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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.

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Refreeze the Arctic

Photograph Source: Gary Bembridge – CC BY 2.0
Photograph Source: Gary Bembridge – CC BY 2.0

Refreeze the Arctic

By Robert Hunziker

Refreezing the Arctic sounds like a crazed impossible idea, but a knowledgeable group of scientists believe it has the potential to be the best most efficient quickest way to reduce manifold risks of a climate system that’s already in shaky condition.

For eons the world’s biggest reflector of incoming solar radiation has been the Arctic’s multi-year ice pack 10-20-30 feet thick. Now it’s merely a shadow of its former self whereas it used to reflect 80%-90% of solar radiation back into outer space. But a lot of that solar radiation is now absorbed by the planet. This loss of mojo is the result of human-generated greenhouse gases that heated up the atmosphere 3-fold more in the Arctic than elsewhere on the planet. As a result, multi-year ice has taken a big hit.

Meanwhile, the Arctic is fast approaching the dreaded Blue Ocean Event BOE, which means a period of time with essentially no ice, and which is packed full of negative connotations so far-reaching for the hemisphere that it’s beyond the scope of this article.

Interestingly, like Father Time as a figment of one’s imagination, the Arctic should carry a designation as Father Weather. After all, what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. Major changes in configuration of the Arctic seascape disrupt the jet streams in the troposphere at 20,000-30,000 feet as if it’s a child’s spinning top towards the end of its spin, turning wobbly. Which, in turn, bolsters unpredictable formidable weather throughout the hemisphere, a living nightmare that gets worse and worse.

Americas’ West experiences its worst drought in 1200 years, 100-yr floods become a routine matter, as Arctic warming amplifies Greenland disintegration and partial collapse. In all cases, the Arctic is responsible for one disaster after another, immediately to its south.

What can be done?

Answer: Refreeze the Arctic.

When it comes to the significance of refreezing the Arctic, which is roughly 2.5 times the size of Canada (NOAA) delegates to COP28 in Dubai/2023 (proof positive that oil sheikhs have highjacked UN-sponsored COPs) may want to consider memorizing, chapter and verse, A Farewell to Ice (Oxford University Press) by Peter Wadhams, emeritus professor of Ocean Physics, and Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, a brilliant book about the significance of loss of the Arctic.

Meanwhile, there is a prominent school of thought amongst a group of scientists that the most effective way to save humanity from going over the very steep climate cliff is refreezing the Arctic. Sounds complicated.

Indeed, there is ample evidence that the large loss of Arctic albedo, or ice reflection of solar radiation back into outer space, has already morphed the climate system into a monster from the North. In other words, the loss of Arctic ice is a major cause of climate-related problems throughout the hemisphere and in record numbers unprecedented throughout human history.

For example, nowadays it’s newsworthy to report colossal floods never witnessed before, massive megafires throughout the hemisphere literally around the world, torrential pounding rainstorms drowning villages and towns as well as cities, white-out blizzards, and scorching droughts destroying major water reservoirs worldwide.

None of that is normal, not even close to normal. It’s a world gone haywire.

Furthermore, mainstream news outlets have even gone so far as to discuss extreme threatening events like the Doomsday Glacier (Thwaites) situated in West Antarctica that unannounced could bust lose and flood Miami someday in the future. The public hears these unnerving news stories. Yet tens of thousands (40,000 at COP27 in Egypt) of climate delegates at UN-sponsored Conference of the Parties (COP) cannot establish a clear pathway to ameliorate the broken climate system. They simply cannot do it! Yet the delegates jabber away whilst toasting champagne glasses at the end of sessions that go nowhere but do break glass and then return home.

Planetary-Restoration

A significant very ambitious plan for refreezing the Arctic is described by climate scientists on a Google-thread code-named: Planetary-Restoration. They detail how and why refreezing the Arctic should be the primary goal of the world. Their logic has considerable merit. The following synopsis comes from Planetary-Restoration:

A stable climate is when planetary cooling balances the heating. According to the Planetary-Restoration group, to re-achieve that all-important balance via reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), such as CO2, is too slow, too risky, and too expensive to deliver net zero heating. Instead of focusing on reduction of GHGs like CO2 the focus should be: “Albedo enhancement or planetary radiation of heat and light reflected to outer space” which is far quicker, easier, cheaper, and safer for cooling the planet.

This refreezing solution is supported by the fact that “rapid Arctic warming, not global warming, is what’s causing difficult, dramatic extremes in weather and climate issues throughout the hemisphere.” Moreover, these “extremes” are far beyond anything anticipated by IPCC models and well in-excess of anything in the historical record.

Of major concern, Arctic warming is accelerating/amplifying the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet and thus risking the onset of sudden sea level rise by partial collapse. This risk is more evident and more threatening than ever before. According to Jason Box, professor in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland: “In the foreseeable scenario that global warming will only continue, the contribution of the Greenland Ice Sheet to sea level rise will only continue increasing. When we take the extreme melt year 2012 and take it as a hypothetical average constant climate later this century, the committed mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet more than doubles to 78 cm (nearly 3 feet).” Notably, this study is only looking at the situation of the Greenland Ice Sheet, not considering the mass loss from Antarctica or other glaciers around the world. (Source: Glaciologists Cut Through Melt Uncertainty of Greenland Ice Sheet, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, August 2022)

Therefore, the immediate priority for climate action must be to halt Arctic warming, which involves a type of cooling intervention called Solar Radiation Management SRM of which Stratospheric Aerosol Injection SAI is a prime example. According to the analysts, and this is a crucial fact, SAI shows promise of benign intervention sufficiently powerful to refreeze the Arctic.

The scientists recommend immediate small-scale SAI deployment to gain insight to efficacy. It is all-important to get this off the ground and operational as soon as possible. Even large-scale CO2 removal will not provide the required “cooling power” in a short enough timescale that SAI can provide.

Time is of essence more so than can be adequately expressed. According to the Climate Change Institute/The University of Maine, the Arctic was 6.63°C (11.93°F) warmer as of 12/06/2022 when compared to some 20 years ago. And, according to navy.mi animation: Arctic Sea ice thickness has barely increased over the past 30 days when ordinarily it should be rapidly thickening.

All of this is leading to more voices that were previously against or neutral on geo-engineering to call for it to help fix a nearly out-of-control climate system that has the potential to radically alter landscapes permanently, for the worst. It does not make sense to sugar coat the situation by saying “we still have time to go to net zero by 2050.” That’s a big joke, a copout. Some climate scientists believe net zero by 2030 may be cutting it too close. This brings refreezing the Arctic into the picture as a very important option for consideration.

It is believed that refreezing the Arctic will go a long way towards resolving two monstrous issues:

1. The rapid sea ice loss in the Arctic has altered the Northern Hemispheric jet streams by reducing the energy that drives the jet stream eastward, resulting in big meandering patterns north to south that create “blocking patterns” of weather extremes that, in turn, create extremes of weather-related havoc across the hemisphere.

2. Rapid Arctic warming is impacting Greenland’s melt rate which threatens to contribute to undesirable sea level rise. Already, the ice sheet is showing signs of disintegration which could result in sudden collapse. Nothing could be worse.

However, it must be noted that the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report cautions that technological fixes in the field of climate geoengineering that are unproven like carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management could trigger “catastrophic events” and a range of new hazards to both people as well as ecosystems. Indeed, the scientific community is not uniform on this issue. The ongoing debate about geoengineering’s impact on the planet is not close to settled and likely poses a challenge.

But that begs an open question of whether humans have already been geo-engineering the climate by spewing greenhouse gases, e.g., CO2, into the atmosphere like a mad hatter for over a century. So, yes, geo-engineering can go wrong, but not necessarily if it’s done right, hopefully.

Nevertheless, if Planetary-Restoration’s goals are realistic and accomplish refreezing the Arctic, which on the surface seems like a challenge beyond human capacity, but if successful, it goes without saying it will be classified as miraculous and award-winning to the nth degree, an event that may help rescue humanity from itself.

Refreezing the Arctic deserves a thorough undertaking.

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 9, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Life Beyond 1.5C

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Life Beyond 1.5C

By Robert Hunziker

Headlines describing the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties (COP) of UNFCCC more commonly referred to as COP27 at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt sent troubling messages: “The Greenwashing Scam Behind COP27’s Flop” (In These Times) “COP27 Climate Summit Missed Chance for Ambition on Fossil Fuels” (Reuters) “COP27 Is Full of Politicians and Policymakers” (The Guardian). None of the headlines spotlight climate scientists because they have been pushed into the background.

