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Climate Code Red Analysis and Sea Level Warnings

Photo by Jieun Lim on Unsplash
Photo by Jieun Lim on Unsplash

Climate Code Red Analysis and Sea Level Warnings

By Robert Hunziker

Climate Code Red, a very thorough and well-respected source on climate change/global warming, recently issued a three-part study on where things stand with the climate system via looking through the rearview mirror at 2022 and reflecting that charred image into the future: Faster, Higher, Hotter: What We Learned About the Climate System in 2022 by David Spratt, Research Director, Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, Feb. 20, 2023.

For starters, several aspects of global warming are at all-time highs, for example, coal use is at an all-time high and not surprisingly all three of the major greenhouse gases CO2, CH4, and N2O hit record highs in 2022. According to the Global Carbon Project: Carbon emissions from fossil fuels hit a new record of 37.5B tons. Topping off these all-time records, the International Energy Agency expects fossil fuel emissions to possibly peak in 2025 but remain at a “high plateau at a high level” for a decade or more with no significant decline expected in the foreseeable future. Good luck with Net Zero.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessments: “There is no longer a credible path to holding warming below 1.5°C without massive immediate cooling interventions, which are not on any policymaking agendas.” Moreover, the experts quoted in the Code Red study believe anything less than 1.5°C is already out of reach.

Not only is the 1.5°C target unachievable, but it’s unachievable regardless of almost any foreseeable mitigation efforts. This fact is also emphasized by the UK publication The Economist, which discussed the lag effect of greenhouse gases, to wit: “But greenhouse-gas emissions do not cause an instantaneous rise in global temperatures, and neither does cutting them result in instantaneous cooling. Instead, it will take decades for today’s policy efforts to result in measurable impacts on global temperature.” (Source: Emissions Slashed Today Won’t Slow Warming Until Mid-Century, The Economist, July 11, 2022)

The Economist article dovetails with the opinion of James Hansen, Earth Institute, Columbia University, who is one of the planet’s leading authorities on global warming: “Global warming of at least 2°C is now baked into Earth’s future.”

Code Red goes on to remind people that, according to paleoclimate evidence, the last time CO2 kevels were similar to today’s with temperatures at 1.2°C and up to 3°C sea levels fluctuated by 20-40 meters, or equivalent to 65-130 feet. Of course, this is a frightening number that readers prefer to gloss over, or forget, but so sorry, it’s factual, it happened and could happen again. Although numbers of 65-130 feet won’t occur during the current generation; it’ll take much longer. Nevertheless, we’re not worried about 65 feet. It’s only the first few feet that’ll sufficiently flood the world’s largest coastal cities, like Mumbai and Miami. By the time 65 feet rolls around, who knows what’ll be happening.

Code Red claims that even sharp reductions in emissions will not be enough to avoid 2°C, or higher temperatures because of record-breaking fossil fuel forecasts. According to Will Steffen, executive director, Australian National University Climate Change Institute, it’s a mistake to assume we can even stabilize at 2°C. “Rather, it’s a signpost on a road to a hotter planet.”

Moreover, “When projections in late 2021 showed future warming of around 2.7°C, Potsdam Institute Director Johan Rockström said: ‘I barely even want to talk about 2.7°C… If we go beyond 2°C, it’s very likely that we have caused so many tipping points that you have probably added another degree just through self-reinforcing changes. And that’s without even talking about extreme events.”

Of equal concern: “Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research: “If the [climate system] tipping elements interact and cascades develop, then the heating could become independent [i.e. self-sustaining] at 2°C. Whether that is the case is perhaps the most important question of science right now because it would mean the end of our civilization.”

Those statements are from climate analysts that are widely considered to be at the top of the class and should not be taken lightly. Frankly, it’s a fair statement that world leaders and the public have no idea how far along the global warming threat has progressed, especially since the start of the 21st century. After all, according to the Institute for European Environmental Policy: One-half of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since 1750 have been emitted over the past 30 years alone. Early-stage evidence of its impact is easily identified, for example, according to NASA: Antarctica and Greenland combined lost 82B tons of ice mass, on average, per year during the 1990s versus 475B tons per year during the 2010s. That’s an extraordinary statement of fact as it’s the fuel behind sea level rise, and it is expanding in short order.

According to the study, permafrost across the Arctic is beginning to “irreversibly thaw and release carbon dioxide and methane.” Alas, we’re not even at 1.5°C yet. Hmm.

The study discusses the status of the world’s major glaciers. All of them are at various stages pointing towards tipping points that could cascade ice sheets and glaciers much more rapidly than any climate models currently indicate, to wit: “Events at both poles are not properly incorporated into current climate models. The evidence suggests that sea-level rises this century will be greater than currently considered feasible by policymakers. Based upon evidence from climate history the current global average temperature increase is enough for 5–10 metres (16-33 feet) of sea-level rise in the longer term, inundating small island states, agriculturally rich alluvial deltas, and vulnerable coastal cities.”

This article covers the first two parts of Climate Code Red’s three-part series. The third will be covered later.

Sea Level Warnings

Separate from, and coincident with, the Climate Code Red article, according to several recent studies on sea level: “The time available to prepare for increased exposure to flooding may be considerably less than assumed to date,” analysis by Dutch researchers Ronald Vernimmen and Aljosja Hooijer. (Source: Worst Impacts of Sea Level Rise Will Hit Earlier Than Expected, American Geophysical Union, January 24, 2023)

New studies have concluded: (1) ice sheets that threaten to expand oceans “will likely crumble with another 0.5°C increase in global warming” (2) ice sheets “are fragile in ways not previously understood.” (Source: Climate, Ice Sheets & Sea Level: The News is Not Good, Phys.org, February 16, 2023)

The studies found flaws in prior research because of misinterpretation of satellite data and inaccurate resources regarding some underlying countries. As a result of new calculations: “The number of people threatened by sea levels has been underestimated by tens of millions,” Ibid.

A study by Jun-Young Park, Fabian Schloesser, et al, Future Sea-Level Projections with a Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean-Ice-Sheet Model, Nature Communications d/d February 14, 2023, concluded: “Our model has a threshold between 1.5C and 2C of warming – with 1.8C as a best estimate – for acceleration of ice loss and sea level increase.”

The Park-Schloesser study claims that 1.8C brings on runaway disintegration of ice sheets. This is the first known study of this kind to correlate a specific global temperature increase with more rapid acceleration of ice loss. It, therefore, begs the question of how soon 1.8C hits?

As for example, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), if all the pledges made by countries at COP26 in Glasgow, November 2021 were met, global temperatures would “hold to 1.8C.” One-hundred-twenty (120) countries pledged at Glasgow. Net Zero by 2050. But as is always true with pledges, implementation, implementation, implementation is all that counts. However, even if the 120 countries meet Glasgow commitments, according to new research, runaway disintegration of ice sheets still starts at 1.8C.

Which brings forth the report card for COP26, as of October 2022, which is not necessarily encouraging: “Progress made on COP26 commitments since Glasgow is mixed at best. But to be fair, countries and others often save up their exciting announcements for major international moments. Hopefully we are in for some nice surprises when world leaders gather in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt for COP27. The world will be watching carefully to see if countries, companies and cities back up their commitments with real action.” (Source: Where Do We Stand on COP26 Climate Promises? A Progress Report, World Resources Institute, October 13, 2022)

By the following month, November 2022, COP27 deflated all expectations. Experts on climate change give UN-sponsored COP27 an F-grade. “A collective failure,” according to The Lancet, which is the world’s highest impact academic journal.

Therefore, if countries are not enthusiastically involved in commitments to limit/cut emissions, the consequences are found far afield. For example, Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, the world’s most iconic image of global warming. According to Ted Scambos, Senior Research Scientist ESOC, University of Colorado: “Each visit underscores how fast Thwaites is changing, seeing this huge ice shelf moving towards you at about a mile every year is unsettling. And all by itself, this one glacier is big enough to impact sea level significantly,” Scambos, head of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, funded by the US and UK to a tune of $50M. How many glaciers of the world have funds dedicated to specific research, and what does this imply about the shaky status of Thwaites, which continues to alarm scientists?

Two new studies, with commentary on Thwaites, are found in Nature d/d February 15th, 2023: “Models of how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and glacier flow respond to climate change are missing some important details. Incorporating these insights should clarify how and why the ice will change in the future.” (Source: Glimpse Beneath Iconic Glacier Reveals How It’s Adding to Sea-Level Rise, Nature, February 15, 2023)

Thwaites is key to future sea level rise because it is massive and increasingly unstable. “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that sea levels will probably rise by between 38 and 77 centimetres, or 1.3 feet-to-2.6 feet, by 2100, but the collapse or melting of some of the ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic could theoretically contribute an additional metre (3.3 feet),” Ibid. Which can only be categorized as disastrous for 8 of the top 10 largest cities in the world, which are coastal.

“Thwaites Glacier is a fast-moving block of ice, the size of Florida, in the West Antarctic. Satellite studies have shown that its ‘grounding line’ — where ice attached to bedrock transitions to ice floating in the sea — has shifted 14 kilometres (8.7 miles) inland since the late 1990s, and some parts of it are retreating as fast as 1.2 kilometres (0.75 miles) per year,” Ibid.

What’s moving Thwaites’ ice sheet? Warm ocean water is melting the underside because of climate change, which has shifted wind patterns in the region, bringing warm ocean water to West Antarctica that was not there before. The water temperatures below Thwaites’ ice shelf are about 1.5C above the freezing point.

Researchers achieved the closest look ever at the underside of Thwaites Glacier as well as “the first-ever glimpse at the spot where the ice meets the land,” Ibid.

Prior field research indicated that giant fractures in the “floating ice” of Thwaites “could shatter part of the shelf within five years.” (Source: Giant Cracks Push Imperiled Antarctic Glacier Closer to Collapse, Nature, December 14, 2021) This would open an avenue for a much faster flow of glacial ice on land into the ocean, contributing to sea-level rise. Already Thwaites accounts for 4% of sea-level rise.

“If Thwaites’s eastern ice shelf collapses, ice in this region could flow up to three times faster into the sea, Pettit says. And if the glacier were to collapse completely, it would raise sea levels by 65 centimetres (2 feet),” Erin Pettit, glaciologist at Oregon State University, Ibid.

