Congrats on 100 and thank you for sharing your writing. I still remember that step rachet explanation in another one of your articles it was so helpful - I need to read again. Good luck out there everyone.
Trump has pulled out of the unenforceable Paris climate accord, who's 1.5 C goal post we have already blown past? Oh no whatever shall we do?
There's more than one flavor of climate change denier. The MAGA-Tards are the kind that taste like shit and make me want to puke. Then there's the techno delusional and their peer delusionalist the COP & international agreement deniers. Then there are loads of people who are just not looking because they feel helpless and just keep fulfilling their roles as parent, worker, etc.
I'm not a skilled writer, nor do I have a good teacher's gentle touch, so I'm sharing something from Paul Chefurka who is both.
***Climbing The Ladder of Awareness***
When it comes to our understanding of the unfolding global crisis, each of us seems to fit somewhere along a continuum of awareness that can be roughly divided into five stages:
1 - Dead asleep. At this stage there seem to be no fundamental problems, just some shortcomings in human organization, behaviour and morality that can be fixed with the proper attention to rule-making. People at this stage tend to live their lives happily, with occasional outbursts of annoyance around election times or the quarterly corporate earnings seasons.
2 - Awareness of one fundamental problem. Whether it's Climate Change, overpopulation, Peak Oil, chemical pollution, oceanic over-fishing, biodiversity loss, corporatism, economic instability or sociopolitical injustice, one problem seems to engage the attention completely. People at this stage tend to become ardent activists for their chosen cause. They tend to be very vocal about their personal issue, and blind to any others.
3 - Awareness of many problems. As people let in more evidence from different domains, the awareness of complexity begins to grow. At this point a person worries about the prioritization of problems in terms of their immediacy and degree of impact. People at this stage may become reluctant to acknowledge new problems - for example, someone who is committed to fighting for social justice and against climate change may not recognize the problem of resource depletion. They may feel that the problem space is already complex enough, and the addition of any new concerns will only dilute the effort that needs to be focused on solving the "highest priority" problem.
4 - Awareness of the interconnections between the many problems. The realization that a solution in one domain may worsen a problem in another marks the beginning of large-scale system-level thinking. It also marks the transition from thinking of the situation in terms of a set of problems to thinking of it in terms of a predicament. At this point the possibility that there may not be a solution begins to raise its head.
People who arrive at this stage tend to withdraw into tight circles of like-minded individuals in order to trade insights and deepen their understanding of what's going on. These circles are necessarily small, both because personal dialogue is essential for this depth of exploration, and because there just aren't very many people who have arrived at this level of understanding.
5 - Awareness that the predicament encompasses all aspects of life. This includes everything we do, how we do it, our relationships with each other, as well as our treatment of the rest of the biosphere and the physical planet. With this realization, the floodgates open, and no problem is exempt from consideration or acceptance. The very concept of a "Solution" is seen through, and cast aside as a waste of effort.
For those who arrive at Stage 5 there is a real risk that depression will set in. After all, we've learned throughout our lives that our hope for tomorrow lies in our ability to solve problems today. When no amount of human cleverness appears able to solve our predicament the possibility of hope can vanish like a the light of a candle flame, to be replaced by the suffocating darkness of despair.
The MAGA-Deniers do not matter, nor do any of the COP's or Paris accord, nor another 9,000,000 warnings from individual scientists or the scientific community. Humans are in the predicaments they are in due to their behaviour, which they are not the authors of. We did not create ourselves.
I hate those MAGA fuck tards as much as anyone, if not the most and I am no fan of western left winger self proclaimed saviors come to fix all social ills - they know best. I hate all those right-wing denier scum no matter what nation they are from, but they can no more help their denial than I can help my hate and my schadenfreude watching them burn and drown and such.
We were headed here all along. Once humans evolved full behavioural modernity it was just a matter of time before they unlocked the power of fossil fuels and birthed industrial civilization. Sure the timing could have been different, sooner or later, but the humans are far too clever not to have exploited fossil fuel's full power. I know all about big oil's yearly billion dollar denial campaign budget and I think it's 1 of the biggest waste of money in history. It's tied with the collective environmental NGO's yearly 'fight climate' multi-billion dollar bull shit budget.
With a couple minor exceptions fossil fuel use has gone up every year since James Hansen addressed the US senate and the world with the first serious no doubt climte change warning.
If all the people who claim to view climate change as a serious threat were to reduce their energy use and consumption by a modest 20%, don't you think that it would show up in the economic and energy consumption data? Truth - how many people have given up the goodies for real? I have, but it was as much about me checking out of society as much as I could without becoming homeless. I know it's a bit of a contradiction for me on the one hand say humans are not responsible for the predicaments they are in, while on the other hand hating the fuck out of right-wing, mostly N American, climate change deniers, but I am only human after all.
