighting the Pronoun Wars.
How would that work? Trees capturing carbon?
As an earth sciences student, I learned about this shit back in the mid-70s. I never got my geology degree (English, instead), but I did learn enough to understand this: IT’S TOO GODDAMN LATE.
We made sure of that here un the USA when we voted in REAGAN.
As an environmental scientist, I’ve been saying that for at least ten years. Every engineer I know disagrees with me, but engineers don’t know shit about climate, about ecosystems, or about chemistry and biology. They know how to build great big things with lots of moving parts that they believe will solve every problem the world has.
Too much engineering is why we’re in this spot in the first place (well, one of the reasons; there are others).
Yes. And no.
In Oz we have a government that is prepared to spend billions to “save” around 30,000 jobs in coal mining. Part of the reason they are doing that is because our banks are refusing to finance new coal projects. So, sometimes the capitalists get it right.
In South Australia, we have massive wind and solar farms, battery storage, and the house roofs all gleam from the solar panels. First occurring in 2020 we now have a number of periods in which the entire states electricity demand is supplied by wind or solar.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-25/all-sa-power-from-solar-for-first-time/12810366
Yes, we are just a pimple on the arse of the Universe, but this is what can be done by a consumer led change in habits. It’s just a shame the rest of the country is so slow to follow.
iknklast @5, as I said to a friend this morning when describing yesterdays ‘Musk’ thread “Everything is an engineering problem. Some problems don’t have to be solved.”
Roj @6, no, no, no. NZ is the pimple. Australia is the arse. ;-)
The problem, as seen by most(?) engineers: Too much atmospheric CO2.
The problem, as seen by the earth sciences: Too many sources of atmospheric CO2. “Too much atmospheric CO2” is not the root cause.
>>“Too much atmospheric CO2” is not the root cause.<<
Correct.
The root cause: Ecological overshoot.
I have to second Iknklast’s assessment of engineers. I am one, and so many of my friends and colleagues are engineers. The common sentiment among my friends is that the solutions are easy, and just involve things like a switch to solar. The problem with that, of course, is that the only problem they are trying to solve is CO2 emissions; when told about the environmental damage caused by mining in order to support solar deployments (among many other activities in support of that deployment that are also damaging), they shrug their shoulders and say “burning fossil fuels is worse”.
For my own part, I feel certain that massively decreasing consumption has to be a part of any viable solution, but that’s never going to happen. So yeah, it’s too late. What’s coming is coming and the 21st century is not going to be fun.
Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan (“Green Upheaval: The New Geopolitics of Energy”, Foreign Policy, January/February 2022) describe the geopolitical difficulties getting off fossil, a reality check. A bit of a long read so just look at Germany for example: somewhat a knee-jerk shutdown of nuclear after Fukushima, weakness of dependence on intermittent sources shown when the wind wasn’t blowing well in the North Sea required burning more coal for electricity, political engagement with Russia to advance the Nord Stream gas pipeline. This is the ‘system’ we currently live in so this is what we have to work with (https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/lessons-from-science-fiction-on-how-to-fight-climate-change-1.6287369). Mark Carney and others have a bunch of new finanical tools (TCFD, OBPS, NZBA, GFANZ …).
Rachel Reeves
Rachel Reeves “My Family’s Pacific Island Home Is Grappling with Deep-Sea Mining” November 30, 2021
https://hakaimagazine.com/features/my-familys-pacific-island-home-is-grappling-with-deep-sea-mining/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
has written an engaging account about the recent history of the communities and politics in the islands directly affected by the possibility of mining for polymetallic nodules in the pristine, alien environment of the deep ocean (Helen Scales “Halt the mineral rush”, New Scientist, July 24, 2021, p.23).
Here are a couple of excerpts.
“On islands where an average annual income is less than US $7,150 and a loaf of bread costs $5, no one goes hungry. People catch fish, roast pigs, harvest seafood from the reef, and tend crops on the plots of fertile land that are every islander’s birthright. Surplus goes to neighbors, according to the cultural code of communities where everything—food, tasks, children—is shared. Bele Tararo, a stout man in his 60s, told me beneath a mango tree on the island of Mauke. “You can’t go hungry here. So everything is always okay.””