“Thwaites flows off the Antarctic continent into the Southern Ocean. At 120 kilometres (75 miles) across, it is the world’s widest glacier. Across about two-thirds of that expanse, ice flows relatively quickly into the ocean. The remaining one-third is the eastern ice shelf, where ice had been flowing more slowly. In part, that’s because the ice grinds to a halt when it reaches an underwater mountain about 40 kilometres offshore. The submerged mountain holds back the ice flow like a cork in a bottle. Earlier this year, members of the Thwaites collaboration reported that the glacier is becoming unstuck from that mountain, causing cracking and fracturing across other parts of the ice shelf,” Ibid.

Based upon what scientists observed at Thwaites, it’s amazing that the metaphor “like a cork in a bottle” describes what may be holding back much more rapid breakup of one of the world’s largest, most menacing, glaciers.

Meantime, sea level researchers deal with a target that moves up, never down, with each passing year. What’ll stop it?

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on February 24, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Big Heat Hits Antarctica

Image Source: Rex, Wikipedia – Public Domain
Image by Rex, Wikipedia – Public Domain

Big Heat Hits Antarctica

By Robert Hunziker

A recent report out of West Antarctica is rattling scientists.

It’s all about heat, big-time heat, encroaching upon the world’s biggest chunk of ice that locks down a couple hundred feet of sea level rise. This kind of news is enough to raise the hackles of smart well-informed people, as excessive CO2 emissions spewing like crazy ever since the turn of the 21st century are now flat-out playing with fire in a very dangerous corner of the planet.

Meanwhile, regarding this very dicey situation, what will the leading nations of the world do? A Marshall Plan operation? Or nothing? Hmm. Based upon a 30-year trail of unmitigated failures by nation/states to meet commitments to cut emissions, probably nothing! But at some point in time it’ll be too late to do anything other than photos for posterity, whatever remains?

According to a highly regarded climate authority Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research: “It’s the sea melting the ice from below, it’s not atmospheric melting from above. And this is really, really worrying … and quite surprising, because up until 10 years ago, we were absolutely convinced that the Greenland ice sheet and the Arctic was the more sensitive of the two poles.” (Source, Bob Berwyn, Antarctica Researchers Report an Extraordinary Marine Heatwave That Could Threaten Antarctica’s ice Shelves, Inside Climate News, Feb. 12, 2023)

Aboard the research ship RV Laurence M. Gould, cruising along Antarctica’s west coast, according to Carlos Moffat, chief scientist, Palmer Long Term Ecological Research Program: “Even as somebody who’s been looking at these changing systems for a few decades, I was taken aback by what I saw, by the degree of warming that I saw… We don’t know how long this is going to last. We don’t fully understand the consequences of this kind of event, but this looks like an extraordinary marine heatwave,” Ibid.

If extraordinary warm conditions continue, it could bring rapid destabilization of the critical underpinnings of the global climate system, impacting ice shelves, glaciers, coastal ecosystems and ocean currents. Already, a similar pattern swept the Arctic, as it approaches a dangersome iceless state. Accordingly, an iceless Arctic is a foreboding event that no climate scientist wants, as it amplifies Greenland’s melt rate, which is already leaning on the ropes.

Honestly, the world’s icebound ecosystems are losing it so much faster than anybody ever expected. It’s very, very, very disconcerting and should motivate world leaders to do something more than simply making slick cameo appearances at UN climate conferences, 110 world leaders showed up for COP 27 in Egypt, November 2022. Yet experts on climate change give UN-sponsored COP27 an F-grade. “A collective failure,” according to The Lancet (est. 1923), which is the world’s highest impact academic journal.

According to Moffat: “These episodes of relatively rapid ocean warming that can persist for months have been occurring all over the place. They haven’t been common in this region.” Ibid.

The RV Laurence M. Gould research vessel covered an area of 600 miles length crisscrossing at the 125-mile-wide continental shelf, documenting the heat. Moffat: “It’s very difficult to warm the ocean, and so when we see these conditions, that really speaks to a very intense forcing.”

Ocean Icy Death Spiral?

The Inside Climate News article poses the question of whether an “ocean icy death spiral” may develop. Significantly, recent studies have shown an erosion of the great continent’s buffer systems that protect it from climate extremes in other parts of the world, such as (1) a protective encircling swift ocean current and (2) defined belt of jet stream winds. Evidently, these crucial buffer systems are clearly weakening. The ramifications are beyond words.

Moreover, a Nature Climate Change study 2022 showed circumpolar deep water at 1,000-to-2,000 feet warmed considerably, allowing warm water to sneak beneath unsuspecting ice sheets. Only recently a study by a team from the University of East Anglia of Thwaites Ice Shelf, one of the biggest, and alas, tipsiest in West Antarctica, showed that one ice shelf sitting next to another ice shelf exports heat to its next-door neighbor. The study found the Pine Island Glacier flowing warm water next door into Thwaites. Thus, a series of ice shelves along the Amundsen Sea impact one another when warmer waters encroach the region. This could become a self-feeding frenzy of one major ice shelf/glacier tumbling another. The Amundsen Sea Embayment and its ice shelves include, Cosgrove, Pine Island, Thwaites, and several others.

All of which prompts the question of this decade: What’s behind this threatening rapid change of the world’s most prominent complex ice ecosystem?

In part, the answer is found in tail pipes of >1.5 billion cars of the world, which, in turn, prompts: Since the start of the 21st century, global warming has been on a breakneck pace:

  1. According to NASA: Antarctica and Greenland combined lost 82 billion tons of ice mass per year in the 1990s compared with 475 billion tons per year in the 2010s, a sixfold increase in only a decade.
  2. According to the Institute for European Environmental Policy: More than one-half (½) of all greenhouse gas emissions since 1750 were emitted over the past 30 years.
  3. A comprehensive study shows the seas are rising three times (3x) faster than they were in the 1990s (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

With the aforementioned three points in mind, what’s next? Will it be stepped-up flat-out acceleration on top of current rapid acceleration (how about another 6-fold increase in ice mass loss per year?) and what then for Antarctica and Miami and does anybody really care enough to do something, anything, massively (worldwide) constructive, assuming it’s even possible, or will the Anthropocene run its course?

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on February 17, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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The Arctic’s Iceless Upheaval

Photo by Ansgar Walk is licensed by CC BY-SA 3.0
Photo by Ansgar Walk is licensed by CC BY-SA 3.0

The Arctic’s Iceless Upheaval

By Robert Hunziker

Anybody who closely follows global warming knows that the Arctic has been clobbered 2-3 times beyond the impact on the planet. And knowledgeable sources also know that what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. After all, for millennia Arctic ice steadfastly served as the planet’s numero uno biggest reflector of solar radiation by reflecting 80%-90% of sunlight back to outer space.

But what if the ice is gone?

Where does all the heat go?

It’s a problem that threatens life as we know it. Alongside nuclear war, it’s one of the bigger threats to civilization since back in time when humans huddled together around smoldering fires in damp, darkened caves.

Based upon scientific studies, including the fact that the following are already in motion, the impact of an iceless Arctic: (1) Disruption of the jet streams in the troposphere at 20,000-30,000 feet which, in turn, throws off normal weather patterns throughout the Northern Hemisphere, as the steady westerlies don’t know which way is up or down or stalled, causing flash floods, torrential rains, scorching droughts, and brutal cold snaps seldom witnessed before, bringing forth unpredictable conditions with extreme cycles that whiplash society, e.g. last year’s 2022-primer for 2023-24 (2) Amplifies Greenland’s disintegration, which is already showing signs of considerable weakness and frailty as 24 feet of sea level rise remains tenuously trapped in ice. Scientists, such as Dr. Jason Box, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, have already put Greenland on special alert status (3) Accelerated melting of permafrost across Siberia, Alaska and Canada where thermokarst lakes by the thousands, yes, by the thousands, are popping up almost overnight, spewing methane bubbles, according to Dr. Katey Walter Anthony, Aquatic Ecosystem Ecologist and professor, University of Alaska. Alas, methane is much more powerful at stimulating global warming than CO2.

Unfortunately, an iceless Arctic is totally misunderstood by people in leadership roles. There are many naïve leaders when it comes to the science and the consequential impact of an iceless Arctic, like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (Looking North: Sharpening America’s Arctic Focus speech, Rovaniemi, Finland, May 2019) celebrating the prospects of an iceless Arctic. Likewise, Vladimir Putin, launching the super-powerful nuclear icebreaker “Rossiya” in May 2022, as well as a floating nuclear power plant. (But the thick ice is mostly gone. And honestly, nuclear in the Arctic… Really?) They visualize dancing sugarplums of new fossil fuel discoveries, easier trade routes, and control over the Far Northern latitudes overshadowing North America and Asia and Europe.

Yet, it’s nearly preordained that an iceless Arctic means an enormously challenging, maybe fatal, set of circumstances for Russia, for America, and for the world. The science is at odds with fossil fuel discovery in the Arctic. Quite the opposite is required in order to save Russia and America from stepping on their own toes. The Arctic needs to be revived, not explored for minerals and oil. Revival may be possible. In fact, a group of scientists have an ongoing effort to do just that.

Titanic Lifeboat Academy recently published an article by Dr. Guy McPherson, professor emeritus University of Arizona, explaining the scholarship/science of an iceless Arctic: On the Rate of Environmental Change, Titanic Lifeboat Academy, January 27, 2023.

The following is a partial synopsis of Dr. Guy McPhersons’ insightful analysis, with additional separate commentary:

For perspective, it’s important to recognize the fact that “Humans have only ever lived in a world topped by ice.” (Source: Mark C. Urban, Life Without Ice, Science, February 14, 2020). According to Dr. Urban, biologist & professor of ecology/evolutionary biology, University of Connecticut: The human species evolved in an icy world that determined “climatic, ecological, and political stability.” That innate stability, taken for granted, is at risk for the first time ever: “By reflecting sunlight, Arctic ice acts as Earth’s air conditioner. Once dark water replaces brilliant ice, Earth could warm substantially, equivalent to the warming triggered by the additional release of a trillion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The ice also determines who gets rain. Loss of Arctic sea ice can make it rain in Spain, dry out Scandinavian hydropower, and set California ablaze.” (Urban)

Dr. Urban believes the Arctic could become ice-free within 30 years and possibly sooner if current trends continue. His statement that ice-free warming could produce a trillion tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent is mouth-dropping; that’s equivalent to 25 years of current emissions, something that nobody has ever experienced nor can possibly imagine. There’s nothing positive about this, absolutely nothing. In fact, a trillion tons of CO2 is so enormous that it leaves the mind spinning forever, no possible exit.