At issue, nation-state commitments to reduce CO2 emissions routinely fail. It’s been over 30 years. As a result of inaction, the impact of global warming at only 1.2°C above pre-industrial is already disrupting ecosystems. Meantime at COP27 the rallying cry was “Keep 1.5 Alive” with the delegates all voicing the same slogan, smiling, joining hands, thumbs up.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has already informed the world that it’s necessary to hold global temps below 1.5°C pre-industrial or all hell will break lose. Moreover, the IPCC, does not yet see a clear pathway out of the morass. In fact, based upon several analyses, it’s starting to look like 1.5C is in the cards. So, get used to it… it’s coming this decade!

For perspective, it’s worth contemplating that this is the first time in human history that a series of major forums, most recently 40,000 attendees at COP27 in Egypt, met to discuss the ramifications of, and possible solutions to, potential destruction of civilization. Such a massive series, twenty-seven COPs, has never happened before. In that regard, it’s unbelievable that the results have been negative for three decades running. Greenhouse gas emissions continued rising and accelerating, never down. It’s as if they, world leaders or their surrogates, are frozen in time like the well-preserved remains of well-to-do Romans at Pompeii.

Zooming ahead 2,000 years beyond Pompeii and focusing on the results of 30-years of meetings to discuss global warming, then what about 1.5°C above pre-industrial? Will 1.5°C hit soon enough that it impacts today’s generation?

Based upon the opinion of analysts, it looks like the answer is “yes.” One explanation for 1.5C hitting this decade by 2030 is found in the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), which is the same brand that published “Brazilians Should Keep Slashing Their Rainforest” (March 27, 2020) and “What Greta Thunberg Forgets About Climate Change” (July 12, 2020). AIER is a favorite of the Charles Koch Foundation, which donates accordingly. When it comes to libertarian credentials, AIER gets an A-plus grade.

An AIER article by James E. Hanley: The Battle for 1.5 Degrees of Warming Is Already Lost, So What’s Plan B? April 7, 2022, clearly conforms to what several climate analysts are saying about the inevitability of hitting 1.5C. It’s inevitable!

His article does a good job, convincingly, explaining how fossil fuels are embedded in society, really embedded more so than people realize, way more than realized. Frankly, it is difficult to take issue with his facts as presented. Not only does he explain embedded fossil fuels but also: “In more bad policy news for the 1.5 degrees goal, few countries are committing to the necessary policy actions to achieve it. According to Bloomberg research group: ‘No G-20 government has implemented sufficient and concrete policies to match promises … from COP26 in Glasgow last year.” This is also commonly mentioned by climate analysts.

More significantly yet, according to the same article, he proffers the IPCC take on the issue: “Here’s the simple math. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that holding the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius requires keeping atmospheric CO2 concentrations to 430 ppm. In 2020 we reached 412 ppm, up from 400 in 2015. At that rate of increase, we’ll hit 430 before the end of the decade, and zero-emissions climate pledges aren’t even scheduled to take full effect until 2050, another twenty years later.” As of Nov. 29th Mauna Loa registered daily CO2 at 416.58 ppm.

As a solution, or Plan B if you like, the article suggests environmentalists don’t really have any suggestions, no real Plan B, other than renewables, which according to the article have several serious drawbacks; alternatively, the article suggests solutions such as nuclear power and massive subsidization into research for carbon capture and sequestration, including atmospheric removal.

An altogether different source that’s more palatable to environmentally sensitive circles is Climate Code Red, which recently stated: “The warming trend will reach 1.5°C around 2030, irrespective of any emission reduction initiatives taken in the meantime. This is because short-term warming is largely determined by past emissions, and the inertia in the energy and political systems.” (Source: Over Half of All Fossil Fuels Are Extracted By Just Seven Countries, As World Heads to 3C of Warming, Climate Code Red, November 28, 2022)

In part, the Climate Code Red analysis is based upon a study by H. Damon Matthews, Global Efforts Are Insufficient to Limit Warming to 1.5°C, Science, vol 376, June 23, 2022.

So, what of 1.5C? What happens beyond 1.5C? Obviously, nobody knows because it’s never happened before. However, some clues come from trends at +1.2C, where we’re at today.

“I can say with a high degree of certainty that civilizations can thrive in a 14-degree C world – but nobody can tell at any degree of certainty that we can thrive at (much higher temperatures) because we’ve never been there,” according to Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research while at COP27 in Egypt.” (Source: Explainer: How Close Are We to Passing 1.5 Degrees Celsius of Global Warming? Reuters, Nov. 14, 2022)

1.5C has become a focal point. At the COP27 meetings countries argued over whether the endangered 1.5C goal should be kept or abandoned. Of serious concern, according to IPCC scientists, studies have shown that air pollution particulate matter is holding down global temperatures by 0.3C. This means the planet may effectively “already have 1.5C in the pipeline but is not showing the effects yet,” according to Rockström.

At 1.5C several things happen much worse than what’s already happening at 1.2C. Most prominently, food and water shortages, which are already very serious problems, as international conflict arises over natural resources combined with ultra-extreme weather events, all-in putting the world on edge, a razors edge that has unforgiving political connotations. Just look at politics at only 1.2C. It’s edgy.

The concerns surrounding 1.5C have already started to surface at 1.2C. Over the past 24 months the world has literally been on fire, massively on every continent for the first time ever, especially the methane vulnerable Siberian permafrost (threatening a breakout of runaway global warming thereby making 1.5C look frighteningly ominous), Australia’s biblical megafires, Western US, Paradise, Calif. pop 27,000 burned to the ground like a matchstick; floods have ravaged, torn apart communities, for example Pakistan (1,739 dead) and the massive European floods of ‘21 (125 dead), and the out-of-the-blue massively disruptive Henan, China flood (302 dead, people trapped in Zhengzhou subway cars with water up to their chins); in stark contrast to flooding, droughts shriveled major rivers and commercial waterways, Rhine, Loire, Danube, Po, Yangtze, Mississippi as well as depleting water resources for entire towns and villages in France and Italy (trucking water to towns) and China and elsewhere in the world, like Chile, where suburbs of Santiago, a city rationing water, also trucking water for 450,000 families. Meanwhile, angry residents take water truck drivers hostage in Northern Mexico (NY Times, Aug.3, 2022). And America’s largest most important reservoir system Lake Mead close to dead pool status. As of November 1st, Lake Mead’s level was 1,046 feet. Dead pool status is 995 feet.

These recurring disasters, already powerfully destructive, but only a small sampling of the bigger world, will likely hit with ever more frequency and potency at 1.5C. This is not normal! All of this is something that’s never been witnessed at such massive scale! It’s absolutely frightening. World governments need to focus on whether the climate system can be fixed or somehow toned down, e.g., by drastically reducing emissions. Yet, that’s not happening at forums of 40,000 high-ranking people. Really?

In turn, the edginess of failing ecosystems brings in its wake social turmoil as disheartened confused people look for scapegoats, thus empowering bellicose political leaders who could care less about social welfare. This is an exercise in insanity.

It’s a nonstop disaster merry-go-round that upends the establishment in favor of rambunctious leaders of desperate souls that have nothing more to lose going nowhere. Maybe the establishment needs to go all-in with both barrels blazing to fix climate change, assuming it’s possible, while they’re still “the establishment.”

What can be done? Some scientists say the only way is to physically remove the stuff, CO2, from the atmosphere while also reducing reliance on fossil fuels slowly approaching net zero, which is a major sticking point that seems insurmountable when understanding the true dimensions of the fossil fuel industry that holds hostage the neoliberal economic system. It’s a fact that needs to be recognized. It’s an iron grip.

Hopefully, developed governments will unite to strategically provide massive amounts of funds to finance technologies, natural climate restoration systems, and/or whatever techniques required to reduce the impact of way too much CO2 in the atmosphere. But, of course, that’s what UN-sponsored COPs are supposed to do. Hmm.

Meantime, beyond 1.5C some say 2C, 3C are on the docket.

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 2, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Montreal Biodiversity COP15 December 2022

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Montreal Biodiversity COP15 December 2022

By Robert Hunziker

What is it about a bunch of high-ranking people getting together at a Conference of the Parties (COP) at some major metropolitan center with plenty of 4-star and 5-star hotels in order to figure out how to save the planet, but it never works!

For example, the tenth (10th) meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity was held in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan from October 18-29, 2010. More than 13,000 delegates from around the world. The Aichi targets were designed to help, or in the best of cases, save or revive biodiversity.

