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Breakdown of the Marine Food Web

Photo of a grey shark by Gerald Schömbs on Unsplash
Photo by Gerald Schömbs on Unsplash

Breakdown of the Marine Food Web

By Robert Hunziker

For the first time, a significant loss at the base of the marine food web has been detected. The Scottish research vessel Capepod reported the findings in equatorial waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s a disturbing discovery, but first a look at the marine food web, starting with the lowest organisms: (1) phytoplankton – plant-like plankton: green algae, diatoms, and dinoflagellates eaten by (2) zooplankton – microorganisms: crustaceans, rotifers, insect larvae and mites eaten by (3) small fish: anchovies, sardines, shrimp, squid, krill eaten by (4) bigger fish: sturgeon, sunfish, sharks, manta rays eaten by (5) mammals: seals, dolphins, polar bears, and last but certainly not least, humans at an increasingly wobbly end of the food chain.

At the bottom of the food web phytoplankton generically serves as the most significant resource of marine life simply because nothing else eats if phytoplankton doesn’t exist. Moreover, phytoplankton performs photosynthesis, converting sunrays to energy, absorbs CO2, and serves as a major source, producing oxygen for the biosphere.

Teams of scientists study plankton and keep track of changes at the base of the food chain. Their results are reported to various governmental agencies that hopefully take remedial action if things are going sideways. But, umm… well, onward with the story.

Only recently, disturbing news came from the Scottish research group Global Oceanic Environmental Survey (“GOES”) Edinburgh that spent two years gathering samples of plankton along the equatorial Atlantic. The team detected unmistakable signs that the food web is compromised: “Their sampling suggested plankton levels may have fallen by 90% in parts of the Atlantic.” (Source: Expert: Warmer Seas are Forcing Crucial Plankton to Move North, The Sunday Post, Dundee, Scotland, July 24, 2022)

The GOES research team spent two years collecting water samples from the Atlantic and the Caribbean. Previously, it was assumed that plankton had fallen by 50% since the 1940s, but this new evidence suggests a mouth-dropping -90%.

According to the GOES team, plankton is directly impacted by: “An overload of CO2 along with a deluge of lethal manmade chemicals in cosmetics, plastics, sunscreen, drugs, and fertilizers is inundating the marine environment. It’s all toxic to underwater life and once the water reaches a tipping point of activity, vast amounts of plankton will simply dissolve.” (Source: Atlantic Ocean ‘Pretty Much Dead’ Says Scientist as Plankton Wiped Out, Marine Industry News, July 18, 2022)

GOES’s research: “The team expected to find up to five visible pieces of plankton in every 10 litres of water – but found an average of less than one (ed.-meaning some samples were zero) Conversely, they’d expected to discover 20 microscopic specks of toxic particles per litre of Atlantic water – but actually counted between 100 and 1,000. The discovery suggests that plankton faces complete wipeout sooner than was expected,” Ibid.

In addition to the above-referenced GOES survey in parts of the equatorial Atlantic, another research team Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey (“CPR”) of Plymouth, UK monitors plankton with vessels across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, up to 30 vessels generating 5,000 samples per year. CPR has been monitoring plankton in the North Atlantic for 70 years and reports results to governments in the UK, EU, and North America.

Preliminary evidence suggests, in addition to human influenced chemicals, etc., for the first time, microscopic plankton sea creatures are negatively reacting to warming ocean water in a profound manner. In part, the issue is the change of water temperature conditions required to support certain species life cycles. It appears that global warming’s impact is displacing them northward as the equatorial waters turn too warm. This shift northward by plankton may be okay for the short-term but more ocean warming will become extremely problematic as plankton essentially run out of enough cooler water space to migrate without overcrowding its own kind in jumbled clumps of plankton crowding onto and battling over the same space. This can become toxic in many respects.

According to David Johns, head of CPR: “Are we in a situation that requires mitigation as a matter of urgency? Yes, I would say so. If they carry on moving north and run out of water, if the seas become too warm, then we’ll lose a lot of those types of plankton that are critically important for fish species and marine mammals,” Ibid.