~
***The purpose of life is to disperse energy***
The truly dangerous ideas in science tend to be those that threaten the collective ego of humanity and knock us further off our pedestal of centrality. The Copernican Revolution abruptly dislodged humans from the center of the universe. The Darwinian Revolution yanked Homo sapiens from the pinnacle of life. Today another menacing revolution sits at the horizon of knowledge, patiently awaiting broad realization by the same egotistical species.
The dangerous idea is this: the purpose of life is to disperse energy.
Many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the second law of thermodynamics, the unwavering propensity of energy to disperse and, in doing so, transition from high quality to low quality forms. More generally, as stated by ecologist Eric Schneider, "nature abhors a gradient," where a gradient is simply a difference over a distance — for example, in temperature or pressure. Open physical systems — including those of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere — all embody this law, being driven by the dispersal of energy, particularly the flow of heat, continually attempting to achieve equilibrium. Phenomena as diverse as lithospheric plate motions, the northward flow of the Gulf Stream, and occurrence of deadly hurricanes are all examples of second law manifestations.
There is growing evidence that life, the biosphere, is no different. It has often been said the life's complexity contravenes the second law, indicating the work either of a deity or some unknown natural process, depending on one's bias. Yet the evolution of life and the dynamics of ecosystems obey the second law mandate, functioning in large part to dissipate energy. They do so not by burning brightly and disappearing, like a fire torching a forest, but through stable metabolic cycles that store chemical energy and continually reduce the solar gradient. Photosynthetic plants, bacteria, and algae capture energy from the sun and form the core of all food webs.
Virtually all organisms, including humans, are, in a real sense, sunlight transmogrified, temporary waypoints in the flow of energy. Ecological succession, viewed from a thermodynamic perspective, is a process that maximizes the capture and degradation of energy. Similarly, the tendency for life to become more complex over the past 3.5 billion years (as well as the overall increase in biomass and organismal diversity through time) is not due simply to natural selection, as most evolutionists still argue, but also to nature's "efforts" to grab more and more of the sun's flow. The slow burn that characterizes life enables ecological systems to persist over deep time, changing in response to external and internal perturbations.
"In the 1970s they were saying we were heading into a new Ice Age. That didn't happen. So why should I believe them now?" You just can't argue with that logic. LOL
The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, University of Exeter Report, January 2025, as reported in the Guardian, introduces the concept of planetary solvency, and this substantiates and reinforces all you have been saying in 100 Crisis Reports and your other writings— an incredibly thorough and credible body of work, Richard, in its own right in my view.
But you preface this report with that hilarious Bloom County cartoon, from sometime in the 1980s, and the humor of it is based on the fact that “Burn, Baby Burn” was prevalent then and now . I loved it then and now.
Will the actuarial view save us from the societal view? Well, you also report on the minimization of climate science in mainstream media, reinforced by “moderate” climate scientists selling “hope.” And that 2/3 of whites that voted in November voted for “Burn, Baby Burn.” Thus far, no real change in consciousness; people are doubling down on overconsumption.
I look forward to your continuing Crisis Reporting. The shit is hitting the fan, and soon enough, the collapse reality will really bite. But we’re into at least four more years here in the USA of doing nothing about it but aiming to make it worse. Who knows? Maybe Mr. Trump will surprise us. Hah!
Are you confusing "Burn, Baby, Burn!" with "Drill, Baby, Drill!"? Claude says: ""Burn, baby, burn" emerged during the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles. Originally a popular radio DJ phrase, it became associated with urban unrest as protesters used it while setting fires during civil rights demonstrations. The phrase captured both the literal acts of arson and metaphorical destruction of oppressive systems during this period of social upheaval."
LtG encompassed Peak Everything atop a generalised pollution crisis, which included things like toxins etc. driving things extinct in the same basket as the Greenhouse Effect. I don’t believe it did anything specifically with temperature. Rather, I believe it just had pollution increasing mortality and decreasing quality of life with some coupling coefficients. Peak Everything is going to radically exacerbate the problems and prevent responding to them effectively by knocking back technology to preindustrial or further, and the specifics of the pollution crisis in terms of the Greenhouse Effect, mine tailings, agricultural runoff, endocrine disruptors, microplastics, arthropod-targeted neurotoxins and more are likely to be far worse than pollution unspecifically having some coupling coefficients for mortality and quality of life. Mad Max, Soylent Green, none of it comes close. Even The Road is too optimistic, as a credit card or more a week of plastic will not make suitable targets for cannibalism.
LtG did most certainly not include climate change. Some of the later variants and updates made by others have included CO2 (but i dont think temperature) - besides other factors and recalibrations of existing weights.
But the climate change is driven by our energy intensity as a civilization which is probably why they also follow the same trajectory.
The climate, however, is not going to stop changing (and average temperature not going to stall) at the same time as our energy intensity goes down. It lags by some decades - and may continue for a long time as feedbacks are activated.