Zoom forward twelve years to November 11th 2022: A news release by Climate Change News announces the upcoming COP15 biodiversity conference scheduled for Montreal December 7-19, 2022: “In the past decade, countries agreed to a ten-year plan called the Aichi targets, aimed at halting biodiversity loss. A UN summary report shows countries failed to meet a single one of those targets.” (Source: UN Nature Pact Nears Its ‘Copenhagen or Paris’ Moment, Climate Change News Nov. 11, 2022)

Thirteen thousand (13,000) delegates specially selected by countries of the world to save biodiversity agreed to save nature. Utter failure ensued.

There’s something happening in the world that’s very strange maybe a curse or something “in the air” that hexes these get-togethers. The truth is: Get-togethers by thousands of well-intentioned people to save the planet time and again fail, not just a little bit, but total utter failure. For example, for more than 30 years climate conferences, COPs, e.g., Paris ’15, have miserably failed. Greenhouse gas emissions set new records by the year, which is going backwards, downhill into a deep climate change abyss. Eventually, the abyss will be so deep, if not already, that it’s impossible to climb back out.

More to the point, at some point in time, likely once biodiversity loss turns horrendous, much worse, maybe when humans start killing 200,000,000 million sharks for fin soup per year rather than the current 100,000,000 or as for climate change/global warming, when the Doomsday Glacier, Thwaites, the world’s widest glacier in West Antarctica crashes, leads to Miami Beach flooding, maybe that’s when the various Conference of the Parties, COPs, will turn dead serious and take drastic measures, which, by then, will be too late but maybe, hopefully, only hopefully, take some the edge off these ongoing disasters, even though the marine ecosystem crashes because of loss of its top predator, and desperately the Army Corp of Engineers scrambles to try to save Miami.

Montreal COP15 December 2022

Climate Change News’ intro to COP15 clearly states: “After a two-year delay and a change of location, the UN biodiversity summit aims to halt nature loss by 2030 and restore ecosystems. It could either be a success like the signing of the Paris Agreement or a dramatic failure like the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen,” Ibid.

Hmm, well the “signing of Paris” was a success; it’s the follow through, emission reduction targets, that miserably failed.

At COP15 more than 100 nations are expected to meet to agree to “protect 30% of all land and ocean ecosystems by 2030.” So far, the “big-forested countries” China, Brazil, and Indonesia have not accepted invitations to attend.

According to Brian O’Donnell of the advocacy group Campaign for Nature, following two years of online negotiations: “What started as a very good framework has ended up almost all in square brackets… indicating a lack of consensus,” Ibid.

Of concern, even though the original meeting was to be held in China, which is still designated as “presidency of the talks,” China has not officially invited world leaders to the talks, which commence shortly. That very important task has fallen to Elizabeth Maruma Mreman, urging world leaders to attend rather than going to the World Cup. Tough choice to make!

Unfortunately, cynicism, anger, and fatigue are the byproducts of reporting on the various international Conference of the Parties (COPs) to save Planet A. Across the board, the failures of COPs add tons of credibility to the film Don’t Look Up (Netflix, December 2021) winner of the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Don’t Look Up is an apocalyptic political satire about two astronomers played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence that spot an incoming asteroid and try to warn a largely numbed body politic, as party leaders urge their dumbed-down adherents not to look up, a campaign motto. Meanwhile, one of the president’s top funders, who was appointed to head NASA, has no background in astronomy, and stupidly assures, not to worry. The film not only points to the dangers of ignoring science but also targets how badly America has been dumbed down into submissive easy prey for bellicose politicians that care less about social welfare.

The Montreal COP15 most assuredly will be held, speakers will drone on about the necessity of saving Planet A’s basic life-supporting ecosystems, agreements will be touted, hands joined, thumbs up, but when 2030 arrives, well, who knows how bad it’ll be?

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 November 28, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Stop COP

Photo by Roxanne Desgagnés on Unsplash
Photo by Roxanne Desgagnés on Unsplash

Stop COP

By Robert Hunziker

Fossil fuel interests have taken over climate talks. The acronym COP for “Conference of the Parties” should be changed to “Continue Oil Production.” Eighteen of the twenty companies that sponsored UN climate talks at the make-believe Egyptian resort Sharm El-Sheikh either directly support or partner with oil and gas companies. Global Witness/London identified at least 636 fossil lobbyists at COP27. What are fossil fuel lobbyists doing at a climate conference?

According to Pascoe Sabido of Corporate Europe Observatory/Brussels: “These findings underline the extent to which this COP has never been about the climate. It’s been about rehabilitating the gas industry and making sure that fossil fuels are on the agenda. This is part of the bigger problem which is linked to the overall corporate capture of the U.N. climate talks… We need to kick the big polluters out.” (Source: Fossil Fuel-Linked Companies Dominate Sponsorship of COP27, DeSomg, Nov. 16, 2022)

Of course, fossil fuel interests sponsor big pavilions, like showtime at Las Vegas conventions. Dubai’s racy, futuristic colorful pavilion was a standout as an effective ploy to convince the world of their serious intentions for net zero. Oh, please! Hopefully, a massive worldwide movement to Stop COP28 Dubai can effectively reverse the embarrassment of holding next year’s COP in the kingdom of oil. It’s an insult to climate scientists. Is Saudi Arabia next?

Adding insult to even the remotest idea of holding further COPs, COP 27 was a virtual disaster. “Indeed, the real legacy of COP27 could well be exposing the climate summit for what it has become, a bloated travelling circus that sets up once a year, and from which little but words ever emerge… in the course of 27 COPs, there has never been a formal agreement to reduce the world’s fossil fuel use.” (Source: Bill McGuire, professor emeritus, Geophysical & Climate Hazards, UCL, The Big Takeaway From COP27? These Climate Conference Just Aren’t Working, The Guardian, Nov. 20, 2022).

Hopefully, a movement to stop COPs altogether will emerge from the shadows of backroom and boardroom negotiations resembling fraternity initiations of naive pledges turned into nincompoops. COP is that ridiculous and overly expensive as well as duping the public into thinking something constructive is happening. Stop COP!

According to Bill McGuire: “Some old hands have labelled it (COP27) the worst COP ever, and I doubt many would argue… it is becoming increasingly difficult to view these events as anything other than photo opportunities for presidents and prime ministers who turn up simply to make the world think they care… hijacking by the fossil fuel sector, and failure, year on year, to do the job they were set up to do, surely means that COP is no longer fit for purpose.”

Rampant Climate Disinformation

Meanwhile climate disinformation campaigns around the world are experiencing a strong revival after a short spell of relative pause.

Interestingly, as actual climate crises spread across the land, so does denialism and disinformation. Climate Action Against Disinformation, a global coalition of over 50 leading climate and anti-disinformation organizations recently released results of a new study. According to Jacob Dubbins, a coauthor, while at COP27: “The rise of climate misinformation is undermining climate action here at COP27.” (Source: November 15, 2022 Climate Disinformation Campaigns Threaten COP27 Progress, a New Report Concludes, Inside Climate News)

Fox News is spotlighted in the new study as a powerful force of false and misleading information fueling unfounded public skepticism and going so far as to “inspire violence against policymakers who advocate strong climate action,” Ibid. Exactly how fascists earn their stripes.

“The report included a scientific survey on the media consumption habits of thousands of people in six different countries: Brazil, Australia, India, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. It found that Americans, especially those who regularly watch Fox News, are the most likely among the study’s participants in all six countries to hold false beliefs about global warming,” Ibid.

Common misrepresentations and outright lying includes statements that renewable energy is more expensive than fossil fuels and that the world’s scientific community is still not sure about the real cause of global warming. Worldwide right-wing media pokes fun at global warming as if it’s child’s play.

Twenty-five (25%) of Americans think climate change is a “hoax,” a consistent talking point of Donald Trump and the GOP. To the contrary: “A staggering 99.9 percent of peer-reviewed studies on global warming conclude that climate change is real and that humans are causing it by burning fossil fuels and clearing land for agriculture.” (Source: More Than 99.9% of Studies Agree: Humans Caused Climate Change, Cornell Chronicle, October 19, 2021)

According to Harriet KIngaby, co-chair of Conscious Advertising Network in a letter submitted to COP27 presidency and country delegations: “Climate disinformation is a global problem, and it is a huge problem… We are on track for 2.8°C of global warming while emissions continue to rise, humanity faces climate catastrophe, yet vested economic and political interests continue to organize and finance climate misinformation and disinformation to hold back action.”

In a twisted perverted manner, COP events feed into the disinform agenda by falsely leading the public into believing something is being done when nothing at all is accomplished. The majority of people do buy into COPs as somehow constructive because of mainstream media coverage that highlights minor accomplishments, like tossing a monetary bone to lesser-developed countries.