Of course, nobody knows for certain whether the horrendous falloff is a result of migration north because of too warm of waters or decimation by toxins such as plastics, chemicals, and farm pesticides/fertilizers. However, it’s likely a combination of factors, which essentially doubles the trouble.

The world community should be overly concerned and overly reactive to do whatever it takes as quickly as possible! This type of bad news has a tendency to get worse over time. Moreover, is there a fast enough solution to make a big enough difference in enough time?

The risk is that a loss of plankton brings in its wake a collapse of the ocean food chain. According to Dr. Howard Dryden of GOES, a tipping point could arrive within 25 years unless direct action is taken on toxins from plastics, chemicals, and farm fertilizers. Still, a big issue is temperatures goosed up by inordinate climate change/global warming as a result of excessive greenhouse gases emitted by humans as well as CO2’s hugely negative impact on ocean acidification.

As for solutions, according to David Johns of CPR: “I’d definitely focus on reducing CO2.”

Which brings forth the heartbreaking reality that CO2 emissions are nearly guaranteed to keep on increasing at the current rate of 10 times more than the paleoclimate record over the past 66 million years. Umm, 10xs faster! And 66 million years left in the dust.

Here’s why CO2 is destined to continue choking the planet: Public announcements of oil and gas production plans guarantee excessive levels of greenhouse gas emissions for years ahead: World’s Biggest Fossil Fuel Firms Projected to Spend Almost a Trillion Dollars on New Oil and Gas Fields by 2030, Global Witness and Oil Change International, April 12, 2022. At the same time, both China and India have once again rediscovered affairs with coal.

Withal, the threat to plankton goes much deeper than human-generated greenhouse gases and toxic chemicals. It’s much worse, to wit: Indeed, scientists have observed zooplankton eating plastic. Micro-plastic resembles food for zooplankton. This horror film analogue introduces a variety of toxic chemicals to the marine food web. Heaven only knows the final results, maybe 3-eyed fish and lots more people with totally fried brains that are easily swayed to believe outright lies. (Source: Plastic Pollution is Killing Plankton. How the Loss of This Species Threatens the Oceans, Onegreenplanet.org, 2021)

All of which brings to mind if, when, and how there’s any chance whatsoever of globally unified remedial policies on a worldwide scale to prevent total collapse of marine life. Hmm! That’s asking for a lot, especially when nations of the world couldn’t even follow thru on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris ’15 climate agreement. That’s been a total failure. What then of the oceans?

Photo of James Lovelock in 2005
Photo of James Lovelock in 2005

R.I.P.

James Lovelock, July 26, 1919 – July 26, 2022

Gaia theory – Earth is a self-regulating living organism

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 July 29, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Paper Straws Are Not Enough

Photo by Brian Yurasits on Unsplash
Photo by Brian Yurasits on Unsplash

Paper Straws Are Not Enough

By Robert Hunziker

As the UK suffered its hottest-ever temperatures only recently, Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, interviewed Britain’s erudite environmental journalist George Monbiot July 21, 2022 about his most recent article in The Guardian: This Heatwave Has Eviscerated The Idea That Small Changes Can Tackle Extreme Weather, July 18, 2022.

According to Monbiot: “Paper straws are not enough. Only System Change can halt the climate crisis.” Of course, System Change can only mean throwing out the neoliberal brand of capitalism in favor of almost anything else.

Adam Smith would be spinning in his grave with today’s crony capitalism. Interestingly, “the term ‘capitalism’ appears nowhere in Smith’s writings.” (Source: Jesse Norman, Adam Smith, Penguin Random House/UK 2018, pgs. 265-66)

According to Jesse Norman, former Financial Secretary to the UK Treasury, 2019-2021 and Member of Parliament since 2010: “The real Adam Smith was (a) not an advocate of self-interest (b) did not believe rational behavior was constituted solely by the pursuit of profit (c) was not a believer in laissez-faire (d) was not pro-rich (e) was not anti-government.”

In other words, Adam Smith is/was the antithesis of today’s brand of neoliberal capitalism, and oh yes, (f) “far from glorifying consumption for its own sake, Smith deprecated it.”

