The Crisis Report - 98
The next 10 years are shaping up to be BAD ones. Lets look at some of the pieces coming together.
Let’s talk about the oceans. Because “Global Warming” is really “Ocean Warming”.
This is what I said almost two years ago.
The last few weeks have been my brain on overload trying to assimilate everything that’s going on in the world and see the “shape” of events. Things are happening now at a pace that would have seemed unbelievable a few years ago.
I am reminded of Tuchman and her “March of Folly”. I fear we have missed our chance to act cooperatively as a global community and deal with the Climate Crisis collectively. It increasingly seems likely that there will be WAR.
Deja vu right?
I don’t think the situation has improved over the last two years, do you?
This is a reasonable way to understand the real Earth’s Climate System. 80% of the solar energy the earth captures happens along the equator, the “ring around the world”.
90% of that energy goes into the world’s oceans.
In 2023 about +15Zj of ENERGY went into the Global Ocean. That’s about 471 million HIROs worth.
In just ONE YEAR.
The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs released an estimated 10 Billion HIROs into the Climate System in just ONE DAY.
Since 2021, the amount of ENERGY in the oceans has gone from 12.5B HIROs to about 14B. At a rate of +15Zj per year of ENERGY being forced into the oceans.
We will reach 20B HIROs around 2040. Two asteroid strikes worth of ENERGY in just 90 years.
I wrote this in 2022.
Global Warming is Ocean Warming. Jan 2022 LiBT 19
Things haven’t gotten “better”.
Look at all the HEAT in the North Atlantic. Here’s a clearer way to visualize what that means.
That’s how fast the oceans are warming up.
This has CONSEQUENCES for the WHOLE Climate System.
The +140ppm increase in the CO2 level to +420ppm over the last 170 years might not seem like much. But, CO2 levels haven’t been this high for about 20 million years.
90% OF THE HEAT GOES INTO THE OCEANS.
Oceans surged to another record-high temperature in 2022 WAPO January 11, 2023
The amount of excess heat buried in the planet’s oceans, a strong marker of climate change, reached a record high in 2022, reflecting more stored heat energy than in any year since reliable measurements were available in the late 1950s, a group of scientists reported Wednesday.
That eclipses the ocean heat record set in 2021 — which eclipsed the record set in 2020, which eclipsed the one set in 2019. What do you think happened in 2023 and now 2024?
12 months of record ocean heat has scientists puzzled and concerned. -NBC News 03/15/2024
“Every day for the last 12 months, the world’s sea surface temperatures have broken records.”
This is what we think the planet looked like at +2°C of warming 3 million years ago. We will reach +2°C, the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period around 2035.
Here’s what we think +4°C will look like. We reach this around 2095 at the current Rate of Warming.
That translates into “hyper aridity” for the tropics and mid-latitudes in both hemispheres. Eventually leading to a world that looks roughly something like this.
We may ALREADY be seeing it start to happen.
An Abrupt Decline in Global Terrestrial Water Storage and Its Relationship with Sea Level Change. — Nature, Nov. 4, 2024
Abstract:
As observed by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow On (GRACE-FO) missions, global terrestrial water storage (TWS), excluding ice sheets and glaciers, declined rapidly between May 2014 and March 2016. By 2023, it had not yet recovered, with the upper end of its range remaining 1 cm equivalent height of water below the upper end of the earlier range.
Beginning with a record-setting drought in northeastern South America, a series of droughts on five continents helped to prevent global TWS from rebounding. While back-to-back El Niño events are largely responsible for the South American drought and others in the 2014–2016 timeframe.
The possibility exists that global warming has contributed to a net drying of the land since then, through enhanced evapotranspiration and increasing frequency and intensity of drought.
Or, in other words. Hotter air can hold more water, every +1°C increase in temperature increases the amount of water it can hold by +7%. Over the oceans this moisture comes from the oceans themselves.
Hotter air over land PULLS moisture out of the soil. What we are seeing in ‘real time’ is the aridification of the mid-latitudes.