STOP COP

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 November 22, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Amazon Rainforest Crisis Report at COP27

Photo by Ivars Utināns on Unsplash
Photo by Ivars Utināns on Unsplash

Amazon Rainforest Crisis Report at COP27

By Robert Hunziker

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) issued a new Living Amazon Report, 2022 at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. The eye-opening report defines a horror story of human destruction of the world’s largest rainforest. There’s no other way to look at it.

Commercialization of the Amazon Rainforest is rampant in a pattern of ignorance amidst reckless abandon with a level of stupidity that’s nearly beyond comprehension, as the iconic nature reserve has been pushed to the edge of ruin. It is hard to believe that pure ignorance and greed could wreck the world’s most critical asset, but it is happening, way too rapidly.

According to the WWF report, 35% of the Amazon rainforest is either totally lost or highly degraded. (Source: Living Amazon Report 2022, World Wildlife Fund publication, November 8, 2022)

“The situation has begun to show signs of nearing a point of no return: seasons are changing, surface water is being lost, rivers are becoming increasingly disconnected and polluted, and forests are under immense pressure from increasingly devastating waves of deforestation and fire. This could lead to irreversible change in the near future,” Ibid.

As it happens: “The tipping point, according to studies by Thomas E. Lovejoy, 1941-2021, former president of the Amazon Biodiversity Center, and Carlos Nobre, Nobel Laureate and Brazil’s top climate scientist is said to occur when deforestation and degradation combined exceed the threshold of between 20% and 25%, a figure that refers to the eastern, southern and central Amazon.” (Source: The Amazon Will Reach Tipping Point if Current Trend of Deforestation Continues, Mongabay, October 3, 2022)

As stated in the report presented at COP27, there is no scientific consensus on the exact probability of a point of no return because of the massive complexity of the ecosystem; however, it is known that probability increases with deforestation, degradation, and the impact of climate change.

It’s only too obvious that the Amazon Crisis essentially calls for the world to collectively pull together and take whatever actions are necessary to hopefully (underlining hopefully) preserve natural resources that are essential for life or face societal chaos. That’s what COP27 is supposed to be all about, but based upon prior COPs dating back to 1992, the cumulative impact of 30 years of bombastic hot air has been just that, hot air, as nonstop destruction of the environment and poisoning of the atmosphere, continue apace, actually intensifying by the year.

According to the WWF report: There are (1) six-hundred (600) infrastructure projects in operation along Amazon rivers (2) twenty planned road projects, (3) four hundred operating, or planned, dams; meanwhile, numerous mining operations continue to dump chemicals such as mercury into rivers. According to PRODES, a satellite monitoring system, the pace of commercialization of the Amazon trudges ahead as 4.2 million square miles of the rainforest was cleared for commercial development last year alone.

The upshot of this hellbent commercialization is already apparent in another recent report from Amazon Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information (RAISG) claiming that 26% of the forests have already “irreversibly transformed.” “The savannization of the Amazon is already visible in Brazil and Bolivia while Ecuador, Columbia and Peru seem to be heading in the same direction.” (Mongabay)

The WWF calls for “urgent action,” requiring massive collaboration worldwide. The WWF advocates following the principles of the COICA-led “Amazon for Life” initiative organized for conservation of >80% of Amazon forests by 2025. COICA – Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indigenas de la Cuenca Amazónica founded in 1984 in Lima.

In a hopeful message within the clutches of an impending disaster scenario, the WWF says of its own report: “The report collects successful experiences implemented by WWF and partners throughout the biome that can be replicated and scaled. A different future is possible for the Amazon, if we collectively act now.”

The delegates (30,000) to COP27 carry an enormous burden not only for the Amazon Rainforest but also for all of the major ecosystems of the planet that are showing rapid deterioration and threatening to fail to support life on Earth.

In particular, the ocean is literally under a wartime attack by human-influenced overfishing and out of control global warming, as the ocean absorbs 90%+ of planetary heat. It’s not only enormously destructive to ocean life; it is heating up the world’s largest ice sheets way-way too fast, e.g., Greenland’s massive ice sheet may already be a goner.

What will COP27 accomplish?

Postscript: Nature, the illustrious British scientific journal, conducted an anonymous survey of IPCC authors in November 2021: Most of the respondents (climate change scientists), in fact 88%, said global warming constitutes a “crisis,” and nearly as many said they expect to see “catastrophic impact during their lifetimes.” Few of IPCC scientists believe the world will limit warming.

Conclusion: The real truth hurts!

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 November 15, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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The Foreboding Hyperthreat Looms Large

Photo: Contaminacion del Lago de Maracaibo by Wilfredor is licensed by CC BY-SA 3.0
Photo: Contaminacion del Lago de Maracaibo by Wilfredor is licensed by CC BY-SA 3.0

The Foreboding Hyperthreat Looms Large

By Robert Hunziker

Image - Cancelled Woman by E.G. Boulton
Image – Cancelled Woman by E.G. Boulton

The hyperthreat is a combination of impending ecological carnage influenced in large measure by hidden behind-the-scenes human forces that drain the vigor and lifeblood of reasonable solutions.

A major exposé of the hyperthreat is the essence of a recently released book by E.G. Boulton, PhD: Cancelled Woman, Destination Safe Earth Publishing, 2022.

Dr. Boulton introduces the concept of hyperthreat by reflecting on how “people in the past responded when their worlds started to descend.” Now society once again is at a crucial crossroads like what brought on The Ballarat Reform League Charter of 1854 and The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Both documents “rejected unfairness and brutality and set a new ethical baseline for human society.”

The sinister nature that’s found within hyperthreat is at the core of the message in Cancelled Woman: “This is because a type of tyranny has arisen that operates behind the scenes. One of its tactics is to cancel people who challenge its authority, power, or worldview.”

Liz Boulton’s doctoral research led to the profound fact that “taken together, global warming and all array of ecological destruction and degradation constituted a new form of threat, for which she coined hyperthreat.” In time, hyperthreat has taken on new meaning beyond ecological collapse. Accordingly, it also refers to “hidden forces which enable and turbo-charge the hyperthreat.”

Indeed, Dr. Boulton herself has become a threat to the hyperthreat’s subtle mechanisms and hidden voices of control. Her curse was to boldly identify a hyper-response to hyperthreat, which she code-named PLAN E. Paradoxically, her research exposed her as a threat to the same hyperthreat that she revealed. Consequences have been daunting.

After all, PLAN E proclaims: The world’s militaries, intelligence agencies, foreign affairs strategies, and think tanks are unwittingly advancing the hyperthreat, which is an acceleration of climate and environmental change leading to Hothouse Earth, as detailed in Boulton’s publication: Plan E: A Grand Strategy for the Twenty-first Century Era of Entangled Security and Hyperthreats by Elizabeth G. Boulton, PhD, Journal of Advanced Military Studies, Vol. 13 No. 1 2022.

PLAN E was published in two parts in the Journal of Advanced Military Studies and by the US Marine Corps University Press, a professional university of the US Marine Corps located in Quantico, Virginia, which listed her thesis as: An Introduction to PLAN E.

Elizabeth G. Boulton, PhD, Australian National University and MA/Climate Policy, University of Melbourne is a former army major in the Australian Defence Force, having served in East Timor (1999) and Iraq (2004) and logistics work in Ghana, Nigeria, and Sudan. She was a lead research officer at army headquarters.

Over time, someone somewhere decided Boulton went too far. Thereafter, her tome has been the subject of cold shoulder treatment amongst sources and venues that usually post or publish such work.

As a result, Cancelled Woman has risen from the ashes of rejection into a book of challenging personal reflections and tense explosive poems. It is an important commentary on the shamelessness of the forces behind the scenes of the ominous hyperthreat. Cancelled Woman elaborates: “As the world hurtles along a trajectory towards WW3; dangerous climate; ecological collapse and other calamities, the hyperthreat has taken societies voice and its capacity to conduct effective sense-making just when we need it most.”

Accordingly, hyperthreat has infiltrated every megaphone in society inclusive of news outlets, social media, universities, think tanks, and publishing houses. The infiltration process focuses on “creation of confusion.” Such mindset ricochets by ending badly within the world: “We face a looming crisis, yet not only does ‘power’ or the ‘establishment’ not initiate crisis or contingency planning, but they also suppress alternative narratives, ideas, and concepts for crisis response.”

Therefore, “overcoming the hyperthreat requires a new way of being; a more ethical way of living across the board.” Part of this is the importance of people speaking up about issues or policies or threads of ideas that harm the greater good, calling-out the perpetrators.