“Mark Brown[, Prime Minister of Cook Islands,] appoints a committee to provide community perspectives on seabed mining. The committee is made up of a pastor, a cultural expert, a sports administrator, a consumer officer, a brand manager, and a traditional titleholder.”
Apparently no scientists, ecologists or environmentalists were available to serve on the committee. Were ordinary representatives of communities like the one described above even asked?
“At a formal event marking the launch of the exploratory licensing process in October, the pastor, who is also chair of the committee, gives a speech in which he explains it would be a sin not to sell the nodules. He quotes a scripture that says to do nothing with your blessings is to be wicked and slothful.”
Until we squeeze the last drop out of the oil sands and mine the last polymetallic nodule from the deep ocean we will not be satisfied. “The Master Player in us tolerates the indifference of nature scarcely at all. We take nature on as an opponent to be subdued for the sake of civilization.” (Carse, F&IG, chapter 5)
John Wasson#11. The pastor who chairs the committee must have quoted the Parable of the Talents, which provides a religious cover for all sorts of sins – here’s the last part:
24 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:
25 And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.
26 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:
27 Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.
28 Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.
29 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
30 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
***
There’s going to be a great deal of weeping and gnashing of teeth if this pastor gets his way. I doubt whether he shall ever weep or gnash his teeth, though.
That’s what’s fun about parables, isn’t it? The Parable of the talents was intended to be a lesson for the discibles on why they should share the Gospel. It’s not enough to be saved, one must also work to save other people. (Jesus is said to be the kind and merciful face of the Trinity, but in this and other stories he was actually a nasty asshole.)
It’s not uncommon for prosperity gospel preachers to use parables that have nothing to do with money to “inspire” people to pull out that credit card. This is the first time I have seen this one used as an excuse to plunder the environment.
Despite the title, I had forgotten that “Parable of the Talents” was a reference to a bible story. I have read and very much enjoyed the Octavia Butler duology “The Parable of the Sower” and “The Parable of the Talents”. They take place in a collapsed US severely impacted by climate change. I looked up some information to refresh my memory of the story line, and I found it begins in 2024. Just a few years from now.
Michael Haubrich#13: I think – though at this distance from my youth it is difficult to recall my state of mind – that what made me unable (by which I mean almost physically unable) to accept Christianity at quite an early age was the constant sense of a threat infusing it: if you don’t believe this stuff, you’re going to be cast into ‘outer darkness’, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
What I, in a backhanded way, admire about Calvin is that he was honest about the nature of Christianity, and tore aside the veil with which Roman Catholicism tries to hide the nastiness at its heart.
@sackbut – that’s my periodic reminder to step away from the computer and get back to reading. I made a note to read those books but they are on a list getting to be longer every day.
@timharris There is a lot that the Catholics hide in their robes and hats. Popes talk about how the revelations of priestly pederasty “pain” them, but not enough to do anything about it. But, true, Christians talk of the New Testament as showing God as loving compared to the Jealous God of the old testament. But, as an atheist if I go back and read the Matthew 25 admonitions I don’t see kindness, I see people being told be nice or they go to Hell. I don’t see any be good for goodness sake. Jesus. Always with the threats, that one.
I was enticed into evangelicalism with pretty words as a teenager. “Jesus loves you and you will be saved no matter what you’ve done in the past. Drugs, sex, masturbating, no evil is too great for Jesus.” Then when you accept that, the rules come out and you discover that “He’s” watching you closer than Sting’s first-person character in “Every Breath You Take.” No more masturbation. Girls, obey your husbands after your dads allow you to marry them, drop that hemline but never wear pants, stop listening to rock and roll music, abandon your old friends if they won’t get saved, stop with the gay sex, etc etc etc – start judging people who don’t meet my standards, and now you must vote right or you’re going to Hell.
It’s so transparent, but still people send in their cash. Salvation is out, obedience is in.