As further stated by Dr. McPherson, there are name-recognition scientists that believe the Arctic will be ice-free very, very soon, as early as 2023. Harvard University professor of atmospheric science James Anderson was quoted in Forbes in 2018: “The chance there will be permanent ice in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero.” Professor Jennifer MacKinnon, University of California-San Diego and Scripps Institution was quoted by CBS News in 2021 as expecting an ice-free Arctic this year, 2023. According to Dr. McPherson: September 2023 is the likely date for an ice-free Arctic. “Then we can expect the full effects next year (2024).” For a detailed analysis of the Arctic: A Farewell To Ice (Oxford University Press) by one of the world’s leading experts on polar ice, Peter Wadhams.

There are several schools of thought on timing of an ice-less Arctic. Some believe an ice-free Arctic will not occur until 2030s (NOAA) or 2065 (Carbon Brief, assuming 1.5C is held, but good luck with that) or 2035 (a National Geographic Arctic article) or a Nature article claims the Arctic might become ice-free during summer within the 21st century.

Only recently, coincident with the start of the U.N. Climate Summit at el-Sheikh, Egypt COP27 in November 2022, the International Cryosphere Climate initiative research network provided new research on the Arctic: “Following the planet’s eight warmest years on record there is growing evidence that the world’s icy regions are melting at increasing rates – and far faster than scientists had expected.” (Source: COP27: Loss of Arctic Summer Sea Ice ‘Inevitable Within 30 Years – Report, Reuters, November 2022)

“Just as there’s no longer a credible path to keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, there’s no credible path to avoiding an ice-free summer,” said co-author Robbie Mallett, a sea ice researcher at University College London… “A distinct environment on Earth is going to go extinct,” said Mallett.” Ibid.

The advocates of fossil fuels, like Pompeo and Putin, are thrilled about an ice-less Arctic. But in all seriousness, Putin is wasting a few billion rubles with a super-powerful nuclear icebreaker. Get serious… polar bears are struggling to find stable ice footing. Meanwhile, and most regrettably, scientists claim Pompeo’s and Putin’s greatest wishes are on the docket, an ice-less Arctic… but when?

Therefore, what happens if Drs. Urban, Anderson, and MacKinnon are right, meaning an iceless Arctic within the next 24 months?

For starters, the planet’s biggest air conditioner will be gone, and according to Dr. Urban: “By reflecting sunlight, Arctic ice acts as Earth’s air conditioner. Once dark water replaces brilliant ice, Earth could warm substantially, equivalent to the warming triggered by the additional release of a trillion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”

In other words, the world will almost certainly turn more topsy-turvy than it was last year 2022 when major hydropower around the world creaked (Lake Powell) and major commercial waterways (Rhine, Po, Mississippi) nearly dried out as France and Italy delivered drinking water in trucks to hordes of thirsty citizens, and California was ablaze. And so much more, floods beyond belief (Pakistan, China). All of which happened before the Arctic turns ice-less, which will trigger ever more upheaval.

On the docket, there’s a trigger mechanism for much more rapid loss of Arctic sea ice looming in the wings, ready for attack. It is El Niño, which sounds innocent enough until it’s examined in more detail. Indeed, it’s a wolf in sheepskin.

The threat of El Niño: As the amount of latent heat contained in the oceans, which absorbs 80%-90% of the world’s heat, combines with the end of the current La Niña, a cooling trend at the equatorial Pacific Ocean (which served to cool the hottest year in 2022- didn’t help much, hmm) transitions into El Niño, the waters of the equatorial Pacific turn much warmer with extensive global impact. This combination will heat everything beyond comfort zones, especially in the Far North Arctic. What’s left of sea ice could disappear fast, faster than ever before, meaning the trio Urban, Anderson, and MacKinnon could “nail it.” This could result in a super cycle of crazed weather throughout the world getting even crazier with scorching bouts of drought followed by Noah’s Ark flooding, followed by city-flattening hurricanes followed by who-knows-what’s next, insanely deadly weather that leaves humanity breathless.

Hopefully, scientists are wrong about the timing of an iceless Arctic and it comes at a much later time. But science has been behind the Eightball on global warming issues for decades, always late to the party. Assuming Urban, Anderson, and MacKinnon nail it, then what will Pompeo (probable presidential candidate) and Putin (president for life sitting on a rusty nuclear icebreaker) recommend?

But more importantly, the ghost question: Why aren’t major countries throwing everything they’ve got at the biggest fixit in world history by flooding scientists with whatever funds and technical help necessary to figure out how to revive the Arctic, see: Refreeze the Arctic d/d December 9, 2022. After all, it may be possible. Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before a trillion tons of CO2 hits. According to Statistica, global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry hit a record annual high of 37.12 billion metric tons in 2021.

How about another trillion (1,000,000,000,000) tons?

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on February 10, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Forever Chemicals, Everywhere

Image by Kai Dahms licensed by Unsplash
Image by Kai Dahms licensed by Unsplash

Forever Chemicals, Everywhere

By Robert Hunziker

Forever Chemicals are found everywhere from the depths of the Mariana Trench to the mountaintop of Mt. Everest. Following 80 years of manufacturing various PFAS chemicals, the world is swimming in chemical permanence. And yes, it is a toxic price society pays for modern-day conveniences — made easy!

But maybe it would be better if “products made easy by PFASs” were made the old-fashioned way, pre-1940 sans dangerous chemicals. After all, several civilizations of the world got along just fine over thousands of years without PFAS chemicals. For example, the BBC documentary: The Story of India by Michael Wood: Archeological discoveries have revealed advanced technological artifacts found at Rakhigarhi, an Indus Valley site 8,000-years-old. Indus cities had elaborate planning for drainage systems, housebuilding, and street construction with plentiful evidence of transcendent cultural affairs.

According to the United States EPA: “PFAS are a group of manufactured chemicals that have been used in industry and consumer products since the 1940s because of their useful properties. There are thousands of different PFAS, some of which have been more widely used and studied than others… PFAS can be present in our water, soil, air, and food as well as in materials found in our homes or workplaces.”

Yet, undeniably, PFASs have created a worldwide toxic stew that’s extremely messy and unquestionably deadly in some instances.

A new study by Environmental Working Group (EWG) scientists uncovered very disturbing levels of PFASs in America’s freshwater fish found throughout the country from coast-to-coast with levels of chemicals “that may be harmful” according to EWG’s polite way of saying: “Stop and beware of what you put into your mouth.” (Source: The Environmental Working Group, Forever Chemicals in Every River in the US, DGR News Service, January 27, 2023)

What are the risks?

Like nuclear radiation isotopes, PFAS chemicals last forever and ever, and ever. Over time these human genome terrorists accumulate in human tissue, showing up years later potentially as testicular, kidney, or pancreatic cancer, weakened immune systems, decreased fertility, endocrine disruption, elevated cholesterol, increased risk of asthma, thyroid disease, and puzzling weight gain.

It’s claimed that PFAS chemicals have contaminated drinking water for nearly one-half of America’s population. Interestingly enough, American cases of chronic illnesses at nearly 50% of the general population seems to support that statement, more on this later.

The US EPA website lists the hazards of PFASs at risks of various levels based upon peer-reviewed scientific studies with a stated caveat, depending upon “exposure to certain levels of PFAS.” Certain levels are two catchwords that leave a person uncertain as to… what and how much is dangerous?

Meanwhile, chronic illness in the U.S., which is likely a result of excessive PFAS exposure, is rampant. According to The Commonwealth Fund (founded in 1918): U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective, 2019: Higher Spending, Worse Outcomes, d/d January 30th, 2020: “The U.S. has the highest chronic disease burden… and an obesity rate that is two times higher than the OECD average.” But it spends more on health care than any other country. Ouch!

Thankfully and importantly, EWG offers a free Guide to “Avoiding PFAS Chemicals.”

The EWG study discovered alarming off-the-charts levels of PFAS chemicals throughout America: “EWG found that median amount of PFAS in freshwater fish were an astounding 280 times greater than forever chemicals detected in some commercially caught and sold fish,” Ibid.

According to David Andrews Ph.D. EWG senior scientist: “People who consume freshwater fish, especially those who catch and eat fish regularly, are at risk of alarming levels of PFAS in their bodies,” Ibid.

And according to Scott Faber, EWG Senior VP for Government Affairs: “These test results are breathtaking… Eating one bass is equivalent to drinking PFOS-tainted water for a month,” Ibid.

EWG discovered: “The extent of contaminated fish to be staggering.” Test results show PFAS contamination across the country from Oregon to Maine. EWG claims there may be more than forty thousand (40,000) industrial polluters of PFAS in the United States alone: “For decades, polluters have dumped as much PFAS as they wanted into our rivers, streams, lakes and bays with impunity We must turn off the tap of PFAS pollution from industrial discharges, which affect more and more Americans every day.” (EWG)

In contrast to a frustrating ongoing procrastination in America, Europeans are taking a much stronger stance on PFAS Chemicals. Forty-six (46) European civil society organizations have demanded an urgent banning by the EU of all PFAS consumer products by 2025 and “across all uses by 2030.” (Source: Civil Society Groups Urge the EU to Keep Their Promises to Ban ‘Forever Chemicals’ PFAS, Health and Environment Alliance aka: HEAL, October 2022)

A statement by the Health and Environment Alliance/Europe: “PFAS pollution is out of control and exposure to several forever chemicals have been linked to an array of adverse health impacts, from liver damage to reduced response to routine vaccination by children and certain cancers. PFASs have contaminated the entire planet and are found in the bodies of most people around the globe.”

“We’re talking about a group of entirely human-made chemicals that didn’t exist on the planet a century ago and have now contaminated every single corner. No one gave their consent to be exposed to these harmful chemicals, we haven’t had the choice to opt out and now we have to live with this toxic legacy for decades to come. The very least we can do is to stop adding to this toxic burden by banning PFAS use and production now,” Dr. Julie Schneider, PFAS campaigner at CHEM Trust. (HEAL)

So far efforts to diminish/control/ban PFASs in the United States have been haphazard and limited in scope. Manufacturing of PFAS has mostly moved offshore, so it now comes back in products from abroad. According to EWG: “There may be more than forty thousand (40,000) industrial polluters of PFAS in the United States.” (Source: The Environmental Working Group, Forever Chemicals in Every River in the US, DGR News Service, January 27, 2023)

Some states have legislated limited restrictions, e.g., PFASs were detected by the Department of Health in Honolulu’s drinking water in 2021. Posthaste, Hawaii House Bill 1644 (2022) was enacted to prohibit manufacture and sale of certain items that contain PFAS such as wraps, liners, plates, food boats, and pizza boxes. Additionally, the bill bans PFAS in products that already have established alternatives. A few other states are also limiting PFAS chemicals.