Liz Boulton’s book was written to convey the ‘feeling’ of being in battle with the hyperthreat. This she has accomplished by revealing its “strange tactics; the subtle way voice is lost, truth buried, and democracy stolen.”

It’s an important book for people to read and keep for further reference to gain an understanding of the clandestine forces shaping society in objectional unwelcomed ways. Whether fully realized or not, we are living under the influence of the hyperthreat. It’s very important to know what to look for. Cancelled Woman helps to understand what’s at stake, and most importantly, that it’s really truly happening.

Indeed, within the confines of a remarkable transformation into feudalism redux, we, all of us, are subjects of the hyperthreat! Yes, subjects, believe it or not, it’s true. The hyperthreat is as real, and as threatening, as described in Cancelled Woman.

The truth is brandished for all to see: “Let me be clear about one specific message I wish to convey in this book: To Australians and global citizens, I feel it is my duty to inform you that a concept for an emergency or ‘hyper-response’ to the hyperthreat of climate and ecological crisis (called ‘PLAN E’), has been deliberately side-lined and suppressed by those entrusted to address such problems. Research is being censored.”

Finally, the strongest statement by Elizabeth Boulton: “In my view, ‘power’ is consciously abrogating their responsibilities to protect the public.”

Liz Boulton can take some comfort knowing that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) was on the American Library Association (ALA) list of top 100 banned and challenged books. Subsequently the Modern Library ranked Brave New World #5 on its list of 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. She’s in good company.

Cancelled Woman website: https://www.destinationsafeearth.com/purchase

Postscript: Salutations: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924)

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 November 25, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Killing Sharks for Fin Soup

Image by Alex Rose on Unsplash
Image by Alex Rose on Unsplash

Killing Sharks for Fin Soup

By Robert Hunziker

Worldwide, eleven thousand (11,000) sharks will be killed within the next 60 minutes. That’s 180 sharks per minute; it’s a bloody affair.

One hundred million (100,000,000) are killed per year, mostly for shark fin soup. In fact, the shark-fin trade is responsible for 75% of sharks killed each year even though more than 50 countries have some kind of shark finning ban in effect.

Nevertheless, stealthy fishing techniques are used to clandestinely hook and de-fin sharks. This illicit practice of Chinese trawlers has been exposed by two separate investigations of massive illegal shark-finning operations, which are discussed in more detail herein.

According to the IUU (Illegal, Unreported, Unregulated) Fishing Index, China is ranked as the world’s worst abuser of sea laws, especially shark finning, a bloody mutilation for a delicacy in China.

China’s fleet of 17,000 fishing vessels is the largest in the world. This compares to 250-to-300 total vessels for both the United States and the EU. China’s distant-water fleet numbers 3,000 ships. Enormous refrigerated vessels referred to as “Motherships” upload the catch of the Chinese fleet, thus allowing an entire fleet of trawlers to fish 24/7 without returning to port for weeks or even months.

Sharks are central to maintaining healthy ocean ecosystems. Without sharks, lower prey spiral out of control, leading to collapse of marine ecosystems. Sorrowfully, based upon rate of kill, collapse of the ecosystem is on the horizon. Shark finning is out of control, mostly illegal, inhumane, and disgustingly immoral, actually worse than disgusting, whatever that is?

So, who cares? After all, Jaws (1975) put on a pretty good display of the dangers of a very, very big threatening shark with fierce jagged teeth. It instilled fear that lingers to this day. However, that 25-foot mechanical shark named “Bruce” has a docile ring to it. Aside from Bruce’s reign of celluloid terror, the odds of getting chomped to pieces by a shark are extremely low at 1-in-3,734,067 or much less than getting hit by lightning.

On the other hand, the odds of a human killing a shark are extremely high. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (Switz.), overfishing has led to a 71% decline in shark species since the 1970s.

Sharks, a permanent feature of the planet, have lived on Earth for 450 million years. Now 70% have been wiped-out in only 50 years, as 450 million years of heritage is gone in a hundred-millionth fraction of 450M/yrs. Poof!

According to a prominent article in Nature: “Oceanic shark catch rates have increased threefold since 1970… We document an alarming, ongoing, worldwide decline in oceanic shark populations across the world’s largest ecosystem over the past half-century, resulting in an unprecedented increase in the risk of extinction of these species.” (Source: N. Pacoureau, et al, Half a Century of Global Decline in Oceanic Sharks and Rays, Nature, Jan. 27, 2022)

Moreover, according to the article: “The low reproductive output of these slow-growing species is clearly no match for the intense fishing pressure that they are currently under.”

Demand for Shark Fins

According to the World Wildlife Foundation: “The growing trade in shark fins – often used to make an expensive Asian soup – has become a serious threat to many shark species. The latest research suggests that around 100 million sharks may be killed annually, often targeted for fins. This practice affects many different shark species, including whale sharks (40,000 lbs. and 20-40 feet long)… Overfishing happens because of huge demand, mainly for shark fins, but also some species such as spiny dogfish and porbeagle are targeted for meat.”

Mongabay, which is one of the world’s premier conservation web portals, recently published an exposé on shark finning, to wit: Exclusive: Shark Finning Rampant Across Chinese Tuna Firm’s Fleet, Mongabay, Nov. 1, 2022.

The article is a stomach-churning story that deserves worldwide exposure. Mongabay conducted extensive investigations via interviews of dozens of crewmembers of Dalian Ocean Fishing (DOF), which is partially state-owned and known as China’s biggest supplier of sashimi-grade tuna to Japan.

“But DOF’s boats have also been the nexus of a massive illegal shark finning operation, an investigation by Mongabay has found, based on interviews with dozens of men who worked as deckhands throughout its fleet of some 35 longline vessels.” (Source: Philip Jacobson and Basten Gokkon, Exclusive: Shark Finning Rampant Across Chinese Firm’s Fleet, Mongabay, Nov, 1, 2022)

“Sharks are terrifying in their power,” according to an eye-witness crewmember, “Sometimes we needed three or four people, one with a spear, one with a hand-hook, and one with a stunner.”

The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF)/London, which also investigates the fishing industry, provided Mongabay with additional excerpts of interviews separately conducted with 11 crewmembers of six of DOFs boats, exposing the highly secretive shark finning operations.

“I was quite dumbstruck by the level of abuse that we found,” EJF CEO Steve Trent told Mongabay. Shark finning and other illegal fishing practices, he said, appear to be “running throughout and across the Chinese distant-water fleet. It’s not just a rogue element within it… DOF uses banned gear to deliberately catch and cut the fins off huge numbers of sharks in international waters, Mongabay has found,” Ibid.

Longliner commercial fishing techniques involve thousands of baited hooks dragged through the sea to capture tuna and other fish. As reported by crewmembers, DOF utilized shark lines and extra-strong wire leaders, which are banned in the western Pacific, alongside regular longlines. In other words, regular longliners added illegal shark fishing gear with much stronger leaders/hooks at a different depth on the same network. This is blatantly illegal.

On a normal longliner the hooks hang several dozen meters below the surface, where tuna tend to swim. In contrast, shark lines run directly from the buoys and floatlines, ensuring the hooks dangle just a few meters deep. “It’s all about where the baited hooks are located in terms of the depth, because sharks tend to be found in higher concentrations in the upper part of the water column,’ said Chapman, the shark expert.” (Mongabay)

According to Mongabay: “DOF’s captains presided over the finning of all manner of shark species in disregard of rules set by treaty organizations governing high-seas tuna fisheries and international wildlife trade… Photos smuggled off one vessel, the Long Xing 629, show large quantities of detached shark fins strewn across the deck.”

Officialdom of China’s agricultural ministry refused to comment on Mongabay’s article. Paradoxically, China explicitly banned shark finning as well as deliberate catching of sharks on the open seas in January 2019. However, there is no enforcement to speak of as partially state-owned vessels continue to run rampant with finning operations in clear violation of their own laws. Astonishingly, DOF is the recipient of millions of government annual subsidies for fishing operations. This entire enterprise is rotten-to-the-core.

“Almost every DOF deckhand interviewed by Mongabay and the EJF said their boat had transshipped shark fin with other boats in violation of rules adopted by the WCPFC (Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission) and the equivalent organization in the Atlantic, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.” (Mongabay)

Transshipping avoids risks of inspectors finding contraband. It’s typically done under cover of darkness. For example, based upon testimony by deckhands, along the Shandong coast (an eastern coastal province of China), two DOF boats transferred 30-50 sacks of dried fin onto a third smaller vessel, which looked like a local fishing boat. The tell-all witnesses reported being awakened after midnight and ordered to carry the sacks to the moonlit boat. The two DOF captains boarded the third boat for delivery of fins, returning a day later. The approximate two metric tons of dried fin carries a black market value of $300,000-$400,000.