The BEST prediction of the Moderates is that we hit +5°C around 2100 if we continue on the RCP8.5 “Business as Usual” path with no appreciable slowdown in CO2 emissions.
The Moderates are now saying (Exploring climate stabilisation at different global warming levels in ACCESS-ESM-1.5 — October 30th, 2024) that their models show we are on a +5°C by 2100 warming track.
However, that’s only if we continue dumping CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate of around +2.5ppm per year. That would put us above 600ppm by 2100 and with accelerated CH4 releases they NOW think that could push us up to around +5°C of warming.
Whatever else you hear about Climate Change this coming year, remember this one thing.
The Climate Models are now saying +5.4°C of warming by 2100 if we continue with “business as usual” and push CO2 levels up to around 600ppm.
The warming oceans are changing our world COMPLETELY. The Extreme Icehouse climate of the last 3 million years is GONE.
The oceans that we had in 1950 are gone. Lost to us forever now. What’s coming is going to be VERY different.
The Coral Reefs are dying.
Coral reefs are one of the most important ecosystems on the planet. While they cover less than 1% of the ocean floor, healthy coral reefs provide homes to approximately a quarter of all known marine species. Currently, scientists have identified almost 800 species of reef-building corals around the world.
Fast-warming oceans are devastating to coral reefs. Coral reefs are vanishing five times more frequently than they were 40 years ago and likely will be gone entirely within your lifetime.
Coral reefs are dying as climate change decimates ocean ecosystems vital to fish and humans — July 2021
The Planet Has Lost Half of Its Coral Reefs Since 1950 — September 2021
Warming Ocean Leaves No Safe Havens for Coral Reefs — February 2022
New research finds coral refugia, where reefs are protected from global warming by cool local currents, are disappearing faster than expected. Even at only 1.5℃ of warming, more than 99 percent of areas previously seen as potentially safe havens for coral will disappear. Warming of 2 degrees C would wipe out all the “reef refugia” where corals might survive
Vanishing Corals: NASA Data Helps Track Coral Reefs — June 2023
A special report in 2018 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected that coral reefs would decline by 70–90% if average global air temperatures warm by 1.5°C (2.7°F) above pre-industrial values. That number jumps to a 99% decline at 2°C (3.6°F) of warming. With the planet already warming approximately 1.1°C (2.0°F) due to human activities since the end of the 19th century, these declines in corals could be reached by 2050 or sooner.
Experts say coral reef bleaching near record level globally because of ‘crazy’ ocean heat — May 2024
Ocean temperatures that have gone “crazy haywire” hot, especially in the Atlantic, are close to making the current global coral bleaching event the worst in history. It’s so bad that scientists are hoping for a few hurricanes to cool things off.
More than three-fifths — 62.9% — of the world’s coral reefs are badly hurting from a bleaching event that began last year and is continuing. That’s nearing the record of 65.7% in 2017, when from 2009 to 2017 about one-seventh of the world’s coral died, said Derek Manzello, coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Coral Reef Watch Program.
The end of coral reefs as we know them — May 2024
Years ago, scientists made a devastating prediction about the ocean. Now it’s unfolding.
Several years ago, the world’s top climate scientists made a frightening prediction: If the planet warms by 1.5 degrees Celsius, relative to preindustrial times, 70 to 90 percent of coral reefs globally would die off. At an increase of 2°C, that number jumps to more than 99 percent.
Hurricanes are getting stronger.
Climate Change Is Making Hurricanes Stronger, Researchers Find — NYT 2020
Fast-warming oceans intensify hurricanes. For example, one recent paper linked the disastrous rains associated with Hurricane Harvey, which hit Houston in 2017, with the amount of heat stored in the ocean. Harvey dumped 60 inches of water on Southeast Texas (the most ever recorded from a single storm in U.S. history).
Ferocity of Atlantic hurricanes surges as the ocean warms. — Nature Nov. 20, 2024
Climate change sharply intensified almost 85% of hurricanes that hit the North Atlantic between 2019 and 2023, according to a modelling study1. The wind speed of those hurricanes rose by an average of nearly 30 kilometres per hour. Enough to have pushed 30 storms up a level on the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity.