Still - its interesting that it seems like climate becomes a problem in the close vicinity of our energy maximum.
Well written. Loved it. Planet Critical Podcast last week had an actuary on that talked about that report. The actuaries seem to be the only adults in the room trying to wake up the politicians to what lies ahead. I'm sure they are very frustrated.
I think of 3C as game over for humanity and to see this included in their report is absolutely terrifying.
It feels like we are living in a dystopian world of 99% deniers and the rest of us 1% acceptance.
I assume this is how you have felt screaming from the rooftops for years and now being vindicated that you were right!
Your information moving forward will be more critical then ever since news of any climate talk will be absolutely suppressed. But then again we are all living it on a daily basis.
"You might want to sell your home now instead of later and “cash out” of the casino."
"Cash out now" doesn't work when apartment rents are $4,000/month for 2 bedrooms. I'm staying put until it burns down. Maybe I'll just stay in bed while it is burning.
One more comment: When you write a POPULATION REDUCTION of 1.5 - 2 billion people.
I interprete that as meaning the 85 million in population growth is ALSO gone (10 years of 80m). In reality making a change of 2.3 - 2.8 billion people.
I’m old enough to remember the Watts riots and have used both expressions. You could cite me for confusion. I wrote what I did late at night. But really why do. we drill, baby, drill if we don’t want to burn, baby, burn? They both describe destruction and oppression, really. My regards to your husband, and to you for expecting some rigor from me.
I don't know if the next 0.3 C will make 2 billion die, but the die-back is baked in. It can't be avoided. In the end it will be the lack of food, the panic it causes and fighting over it that will kill most people, not big Hollywood style disasters like the LA fires. We are good at getting people out of the way.
I've been keeping an eye on climate consequences to industrial agriculture and it's been slowly eroded over time. Farmers and growers have been pulling out all the stops to save their livelihoods and profits, but they cannot adjust indefinitely. Also, the climate consequences must be looked upon in combinations with other stressors to the agriculture system and it's the same for everything climate consequences touches. The LA fires do not happen with out the dryness from global warming, but combined with other stressors (bad management and practices) we see unprecedented events like LA.
Here is but one recent example/consequence of climate + other stressors (EG:economics).
~~
**World's top wheat exporter makes concerning decision after experiencing heavy losses: 'The profitability of grain crops is approaching zero'**
'This may be a canary in the coal mine, a harbinger of what could be coming globally.'
" Russian farmers, the world's most prolific wheat producers, are pivoting away from the crop to more profitable ones after a year of significant losses due to extreme weather events.
What's happening?
According to a report from Malay Mail, Russian farmers have decided to plant less wheat and focus more on peas, lentils, and sunflowers after a year of catastrophic losses and low prices drove the profit margin close to zero.
Russia's wheat crop production dropped to 83 million tons in 2024 after sitting at 92.8 million tons in 2023 and a record 104.2 million tons in 2022. Frosts and drought that killed significant portions of the crops were to blame, as were massive rains during harvesting season that made getting the wheat out of the ground almost impossible.
Add falling wheat prices around the globe, and farmers have started pivoting to other crops in an effort to make a profit.
"The profitability of grain crops is approaching zero," said Dmitry Garnov, CEO of Rostagro Group, which owns massive swaths of farmland in rural Russia. "The company has reduced the volume of winter wheat sowing by 30 per cent. There are two drivers now — soybeans and sunflower."
Why is crop loss important?
Climate-related crop loss is increasing around the world. As weather patterns shift and change due to our warming planet and weather events such as droughts and massive storms become more common, crops that thrived in one place are much tougher to farm now."
If you read the research on collapsed civilizations, one major factor in a number of collapses has been long term drought, which is going on in many more nations than Russia.
Another little talked about or know issue that is an agriculture predicament is what damage increase of atmospheric CO2 had done to crops and other food.
~
**Rising carbon dioxide levels are turning rice and fish into junk food**
Rice crops in countries like Myanmar will decrease in nutritional value as CO2 concentrations increase.
Increased CO2 in the atmosphere reduces the nutritional value of rice, the world's most plentiful and valuable crop, as well as wheat and many wild plants. But CO2 also has a negative impact on the nutrition we take from the oceans, and that starts at the base of the food web with the harm it does to the microscopic phytoplankton.
We looked across a variety of kinds of rice — and these are the most popular kinds of rice that are eaten in Asia … and for the first time we report that essential B vitamins also decline under higher concentrations of carbon dioxide.
Here in Canada, we think of rice primarily for the many ways it can be prepared as part of so many different types of cuisine. But in developing countries, like Bangladesh, Indonesia and Cambodia, rice is a staple. Millions of people in those countries get at least 50 per cent of their daily energy and protein directly from rice."
**Less Nutritious Crops: Another Result of Rising CO2**
Rising carbon levels are eroding nutritional values of staple crops, threatening millions with hidden hunger.