Shark-less Ecosystem Stress

Sharks are crucial to maintaining a healthy marine ecosystem. The marine food chain will collapse without sharks at the pinnacle. “Fish-hunting sharks weed out weak and sick individuals, ensuring that the fish population remains healthy and at a size that the habitat’s resources can support… If the sharks disappear, the smaller fish explode in population because nothing’s eating them,’ Daly-Engel told Live Science. ‘Soon, their food — plankton, microorganisms, shrimp — all of that is gone… fish ultimately starve.” (Source: Want if There Were No Sharks? LiveScience, Sept. 9, 2020)

Deep-sea sharks regulate the amount of carbon that drifts up to the atmosphere by eating/scavenging dead animals on the bottom of the ocean. It’s estimated they remove up to ½ of manufactured carbon to the atmosphere. (Source: Why do We Need Sharks for Our Ecosystem? Oceans-Research, September 20, 2021)

Medicinal research is being conducted on sharks as shark tissue is a strong anticoagulant and antibacterial that may become a key to new medicines.

One of the main problems with overfishing is that sharks grow slowly, taking years to fully mature, and they reproduce few young. Females reproduce once in two-to-three years. Reproduction can’t come close to keeping up with overfishing, especially illegal finning, which decimates regional populations.

Illegal shark fishing, especially finning, is threatening collapse of marine ecosystems. Of special concern, it is already happening much faster than authorities can keep up or regulate. And, regulation is tacky and thin and practically nonexistent as Official China hides behind the dirty work of shady ship captains.

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 November 11, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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COP27 Egypt – Oh, Well!

Image by Markus Spiske
Image by Markus Spiske

COP27 Egypt – Oh, Well!

By Robert Hunzkiker

Dateline: November 7-18, 2022, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Dignitaries from every country will be meeting to discuss climate change at COP27. Based upon early confirmations, 90 heads of state will attend, lending an aura of importance.

“Climate change is the crisis of our lifetime. If we are not able to reverse the present trend that is leading to a catastrophe in the world, we will be doomed.” (António Guterres UN Secretary-General, BBC interview leading to COP27)

The Secretary-General has been beating that same drum for some time now, which prompts a thought: Should the UN stop holding annual COP “Conference of the Parties” climate change meetings? For 30 years straight, following each COP meeting, CO2 emissions have climbed higher than the year before. That’s thirty years, or an entire generation, of failure to slow emissions by even a teeny bit. It’s starting to get embarrassing.

For historical perspective, Global CO2 emissions in 1992, when COPs started, were just over 22 billion metric tons. In 2021 CO2 emissions were a record high 36 billion tons or an increase of 65% since nations signed up to protect the planet from excessive greenhouse gases. This equates to thirty-years of blabbering and more blabbering with nothing to show for it, except big increases in greenhouse gases, an amazing anti-achievement!

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) formed at the Earth Summit in May 1992 with 178 member nations unanimously agreeing to bring CO2 emissions down to 1990 levels of 354 ppm by the year 2000.

May 1992 CO2 @ 359.99 ppm – UNFCCC formed

May 2000 CO2 @ 371.82 ppm – missed the 354 target

October 2022 CO2 @ 427.01 ppm – Oh, well!

COP meetings are the Super Bowl of climate change but not quite as extravagant but still pretty darn plush. And, millions are expended to house (multi-star hotels) and feed (30,000 registered delegates for COP27) to annual COP two-week get-togethers, not including airfare expenses as well as CO2 exhaust fumes.

So far, taxpayers or grants or private funding or institutional funds that support attendees have witnessed CO2 emissions increase every year ever since UNFCCC formed, never a down year. It’s been a bad investment, but offsetting that misfortune is effective PR. “Climate Change” is universally recognized.

Meantime – The All-time Worldwide Killer is Fossil Fuels

One seldom-noticed world statistic stands out like a sore thumb: “There are almost 10,000,000 (ten million) fossil fuel specific air pollution deaths per year.” (Source: Dr. Peter Carter – UN June Climate Meeting Bonn: Bad Beyond Belief – more on Carter to follow)

That puts fossil fuels in the all-time standings list with World War I and World War II, actually in first place. Wars end. Fossil fuel emissions do not. Why not use that statistic for more effective (compelling) PR?

According to a 2018 study by Harvard University, University of Leicester and University College London: “More than 8 million people died in 2018 from fossil fuel pollution, significantly higher than previous research suggested.” (Source: Global Mortality From Outdoor Fine Particle Pollution Generated by Fossil Fuel Combination, Environmental Research posted at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 02/09/2021)

Unfortunately, any prospects for a letup in fossil fuel-related deaths does not appear to be on the horizon, in fact, quite the opposite based upon the UN Emissions Gap Report 2022 d/d October 27, 2022, to wit: “As growing climate change impacts are experienced across the globe, the message that greenhouse gas emissions must fall is unambiguous. Yet the Emissions Gap Report 2022: The Closing Window – Climate crisis calls for rapid transformation of societies finds that the international community is failing far short of the Paris goals, with no credible pathway to 1.5°C in place. Only an urgent system-wide transformation can avoid climate disaster.”

Alas, there is no known “urgent system-wide transformation” that “can avoid climate disaster” on the drawing boards even as the United Nations insists it’s the only way to avoid climate disaster.

But, of course, the IPCC does not control fossil fuels, which, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), plan nearly $1 trillion of new fossil fuel projects, oil & gas, by 2030, and the IPCC does not control coal emissions.

According to Bloomberg, US Edition, Sept. 21, 2022: “A year after President Xi Jinping promised China would stop building coal power plants overseas, the country has completed 14 such facilities beyond its borders and will finish another 27 soon.” The soon-to-be completed plants will emit more emissions than the Philippines or 140 million tons of CO2/yr.

Additionally, India May Boost Coal Power Fleet By 25% By 2030 Amid Rising Demand, Bloomberg, US Edition, Sept. 22, 2022. India’s PM claims reliable electricity supply is the nation’s priority, and thus, according to Bloomberg and COP26: He aims for net zero by 2070, not 2050. Why not make it 2170? That’s likely what’ll happen over time, assuming an excruciating pounding summer heat, like the summer of 2022, doesn’t bring on mass protests or more likely mass deaths well ahead of net zero by 2070.

And, just for good measure: “The US government has funneled more than $9bn (£7.7bn) into oil and gas projects in Africa since it signed up to restrain global heating in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, a tally of official data shows, committing just $682m (£587m) to clean energy developments such as wind and solar over the same period.” (Source; Two-thirds of US Money for Fossil Fuel Pours Into Africa Despite Climate Goals, The Guardian, October 31, 2022)

In the face of all of that, expectations are high for COP27 in Egypt, but they’re always high before every COP. In all honesty, maybe COP meetings should be stopped in favor of an altogether different approach because whatever they are doing is clearly not working. As a practical matter, maybe scale down the meetings to much smaller delegations and omit the edit of policy measures by individual country bureaucrats or economists or fossil fuel reps and leave the fixit policy measures to scientists/engineers and establish strict enforcement by monitoring country promises of CO2 reductions, abandon voluntary country emission reductions. That has never worked!

Of more than passing interest, people have already expressed trepidation about holding COP27 in Egypt with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisis’s massive crackdown on dissent. It’s over-the-top excessive and whether intentional or unintentional, may serve to diminish street protests at COP27. According to the Arabic Network for Human Rights, at least 60,000 political prisoners are held behind bars for expressing political beliefs. Amnesty International ranks Egypt as the 3rd worst country by numbers of executions. Highlighting Egypt’s troubling repressiveness, Naomi Klein referred to COP 27 as the “Carceral Climate Summit.”

In order to better understand what to expect at COP27, Dr. Peter D. Carter, director, Climate Emergency Institute and IPCC expert reviewer analyzed a major preliminary meeting to COP27 at the Bonn UN Climate Change Convention of June 2022 with insight to COP27, which Dr. Carter boldly labels: “Bad Beyond Belief”

Following the Bonn meetings on June 16th, according to Dr. Carter: “It is my unpleasant duty and with profound sadness that I’m going to report on what happened… I’ve called it an unbelievably abysmally bad Bonn United Nations Climate Change Convention meeting.” (Source: UN June Climate Meeting Bonn: Bad Beyond Belief, link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTfs4kKpFEQ)

Carter: Bonn demonstrated a level of “incredible climate change denial throughout the conference.” Yet, Bonn paves the way for COP27, which brings to mind: Who listens to the Secretary-General?