Human-caused ocean warming has intensified recent hurricanes. — IOP Science, Nov. 20, 2024
A summary of attributable influences on hurricanes during five recent North Atlantic hurricane seasons (2019–2023) and a case study of Hurricane Ian (2022) reveal that human-driven SST shifts have already driven robust changes in 84% of recent observed hurricane intensities. Hurricanes during the 2019–2023 seasons were 8.3 m s−1 faster, on average, than they would have been in a world without climate change.
Human-caused ocean warming intensified recent hurricanes, including all 11 Atlantic hurricanes in 2024 — YCC, Nov. 20, 2024
Researchers determined that 44% of the economic damages caused by Hurricane Helene and 45% of those caused by Hurricane Milton could be attributed to climate change.
Sea Level Rise (SLR) is ACCELERATING. Sea Levels are Rising — FAST
U.S. coastline to see up to a foot of sea level rise by 2050. Report projects a century of sea level rise in 30 years. NOAA February, 2022
Hotter oceans mean faster sea-level rise, in part because as water warms, it expands. As the oceans heat up, sea levels rise because warmer water takes up more space than colder water. In fact, most of the sea level rise observed to date is because of this warming effect, not melting ice caps.
Absent global action to reduce carbon emissions, ocean warming alone will cause sea levels to rise by about a foot by 2050, in addition to what the ice caps contribute.
And, fast-warming oceans are melting the great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica from below, which has the potential to greatly increase the rate and height of sea-level rise. The warming of the Southern Ocean is particularly alarming, because it could destabilize West Antarctica and lead to the collapse of ice sheets that could raise global sea levels by 10 feet or more by 2100.
That 12 inches by 2050, that’s a “minimum” estimate. They didn’t incorporate any of the latest findings from Greenland or Antarctica. Sea level rise could be as high as 2' — 3' feet by 2050.
What are the best- and worst-case scenarios for sea level rise? — MIT Climate June 2024
In the rosiest possible future, global average sea level will rise another 20 to 50 centimeters (8 to 20 inches) by the year 2100. Minchew says the low end of that range would require humanity to achieve negative greenhouse gas emissions — in other words, not only stopping new emissions but also removing some excess greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. The higher end, 50 cm, would occur if we did not meaningfully manage to cut our emissions, but still avoided a spike in sea levels from the collapse of major ice sheets or glaciers.
This range of sea level rise would not be cataclysmic, but it would be disruptive. Minchew says an extra 20 cm of rise would cause much more “nuisance flooding” for coastal communities, turning what used to be hundred-year floods into disasters that occur every couple of decades. Nations would need to invest vast sums in coastal infrastructure to keep floodwaters at bay, including new “green barriers” like wetlands and mangrove forests and “gray barriers” like seawalls.
The worst-case scenario, however, is much worse. Minchew says the maximum projection for sea level rise by the end of the century reaches 2 meters, or 10 times higher than the 20-cm scenario.
Past 2050, SLR estimates are all over the map. However, BY 2040 we will KNOW how bad it’s going to be. Estimates range from +2m up to +5m to +6m. MOST SLR is going to happen after 2100 in the 22nd century.
Fast warming oceans could mean that EVERY port city in the world “drowns” and is lost by 2100. If we get 3'ft (1m) by 2050 an estimated 50% of the world’s port cities will become non-viable.
Marine Heatwaves are happening in the Oceans.
Marine heatwaves threaten global biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services
Ocean Heat Waves Are Threatening Marine Life
Can you see where the HEAT builds up FIRST in the oceans?
Here’s a different view.
Because the oceans are so large and are a complex chaotic system, the heat that accumulates in them isn’t evenly distributed. It starts in the tropics and then flows to the poles.
As it moves it forms large “blobs” of hot water that can move into a region and then “set” there. After witnessing the first of these blobs in 2014, we have seen others form around the world. We now call them “marine heatwaves”.