Everything that Smith was against is found in neoliberalism today, especially the failure to protect and benefit the common good.

Today’s capitalism couldn’t fix climate change if its existence depended upon it, which it does, as self-interest looks elsewhere far beyond the common good or welfare.

Photo of George Monbiot by TED Conference is licens under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Photo of George Monbiot (“TS2019_20190723_2BH8236_1920“)by TED Conference is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

George Monbiot echoes Adam Smith in many respects. Like Smith, Monbiot has been recognized and awarded by his contemporaries, recently winning the Orwell Prize for Journalism 2022 for his article: Capitalism is Killing the Planet – it’s Time to Stop Buying into our Destruction, The Guardian, October 30, 2021.

Capitalism is Killing… is a scathing critique of how we’re dealing with the climate crisis by focusing on what he terms micro consumerist ballocks.

Monbiot explains: What we’re collectively saying as environmentalists is that we’re facing the biggest existential crisis humanity has ever faced, a potential collapse of our life support systems, the domino effect as one earth system pulls down another until habitable space on the planet collapses into a state from which we did not evolve.

In response, environmentalists are saying we want to use less plastic bags, and replace plastic shafts with paper shafts, and stop using plastic straws. Essentially, the environmental movement has been calling for micro solutions to solve macro problems. The upshot is a very low threshold for people to get involved in this way of thinking. In turn, it creates a mindset that believes “we cannot possibly have such a big problem if the solutions are so tiny.” People continue to whistle whilst they work with nothing too serious to care about. Micro consumerist ballock is the dominant narrative within the media and amongst environmental orgs.

However, “incremental change can never develop the transformation which is required… it just does not deliver.” The only way to deliver quickly and effectively is by radical system change.

Meanwhile, as environmentalists have been messing around with micro fixes, the global Right has instituted insurgency and has achieved system change that’s tearing down democracy, tearing down equality before the law, tearing down basic rights, human rights, regulations, and taxes, ripping down everything, and changing the system to suit billionaires, oligarchs, and predatory corporations. They have proven that it’s possible to achieve system change. They’ve done it!

The Right has executed the biggest system change in American history, while the Left’s timidity and failure to demand system change chokes in the dust as a big part of why we collectively are stuck where we are, and why almost no effective broad based measures to address the greatest crisis of all time have been instituted.

Meanwhile, what we really truly want is “private sufficiency with public luxury.” Meaning people have their own home base with necessities, which is private sufficiency. Then, for luxury we collectively pursue it in the public domain as public luxury.

Whereas luxury-for-all is a huge indomitable challenge. “There is not enough physical or ecological space for everybody to pursue private luxury.” For example, if everyone has a private jet and a big luxury car and overly spacious home, that’s planet-gone (devastation) within hours. We’d burn through everything in a flash of time.” If everyone in London had a swimming pool and tennis court and art collection, the city would physically need to be as big as all of Europe to accommodate it all. Where would everybody else in Europe go to live?

There simply is not enough planet space for everybody to be a billionaire, but there is enough space for public luxury, e.g. public swimming pools and public tennis courts and public health service and public transport, which creates space for people by sharing resources on a per capita basis that is manageable.

Kate Rayworth’s Doughnut Economics (Random House, 2017) outlines such a life style where we all live within planetary boundaries but above welfare boundaries. The message is clear that mitigation of the climate crisis requires an ecological civilization with participatory democracy, once again.

The Left’s blatant failure to openly call for system change is its biggest failing and quite the opposite of the Right’s success with system change, leaving the Left speechless and coughing and wheezing in an effortless cloud of dust. The Left has never learned to fight by taking off the gloves, bare-knuckled.

In Montbiot’s book Regenesis, Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet, Penguin Random House 2022, he looks at the world via a global prism. Therein, he discovers that it is as important to stop animal agriculture as it is to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

According to Monbiot, “the great majority of people have got to stop eating animals.” It is a primary driver of environmental destruction, a major cause of habitat loss, of wildlife loss, of extinction, of abusive land use, of fresh water overuse, of soil degradation, a major cause of climate breakdown and of water pollution and air pollution. Animal agriculture is at the top of the list along side fossil fuels as the planet’s biggest drivers of mass destruction.