Patrick Byrne, an environmental pollution researcher at the U.K.’s Liverpool John Moores University (a public research university est. 1823), who was not involved in the EWG research: “PFAS are probably the greatest chemical threat the human race is facing in the 21st Century.” (Source: Eating One Fish from U.S. Lakes or Rivers Likened to Drinking Months’ Worth of Contaminated Water, CBS News, January 17, 2023)

Not surprisingly, in the face of an epidemic of PFAS chemicals soaked into the fabric of America, the country ranks high in the world for cases of chronic diseases, including, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, stroke, heart disease, respiratory diseases, arthritis, obesity, and oral diseases. Forty-five percent (45%) of America’s population, or roughly 133 million Americans, have at least one chronic disease. (Source: National Center for Biotechnology – Information/National Library of Medicine)

Forty-five percent is a weighty number.

What can be done?

Is the EPA up to the task?

Answer: No, not even close.

The EPA is overwhelmed, understaffed, underfunded and outlawyered at every crossing. Despite 100+ pages of statutory text in the Toxic Substances Control Act, chemical manufacturers have no legal obligation to test or to assess the toxicity of manufactured chemicals. America’s main line of defense against toxic chemicals is an understaffed, horribly underfunded EPA. They must dig through tens of thousands of scientific data to determine what’s good and what’s bad. But without enough bodies on hand to keep turning the pages. Moreover, many chemical compositions are shielded behind “trade secrets.”

“The EPA has only banned a handful of chemicals in over 40 years.” (Source: Industrial Chemical Polluters are Almost Unregulated in the US, Massive Science, May 13, 2020).

According to the following article, Congressional Lack of Funding Continues to Jeopardize EPA Operations, EHS Administration, Wastewater, May 18, 2022: “The EPA has been substantially ‘hollowed out’ for inadequate resources that have long been dangerously declining to a point where EPA is spending, in real dollars, less than half what the agency spent in 1980.”

Therefore, in the face of tens of thousands of potentially toxic chemicals slushing about in rivers, lakes, marshes, farmland, city drainage systems, in fact throughout the country, the EPA’s wherewithal is embarrassingly scandalously weak and a sure signal of a failing society. According to sources, the recent appropriations bill rejected a piddly $10 million budget increase to address polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Evidently, Congress is not at all serious about one of the country’s most serious threats to citizens of every congressional district. They don’t care! Can’t even commit to a lousy $10M increase.

All of that on top of 4 years of Trump administration hatchet jobs on the EPA: “Trump’s environmental record is such a toxic disaster it should be declared a Superfund site.” (Source: Carol Browner, head of EPA during Clinton Administration). Trump’s fiscal 2021 prop0sed budget called for a 26% hit to EPA. This after a few years of a hatchet job on environmental departments of the federal government, chasing senior scientists out, many went to France where Macron greeted them with open arms. Just imagine Trump back in the White House! Whew!

Somewhat timidly, the EPA has been studying the PFAS issue and has taken some preventative measures, but sources wonder if it is even remotely close to adequate. With 40,000 industrial PFAS polluters in America, even though there’s no manufacturing of PFASs in the U.S. any longer, the question arises: Who’s watching the store? PFASs that are prohibited from manufacturing in America are okay elsewhere and end up in products exported to America which, via various manufacturing processes, end up in the environment.

What does it take?

Does it take a mean-spirited maddened consortium of angry pissed-off civic groups like the European HEAL campaign, which has demanded an urgent banning by the EU of all PFAS consumer products by 2025 and across all uses by 2030, in order to move the needle to control/ban/restrict PFAS chemicals?

Otherwise, putting it bluntly, we are blindly, indiscriminately poisoning ourselves.

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on February 3, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Doomsday Clock Jitters and “How to Fix a Broken Planet”

Image by Javier Miranda licensced by Unsplash
Image by Javier Miranda licensed by Unsplash

Doomsday Clock Jitters and “How to Fix a Broken Planet”

By Robert Hunziker

In January of every year for the past 75 years the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists publishes an updated setting of the Doomsday Clock. The clock is a metaphor for how close or far humanity is from the brink.

Coincidentally, on the heels of the resetting of the world-famous clock this year, Julian Cribb, who is one of the world’s most erudite science writers, is releasing a new book: How To Fix A Broken Planet, Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Cribb’s book has entire chapters that deal with every major concern of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He describes in detail the very issues that disturb the Science and Security Board members, and he offers solutions to those same issues that served to nudge the iconic clock to its most intimidating, most threatening, most unnerving level in over 75 years: 90 Seconds to Midnight.

According to the Board, as of January 24, 2023, the new setting: “A Time of Unprecedented Danger. It is 90 Seconds to Midnight.”

“This year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.” (Source: Bulletin Statement…Link to full statement: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/)

As of today, the iconic clock has traveled far from its courageous beginnings when it first registered the dangers of nuclear annihilation in the 1940s. Today’s modern version of the enduring clock includes worldwide concerns: (1) climate change (2) bioterrorism (3) artificial intelligence and (4) damage inflicted by mis/disinformation. These elements fuse together as a potential cataclysmic event registered by the clock’s setting vis a vis a midnight hour imagery of apocalypse.

In a fascinating coincidence of mutual awareness of missteps and human frailty, Cribb’s book addresses the same issues as the Bulletin, and much more. It is an indispensable reference for solutions to what ails the world. For example, Chapter 4 Nuclear Awakening pages 44-53: “The greatest single risk of human extinction among the 10 catastrophic threats that comprise our existential emergency is still nuclear war. However, the core issue is that conflict can originate with almost any one of them – with food shortages leading to international disputes over food, land and water, in quarrels over dwindling fish, forest, energy, etc.….” (pg. 47)

“An instance of how mega-risks may compound into nuclear war is the long-standing animosity between India and Pakistan, chiefly over Kashmir, terrorism, and the waters of the Indus River which feed both countries at a time of growing climate stress. Even a relatively limited nuclear conflict between the two – 100-150 warheads of Hiroshima scale- is projected to kill 100 million people directly and 1-2 billion people worldwide as the resulting ‘nuclear winter’ would cause harvests to fail and food supplies to collapse all around the planet.” (pg. 47)

Furthermore, on dozens of occasions because of human error or technical miscue or active threat, the world has come dangerously close to the brink of nuclear conflagration. As Cribb explains, it is a “terrifying history of which most people remain ignorant.” (pg. 49)

Cribb describes seven solutions to the nuclear threat (pages 49-51) and informs individuals of what they can do, actively supporting citizen campaigns to ban nuclear and much, much more. “Understand that a nuclear inferno is a growing threat to you, your children, and to all of posterity. It exists 24/7. It is most likely to be the cause of human extinction. The fact that it has not happened in the last seventy years does not mean it will not happen. The risk is now greater than at any time since atomic weapons were invented.” (pg. 51)

Another chapter that hits the bullseye of threats to society that’s also recognized as a serious threat by the Board: Chapter 11 – Ending the Age of Deceit: “Perhaps the deadliest pandemic ever to strike humanity is the plague of deliberate misinformation, mass delusion and unfounded beliefs which is engulfing twenty-first-century human society.” (pg. 127)

Misinformation is an all-inclusive threat that humanity has seldom faced on such a massive scale. It’s literally an out-of-control epidemic that crushes the foundations of established principles. Cribb references a study by Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom, stating: “Misinformation has reached crisis proportions… it poses a risk to international peace, interferes with democratic decision making, endangers the well-being of the planet and threatens public health.” (pgs. 127-28).

The motive behind spreading lies and conspiracy theories runs the gamut from monetary greed, political advantage, malice, and hatred of others to ruinous ignorance, the most dangerous element of all the dangers. “The problem of mass delusion is compounded by signs that humans are less intelligent than they were a generation or two ago. Recent research has found that human IQ has declined by around 13 points since the mid-1970s.” (pg. 131)

Cribb says a solution to shortsighted, laughable ignorance is to reframe all economic, political, religious, and narrative discourse in a place that calls upon everyone to help develop a worldwide plan for survival in the face of unprecedented challenges, requiring worldwide leadership at all levels, media, teachers, religious leaders, and actively involved citizen groups forming an Earth System Treaty negotiated internationally by all countries in a uniform plan to “fix our planet.” Thus, overriding, overshadowing ignorant chatter and its blockhead stupidity of bold-faced lies.

The crucial significance of Cribb’s book is found in its introduction: “We humans are facing the greatest emergency of our entire million-year existence. This is a crisis compounded of 10 catastrophic risks, each of our own making. These threats are deeply interconnected and are now arriving together. However, their collective scale is so vast and their relationships so complex that few yet understand the peril they place us in.” (pg. 5)

According to Cribb, the world needs a “survival revolution.” And that is precisely what How To Fix A Broken Planet explains in detail and with solutions. It’s a fascinating, enjoyable, quick read filled with uppermost classroom quality facts that ultimately point to an Earth System Treaty with an Earth Standard Currency that literally stands the neoliberal brand of capitalism on its head and establishes value for the biosphere.

Julian Cribb is an ideal adjunct of the breadth and depth of core analysis by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board, a group of 18 experts with backgrounds in public policy, diplomacy, and worldwide trends with advice from a Board of Sponsors, which includes eleven Nobel laureates.

The initial setting for the Doomsday Clock in 1947 was seven (7) minutes to midnight. The furthest from midnight occurred in 1991 at seventeen (17) minutes to midnight on the eve of the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War.

According to the venerable clock, the most threatening years are the most recent, 2021 and 2022, both set at 100 Seconds to Midnight, a result of global nuclear/political tensions, COVID-19, climate change, a surge of disinformation undermining the integrity of democratic institutions and increasing biological weapon threats. Now, the two most threatening years have succumbed to a new low of 90 Seconds to Midnight.

Never has civilization been so much at odds with itself.