"Scientists investigating the impact of increasing carbon dioxide on global staple foods like rice and wheat have made some concerning findings: Higher CO2 levels make many foods less nutritious, reducing protein, vitamins, and critical micronutrients like zinc and iron.
Micronutrient deficiency, or “hidden hunger,” is already a pervasive problem globally as a result of poor and restricted diets. A lack of crucial vitamins and minerals can affect humans in a number of ways, from increasing child and maternal mortality to impairing growth and development. More than 2 billion people worldwide currently face micronutrient deficiencies, including more than half of preschool children and about two-thirds of non-pregnant women of reproductive age, research has estimated
. Declines in crop nutrients as a result of rising CO2 could exacerbate these threats to human health, especially for children and pregnant people in low-income countries.
“It’s a really strong example of planetary health: Something that we’re doing to the environment is impacting health,” explains Samuel Myers, MD, director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health and a professor in Environmental Health and Engineering. “As we change these complex systems, we’re seeing unintended consequences and unanticipated results.”
Big Ag & Big corporate produces of the psuedo foods that comprise the majority of SAD (Standard American Diet) which is pretty much global, have already provided the worst diet in human history and it's consequences are straining healthcare systems the world over, not to mention work loss due to obesity and it's 200 comorbidities.
The food is such shite that it has created millions of people who are simultaneously obese and malnourished. As far as neo liberal mentality goes they are happy with the bottom line results (their reason for being).
~
**Malnutrition in patients with obesity: An overview perspective**
Abstract
Malnutrition in patients with obesity presents a complex and often overlooked clinical challenge. Although obesity is traditionally associated with overnutrition and excessive caloric intake, it can also coincide with varying degrees of malnutrition. The etiopathogenesis of obesity is multifaceted and may arise from several factors such as poor diet quality, nutrient deficiencies despite excess calorie consumption, genetics, and metabolic abnormalities affecting nutrient absorption and utilization. Moreover, a chronic low-grade inflammatory state resulting from excess adipose tissue, commonly observed in obesity, can further exacerbate malnutrition by altering nutrient metabolism and increasing metabolic demands. The dual burden of obesity and malnutrition poses significant risks, including immune dysfunction, delayed wound healing, anemia, metabolic disturbances, and deficiencies in micronutrients such as vitamin D, iron, magnesium, and zinc, among others. Malnutrition is often neglected or not given enough attention in individuals with obesity undergoing rapid weight loss through aggressive caloric restriction, pharmacological therapies, and/or surgical interventions. These factors often exacerbate vulnerability to nutrition deficiencies. We advocate for healthcare practitioners to prioritize nutrition assessment and initiate medical intervention strategies tailored to address both excessive caloric intake and insufficient consumption of essential nutrients. Raising awareness among healthcare professionals and the general population about the critical role of adequate nutrition in caring for patients with obesity is vital for mitigating the adverse health effects associated with malnutrition in this population.
Geez, Richard, your unattributed opening graph is whacko and the real surface global temp graph is shown much later, from C3S. The 2025 1-21-25 surface air temp globally averaged is 13.23 degC and the temps are NOT plunging, rather accelerating higher, as you correctly state elsewhere. What are you smoking? As for the temp increase predictions, you are, again, way off. The annual ave. global temp increase is 0.20 degC, according to C3S, and that gives us 2 degC by 2027, 3 degC by 2032, etc. Gregg
I thought that at first, too, Doc. But then I noticed that the X-axis is millions of years. The warming of the last 200 years doesn't even show up at that scale.
Why does the Daily Air Surface Temperature Graph show a significant decline in global northern winter. And a significant elevation in northern summer. This is supposed to be a global graph. The graph seems to represent the northern Hemisphere only. It's made even more confusing by the fact that the Southern Hemisphere is mostly ocean & therefore an even bigger sink of higher temperatures. Please someone explain. This graph does not appear "Global" to me. Wotfigo.
Congrats on 100 and thank you for sharing your writing. I still remember that step rachet explanation in another one of your articles it was so helpful - I need to read again. Good luck out there everyone.
Trump has pulled out of the unenforceable Paris climate accord, who's 1.5 C goal post we have already blown past? Oh no whatever shall we do?
There's more than one flavor of climate change denier. The MAGA-Tards are the kind that taste like shit and make me want to puke. Then there's the techno delusional and their peer delusionalist the COP & international agreement deniers. Then there are loads of people who are just not looking because they feel helpless and just keep fulfilling their roles as parent, worker, etc.
I'm not a skilled writer, nor do I have a good teacher's gentle touch, so I'm sharing something from Paul Chefurka who is both.
***Climbing The Ladder of Awareness***
When it comes to our understanding of the unfolding global crisis, each of us seems to fit somewhere along a continuum of awareness that can be roughly divided into five stages:
1 - Dead asleep. At this stage there seem to be no fundamental problems, just some shortcomings in human organization, behaviour and morality that can be fixed with the proper attention to rule-making. People at this stage tend to live their lives happily, with occasional outbursts of annoyance around election times or the quarterly corporate earnings seasons.