Monbiot says plant-based diets are far better than animal agricultural diets, but he feels society can go much further than that with new technologies, including fermentation, which produces a protein-rich food from single-cell organisms or microbes that are essentially brewed. It is a process that can be done anywhere. No need for fertile land or chemicals or using massive quantities of water. It is also an avenue to break away from multinational corporations that control global trade, e.g. four corporations control 90% of the global grain trade, which is essentially a long and highly vulnerable food chain.

Of concern, the global food system has lost its resilience, and it’s starting to approach the deplorable state of the financial system in 2008. Threateningly, the global food system has switched from stocks to flows. Basically our global food reserves are floating at sea in container ships. The dangers are legion.

To mitigate the climate crisis, precision fermentation offers an opportunity to break the hold of four corporations controlling the world’s food system, as well as offering release of the all-powerful destructive tension hitting ecosystems throughout the world that are fast approaching a Big Snap!

Examples of Fermentation

In response to a question about fermentation examples, the following comes from an article of mine some time ago:

Factory farming is about to be disrupted via better foods, tastier foods, cheaper foods, healthier foods, and a much healthier environment. That future, sans institutional slaughterhouses and sans widespread use of chemicals and the end of clear-cutting has been theorized in detail by the independent think tank RethinkX.

The not-so-secret formula to better, tastier, cheaper, healthier, more prevalent food is the production of microorganisms. Already over past centuries humanity has shown the value of controlling microorganisms through fermentation, producing bread, cheese, alcohol, as well as preserving fruit and vegetables.

“Moving food production to the molecular level promises a more efficient means of feeding ourselves and the delivery of superior, cleaner nutrients without the unhealthy chemical/antibiotic/insecticide additives required by current industrial means of production.” (RethinkX)

The capability to create foods with exact attributes of nutrition, structure, taste, and texture is advancing whereby ordering food will be similar to installing software on your phone but via databases of engineered molecules, as fermentation farms displace factory farms.

Impossible Foods is an example that utilizes fermented (heme) to create a higher-performing product. (Source: A Rainbow of Opportunity: How Fermentation Biotech is Creating “Agricultural 2.0”, Food Navigator, March 25, 2021)

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

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Greenland Threatens

Image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Greenland Threatens

By Robert Hunziker

It rained for 9 hours at Summit Station/Greenland, 10,530’ elevation.

Greenland is sending signals to coastal metropolises around the world that it’s never too early to start building seawalls. These are not mixed signals from the big ice island. Rather, they are straightforward signals indicative of rapid breakdown of average ice thickness of 5,000 feet sooner than ever thought possible.

Stating the obvious, it’s horrible news.

In conjunction with freakish rain at the top of Greenland, the response to global warming has increasingly exposed humans as farcically trapped behind the biggest eight ball of all time by not taking global warming seriously. Now, there may be no way around it.

Greenland is acting out. For example, it rained at the Summit Station at 10,530 feet above sea level where it has never rained throughout all recorded history. It’s not supposed to rain at the top of an ice sheet nearly two miles above sea level. But, it did.

Why?Climate System Scientist Paul Beckwith knows why, as he explains in a 41-min video released July 14, 2022 entitled: Greenland Ice Sheet Vulnerable to Bone-Crushing Melt from Stronger More Frequent Atmospheric Rivers

He starts by explaining how the first rainfall in recorded history at the summit happened one year ago. An atmospheric river caused it. Accordingly, he explains: “These atmospheric rivers are occurring more frequently.”

Here’s how Beckwith sees it: “The idea that the ice on Greenland will last decades and decades, even centuries. I think you could throw those ideas out the window as you get more and more atmospheric rivers, you’ll get more and more abrupt changes in the melt rate.”

On the first day of rain at the Summit, it rained every hour, which was unprecedented and shocking to the scientists at the station at 10,000 feet elevation. Temperatures were more than 18°C higher than normal.

The implications are horrifying. For example, when and how much sea level rises has become a roll of the dice that threatens every coastal city of the world. When and how much?