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on January 27, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Fukushima’s Toxic Dumping Flashpoint

Image by MIKI Yoshihito – CC BY 2.0
Image by MIKI Yoshihito is licensed by CC BY 2.0

Fukushima’s Toxic Dumping Flashpoint

By Robert Hunziker

“We must remind Japan that if the radioactive nuclear wastewater is safe, just dump it in Tokyo, test it in Paris and store it in Washington, but keep our Pacific nuclear-free.” (Vanuatu’s celebrated former ‘Turaga Chief’ Motarilavoa Hilda Lini)

In the face of considerable worldwide criticism, TEPCO is moving ahead with its well-advertised plans to dump contaminated water from storage tanks at the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster zone into the Pacific Ocean. They are running out of storage space and the Pacific Ocean is conveniently right next door.

The Japanese government is courting trouble, as a contracting party to: (1) the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (2) the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident, and (3) the Convention on Nuclear Safety, Japan has knowingly violated all three conventions by making the decision to dump contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean.

TEPCO’s toxic dumping scheme is opposed by some scientists as well as some of the world’s most highly regarded marine laboratories, e.g., the U.S. National Association of Marine Laboratories, with over 100 member laboratories, has issued a position paper strongly opposing the toxic dumping because of a lack of adequate and accurate scientific data in support of Japan’s assertions of safety.

The position paper: “We urge the government of Japan to stop pursing their planned and precedent-setting release of the radioactively contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean and to work with the broader scientific community to pursue other approaches that protect ocean life; human health; and those communities who depend on ecologically, economically, and culturally valuable marine resources.” (Source: U.S. Marine Labs Call for Stop to Fukushima Dumping Plans for Pacific, Pacific Island Times, Dec. 20, 2022)

Furthermore, Marine Laboratories agrees with the Pacific Island Forum’s suggestion that TEPCO look at options other than discharge. The toxic dumping plan has already put Japan at risk of losing its status as a Pacific Islands Forum Dialogue Partner. There are 21 partners, including the US, China, the UK, France, and the EU. According to Secretary General Henry Puna, the Forum has persistently requested Japan to share pivotal data, which has not been forthcoming: “In fact, we are very serious, and we will take all options to get Japan to at least cooperate with us by releasing the information that our technical experts are asking of them.” (Source: Pacific Island Forum Could Sideline Japan Over Nuclear Waste Plan, RNZ Pacific, January 12, 2023)

Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority has endorsed the dumping plan. No surprise there. Also unsurprisingly, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the marketing arm for nuclear power, claims the dumping proposal is safe. Effective December 29, 2022, IAEA released an extensive report that details how the process will be monitored by independent entities, not to worry, uh-uh.

TEPCO generates 100 cubic metres of contaminated water per day, a mixture of groundwater, seawater, and water that cools the reactors. It is filtered for “the most radioactive isotopes” and stored in above-ground water tanks, but authorities admit that the level of tritium is above standards. It is almost impossible to remove tritium from water. TEPCO claims it is “only harmful to humans in large doses.” But who’s measuring?

According to TEPCO: “After treatment the levels of most radioactive particles meet the national standard.” However, the statement that most radioactive particles meet the national standard is not reassuring. And furthermore, why should anybody anywhere in the world be permitted to discharge large quantities of contaminated water that’s been filtered for ‘most radioactive particles’ directly from a broken-down nuclear power plant into the ocean under any circumstances?

But storage space is running out and the ocean is readily available as a very convenient garbage dump. Well, yes, but maybe find more storage space… on land… in Japan!

According to a Japanese anti-nuclear campaign group, the contaminated water dumping scheme violates the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution as well as the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas. Their opposition is endorsed by the National Fisheries Cooperative Federation of Japan. In September 2022, 42,000 people signed a joint petition delivered to TEPCO and Japan’s Ministry of Economy demanding other solutions to the toxic water dumping plans. According to national broadcasting firm NHK, 51% of Japanese respondents oppose the dumping plan. And a survey by Asahi Shimbun claims 55% of the public opposes the dumping.

A Greenpeace East Asia press release d/d April 28, 2021, says; “According to the latest report by the Japanese government, there are 62 radioactive isotopes found in the existing nuclear water tanks in Fukushima, among which concentration of a radionuclide called tritium reached about 860 TBq (terabecquerel) – an alarming level that far exceeds the acceptable norm.”

China’s Xinhua News Agency claims: “TEPCO believes that tritium normally remains in the wastewater at ordinary nuclear power stations, therefore it is safe to discharge tritium-contaminated water. Experts say TEPCO is trying to confuse the concept of the wastewater that meets international standards during normal operation of nuclear power plants with that of the complex nuclear-contaminated water produced after the core meltdowns at the wrecked Fukushima power plant. The actual results of ALPS (Advanced Liquid Processing System) are not as ideal as TEPCO claims. Japanese media have found that in addition to tritium, there are a variety of radioactive substances in the Fukushima nuclear wastewater that exceed the standard. TEPCO has also admitted that about 70 percent of the water treated by ALPS contains radionuclides other than tritium at the concentration which exceeds legally required standards and requires filtration again.” (Source: World Insights: Japan Extremely Selfish to insist on Discharging Nuclear Wastewater into Sea, Xinhua, August 10, 2022)

According to Hiroyuki Uchida, mayor of Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, despite strengthened information about the toxic dumping by TEPCO and the government of Japan, the discharge plan has not gained “full understanding of citizens and fishery stakeholders.” (Source: Japanese Public Opposes Plan to Dump Radioactive Water into Sea, Asia & Pacific by Xinhau, January 15, 2023)

Rhea Moss-Christian, executive director of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, aka: the Pacific Tuna Commission said: “It’s a real concern and I just wish they would take a bit of time to think more carefully about this… this is a massive release and a big, big potential disaster if it’s not handled properly… There are a number of outstanding questions that have yet to be fully answered. They have focused a lot on one radionuclide and not very much on others that are also present in the wastewater.” (Source: Hiroshima Survivor Pleads for Halt of Radioactive Waste Dump in Pacific Ocean, INA Pacific News Service, December 20, 2022)

Greenpeace/Japan on TEPCO dumping: “The Japanese government has once again failed the people of Fukushima. The government has taken the wholly unjustified decision to deliberately contaminate the Pacific Ocean with radioactive wastes. It has discounted the radiation risks and turned its back on the clear evidence that sufficient storage capacity is available on the nuclear site as well as in surrounding districts.[2] Rather than using the best available technology to minimize radiation hazards by storing and processing the water over the long term, they have opted for the cheapest option [3], dumping the water into the Pacific Ocean… Since 2012, Greenpeace has proactively campaigned against plans to discharge Fukushima contaminated water – submitting technical analysis to UN agencies, holding seminars with local residents of Fukushima with other NGOs, and petitioning against the discharges and submitted to relevant Japanese government bodies.” (Source: Greenpeace Press Release, April 13, 2021)

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly on September 22nd, 2022, President David Panuelo of Micronesia stated: “We cannot close our eyes to the unimaginable threats of nuclear contamination, marine pollution, and eventual destruction of the Blue Pacific Continent. The impacts of this decision are both transboundary and intergenerational in nature.”

In April 2021 Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister (serving from 2012-to-2021) Tarō Asō publicly stated that the treated and diluted water “will be safe to drink.” In response to Deputy PM Asō, Chinese Foreign Minister Lijian Zhao replied: “The ocean is not Japan’s trashcan” and furthermore, since Japan claims it’s safe to drink, “then drink it!” (Source: China to Japan: If Treated Radioactive Water from Fukushima is Safe, ‘Please Drink It’ Washington Post, April 15, 2021)

Mr. Zhao may have stumbled upon the best solution to international concerns about TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) dumping contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. Instead, TEPCO should remove it from the storage tanks at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and deliver it to Japan’s water reservoirs. After all, they publicly claimed it’s “safe to drink.” Japan has approximately 100,000 dams of which roughly 3,000 are reservoirs over 15 meters (50’) height. For example, one of the largest drinking water reservoirs in Japan is Ogouchi Reservoir, which holds 189 million tons of drinking water for Tokyo.

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on January 20, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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UFOs Forever

Photo by Albert Antony on Unsplash
Photo by Albert Antony on Unsplash

UFOs Forever

By Robert Hunziker

Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAPs, the new acronym for UFOs doesn’t have a classy ring to it. The Pentagon’s decision to rename UFOs as UAPs is a big letdown. UAP is dull, unexciting, hard to remember, who really cares?. It’s an ugly acronym that takes the fun and sport out of ufology.

But they’re still out there! UFOs.

For example, Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich of “60 Minutes” fame saw one on November 14, 2004, as a newly winged pilot of a regular training mission with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group. A very fast-moving erratic object came into her view. Her leader Cmdr. Dave Fravor instructed her to “hang back and be his wingman” as he flew closer to inspect the strange object. The UFO started “mirroring his flight movements” and then “it suddenly disappeared.” After the incident, she and her commander agreed if they had been solo, they would not have reported the sighting. Intimidation by colleagues and the press overrides the reality of the moment to avoid the epithet “UFO freak.”

Several sightings by highly qualified personnel include: “Aircrews flying in ‘exclusive use’ training areas off the U.S. East Coast frequently observe unknown objects exhibiting highly anomalous flight characteristics.” (Source: Stunned by UFOs, ‘Exasperate’ Fighter Pilots Get Little Help from Pentagon, The Hill, July 8, 2022)

According to Navy fighter pilot Ryan Graves: “A cube in a sphere” is how to describe the UFOs. Another test pilot, also in 2014, reported: “A cube-in-a-sphere riding with him within 30 feet before it ‘zipped off.” Another pilot in a F/A-18F fighter in the same year had “a near collision with a cube-in-a-sphere” object.

UFOs have been spotted by some of the most credible witnesses on the planet, highly skilled military-trained pilots and radar operators: “The main revelation is that technology exists that is capable of performing flying maneuvers that shatter our perceptions of propulsion, flight controls, material science, and even physics.” (Source: Sorry, but it’s Probably Not Aliens – So, What Are Navy Pilots Seeing in the Skies? AMU-Edge, June 9, 2021)

“The Nimitz encounter with the Tic Tac proved that exotic technology that is widely thought of as the domain of science fiction actually exists. It is real. It isn’t the result of altered perception, someone’s lucid dream, a stray weather balloon, or swamp gas. Someone or something has crossed the technological Rubicon and has obtained what some would call the Holy Grail of aerospace engineering… What was strange, the pilots said, was that the video showed objects accelerating to hypersonic speed, making sudden stops and instantaneous turns — something beyond the physical limits of a human crew,” Ibid.