It’s even worse than the Secretary-General realizes, according to Dr. Carter: “Today there is no agreement, not even a plan, to put emissions into decline… Bonn this June 2022 was yet another international meeting that refused to stop the rapid, rampant wanton destruction of the sacred earth.”

Accordingly, the most amazing media report by BBC that came out of Bonn: “To Bridge the 1.5C Degree Gap.” Countries agreed to a new “work stream” for this current decade. But that is one more decade following one more decade “work stream” or work program, a-work-in-progress. At the Bonn meeting, both the EU and the US said the “work stream should continue until 2030.” According to Carter: Effectively, they’ve advocated keeping on blah blah blah until 2030: “Which is definitely a delayed death sentence.”

Rather than discussing emissions decline, Bonn has reinforced the 1.5C climate catastrophe by more climate action delay. In contrast, the world’s most eminent climate scientist James Hansen said it is scientifically impossible to limit to 1.5 degrees. Evidently, nobody at Bonn was focused on that and what to do, if anything, about it.

Much more disturbing yet: “There are scientists supporting the 1.5C falsehood, wrongfully proclaiming there is no climate emergency. Instead they claim we can still limit to 1.5C.” (Carter)

According to Carter, Bonn has written the future off once again. The truth: “We face global climate hell at 1.5 degree C.” This fact was made obvious in the 6th Assessment by the IPCC itself. Hmm.

Meanwhile according to Carter: “We are getting severe extreme weather events at an increasing rate affecting all habitable regions on the planet. These will increase over time, heat waves, droughts, forest fires, superstorms, hurricanes and cyclones, torrential rains, floods. And the heat waves, unprecedented heat waves across the Northern Hemisphere.” For example, practically all of India was only recently under an unprecedented pounding heat wave. People died.

In spite of everything mentioned above, at the Bonn climate talks, no one could agree on what a work stream should look like. Thirty years of negotiations, and nobody knows what their recommendations for a work stream on climate action will look like. Amazingly disturbing.

However, Bonn did discuss carbon markets under the 2015 Paris agreement Article 6, which are really only mechanism for emissions trading or what many refer to as “junk or zombie credits,” worthless credits but now approved and used for greenwashing. In total 320 million of the credits equivalent to the annual emissions of 86 coal-fired power plants have been made available for countries to count towards climate emission reduction commitments. Hmm.

Bottom line: “There was not a hint of putting emissions into decline at the two-week Bonn meetings. All agreements result in continued emissions.” (Carter) The inertia is shameful.

Adding insult to injury, as part of COP negotiations, way back in 2009, rich countries agreed to provide 200 billion dollars a year to underdeveloped countries by 2020. As of today, they have failed to pay the first 200 billion. Bonn meetings ended with nothing more done about this 200B failure. Ever since 1992, major countries have stalled. This is a recurring source of distrust in the process by underdeveloped countries. A BBC headline regarding Bonn’s two-week meetings stated: “Climate Change: Bonn Talks End In Acrimony Over Compensation,” BBC News Science.

Additionally, it’s hard to accept, but Bonn caved in to major emitters. China rejected any references to being labeled a “major emitter.” However, they are a major emitter. In fact, China’s emissions are double the next largest emitter, which is the US. India, China, and Middle East all objected to any language about “major emitters,” which, in fact, was deleted.

They also agreed to omit any emissions accounting by the UN climate secretariat for NDC or voluntary national emissions targets, even though these are, in fact, “paltry targets” which will not even come close to limiting global warming to 2C. And, what they did agree to will not even be new national emissions accounting until 2023. Only Australia promised deeper cuts.

Alas, it’s hard to believe, but there is no plan for how countries will work out and submit their emission targets. Different countries are using different methodologies. “This is a basket case. It’s chaotic how national emissions targets are being accounted and registered with the UN.” (Carter)

Dr. Carter: “This is absolute madness. You read thru the accounts of these meetings and you cannot believe it is true… we will not survive if these unbelievably sky-high greenhouse gases, particularly CO2 are allowed to continue to increase at the accelerating rate. We’re on a global suicide proposal.”

Postscript: COP26/Glasgow/2021 news not covered by mainstream media: Commentary of Dr. James Hansen (Ex-NASA Climate Chief) re COP26/Glasgow: “In a memo published last December – unreported until now – Prof Hansen warned that world governments and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are severely under-estimating the speed and impact of global warming this century.” (Source: COP26 Pledges Will Have Catastrophic Consequences Says Ex-NASA Climate Chief, Byline Times, February 16, 2022)

“Conventional climate models, he said, do not sufficiently account for the Earth’s paleoclimate history or ongoing observations of the climate system… Prof Hansen criticized Boris Johnson’s ‘claim that COP26 salvaged the chance to keep global warming below 1.5°C’ and that ‘we’ll look back at COP26 as the moment humanity finally got real about climate change. Describing the UK Government’s claims about the success of the COP26 as ‘unadulterated bulls**t’, his memo warned that ‘the 1.5°C global warming ceiling will be breached this decade’ and that pledges made by Johnson’s administration at COP26 will do nothing to stop the world hitting dangerous climate change.”

Recommended: Climate Restoration, Rivertowns Books, 2022

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 November 4, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Posted on

Can the Climate Be Restored?

Photo by Li-An Lim on Unsplash
Photo by Li-An Lim on Unsplash

Can the Climate Be Restored?

By Robert Hunziker

A fresh approach to fixing climate change/global warming is outlined in a new book: Climate Restoration, which focuses on how the climate can be restored. Indeed, the book is full of fascinating details, meriting a closer look and critique (Peter Fiekowsky and Carole Douglis, Climate Restoration, Rivertowns Books, 2022).

But first: The words climate change and global warming have become imbedded in the fabric of society so much so that the attendant dangers become a nonevent in people’s minds. Over time, they become comfortable with their own personal knowledge of what it means. That’s a problem because studies suggest that only a tiny fraction of people truly understand the real science and inherent dangers.

Meanwhile, in touch with reality, the risks associated with climate change/global warming keeps climate scientists wide-eyed in the middle of the night staring at the ceiling, unblinking, in a cold sweat.

For example, one well-known scientist claims: “At just 1.2°C of global average warming, tipping points (ed. meaning the point of no return) have been passed for several large Earth systems.  These include Arctic sea ice, the Greenland Ice Sheet, The Amundsen Sea glaciers in West Antarctica, the eastern Amazonian rainforest, and the world’s coral systems… The meme that ‘we have eight years to avoid 1.5°C and tipping points’ should be deleted from the climate advocacy vocabulary. It is simply wrong.”

Moreover: “Certainly, in the case of West Antarctica, the evidence continues to pile… Thwaites ‘doomsday’ glacier could begin rapid melt with ‘just a small kick’, researchers say… Similarly, scientists now report that Greenland ice sheet has passed a point of system stability and is now “irreversibly committed” to a significant sea-level rise regardless of twenty-first-century climate pathways.” (Source: Climate Dominoes, National Centre for Climate Restoration, Melbourne, May 2022 by David Spratt, Climate Code Red, September 28, 2022).

On the other hand, from a positive viewpoint, is it possible to roll back time and restore the climate to its former self? Climate Restoration makes that claim and offers supporting evidence.

But first, Climate Restoration tells the ugly truth about the popular rallying cry “Net Zero by 2050.” This idiom is widely accepted as the solution to the global warming monster, but that assumption is simply wrong.

In point of fact, if the world follows through on Net Zero by 2050, by the year 2050 CO2 will be at 460ppm, or higher, and according to Fiekowsky/Douglis, the world will have changed: “The great coral reefs are gone… the oceans are largely devoid… gone, too, are most of the old-growth forest and rainforests… average sea level rise of about two feet. The path of humankind in this scenario is a risky one from which there may be no turning back.” pgs. 7-9

Therefore, assuming the nations of the world continue on the pathway of Net Zero by 2050. Fiekowsky-Douglis make a case for a planet that nobody will want to live on. And, maybe they should’ve even gone further in the analysis by stating major portions of the planet will basically be unlivable. There are scientists who believe that’ll be the consequences of Net Zero by 2050, which the world at large has already embraced as the magical solution: “No worries, we’re gonna hit Net Zero by 2050!”

Thus and therefore, it’s vitally important to be brutally honest about whether one book can change the world, re-educate enough people to see the scientific truth and find a better pathway? Hopefully, Climate Restoration can turn enough heads to make a difference. Moreover, double-hopefully, will it truly work?