A Warning From a California Marine Heat Wave
An extreme heat wave off California's coast seemed like an anomaly 10 years ago. But as the ocean warms, the… - www.nytimes.com Dec. 1, 2024
They call it “the Blob.”
A decade ago, sea surface temperatures in the Pacific shot up to 11 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than normal. A high pressure system parked over the ocean, and winds that churn cold, nutrient-rich water from the depths to the surface died down. Stagnant, warm water spread across the Northeast Pacific, in a marine heat wave that lasted for three years.
Under the surface, the food web broke down and ecosystems convulsed, at first unseen to humans on shore. But soon, clues washed up.
Dead Cassin’s auklets — small, dark gray seabirds — piled up on West Coast beaches. The auklets were followed by common murres, a slightly bigger black-and-white seabird. The carcasses were knee-deep in places, impossible to miss.
Researchers are still untangling the threads of what happened, and they caution against drawing universal conclusions from a single regional event. But the Blob fundamentally changed many scientists’ understanding of what climate change could do to life in the ocean; 10 years later, the disaster is one of our richest sources of information on what happens to marine life as the temperature rises.
One thing is CERTAIN.
They are deadly to marine life.
Because marine ecosystems tend to be temperature sensitive, for marine life one of these heatwaves is basically a “flaming wall of death”. The life that can flee to cooler waters survives, most of the rest dies.
Super-Marine Heatwaves: A New Term for a Growing Concern
According to the Annual 2023 Global Climate Report, 2023 was the warmest year since global atmospheric temperature…
Super-Marine Heatwaves
In 2023 found that record-breaking Sea Surface Temperatures caused extremely strong marine heatwaves (MHWs). The MHWs were so powerful that the authors came up with a new term for them: Super-Marine Heatwaves (SMHWs).
MHWs usually describe any time when the ocean temperature is above the 90th percentile for five or more days in a row, with gaps of less than three days. This means that the temperatures are warmer than 90% of the previous observations for a given time of year.
In 2023, MHWs were so extreme that the paper’s authors coined the term “super-MHW” to describe when the daily SST in 2023 exceeded the corresponding maximum daily SST from the period of 1982–2022. These super-MHWs occurred across the globe, including in the Arctic region.
At some point in the next century, scientists project that much of the global ocean will have warmed past the temperature threshold that defines these events. Pushing many parts of the world into a state of permanent marine heatwave.
Right now, what we are seeing is that marine life is on the move North.
Fishing in New England Now Comes With a Catch: You Might Reel in a Prehistoric Beast. — WSJ Dec. 5, 2024
Tarpon are migrating north, startling fishermen and mystifying scientists; ‘What are they doing up here?’ Marine biologists and scientists say climate change and the ensuing warming of normally frigid waters are spurring the northern migration of tarpon and other tropical fish species.
In terrestrial ecology there is a term “mountain top island”. It refers to the phenomenon of ecosystems literally moving “uphill” as the temperature around them increases. Mountain tops become islands, where cooler temperatures allow these ecosystems to exist, as fragments of their former range.
The Arctic is the “global mountaintop”.
As the planet warms, marine life is moving “up the mountain” to where it’s still cool enough for survival. This is why polar bears are doomed. They already lived at the top of the mountain. As it warms up, they have nowhere to go. For the species flowing into the Arctic though, it will become a refuge.
However, if it gets too warm this refuge will get snuffed out.
Because, once you’re at the top of the mountain you have no where else to go. If it gets too hot, you go extinct.
THIS IS A SIGNAL OF HOW FAST THE OCEANS ARE WARMING UP.
Ocean Acidification (OA)
Almost one quarter of human-caused carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions are absorbed by oceans, resulting in ocean…
Ocean acidification is sometimes called “climate change’s equally evil twin” and for good reason. It’s a significant and harmful consequence of the increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. At least one-quarter of the carbon dioxide (CO2) released by burning coal, oil and gas doesn’t stay in the air, but instead dissolves into the ocean.