Keep in mind nobody is gonna ring a bell or pre-announce: Hey, Greenland’s crumbling so fast that we’d better head for the hills. Nobody is going to make a public statement like that, and if they did, climate deniers, including 52% of House Republicans and 60% of Senate Republicans would tear them to pieces in the media labeled as a “commie plot,” or as a “lie to scare Americans,” or something equally stupid and juvenile that a whole bunch of people would believe.

Beckwith introduced a new study d/d June 2nd, 2022 entitled: Greenland Ice Sheet Rainfall, Heat and Albedo Feedback Impacts From the Mid-August 2021 Atmospheric River, Geophysical Research Letters, Vole 49, Issue 11 by Jason E. Box, et al. Box is widely recognized as the world’s leading authority on Greenland.

Regarding the analysis according to Christopher Shuman, a glaciologist with University of Maryland: “To see this many melt events at this intensity in such a short period is absolutely remarkable in the historic records that are available to us… We now see three melting events in a decade in Greenland – and before 1990, that happened about once every 150 years, and now rainfall in an area where rain never fell,” Ibid.

According to Beckwith: “This has huge implications for Greenland’s rate of melt, it has huge implications for global sea level rise. It has huge implications for the Ocean Circulation Pattern… It’s a solid indicator that we’re in abrupt climate system change… crazy things are happening, we’re at that state.”

The frequency of atmospheric rivers driven by highly amplified jet stream patterns is increasingly troublesome and threatens continued rapid melt. This is also an issue in Antarctica.

Since the timeline and extent of sea level rise is now an unknown more so than ever before and in the face of rapidly deteriorating conditions at both poles, coastal communities worldwide should preempt the unknown by building sea walls, especially low-lying areas like Miami. And yet, there are no hues and cries across the land to initiate emergency measures to hold back rising seas.

Bottom line according to Beckwith: “Throw out all of the models, the idea that it can take decades and decades or even centuries for a place like Greenland ice to melt out with a huge increase in sea level rise… If atmospheric rivers become more frequent, the Greenland ice sheet is basically a sitting duck to be obliterated by these atmospheric rivers.”

“In just one week in July last year, the ice and snow virtually disappeared from the surface of Greenland’s barren interior. Only a few months earlier, when Box predicted this might happen, he was dismissed by many of his fellow scientists as an alarmist.” (Source: Greenland Melting, Rollingstone, 2022)

Box explains the problem of science: “For most scientists publishing a paper is a masturbatory act… Few people read it, you feel good, and then it’s over; it has no influence on policymakers; it does nothing to increase public understanding of what is happening to the climate system,” Ibid.

Meanwhile, according to NASA: Greenland and Antarctica are losing three times as much ice each year as they did in the 1990s.

Years of warnings about dangers of excessive fossil fuel CO2 emissions have not moved the needle. Fossil fuels today account for 75-80% of the energy mix, same as 50 years ago. And, according to the International Energy Agency, fossil fuel companies plan on $1.5T of new production between now and 2030.

With warnings galore of dangers of global warming, even The Economist felt compelled to carry an article Aug. 25, 2020: The Greenland Ice Sheet has Melted Past the Point of no Return: “The ice loss, they think, is now so great that it has triggered an irreversible feedback loop: the sheet will keep melting, even if all climate-warming emissions are miraculously curtailed. This is bad news for coastal cities.”

The Economist article was two years ago, one year before the unusual rain incident at Summit Station, which was a big time wake up call. Yet, the planet’s biggest threat remains worse than ever. Alas, at some point in time global warming warning articles, like this one, will become meaningless. Gurgle!

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 July 19, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Will Egypt Drain the World’s Second Largest Wetlands?

Photo by Wynand Uys on Unsplash
Photo by Wynand Uys on Unsplash

Will Egypt Drain the World’s Second Largest Wetlands?