Fiekowsky-Douglis, echoing Al Gore, state: “It’s time to acknowledge the inconvenient truth that climate scientists and activists have failed to confront, which is: Meeting the goal of Net Zero by 2050 in no way guarantees the survival of human society as we know it or even that of homo sapiens as a species.” pg. 22.

That paragraph is a shot across the bow for today’s world leaders as the Net Zero by 2050 ship logs into Titanic’s route, Southampton to New York. According to the authors: “The ecosystems we depend on will still continue to collapse” even as society achieves Net Zero by 2050 with universal renewable energy, electric vehicles, and total elimination of fossil fuels.

The hard truth: A monster hangs over, and in fact deflates, Net Zero by 2050: “There will still be a trillion tons (ed. 1,000,000,000,000) of excess CO2 lingering in the atmosphere for a millennium or longer.” pg. 23

Under that scenario with a trillion tons of CO2 still hanging around like a big blanket in the atmosphere continuing to heat up the planet (1) ice caps will continue melting (2) sea levels will keep going up and (3) ecosystems will continue collapsing all whilst the world community pops champagne corks on January 1, 2051 to celebrate Net Zero!

Net Zero does not remove the big blanket. Get over it!

Furthermore, according to the book: “No scientist I know will defend the claim that humankind is likely to survive if we limit our climate efforts to meeting the Paris goals… I sometimes refer to the Paris Accords as ‘the Paris Suicide Pact.” pg. 27

The authors initially discuss the goals of climate restoration on page 28: “Achieving the net zero goal set by the Paris Accords is not enough to guarantee a healthy, sustainable future… We need to go further by reducing the level of atmospheric CO2 to below 300 ppm level to which our species originally evolved and has historically flourished.”

Significantly, the climate restoration plan supplements and completes the work that Paris has started with its target of Net Zero by 2050. Keep in mind, it’s not all bad, as Paris ’15 has inspired the world to work towards a common goal of a cleaner, healthier, sustainable planet as well as motivating nations to work to reduce emissions. In spite of general neglect by nations to abide by IPCC commitments to reduce emissions, Paris ‘15 is still a positive event in many respects, specifically by bringing the issue onto the world stage.

Beyond the work to be (hopefully) accomplished by Net Zero by 2050, the good news is that climate restoration is already fairly well advanced. It involves technological processes not anticipated by Paris ’15. Many have already been tested and successfully developed.

Climate Restoration

“Restoring the climate means reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide from today’s 420 ppm to below 300 ppm by 2050. This will require removing roughly a trillion tons of carbon dioxide that we’ve already pumped into the air that would otherwise remain in the atmosphere far beyond our lifetimes, as well as removing any continuing emissions while we head to zero emissions.” pg. 30

Removing a trillion tons of CO2 is the same as removing seven tons of CO2 per year for every person on the planet. Try that one on for size!

All of which prompts a burning question for many people: Where is all of the CO2 located? According to MIT: “Carbon dioxide mixes evenly through the atmosphere. But the atmosphere as a whole is densest near the ground, so a cubic foot of air at ground level will contain more carbon dioxide molecules than a cubic foot of air high up in the sky.” (Source: Is There a Place in the Atmosphere Where Carbon Dioxide is Concentrated, and if so, Can we Remove it? MIT Climate Portal)

The restoration schedule: The decade of the 2020s is projected for scaling up the removal technologies. Thereafter, removal technologies work full tilt from 2030-2050, thus removing a minimum of 50 gigatons of CO2 each year, which in effect removes legacy CO2 by 2050.

Significantly, the technologies all have one thing in common. Each is an adaptation of natural processes that have actually occurred in former geological eras, hands free, no humans involved.

Climate restoration is not based upon fancy new technology breakthroughs. Rather, it’s as 0ld as nature itself. The planet on its own merits has encountered and resolved the same exact global warming problems over the eons but much, much, much more slowly. As explained by the authors: “Nature was not in a hurry to remove geologically relevant amounts of CO2.” However in contrasts to good ole slow Mother Nature: “Using modern technological tools, we can do the same as nature but on an accelerated timetable. For our survival, we now need to do so roughly a thousand times faster.” Hmm.

Accordingly, “scientists and engineers have developed and demonstrated four major technology processes for reducing greenhouse gas levels that reproduces large-scale natural processes.” pg. 33

Four Major Technologies

The technologies for climate restoration are classified as biomimicry and geomimicry, as follows:

1. Synthetic Limestone Manufacture – capturing CO2 and converting it to synthetic limestone producing a commercial product, which when scaled-up could pull 50 Gt of CO2 per year from the atmosphere.

2. Seaweed Permaculture – the construction of arrays of light-latticed structures constructed of tubes to which seaweed can attach in mid-ocean. At scale it could capture enough CO2 to reduce excess CO2 by 20% over 20 years.

3. Ocean Iron Fertilization – adding trace amounts of iron-ore dust to iron-poor ocean areas, in turn, photosynthesis increases rapidly with expansion of phytoplankton which in turn pulls CO2 from the atmosphere. “If just one or two percent of the ocean bloomed with phytoplankton thanks to ocean pasture restoration, the trillion tons of excess carbon could be drawn… within 20-30 years.” Pgs. 40-41

4. Acceleration of Natural Methane Oxidation – by adding iron chloride to the atmosphere to oxidize methane and thus restore pre-industrial methane levels by 2028.

Each of the four strategies is discussed at length in four separate chapters, pgs. 83-162.

Climate Restoration is a bold idea; it is a fresh idea; it is new to the scene as an adjunct to Net Zero by 2050, which by itself can make a huge difference, but it cannot and will not stop the legacy of 1,000,000,000,000 tons of CO2 hanging-out in the atmosphere. That massive blanket will continue to heat up the planet post 2050. It must be removed… period!

In Conclusion, once you’ve read this article, you have some choices to make. One obvious choice is to think about it for a moment but move on with life, biz as usual.

Or, think about what you can personally do to help restore the climate. Here are a couple of suggestions:

Forward this article to everybody you know with a personal message that you intend to get involved and want friends to help, asking them to also spread the word. It’s that important. After all, “restore the climate” is not exactly well known, but the more word gets around, the better chances it can happen. Word of mouth is a powerful tool for making things happen. Your forwarding message could be: “I am sending an article about climate restoration. It’s fascinating stuff! Let me know what you think.”

Or, contact the Foundation for Climate Restoration and ask how you can join in the effort: https://foundationforclimaterestoration.org/

Or, write to every local, state, and federal government representative asking them to look into climate restoration.

Or, maybe forward William Shatner’s message, which is found in the postscript to this article.

It’s important to be realistic when it comes to fixes for climate change. For decades now, nations have dragged their feet, not keeping commitments and breaking promises to cut emissions. And, the climate change issue has acquired a considerable amount of cynicism, which is fed by various sources like Fox News, politicians of note like Trump and Bolsonaro, and a general public belief that it’s old news, heard over and over again, that somebody somewhere will handle it if it gets bad enough. In other words, the general public is not well-educated about the reality.

In that regard, it’s much worse than people realize and happening so much faster than scientists ever expected. Ecosystems are stressed to breaking points from the far northern latitudes to the far southern and everywhere in between.

Harmful climate change is happening everywhere where nobody lives. For example, while blindfolded throw a dart at a globe; it’ll probably hit close to a stressed ecosystem, for example, Thwaites “Doomsday” Glacier in West Antarctica (tipsy) or Greenland (massive ice loss) or Siberian permafrost (methane bubbling lakes) or Lake Mead (close to dead pool status) or the Po River/Italy (a trickle this past summer) or the Amazon rainforest (30,000+ human-fires/August) or melting Andes’ glaciers (water wars in So. America) or tanker trucks supplying drinking water to 400,000 families outside of Santiago, all signs of stressed ecosystems threatening to shut down nature’s climate system of life support.

Thus and therefore, whether Climate Restoration can gain enough traction to get the job done is a major concern, and it’s why every person who can help, must help. Our home, our planet is at stake, and right now it does not look good. Time is of the essence.

It is imperative that Climate Restoration gets a chance to prove itself because, frankly, it is the only known technological process for naturally reviving our spectacular blue planet.

Postscript: Dateline, October 13, 2021: Capital Kirk, aka: William Shatner’s feet touched ground after a 10-minute 66-mile trip four miles beyond the edge of space on Blue Origin. Shatner wept, but he wasn’t sure why, until he reflected for a spell: “I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.”

Upon more reflection: “My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”

At a later date, upon more reflection: We must have “a clarion call to stop climate change… a Manhattan Project of scientists charged with removing carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.”

Climate Restoration, Rivertowns Books, 2022

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 October 28, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.