2 - Awareness of one fundamental problem. Whether it's Climate Change, overpopulation, Peak Oil, chemical pollution, oceanic over-fishing, biodiversity loss, corporatism, economic instability or sociopolitical injustice, one problem seems to engage the attention completely. People at this stage tend to become ardent activists for their chosen cause. They tend to be very vocal about their personal issue, and blind to any others.
3 - Awareness of many problems. As people let in more evidence from different domains, the awareness of complexity begins to grow. At this point a person worries about the prioritization of problems in terms of their immediacy and degree of impact. People at this stage may become reluctant to acknowledge new problems - for example, someone who is committed to fighting for social justice and against climate change may not recognize the problem of resource depletion. They may feel that the problem space is already complex enough, and the addition of any new concerns will only dilute the effort that needs to be focused on solving the "highest priority" problem.
4 - Awareness of the interconnections between the many problems. The realization that a solution in one domain may worsen a problem in another marks the beginning of large-scale system-level thinking. It also marks the transition from thinking of the situation in terms of a set of problems to thinking of it in terms of a predicament. At this point the possibility that there may not be a solution begins to raise its head.
People who arrive at this stage tend to withdraw into tight circles of like-minded individuals in order to trade insights and deepen their understanding of what's going on. These circles are necessarily small, both because personal dialogue is essential for this depth of exploration, and because there just aren't very many people who have arrived at this level of understanding.
5 - Awareness that the predicament encompasses all aspects of life. This includes everything we do, how we do it, our relationships with each other, as well as our treatment of the rest of the biosphere and the physical planet. With this realization, the floodgates open, and no problem is exempt from consideration or acceptance. The very concept of a "Solution" is seen through, and cast aside as a waste of effort.
For those who arrive at Stage 5 there is a real risk that depression will set in. After all, we've learned throughout our lives that our hope for tomorrow lies in our ability to solve problems today. When no amount of human cleverness appears able to solve our predicament the possibility of hope can vanish like a the light of a candle flame, to be replaced by the suffocating darkness of despair.
http://paulchefurka.ca/LadderOfAwareness.html
~~
The MAGA-Deniers do not matter, nor do any of the COP's or Paris accord, nor another 9,000,000 warnings from individual scientists or the scientific community. Humans are in the predicaments they are in due to their behaviour, which they are not the authors of. We did not create ourselves.
I hate those MAGA fuck tards as much as anyone, if not the most and I am no fan of western left winger self proclaimed saviors come to fix all social ills - they know best. I hate all those right-wing denier scum no matter what nation they are from, but they can no more help their denial than I can help my hate and my schadenfreude watching them burn and drown and such.
We were headed here all along. Once humans evolved full behavioural modernity it was just a matter of time before they unlocked the power of fossil fuels and birthed industrial civilization. Sure the timing could have been different, sooner or later, but the humans are far too clever not to have exploited fossil fuel's full power. I know all about big oil's yearly billion dollar denial campaign budget and I think it's 1 of the biggest waste of money in history. It's tied with the collective environmental NGO's yearly 'fight climate' multi-billion dollar bull shit budget.
With a couple minor exceptions fossil fuel use has gone up every year since James Hansen addressed the US senate and the world with the first serious no doubt climte change warning.
If all the people who claim to view climate change as a serious threat were to reduce their energy use and consumption by a modest 20%, don't you think that it would show up in the economic and energy consumption data? Truth - how many people have given up the goodies for real? I have, but it was as much about me checking out of society as much as I could without becoming homeless. I know it's a bit of a contradiction for me on the one hand say humans are not responsible for the predicaments they are in, while on the other hand hating the fuck out of right-wing, mostly N American, climate change deniers, but I am only human after all.
~
***The purpose of life is to disperse energy***
The truly dangerous ideas in science tend to be those that threaten the collective ego of humanity and knock us further off our pedestal of centrality. The Copernican Revolution abruptly dislodged humans from the center of the universe. The Darwinian Revolution yanked Homo sapiens from the pinnacle of life. Today another menacing revolution sits at the horizon of knowledge, patiently awaiting broad realization by the same egotistical species.
The dangerous idea is this: the purpose of life is to disperse energy.
Many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the second law of thermodynamics, the unwavering propensity of energy to disperse and, in doing so, transition from high quality to low quality forms. More generally, as stated by ecologist Eric Schneider, "nature abhors a gradient," where a gradient is simply a difference over a distance — for example, in temperature or pressure. Open physical systems — including those of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere — all embody this law, being driven by the dispersal of energy, particularly the flow of heat, continually attempting to achieve equilibrium. Phenomena as diverse as lithospheric plate motions, the northward flow of the Gulf Stream, and occurrence of deadly hurricanes are all examples of second law manifestations.