By Robert Hunziker

“With 35% loss globally since 1970, wetlands are our most threatened ecosystem, disappearing three times faster than forests. Wetlands’ services for climate mitigation, adaptation biodiversity, and human health outweigh all other terrestrial ecosystems.” (Source: Wetlands are Being Lost at Alarming Rates, Global Wetland Outlook, 2021)

Sudd is Africa’s largest freshwater wetland at roughly 3,500 square miles in an otherwise dry region of South Sudan. It’s under threat by a megaproject named Jonglei Canal that has the potential to devastate this ecological gem.

According to conservationists: “Even a partial loss of the Sudd would be an ecological disaster, desiccating the world’s second largest swamp and ending seasonal flooding of the surrounding grasslands, which comprise Africa’s largest intact area of savannah.” (Source: Will Nile Canal Project Dry Up Africa’s Largest Wetland? Grist, July 8, 2022)

Egypt has Sudd’s water in its sights, some of it or all of it, only time will tell. Its plans involve a 40-yr disrupted work-in-progress that is now moving ahead once again, diverting water from the Sudd watershed to Egypt.

Map of South Sudan is in the public domain.
Map of South Sudan by the United States Central Intelligence Agency is in the public domain.

Completion of a 240-mile canal will divert White Nile River flow directly to Egypt. This risks draining Sudd to levels that’ll negatively impact the ecosystem forever. But, nobody on the Egyptian side will even hint of such possibilities. The White Nile is one of two main tributaries of the Nile. It begins at Lake Victoria and flows thru Uganda and South Sudan, where it feeds water to Sudd’s remarkable pristine ecosystem, one of the world’s finest.

Wetlands are the principal feeder system for replenishment of the world’s aquifers. According to NASA one-third of the world’s largest aquifers are stressed in large measure because of loss of wetlands.

Cementing over, draining, diverting, or plowing under the world’s wetlands destroys the kidneys of the planet and a whole lot more. The path of destruction is already at critical levels.

“In just over 100 years we have managed to destroy 50 percent of the world’s wetlands… It is a startling figure.” (Source: Achim Steiner, executive director, UN Environment Programme, Hyderabad UN Conference)

“Wetlands are critical to human and planet life. Directly or indirectly, they provide almost the entire world’s freshwater. More than one billion people depend on them for a living and they are among the most biodiverse ecosystems. Up to 40% of the world’s species live and breed in wetlands, although now more than 25% of all wetlands plants and animals are at risk of extinction.” (Source: Wetlands Disappearing Three Times Faster Than Forests, United Nations Climate Change, October 2018)

One sentence from above says it all: Directly or indirectly, they (wetlands) provide almost the entire world’s freshwater. In a world riddled with unprecedented bouts of severe drought, it takes on new significance.

As for completion of the work-in-progress canal, South Sudan’s environmental ministry has different ideas than most others in its administration. The ministry will not support “completion of the canal because of the ecosystem services that Sudd provides to our nation, the region and the world.” (Source: Will a Nile Canal Project Dry Up Africa’s Largest Wetland? YaleEnvironment 360, June 28, 2022)

What Will be Lost?

Ecologists claim the magnificent Sudd is under threat of turning into desert. Sudd is home to thousands of crocodiles, hippos, elephants, zebras, and the great majority of the world’s shoebill storks. It serves as one of the world’s mightiest mammal migration pathways, including 1.3 million antelope that cross through the ecosystem’s 100s of miles of rich grasslands to Gambella, Ethiopia. Ecologists fear that much of this will be lost. (Grist, July 8th)

Furthermore, hydrologist claim the project will reduce rainfall for farms and the rainforests across South Sudan as well as in neighboring countries.

Canal Status

British colonial engineers first proposed the canal in 1904. It was 2/3rds completed in the 1980s but abandoned because of a raging civil war. Rebels kidnapped the operators of the canal. They saw the canal as water theft by Egypt, depriving Sudd’s nomadic Dinka, Nuer, and Shilluk of fisheries and seasonal flooding of pastures for livestock. A 22-year civil war ensued.