A June 2021 Pentagon report claims US Navy pilots reported 144 sightings of UAPs (UFOs) since 2004. Interestingly, according to the Pentagon, most of the sightings “probably do represent physical objects.” (Source: Footage of Bizarre Metallic UFO Shown by Pentagon Officials at Historic Hearing, LiveScience, May 17, 2022)

“Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray stated: ‘I do not have an explanation for what this specific object is.’ According to Bray, since the release of last year’s report, the number of reported UAP sightings has grown to more than 400 and the incidents — many of which occurred in military training areas and designated airspaces and remain unidentified — were ‘frequent and continuing,” Ibid.

Pilots observe objects that remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly or move at considerable speed without any discernible means of propulsion. Of concern, U.S. military craft have been involved in 11 near-collisions.

According to Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie, a new group referenced as AOIMSG has been established to track UAPs. To date, the Pentagon cannot rule out the possibility that sightings could be extraterrestrial life, and confirming; “There are elements of our government engaged in looking for extraterrestrial life,” Ibid.

“The Defense Intelligence Agency’s secretive Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) that ran from 2007 to 2012, reported more than 300 medical accounts of human interaction with UFOs — some of which included burn injuries, brain damage, nerve damage, heart palpitations and headaches from alleged close encounters with ‘anomalous vehicles,” Ibid.

Finally, in this new era of the Pentagon’s approach to UFOs, the ’little green men” jokes are officially over. “Last summer, David Norquist, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, announced the formal existence of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Forde. The 2021 Intelligence Authorization Act, signed this past December, stipulates that the government had a hundred and eighty days to gather and analyze… In a recent interview, John Ratcliffe, the former director of National Intelligence, emphasized that the issue was no longer to be taken lightly. ‘When we talk about sightings… we are talking about objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots or have been picked up by satellite imagery, that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain, movements that are hard to replicate, that we don’t have the technology for or are travelling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom.” (Source: How The Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.S Seriously, The New Yorker, April 30, 2021)

Rebuttals by scientists that “flying saucers didn’t exist because they couldn’t exist” go back to the first public sightings but are now soundly rejected as the US finally comes to grips with the reality of credible witness sightings. It’s hard to discount one’s own highly trained military personnel.

The first official close-range sighting of a UFO occurred in 1948 when two Eastern Airline pilots in a DC-3 observed a “large, cigar-shaped light speed toward them at a tremendous velocity before making an impossibly abrupt turn and vanishing into a clear sky,” Ibid.

Subsequently, Project Blue Book reviewed 12,000 cases finding “701 unexplained.” As a follow up to Project Blue Book, the 1968 Condon Report, a thousand-page “Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects” concluded that 91 specially selected Blue Book cases found 30 remained as “official mysteries.” Tellingly, these past efforts have always been seen as efforts to discount the existence of UFOs.

Another very credible and highly exposed close-range sighting of a craft occurred in 2006 at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. A metallic disk (witnesses identified it as such) hovered over gate C-17 for several minutes before suddenly accelerating straight up, leaving a perfect circle in the cloud layer. Actual witnesses (several) refused to be recognized or cited when the Chicago Tribune published an account of the incident for fear of intimidation. Interestingly, a taped conversation between a United Airlines supervisor and an air-traffic controller: “Hey, did you see a flying disk out by C17?” Audible laughter… “A flying… you’re seeing flying disks?” … “Well, that’s what a pilot in the ramp area at c17 told us.” … “I haven’t seen anything Sue, and if I did I wouldn’t admit to it.”

What is official now but was not been treated seriously over the past decades is a new level of competence and resolute seriousness. “The U.A.P. issue is being taken very seriously now even compared to where it was two or three years ago,” claims a former Pentagon official,” Ibid.

Pilots are encouraged to report incidents without fear of scorn or censure. Also, it’s believed that the government already has remarkable physical evidence that it has not released to the public. According to The New Yorker article: “The former Pentagon official implied that the government possesses stark visual documentation.” Several other interviewees endorsed that claim.

“In the past two years, the Pentagon’s U.A.P. investigators have distributed two classified intelligence papers on secure networks that allegedly contain images and videos of bizarre spectacles, including a cube-shaped object and a large equilateral triangle emerging from the ocean. One of the reports brooked the subject of “alien” or “non-human” technology, but also provided a litany of prosaic possibilities,” Ibid.

Moreover, according to The New Yorker article, virtually all astrobiologists believe that “we are not alone.” Astronomers at the SETI Institute believe we’ll find “inconvertible proof of intelligent life by 2036.” They claim there are hundreds of millions of potentially habitable exoplanets in just our galaxy alone. And there may be 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.

Our galaxy is just one among numerous galaxies, and it isn’t even considered a big galaxy. The Milky Way stretches for 105,700 light-years in diameter and may contain at least 100 billion planets and 400 billion stars. The largest galaxy ever discovered, IC1101, contains over 100 trillion stars. The possibilities are boundless. Astrobiologists say our civilization is most likely mediocre or inferior and millions or even billions of years behind distant neighbors. (Source: The Nine Planets)

In a fascinating twist of fate, the author of The New Yorker story met with a lieutenant colonel of the Air Force who encountered a UFO that registered on his plane’s sensors. He never reported the incident because of fear of intimidation, but when the Nimitz story came out in the New York Times, his buddies, whom he had privately confided his story of seeing “a 40-foot-long craft that disobeyed known principles of aerodynamics and looked exactly like the Tic Tac seen by Commander Fravor,” they called to tell him they apologized for calling him “an idiot.”

They are out there!

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on January 17, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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The Invisible Global Heat Danger Zone

Image by Elena Mozhvilo.
Image by Elena Mozhvilo, licensed by Unsplash

The Invisible Global Heat Danger Zone

By Robert Hunziker

NASA claims that 2022 was one of the hottest years ever recorded with record-breaking heat waves around the world, as major commercial waterways, like the Danube, Po, Rhine, Yangtze, and Mississippi rivers temporarily dried up leaving humongous river barges choking in mud.

But that was merely global-warming-lite.

The real global warming threat is invisible. It’s the oceans where 90% of planet-generated heat is captured, and it’s starting to impact the climate system with increasing ferocity. Statistical records dating back to 1958 show a relentless rise in global ocean temperatures that rapidly accelerated post 1990. By now, it’s evident that climate change got a set of wings during the final decade of the 20th century, and it’s still soaring.

According to a recent extensive study by Lijing Cheng, et al, Another Year of Record Heat for the Oceans, Atmospheric Sciences d/d January 10, 2023: “The inexorable climb in ocean temperatures is the inevitable outcome of Earth’s energy imbalance, primarily associated with increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases. The trend is so steady and robust that annual records continue to be set with each new year.”

The repercussions are immense but not recognized until it’s too late, which is the unique characteristic of invisibleness. The general public, plus country leaders, do not connect with this hidden monster. After all, it is invisible. That one fact alone may explain why the world’s nation/states have not felt enough public pressure nor truly come to grips with the danger in order to aggressively take unified steps to halt rapid increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gases. It’s because so much of it is invisibly hidden in the sea; this then explains, in part, the wasteful series of bereft annual UN Conferences of the Parties COPs with almost zero net results after three decades of haggling over the same subject time and again. Regularly, greenhouse gases continue setting new records in the face of 30,000-40,000 professionals meeting annually to discuss the subject of too much CO2.

If in fact global warming could be flipped and the oceans replace the atmosphere with its heat content turned loose for all to see, feel, and experience, it would create a panic-stricken world that would likely burn up over time, as if it’s an emergent Venus with its 95% CO2 atmosphere and 850°F temperature, hot enough to melt metal.

For example, according to Ken Buesseler, a biochemist at the prestigious Woods Hole Institute in Massachusetts: CO2 levels in the atmosphere “would jump by nearly 50 percent” without the many ecological services the twilight zone (ocean) provides. Already, the ocean stores 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere and 20 times more than all plants and soil combined. (Source: Bella Isaacs-Thomas, When it Comes to Sucking Up Carbon Emissions, ‘The Ocean Has Been Forgiving.’ That Might Not Last, PBS News Hour, Science, March 25, 2022).

Meanwhile, Argo, which is a global collaborative partnership with several nations maintaining an array of ~4000 autonomous ocean floats (Argos) that each profile vertically from 2000m once every 10 days, measuring temperatures and salinity data.  The data from Argo allows for unprecedented spatial coverage of the world’s oceans, with approximately one float per 3-degree box across the global ocean where it is deeper than 2000 meters.

So then, what are the repercussions of too much heat in the oceans?

For starters, the year 2022 saw the most volatile climate behavior of any current lifetime, massive floods, pounding droughts, depleting reservoirs everywhere, as the oceans reacted to too much heat. Studies clearly show that the world’s seas are the predominate influence on global weather. As oceans get hotter, they supercharge extremes like intense hurricanes and massive pounding atmospheric rivers with its sights recently set on Northern California, nearly slip-sliding into the ocean.

According to an article in The Guardian that discussed the Cheng study: “The international team of scientists… concluded: ‘The Earth’s energy and water cycles have been profoundly altered due to the emission of greenhouse gases by human activities, driving pervasive changes in Earth’s climate system.” (Source: Damian Carrington, Oceans Were the Hottest Ever Recorded in 2022, Analysis Shows, The Guardian, January 11, 2023)

“Prof John Abraham, at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and part of the study team, said: ‘Measuring the oceans is the most accurate way of determining how out of balance our planet is… We are getting more extreme weather because of the warming oceans and that has tremendous consequences all around the world,” Ibid.

Another major study claims it is highly likely that the oceans are now at the hottest in over 1,000 years and heating up faster than any time over the past 2,000 years. (Source: Annual Review of Marine Science by Department of Physical Oceanography, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institutions, January 2021).

Moreover, as for the global warming outlook, it’s lousy! The World Meteorological Organization recently reported that atmospheric concentration of the main greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide reached all-time highs as of October 2022. Alarmingly, the WMO found the biggest year-over-year jump in methane which is a major concern as it is a powerful stimulant of global warming. Methane emissions have skyrocketed, hitting +262% pre-industrial levels.