Since the beginning of the industrial era, the ocean has absorbed some 525 billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, presently around 22 million tons per day.
At first, scientists thought that this might be a good thing. The theory was that the world’s oceans acted like a giant carbon “sink” that would moderate and buffer the amount of CO2 in the air. But in the past decade, they’ve realized that this slowed warming has come at the cost of changing the ocean’s chemistry.
When carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater, the water becomes more acidic and the ocean’s pH (a measure of how acidic or basic the ocean is) drops. Even though the ocean is immense, enough carbon dioxide can have a major impact.
In the past 200 years alone, ocean water has become 30 percent more acidic — faster than any known change in ocean chemistry in the last 50 million years.
If you have ever had an aquarium, you know how crucial the pH balance of the water is to the survival of the fish. Now imagine that the pH balance of every ocean on the planet has gotten 30% more acidic and that the process is accelerating. The effects on marine life are going to be devastating. In the geologic record, when the oceans get more acidic it’s a signal that a “mass extinction event” is happening.
Global Warming Is Putting the Ocean’s Phytoplankton in Danger
Understanding Ocean acidification
Understanding the Science of Ocean and Coastal Acidification
Climate change caused the ‘Great Dying,’ aka the planet’s worst extinction
Oceanic Oxygen Depletion (OOD)
Oceanic oxygen depletion doesn’t really have anything to directly do with CO2 levels. It is a consequence of the heat that higher levels of CO2 bring with them. The science is very simple:
Warm water holds less oxygen than cold water.
The warmer the oceans get, the less oxygen there will be in them. This has consequences. In 2017, scientists delivered troubling news in Nature. Overall, the world’s oceans had already lost some 2% of their oxygen since 1960, roughly double what climate models predicted.
As Ocean Oxygen Levels Dip, Fish Face an Uncertain Future
Global warming not only increases ocean temperatures, it triggers a cascade of effects that are stripping the seas of…
Researchers complain that the oxygen problem doesn’t get the attention it deserves, with ocean acidification and warming grabbing the bulk of both news headlines and academic research. Just this April, for example, headlines screamed that global surface waters were hotter than they have ever been — a shockingly balmy average of 70 degrees F. That’s obviously not good for marine life.
When researchers take the time to compare the three effects — warming, acidification, and deoxygenation — the impacts of low oxygen are the worst.
“That’s not so surprising,” says Wilco Verberk, an eco-physiologist at Radboud University in the Netherlands. “If you run out of oxygen, the other problems are inconsequential.” Fish, like other animals, need to breathe.
Breathless oceans — Warming oceans are running short of oxygen
The 2% drop in oxygen levels seen so far might not sound like much. But global averages can be misleading. There are places in the ocean where there’s been much bigger declines.
During the Permian period 256 million years ago, rising ocean temperatures and an 80% plunge in oxygen levels helped drive the largest extinction in Earth’s history. Up to 96% of all marine species disappeared.
In 2018, the scientific arm of the United Nations, UNESCO, issued a report titled The Ocean is Losing its Breath. A year later, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) published a 588-page tome detailing the threat to ocean ecosystems and the people who rely on them.
Deoxygenation is the overall decline in the oxygen content of oceanic and coastal waters.
Loss of Oxygen in Lakes and Oceans a Major Threat to Ecosystems, Society, and Planet
Oxygen is a fundamental requirement of life, and the loss of oxygen in water, referred to as aquatic deoxygenation, is…
Across all aquatic ecosystems, from streams and rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and ponds to estuaries, coasts, and the open ocean, dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations have rapidly and substantially declined in recent decades.
Lakes and reservoirs have experienced oxygen losses of 5.5% and 18.6% respectively since 1980.
The oceans have experienced oxygen losses of around 2% since 1960 and, although that number is smaller, it represents a more geographically and volumetrically extensive mass.
Marine ecosystems have also experienced substantial variability in oxygen depletion. For example, the midwaters off of Central California have lost 40% of their oxygen in the last few decades.
The volumes of aquatic ecosystems affected by oxygen depletion have increased dramatically across all types.