There is growing evidence that life, the biosphere, is no different. It has often been said the life's complexity contravenes the second law, indicating the work either of a deity or some unknown natural process, depending on one's bias. Yet the evolution of life and the dynamics of ecosystems obey the second law mandate, functioning in large part to dissipate energy. They do so not by burning brightly and disappearing, like a fire torching a forest, but through stable metabolic cycles that store chemical energy and continually reduce the solar gradient. Photosynthetic plants, bacteria, and algae capture energy from the sun and form the core of all food webs.
Virtually all organisms, including humans, are, in a real sense, sunlight transmogrified, temporary waypoints in the flow of energy. Ecological succession, viewed from a thermodynamic perspective, is a process that maximizes the capture and degradation of energy. Similarly, the tendency for life to become more complex over the past 3.5 billion years (as well as the overall increase in biomass and organismal diversity through time) is not due simply to natural selection, as most evolutionists still argue, but also to nature's "efforts" to grab more and more of the sun's flow. The slow burn that characterizes life enables ecological systems to persist over deep time, changing in response to external and internal perturbations.
MORE
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10674
~~~~~
You & Me and the MPP
I do appreciate all the time and effort you put in to creating The Crisis Reports.
So 2035 will be bad enough. Good to know.
My problem is that when I say "in ten years time..." people right then and there stop listening.
They claim to have heard that thing about ten years too many times already.
Which is why I seldom say anything at all.
As always, thank you Richard for your report.
"In the 1970s they were saying we were heading into a new Ice Age. That didn't happen. So why should I believe them now?" You just can't argue with that logic. LOL
The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, University of Exeter Report, January 2025, as reported in the Guardian, introduces the concept of planetary solvency, and this substantiates and reinforces all you have been saying in 100 Crisis Reports and your other writings— an incredibly thorough and credible body of work, Richard, in its own right in my view.
But you preface this report with that hilarious Bloom County cartoon, from sometime in the 1980s, and the humor of it is based on the fact that “Burn, Baby Burn” was prevalent then and now . I loved it then and now.
Will the actuarial view save us from the societal view? Well, you also report on the minimization of climate science in mainstream media, reinforced by “moderate” climate scientists selling “hope.” And that 2/3 of whites that voted in November voted for “Burn, Baby Burn.” Thus far, no real change in consciousness; people are doubling down on overconsumption.
I look forward to your continuing Crisis Reporting. The shit is hitting the fan, and soon enough, the collapse reality will really bite. But we’re into at least four more years here in the USA of doing nothing about it but aiming to make it worse. Who knows? Maybe Mr. Trump will surprise us. Hah!
Are you confusing "Burn, Baby, Burn!" with "Drill, Baby, Drill!"? Claude says: ""Burn, baby, burn" emerged during the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles. Originally a popular radio DJ phrase, it became associated with urban unrest as protesters used it while setting fires during civil rights demonstrations. The phrase captured both the literal acts of arson and metaphorical destruction of oppressive systems during this period of social upheaval."
There are no good capitalist societies🤣😂🤣 Capitalism cannot exist without abject poverty and massive exploitation.
It is interesting that climate catastrophe also follows the schedule of Limits to growth...
LtG encompassed Peak Everything atop a generalised pollution crisis, which included things like toxins etc. driving things extinct in the same basket as the Greenhouse Effect. I don’t believe it did anything specifically with temperature. Rather, I believe it just had pollution increasing mortality and decreasing quality of life with some coupling coefficients. Peak Everything is going to radically exacerbate the problems and prevent responding to them effectively by knocking back technology to preindustrial or further, and the specifics of the pollution crisis in terms of the Greenhouse Effect, mine tailings, agricultural runoff, endocrine disruptors, microplastics, arthropod-targeted neurotoxins and more are likely to be far worse than pollution unspecifically having some coupling coefficients for mortality and quality of life. Mad Max, Soylent Green, none of it comes close. Even The Road is too optimistic, as a credit card or more a week of plastic will not make suitable targets for cannibalism.
LtG did most certainly not include climate change. Some of the later variants and updates made by others have included CO2 (but i dont think temperature) - besides other factors and recalibrations of existing weights.
But the climate change is driven by our energy intensity as a civilization which is probably why they also follow the same trajectory.
The climate, however, is not going to stop changing (and average temperature not going to stall) at the same time as our energy intensity goes down. It lags by some decades - and may continue for a long time as feedbacks are activated.
Still - its interesting that it seems like climate becomes a problem in the close vicinity of our energy maximum.
Well written. Loved it. Planet Critical Podcast last week had an actuary on that talked about that report. The actuaries seem to be the only adults in the room trying to wake up the politicians to what lies ahead. I'm sure they are very frustrated.
I think of 3C as game over for humanity and to see this included in their report is absolutely terrifying.