Posthaste, meaning like yesterday, scientists claim we need a major transformation of our industrial, energy, and transport systems and whole way of life, as time is running out to do much of anything to alleviate a thundering freight train behind that bright light at the end of the tunnel, assuming it can even be done. The UN has been warning for some time now that even with current emissions pledges by countries, which few if any seem to honor, it will lead to catastrophic climate breakdown. And, based upon the out-of-control climate system of 2022-23, it appears to have already started in earnest. So, forget all the phony promises of “net zero by blah-blah-blah” and buckle-up!

Still, a universal plan to address the biggest threat of all time to humanity awaits in the wings. Yet, understandably, it’s nearly impossible to really impart to the general public and to national leaders the gravity of the situation the way climate scientists see it. Many of them are scared, really scared.

Of even more concern, watch out below/duck for cover as the amount of latent heat contained in the oceans combines with a distinct possibility of the current La Niña, a cooling trend at the equatorial Pacific Ocean (which served to cool the hottest year in 2022- didn’t help much, hmm) ends and transitions into El Niño, when the waters of the equatorial Pacific turn much warmer with extensive global impact. This could result in a super cycle of crazed weather patterns throughout the world getting even crazier with scorching bouts of drought followed by Noah’s Ark flooding, followed by city-flattening hurricanes followed by who-knows-what’s next. This is all within the realm of possibility more so than ever before because of the constant pressure of more and more CO2 and sister gases spewing into the atmosphere as the oceans may now be too weakened or simply unable to continue absorbing 90% of planetary heat and 30%-45% of CO2, which is becoming more and more evident via the ballistic off-the-charts climate system of recent.

The ocean is now paying the price for years of absorbing heat and CO2 to enable a stable climate system, until now.

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on January 13, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Another Blistering Year Next Year?

Photo by Patrick Perkins
Photo by Patrick Perkins

Another Blistering Year Next Year?

By Robert Hunziker

NASA claims that 2022 was one of the hottest years ever recorded. Furthermore, according to CareOurEarth.com, this past year experienced: “Record-Breaking Heatwaves Around the World.”

It was the year of fires (everywhere, big fires), scorching heat (globally) floods (Pakistan! Europe, China) loss of potable water (especially France and Italy) nearly impassable commercial waterways (Danube, Po, Rhine, Mississippi) sunbaked droughts (US Southwest, Chile) sputtering water reservoirs (Lake Mead). In all, a mini-biblical-scale worldwide disaster scenario that conditioned people of the world for what to expect when global warming really cranks up bigtime.

In that regard, the upcoming year 2023 looks like it could be bigtime.

And, of special note, the world’s leaders, scientists, economic bureaucrats, and fossil fuel lobbyists met in Egypt at UN-sponsored COP27 only a month ago for two weeks to figure out what’s going on with climate change. The gathering of 40,000 honorable delegates took place right on the heels of resounding evidence of a climate system on crutches. The delegates agreed in unison that we should not exceed 1.5°C pre-industrial or all hell will break lose.

Well, okay, but unfortunately 1.5C will likely come much earlier than most people expect based upon a recent article in Wired magazine by Bill McGuire, one of the world’s most forthright climate scientists: El Niño Is Coming—and the World Isn’t Prepared, Wired, December 24, 2022.

Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, has a reputation for telling it like it is, no sugar coating. In his words: “Global heating will set the stage for extreme weather everywhere in 2023. The consequences are likely to be cataclysmic.”

Well, if cataclysmic means more water supply failures, then the Po River Valley and French authorities that trucked water to more than 100 towns this past summer will need more trucks. Commercial barge operators on the rivers Danube and Mississippi will need to buy trucks to deliver basic goods.

The world climate system on-the-ropes in 2022 didn’t go unnoticed. An article in the Insurance Journal, d/d August 26, 2022, one of the nation’s most well-respected insurance trade publications, discussed the issue: Why Are the World’s Rivers, Canals, and Reservoirs Turning to Dust?

“From the U.S. to Italy to China, waters have receded, leaving nothing but barren banks of silt and oozing, muddied sand. Canals are empty. Reservoirs have turned to dust.” (Insurance Journal)

“The world is fully in the grip of accelerating climate change, and it has a profound economic impact. Losing waterways means a serious risk to shipping routes, agriculture, energy supplies — even drinking water,” Ibid.

“Rivers that have been critical to commerce for centuries are now shriveled, threatening the global movement of chemicals, fuel, food and other commodities,” Ibid.

“The reasons global waterways have dried to a trickle are complex. There’s the impact of the weather-roiling La Niña, prolonged drought in many regions and also simple bad luck. But the biggest driver underpinning the shift is climate change,” Ibid.

When a mainstream, conservative publication like the Insurance Journal publishes an article that reads like a doom & gloom rejoinder to climate deniers, inclusive of several right-wingnut Republicans, one must wonder what the hell’s really going on in the world, meaning: Who’s preventing a facsimile of a Marshall Plan to hopefully fix climate change that, at the very least, gives it its best shot? After all, it’s not exactly a military secret that the climate system is out of whack, screwed-up, and extremely dangerous, unless you listen to the insanity of Fox News charlatans.

Of considerable concern, the record-setting heat of 2022 happened during a recurrent climate cycle known as La Niña when waters of the equatorial Pacific are noticeably cooler than normal. In turn, La Niña influences weather patterns across the planet by providing a “cooler” backdrop. Thankfully, it acted to reduce the record-setting heat of 2022. Hmm.

“La Niña will end and eventually transition into the better-known El Niño, which sees the waters of the equatorial Pacific becoming much warmer. When it does, the extreme weather that has rampaged across our planet in 2021 and 2022 will pale into insignificance.” (McGuire)

Forecasters expect La Niña to continue into early 2023, but El Niño is expected to start strutting its stuff sometime during the year, which will probably bring on “the hottest year on record,” according to Bill McGuire, as the heat builds in 2023, it is within the range of possibility that global temperatures will “touch or even exceed 1.5°C.” But delegates to the UN COP27 affair in Egypt only one month ago drew a line in the sand at 1.5C.

McGuire views 1.5C as entry into the dreaded climate breakdown zone, meaning, in his words: “The formerly stable climate will begin to collapse in earnest.”

Assuming it happens as suggested, the implications are not good: Starting with (1) drought-slashing crop yields, leading to (2) rising crop prices, stoking inflation, resulting in (3) the possibility of civil unrest, as (4) Lake Powell could stop power generation for 4 million householders sometime in 2023, foreshadowing (5) the possibility of Lake Mead “dead pool” status in 2024, impacting 40,000,000 people. If the foregoing sounds apocalyptic, it is apocalyptic, but frankly, it’s only a sampling. Hopefully, with fingers crossed, nature surprisingly takes an altered course, or some other unexpected miracle intervenes to lessen the impact of what could be an extremely dangerous unforgiving 2023 and 2024.

McGuire also mentioned the impact of super storms. La Niña lessens the impact of hurricanes in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico but losing its impact in 2023 is expected to bring stormier weather, e.g.: “This would favor the formation and persistence of super-hurricanes, powering winds and storm surges capable of wiping out a major US city, should they strike land.” (McGuire)

According to Severe Weather Europe d/d December 3, 2022: “We are already seeing signs that later in 2023, an El Nino could emerge after several years. It can completely change the weather patterns for the weather seasons next year.” (Severe-weather.eu)

“El Nino and La Nina are just opposite faces of the ENSO, which stands for ‘El Niño Southern Oscillation.’ This region in the equatorial Pacific Ocean periodically shifts between warm and cold phases. Typically, there is a phase change around every 1-3 years,” Ibid.

Over time, ENSO affects overall global circulation, as it influences weather patterns across the world.

Once damaging weather systems disrupt what the world depends upon, like grain supplies, at some point in time universal distress takes over people’s behavior as they start figuring out what’s going on in the world and start looking for answers. Along those lines, most major nations are squeezed for funds because of excessive levels of debt. Meanwhile, almost all the extra money that could be used to help fix the climate mess is held at the top of the pyramid where billionaires hang out with their pet projects, like a death-trip to Mars or a 20-minute joyride into outer space. Oh, Gee, What a thrill! But what if confused angry masses surround their gated estates, like the Reign of Terror/Paris 1793 when 80,000 Parisians surrounded the Bastille, demanding billionaire funding for fixing the climate and who knows what else? What will the billionaires do?

As it happens, industrial civilization, the biggest heat machine of all time, increasingly puts a bigger and ever-bigger exclamation point on the ENSO cycle, which results in years like 2022 with NASA posting red-warning-flags all over the place. Countries of the world recognize this human-generated impact on global warming and ecosystem destruction because they meet once a year at the UN Conference of the Parties COPs to discuss it, in fact, nearly 200 attended COP27. Why would all 0f the world’s countries agree to meet every year to discuss the same thing over and over again if they weren’t nervous about dire ramifications when too much CO2 blankets the atmosphere, like we’ve got right now?

Yet perplexingly, despite NASA’s red-warning-flags and despite unanimous agreement among all of the nations at COPs that global warming must be stopped at 1.5C, after 30 years of haggling, nothing of consequence on a worldwide coordinated basis has been initiated to reduce greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Why not? After all, if you break it, y0u can fix it, or can you?

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on December 30, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Multiple Breadbasket Failures as Radicals Stop Private Jets

Photograph Source: Timo Breidenstein – GFDL 1.2
Photograph Source: Timo Breidenstein – GFDL 1.2

Multiple Breadbasket Failures as Radicals Stop Private Jets

By Robert Hunziker

Global warming is taking a big bite out of the planet. Unprecedented severe droughts dry up major commercial waterways and extreme conditions have either diminished or partially decimated many crops in the US, Europe, China, Australia, the Indian subcontinent and throughout regions of Africa.

This article explores the impact of “multiple breadbasket failures” as defined by UN research. As well as a discussion of angry radicals that stop private jets, thus challenging in direct fashion a source at the pinnacle of climate issues, discussed in the final 7 paragraphs.

But first: (1) What will stop global warming? (2) Will global warming get worse even as countries go to net zero by 2050, which will continue adding CO2 every year for the next 27 years? (3) Therefore, does net zero by 2050 imply loss of commercial waterways like the Danube and loss of major water reservoirs like Lake Mead, both of which nearly failed in 2022? (4) Is net zero by 2050 a ruse?

The UN-sponsored Conference of the Parties COP annual get-togethers have punted on any kind of serious diminishment of fossil fuel emissions, as the fossil fuel industry itself is cranking up big time by planning to spend well over $1T to develop more oil and gas, which, in turn, ultimately brings on severe droughts that destroys crops and bleeds commercial waterways of navigability as reservoirs hit dead pool status.