Scientists have concluded that in this century, declining oxygen will likely have a bigger impact on the ocean than underwater heat waves and ocean acidification.
What does it all mean? It means that the oceans are dying.
What does “mass extinction” mean?
At its most basic it’s a period when biodiversity significantly declines. Coral reefs are being driven to extinction across the planet as a consequence of the thermal pulse from our carbon bomb.
Coral reefs make up just 1% of the world’s oceans. Yet they support 25% of all the marine life in the oceans and have greater biodiversity than a tropical rainforest. When they are gone, the biodiversity in the oceans will decline dramatically.
This isn’t something that “might” happen in the future. It’s happening right now.
The death of the coral reefs is a mass extinction event for the oceans. If “only” the coral reefs and their ecosystems died it would still be one of the six worst mass extinction events since life began.
That’s just ONE impact of Ocean Warming.
A mass extinction event is happening right in front of our eyes. We should take detailed notes about how it happens. How it plays out.
After all, it will be only the 6th time IN THE HISTORY OF LIFE ON THE PLANET that a mass extinction event on this scale has happened.
The reefs are just the beginning.
Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction — PNAS June 2020
Fish are vertebrates, they are the first vertebrates. A lot of species are about to go extinct. Particularly the “cold water” species. As the northern waters warm they will have nowhere to migrate to.
When you consider all of this together. When you look at the big picture.
The outlook for the oceans is grim.
They are rapidly becoming hotter, more acidic, and oxygen starved. Long term, we don’t know what’s going to happen. The last time conditions like this existed was 14–15 million years ago. We literally have no clue what’s going to happen. But the signs don’t look good.
Unknown waters ahead puzzle marine modellers
Climate change could alter ocean food chains, leading to far fewer fish in the sea
The oceans that our grandchildren know are not going to be like the ones we knew.
They are going to be filled with hardy “weed species” like jelly fish and squid (Jellyfish are taking over the world).
Vast sheets of rotting algal blooms will infest coastal areas (2021 Has Brought One of the Worst Red Tides to Florida in Decades).
The waters around the land will be mostly dead zones (Ocean’s Largest Dead Zones Mapped by MIT Scientists).
Very soon, “sea food” will be a distant memory and something that only the wealthiest can afford.
What does this mean for us in the “short term”?
Since the ocean is the primary food source for over a billion people, the degradation of the oceanic ecosystem is going to directly impact the extent of the population die back this century.
One Billion people rely on the oceans as their primary food source.
Three Billion people rely on the oceans for part of their diet.
About 40% of the global population lives within 50 miles of a coast.
What’s happening to the oceans is NOT going to be “a good thing”. The planet isn’t going to cool down for thousands of years. The oceans, when they eventually do come back, are going to be very different.
IF YOU LIVE ON AN ISLAND.
You should move. NOW. If you can at all manage it. Islands are deathtraps now. They have no future in a world without coral reefs and fish. Without outside food supplies being shipped in, there won’t be enough to eat.
By 2050 most of the world’s island nations will be gone.
What it MEANS for us, is that now the CONSEQUENCES for our collective actions are starting to arrive in earnest.
We are out of time. Collapse has started.
This is my analysis.
This is what I see.
This is my “Crisis Report”.
— rc 120824
Personal Notes:
It’s been almost a month since my last article. I’ve had a bad case of “writers block”. What brought it on was this comment from one of my readers on Substack.
“I find that whenever one of these newsletters appear in my inbox I am immediately thrust into a sort of alarm following by helpless melancholy. My own writing is a response of sorts -trying to make sense of moving forward in spite of this knowledge.
I am now of the mind to not receive your dispatches into my inbox now and just…support your work but ignore and delay reading it unless I’m already in a despondent place.
What do you think is the value of having this knowledge?
What is the impact you hope to have on your audience now that the situation is manifest?”
I started thinking about these questions and, like the centipede asked to explain how it controls so many legs, I immediately ground to a creative halt. This is my fifth attempt to write something new and the only one I liked enough to publish.