It feels like we are living in a dystopian world of 99% deniers and the rest of us 1% acceptance.
I assume this is how you have felt screaming from the rooftops for years and now being vindicated that you were right!
Your information moving forward will be more critical then ever since news of any climate talk will be absolutely suppressed. But then again we are all living it on a daily basis.
Thank you!
"You might want to sell your home now instead of later and “cash out” of the casino."
"Cash out now" doesn't work when apartment rents are $4,000/month for 2 bedrooms. I'm staying put until it burns down. Maybe I'll just stay in bed while it is burning.
Thank you for sharing this. But I must ask, what can we do? What can normal people actually do? It seems we are powerless in the face of capital.
I like the new conversational tone. It's much more accessible. Hope you're well.
Thanks for your continued writing and analysis on this. I think it is time to plan our mitigation at community level.
One more comment: When you write a POPULATION REDUCTION of 1.5 - 2 billion people.
I interprete that as meaning the 85 million in population growth is ALSO gone (10 years of 80m). In reality making a change of 2.3 - 2.8 billion people.
We go from +85m x10y to [-1500;-2000] million
Am I Correct?
Think less about the numbers and more about the chaos that causes the death, and the chaos that results from the deaths.
No matter how many people die, it's just...going...to...suck.
I’m old enough to remember the Watts riots and have used both expressions. You could cite me for confusion. I wrote what I did late at night. But really why do. we drill, baby, drill if we don’t want to burn, baby, burn? They both describe destruction and oppression, really. My regards to your husband, and to you for expecting some rigor from me.
So 1.7 C warming didn't cause significant mortality, but the next 0.3 C will make 2 billion die? How does that work?
Maybe try looking at the big picture, not just your myopic little world and how it affects just you.
What big picture?
That response says it all
I don't know if the next 0.3 C will make 2 billion die, but the die-back is baked in. It can't be avoided. In the end it will be the lack of food, the panic it causes and fighting over it that will kill most people, not big Hollywood style disasters like the LA fires. We are good at getting people out of the way.
I've been keeping an eye on climate consequences to industrial agriculture and it's been slowly eroded over time. Farmers and growers have been pulling out all the stops to save their livelihoods and profits, but they cannot adjust indefinitely. Also, the climate consequences must be looked upon in combinations with other stressors to the agriculture system and it's the same for everything climate consequences touches. The LA fires do not happen with out the dryness from global warming, but combined with other stressors (bad management and practices) we see unprecedented events like LA.
Here is but one recent example/consequence of climate + other stressors (EG:economics).
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**World's top wheat exporter makes concerning decision after experiencing heavy losses: 'The profitability of grain crops is approaching zero'**
'This may be a canary in the coal mine, a harbinger of what could be coming globally.'
" Russian farmers, the world's most prolific wheat producers, are pivoting away from the crop to more profitable ones after a year of significant losses due to extreme weather events.
What's happening?
According to a report from Malay Mail, Russian farmers have decided to plant less wheat and focus more on peas, lentils, and sunflowers after a year of catastrophic losses and low prices drove the profit margin close to zero.
Russia's wheat crop production dropped to 83 million tons in 2024 after sitting at 92.8 million tons in 2023 and a record 104.2 million tons in 2022. Frosts and drought that killed significant portions of the crops were to blame, as were massive rains during harvesting season that made getting the wheat out of the ground almost impossible.
Add falling wheat prices around the globe, and farmers have started pivoting to other crops in an effort to make a profit.
"The profitability of grain crops is approaching zero," said Dmitry Garnov, CEO of Rostagro Group, which owns massive swaths of farmland in rural Russia. "The company has reduced the volume of winter wheat sowing by 30 per cent. There are two drivers now — soybeans and sunflower."
Why is crop loss important?
Climate-related crop loss is increasing around the world. As weather patterns shift and change due to our warming planet and weather events such as droughts and massive storms become more common, crops that thrived in one place are much tougher to farm now."
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/russian-wheat-crop-farmers-profitability-pivot/
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If you read the research on collapsed civilizations, one major factor in a number of collapses has been long term drought, which is going on in many more nations than Russia.
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**Global Drought Conditions**
https://www.drought.gov/international
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Another little talked about or know issue that is an agriculture predicament is what damage increase of atmospheric CO2 had done to crops and other food.
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**Rising carbon dioxide levels are turning rice and fish into junk food**
Rice crops in countries like Myanmar will decrease in nutritional value as CO2 concentrations increase.
Increased CO2 in the atmosphere reduces the nutritional value of rice, the world's most plentiful and valuable crop, as well as wheat and many wild plants. But CO2 also has a negative impact on the nutrition we take from the oceans, and that starts at the base of the food web with the harm it does to the microscopic phytoplankton.
We looked across a variety of kinds of rice — and these are the most popular kinds of rice that are eaten in Asia … and for the first time we report that essential B vitamins also decline under higher concentrations of carbon dioxide.