It’s an endless circuitous spectacle of insanity in pursuit of elusive infinite economic growth bumping up against planetary limitations, as we currently use 1.5 more biocapacity than the planet can regenerate (Global Footprint Network).

It’s also a guaranteed losing proposition, but who really cares is the problem. If it were otherwise, meaning if world leaders really cared, then there’d be all kinds of worldwide coordinated Marshall Plans funding renewables, climate restoration, refreezing the Arctic, etc. but that’s not the case, not even close.

More than 80% of the world’s population lives in countries that are currently running ecological deficits, using more resources than the ecosystems can regenerate. Meanwhile, global warming is hammering that deficit hard and harder via soaring drought conditions around the world.

According to the World Economic Forum’s coverage of drought conditions, a new UN study claims drought frequency and duration has increased by nearly a third since 2000. A 33% increase on a biomass as large as the planet in only 20+ years is almost impossible to phantom. How is it even possible in such a short timeframe? (Source: Droughts are Getting Worse Around the World, World Economic Forum, August 2022)

The Drought in Numbers 2022 Report concludes: “Sustainable and efficient agricultural management techniques are needed to grow more food on less land and with less water, and humans must change their relationships with food, fodder and fibre – moving toward plant-based diets and stemming the consumption of animals,” Ibid.

Stop Eating Animals helps resolve many ecosystem issues.

UN researchers refer to global warming’s damage to major growing regions as “Multiple Breadbasket Failures.” They know, as we all know, unless global warming lessens soon, meaning real soon, multiple breadbasket failures will get worse. “A study of global hotspots of heat stress due to climate change showed areas of Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia and North America (40–60 degrees N.), which include the major grain producing areas of the world, as being particularly vulnerable.” (Source: Anthony Janetos, et al, The Risks of Multiple Breadbasket Failures in the 21st Century: A Science Research Agenda, Boston University, March 2017)

The risks are well defined: Only 23% of total cropland in the world accounts for most of total global cereal production of three major crops, i.e., maize (70%) wheat (69%) and rice (85%) according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Statistics Division. The Rub: Those producing areas are the most exposed or most “particularly vulnerable.”

The impact of devastating drought and food vulnerability is nowhere more prevalent than the Horn of Africa where tens of millions of people are up against the wall with 9,000,000 animals already dead, a result of 60 months of terrifying brutal drought. It is an example of global warming-enhanced drought conditions gone bonkers, at its worse. According to Dr. Deepmala Mahia of CARE International, 50,000,000 people are “one step away from starvation.” (Source: Hunger Crisis in Horn of Africa Grows as Drought Persists, Voice of America News, VOA, September 23, 2022)

Imagine being one of fifty million one step away from starvation. This represents a gruesome global warming-enhancement story that unfortunately the world choses to ignore as thousands of furrowed brows of global leaders and high-ranking bureaucrats and climate scientists gather annually at UN-sponsored COPs to discuss how bad climate change was in previous years… but do nothing meaningful enough to resolve it.

Meanwhile, global warming has turned ferocious and mean-spirited like never before. The trend is ominously right around the proverbial corner until and unless a massive worldwide coordinated campaign stops fossil fuel dead in its tracks. It’s impossible to sugar coat the devastating impact of fossil fuel emissions.

Scientists are now discussing a new Era of Climate Change-Driven Simultaneous Food Supply Failures: The UN World Food Programme has warned that climate change is now the driving force behind global hunger. For example, extreme temperatures starting in March of 2022, and lasting for weeks, badly damaged India’s rice crop, which is 40% of the world rice trade. Vegetable yields in parts of India were down by 50%. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s floods reduced the rice harvest by 30%. Pakistan is the world’s fourth largest exporter of grain.

Gernot Laganda, Director of Climate at the United Nations World Food Programme: “Climate change is an important driver in the current increase in global hunger. Right now, 345 million people are facing acute food insecurity – which is an increase from 135 million since 2019.” (Source: Scientists Warn of Breadbasket Failure Because of Climate Change, Deccan Herald, Sept. 5, 2022)

In only three years’ time the number of people facing “acute food insecurity” has ballooned by 200,000,000, up 150%. At 345 million it’s the size of the United States. It’s little wonder that mass migrations have become brazen constant features of the Northern Hemisphere. People turn desperate, move to new territory, encounter pushback by sadistic white supremacists, especially in the former colonial empires of Europe and America and all hell breaks loose in local communities that heretofore were stable and quiet, peaceful no longer.

Acute food insecurity has not hit the US, yet. Americans generally ignore the issue, but as a precursor to a tough challenging future, global warming hit US crops hard: (1) corn at its lowest yield in 10 years (2) hard red wheat the smallest since 1963 (3) Texas cotton farmers walked away from 70% of their crop because of paltry harvest (4) California’s rice harvest down 50%. The problem is more widespread that it appears on the surface, as drought has hit 40% of the US for the past 100+ weeks, according to USDA’s Brad Rippey: “Precisely where that 40 percent shifted over time, meaning different swaths of the country’s agricultural land have been affected at different times, spreading pain and difficult choices geographically and by crop.” (Source: The Summer Drought’s Hefty Toll on American Crops, The Washington Post, Sept. 5, 2022)

It is only too obvious that climate change madness must be reigned-in, or the future will turn very dark. As things stand, according to a McKinsey study, 2023 could witness a grain deficit of 60 million tons. (Source: The Grain Shortage Caused by Global Food Crisis Could Correspond to the Annual Nutritional Intake of up to 250 Million People: McKinsey, Helsinki Times, August 25, 2022)

According to McKinsey, the pandemic of 2020 increased the price of grain, and “since then, drought-induced harvests have increased prices even more. With the ongoing war in Ukraine, there is a risk of a food crisis, which may become the most serious so far in the 21st century,” Ibid.

According to the International Panel on Climate Change, IPCC: “Future projections in global yield trends of both maize and wheat indicate a significant decline; these declines can be attributed to the negative impacts of climate change arising from increasing greenhouse gas emissions.” (Source: The World’s Food Supply is Made Insecure by Climate Change, United Nations – Academic Impact)

Declining crop yields effectively reverse the impact of the storied Green Revolution, aka: The Third Agricultural Revolution of some 50-70 years ago which saw dramatic increases in crop yields and production. Whereas a couple of generations later we’re going backwards, but the global population of 3 billion in 1960 has exploded to 8 billion today. Astonishingly, we’ve added 5 billion people during one lifetime! Whew! Meanwhile, global warming’s impact of less crop yield in the face of nearly triple population numbers has grave implications.

The IPCC effectively researches and informs world leaders of the risks of climate change, as UN Secretary-General Guterres exclaims: “We are losing the fight of our lives.” In fact, they do a decent job of exposing risks. So, where’s the disconnect and failure to do something about the well-known death trap of fossil fuel emissions?

The origin of the death trap is the economic system of neoliberal capitalism that focuses on profits and growth above all other considerations, oblivious to the health of crucial life-supporting ecosystems and certainly unruffled about global warming. Notably, and obvious for all to see, it generates a tiny flock of fabulously rich people that have nearly gained control over much of the world order. Therefore, maybe the answer to the current upside/down climate system is to upend the upside/down socio-economic system that in fact perpetuates fossil fuels at any costs towards an elusive infinity of growth. After all, that tiny flock basically controls the media, as well as holding major influence over the direction of UN-sponsored COPs. Thus, they have a certain level of control over the ultimate direction of fossil fuel usage or renewable energy sources as a replacement. Therefore, the ultimate question for the future direction of the planet’s climate system, and by extension, its food supply is whether neoliberal capitalism is so impregnable as to be immovable. If its iron-fisted grip over the socio-economic system cannot be broken, then the climate system is destined to break apart worse and ever worse and even worse under neoliberalism’s relentlessness push for elusive infinite growth. Significantly, it’s getting to be very expensive.

What can be done beyond than tens of thousands of people meeting at world forums like the UN-sponsored COPs for climate change and biodiversity but without appreciable results? Meanwhile, the tiny flock of super wealthy are convinced “the market will bail us out.” After all, this is all they know. Ergo, in its infinite wisdom, the unfettered forces of neoliberal capitalism will solve the problem of global warming via human ingenuity. But unfettered neoliberal capitalism is what got us into this mess in the first place, and frankly it seems to like it.

Moreover, they proclaim, grinning from ear to ear, we’ve got all-powerful clean fusion, which sparked for the first time ever only recently, creating more energy output than energy input for a mere fraction of a second. Yeah, maybe, but that’s likely off in the future by a few decades. Stop grinning!

There is something else at work, something that goes well beyond 40,000 well-intentioned climate delegates at COP27 and all the other COP flops of the past 30 years, and its chutzpah is just starting to show enough influence over the masses to incite profound change in the direction of the infamous world order.

Recently “700 self-described climate rebels breached the chain-link fence surrounding Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, the world’s third-busiest hub for international passenger traffic, on November 5.” (Source: Christopher Ketcham & Charles Komanoff, The Shutdown of “Luxury Emissions” Should Be at the Center of Climate Revolt, The Intercept, December 13, 2022)

As it happened, bolt cutters pried open metal fences and ladders propped up against the 9-foot fence, as 700 rebels poured onto the tarmac to surround and effectively ground private jets for 6.5 hours, until police laboriously peeled the throng away.

As reported from the scene, “The superrich have got used to polluting as they please with a total disregard for people and planet, and private jets are the pinnacle of these luxury emissions that we simply cannot afford,’ Jonathan Leggett, one of the activists, told us,” Ibid.

“For reasons both symbolic and practical, the climate movement must strike not just at pipelines and mines, but also at obscene wealth,” Ibid.

“At the nexus of consumption and wealth sits luxury carbon. Which is why the Schiphol action was so strategic… The justification is unarguable. Large personal fortunes feed carbon consumption and make a mockery of programs to curb it. As well, the surplus wealth of the superrich is probably the lone source of capital that can finance the worldwide uptake of greener energy and also pay for adaptation where it’s most critical,” Ibid.

“A few days after the Schiphol revolt, climate activists under the banner of Scientists Rebellion disrupted operations at private airports in four U.S. states and a dozen other countries,” Ibid.

The world is stirring towards outright demands for radical change for the betterment of everybody. Stay tuned.

Robert Hunziker is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and published in over 50 journals, magazines and sites worldwide.

This article was originally published on December 16, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.