What do you think is the value of having this knowledge?
I cannot tell you that, you have to decide that for yourself.
What I can tell you is that this isn’t the “End of the World”.
It's going to be a mass extinction event, there's no stopping that now. This paper, “Climate change extinctions”, released on 12/5, found that
We can expect, with increased certainty, that rising temperatures will lead to an increasing number of extinctions, with the highest emission scenario leading to extinction of nearly a third of the Earth’s species, especially those from particular vulnerable taxa or regions.
This is not a “good thing” BUT, life goes on. It’s not going to wipe out everything. The planet and the biosphere will recover.
It's not the End of the World. However, it is the end of our civilization. The “Anthroposphere” or “Human World” that we have constructed over the last 10,000 years is about to collapse.
To me the evidence is clear. To you it may not be. This is my analysis, it’s based on what I see today. Things can change.
In the book “The Wizard and the Prophet” the situation at the dawn of the 20th century was also dire. The global population had exceed 1 billion and there were real fears that overpopulation would lead to a continuous state of global famine.
Then the “wizards” found ways to make synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and bred new “high yield” versions of wheat and corn. The “crisis” everyone feared, never happened.
We could get some combination of breakthroughs that “save” us once again. Most people expect that’s going to be the case. If you don’t, well then you’re a “doomer”.
I think the situations aren’t the same and that there isn’t going to be any “last minute” solution to what we have done. We REALLY FUCKED IT UP as a species. Most people, if they think about it at all, disagree with me. Most people think we will “muddle through” the way we have always done.
In a way, both points of view are right.
SOME people will “muddle through” the collapse. There will be survivors and they will eventually form new ways of life and new societies. Possibly around the shores of an “ice free” Arctic ocean with a climate like Miami’s.
But, there will probably NEVER be as many of us at once as there are today. For that, I morn.
Firstly, thank you for posting your excellent researches and analyses that contribute so much to the understanding of so many of us. Your work is valuable to us, so please try to keep going with it.
I have a small request: it seems to me that we are at a point where some research (and images) include AMOC declining or turning off altogether and some do not, depending on the models used. For us in Europe the difference is massive, so it would be very useful to know if it is AMOC corrected. I will also mention that I find myself hoping for AMOC to turn off much sooner than even the latest models - sooner the better! It seems the one morsel of relative hope in an otherwise very difficult scenario of mass extinctions and human collapse, although I do appreciate many northernmost Europeans won't feel the same way!
Of course you must also pace yourself, give yourself spaces, have other plans and reasons, as we all do. My own time includes walking my dog 3 or 4 times a day (a couple of hours), meditating most days, coffees with friends, consciously listening to music, daytime naps, and NOT watching the mainstream news (most of which is irrelevant to me). I'm sure you have developed your own strategies to decompress.
I posted the other day about the 5 stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
I said that after decades watching and studying climate change, and with the help of Lovelock's Gaia interpretations, I was mostly at 'acceptance' with occasional forays into anger (at the corrupted politics and lack of action) and bargaining (my personal survival stratégies). Perhaps if you are still mostly in the depression stage (that I understand very well), you could look forward to emerging into acceptance too. I'm sure it will come.
The other week someone criticised me for the 'acceptance' idea, angry that I was 'giving up' and I was supposed to be fighting for what I believed in. I wrote a long reply, but then didn't send it. I realised that she needed to find her own path through, and my comments and 'excuses' (to her) would fall on deaf ears. We can only do what we can do.
Whilst we are all complicit in what we have done to this extraordinary planet, the only one we have ever found that we know can sustain life, you nor I are personally responsible for it because we have not been given the godlike power to change this path. We can only be spectators and commentators. To assume more responsibility is an arrogance, even hubris!
Please keep up the good work as a spectator, commentator and explainer. Our tour guide!
And please forgive yourself for your lack of godlike powers! 🙂
As a longtime (former) journalist, my mantra is this: Never Read the Comments.
And please keep writing. You are doing important work. I am not alone in appreciating it, dire as it is. Thank you.