Here in Canada, we think of rice primarily for the many ways it can be prepared as part of so many different types of cuisine. But in developing countries, like Bangladesh, Indonesia and Cambodia, rice is a staple. Millions of people in those countries get at least 50 per cent of their daily energy and protein directly from rice."
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/june-9-2018-rising-co2-levels-make-food-less-nutritious-neonics-and-bees-tricking-facial-recognition-1.4696119/rising-carbon-dioxide-levels-are-turning-rice-and-fish-into-junk-food-1.4696123
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**Less Nutritious Crops: Another Result of Rising CO2**
Rising carbon levels are eroding nutritional values of staple crops, threatening millions with hidden hunger.
"Scientists investigating the impact of increasing carbon dioxide on global staple foods like rice and wheat have made some concerning findings: Higher CO2 levels make many foods less nutritious, reducing protein, vitamins, and critical micronutrients like zinc and iron.
Micronutrient deficiency, or “hidden hunger,” is already a pervasive problem globally as a result of poor and restricted diets. A lack of crucial vitamins and minerals can affect humans in a number of ways, from increasing child and maternal mortality to impairing growth and development. More than 2 billion people worldwide currently face micronutrient deficiencies, including more than half of preschool children and about two-thirds of non-pregnant women of reproductive age, research has estimated
. Declines in crop nutrients as a result of rising CO2 could exacerbate these threats to human health, especially for children and pregnant people in low-income countries.
“It’s a really strong example of planetary health: Something that we’re doing to the environment is impacting health,” explains Samuel Myers, MD, director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health and a professor in Environmental Health and Engineering. “As we change these complex systems, we’re seeing unintended consequences and unanticipated results.”
https://magazine.publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/less-nutritious-crops-another-result-rising-co2
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Big Ag & Big corporate produces of the psuedo foods that comprise the majority of SAD (Standard American Diet) which is pretty much global, have already provided the worst diet in human history and it's consequences are straining healthcare systems the world over, not to mention work loss due to obesity and it's 200 comorbidities.
The food is such shite that it has created millions of people who are simultaneously obese and malnourished. As far as neo liberal mentality goes they are happy with the bottom line results (their reason for being).
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**Malnutrition in patients with obesity: An overview perspective**
Abstract
Malnutrition in patients with obesity presents a complex and often overlooked clinical challenge. Although obesity is traditionally associated with overnutrition and excessive caloric intake, it can also coincide with varying degrees of malnutrition. The etiopathogenesis of obesity is multifaceted and may arise from several factors such as poor diet quality, nutrient deficiencies despite excess calorie consumption, genetics, and metabolic abnormalities affecting nutrient absorption and utilization. Moreover, a chronic low-grade inflammatory state resulting from excess adipose tissue, commonly observed in obesity, can further exacerbate malnutrition by altering nutrient metabolism and increasing metabolic demands. The dual burden of obesity and malnutrition poses significant risks, including immune dysfunction, delayed wound healing, anemia, metabolic disturbances, and deficiencies in micronutrients such as vitamin D, iron, magnesium, and zinc, among others. Malnutrition is often neglected or not given enough attention in individuals with obesity undergoing rapid weight loss through aggressive caloric restriction, pharmacological therapies, and/or surgical interventions. These factors often exacerbate vulnerability to nutrition deficiencies. We advocate for healthcare practitioners to prioritize nutrition assessment and initiate medical intervention strategies tailored to address both excessive caloric intake and insufficient consumption of essential nutrients. Raising awareness among healthcare professionals and the general population about the critical role of adequate nutrition in caring for patients with obesity is vital for mitigating the adverse health effects associated with malnutrition in this population.
https://aspenjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ncp.11228
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Geez, Richard, your unattributed opening graph is whacko and the real surface global temp graph is shown much later, from C3S. The 2025 1-21-25 surface air temp globally averaged is 13.23 degC and the temps are NOT plunging, rather accelerating higher, as you correctly state elsewhere. What are you smoking? As for the temp increase predictions, you are, again, way off. The annual ave. global temp increase is 0.20 degC, according to C3S, and that gives us 2 degC by 2027, 3 degC by 2032, etc. Gregg
I thought that at first, too, Doc. But then I noticed that the X-axis is millions of years. The warming of the last 200 years doesn't even show up at that scale.
Thanks, Elaine!
So, are you saying that the temp increase is accelerating more (=worse for us) than Richard says in his report?
Just so I understand your view on this.
Why does the Daily Air Surface Temperature Graph show a significant decline in global northern winter. And a significant elevation in northern summer. This is supposed to be a global graph. The graph seems to represent the northern Hemisphere only. It's made even more confusing by the fact that the Southern Hemisphere is mostly ocean & therefore an even bigger sink of higher temperatures. Please someone explain. This graph does not appear "Global" to me. Wotfigo.