“The abandoned site of the half-completed Jonglei Canal is one of the strangest scenes in Africa. A dry excavation 250 feet wide and up to 25 feet deep, extends across near-desert east of the Sudd for 160 miles, ending at the Bucketwheel, a 2,300-ton laser-guided digging machine as tall as a five-story building. The machine was brought there in 1978 by a French construction company, and for six years its 12 giant rotating buckets steadily excavated the canal.” (Grist)

In February 2022, South Sudan’s VP for Infrastructure Taban Deng Gai became the first minister to publicly call for the canal to be completed: “For our land not to be submerged by flood, let’s allow this water to flow to those who need it in Egypt,” Ibid.

Clearly, Egypt stands to gain the most, and it’s likely the only true beneficiary of completion of the canal.

However, an incipient coalition of environmentalists, concerned members of the Sudan National Legislature, academics, and NGO officials are pushing back with an energetic “Save the Sudd” campaign. Accordingly, John Aker, the vice chancellor of the University of Juba claims: The canal “has the potential of draining and destroying the Sudd’s ecosystem, with dire consequences on the Sudd region’s biodiversity, livelihood, culture, and hydrological cycle,” Ibid.

Academic Jacob Lupai claims: “South Sudan did not fight two costly and devastating wars… just to be at the receiving end of predatory outsiders’ imposed projects and to allow its precious natural resources to be plundered,” Ibid.

Supporters of the canal project claim it will not entirely dry up Sudd, merely shrink it. But, by how much is uncertain… guesstimates run as low as 7% and up to 40% with some opponents claiming total devastation. According to conservationists, “even a partial loss of the Sudd would be an ecological disaster.” (Grist, July 8th)

Significant amounts of water evaporation from Sudd’s skies carry south via winds that consistently maintain moisture for the ecologically crucial Green Belt that spreads across most of southern South Sudan and including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. In that regard, according to a hydrological model at Delft University of Technology and the University of Juba’s John Alec: “A shrinking Sudd will eliminate all-year rains across the region.”

Additionally, four billion tons of carbon would be released from peat if and when a significant Sudd dry out occurs.

Egypt’s completion of the Jonglei Canal puts at risk one of the world’s last remaining spectacular wetlands. The loss would be immeasurable and obviously irreplaceable, as it impacts one of the planet’s last remaining wonderlands of wildlife.

It’s truly one of a kind.

Save the Sudd!

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

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Noam Chomsky and the United Nations Warn of Collapse

Photo by Javier Miranda on Unsplash
Photo by Javier Miranda on Unsplash

Noam Chomsky and the United Nations Warn of Collapse

By Robert Hunziker

It’s entirely possible that doomsayers of the world, though widely ridiculed, could be on target about the prospects for global societal collapse. But, of course, when? According to a recent Noam Chomsky interview, it’s an ongoing grind that will end with a thud.

The onset of societal collapse is not hidden. Rather, similar to animals in the wild, people sense when something’s out of the ordinary, amiss, trouble brewing, on the alert. There’s tension in the air, tempers flare, strangers lash out, and society turns against establishment protocols; it’s the antithesis of The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet (1952-1966) and Father Knows Best (1954-1960). Instead, it’s Mad Max (1979) redux. It is today’s world, and people sense trouble, something’s not right.

As for confirmation of those haunting feelings that something’s not right, a recent UN report discusses prominent risks of “global collapse”: UN 2022 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, aka: GAR2022 d/d May 2022, more on this later.

Accordingly, escalating synergies of (1) disasters (2) economic vulnerability and (3) ecosystem failures increasingly accumulate into a juggernaut of collapse, and finally, similar to an orderly line of tripped dominoes, it cascades without enough notice.

On the heels of the recent UN warning, Noam Chomsky also echoes the central premise of doomsayers: “The challenge ahead is beyond anything humans have ever faced. The fate of life on the planet is now at hand.” (Chomsky – Principal speaker for the American Solar Energy Society 51st annual conference, University of New Mexico, June 21, 2022).

"Noam Chomsky" by Andrew Rusk is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
“Noam Chomsky” by Andrew Rusk is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Chomsky is an iconic fixture of the Left known for strength of character, brilliance, and omniscience. His opening statement at the conference: “We are at a unique moment in human history. Decisions that must be made right now will determine the course of future history if there is to be any human history, which is very much in doubt. There is a narrow window in which we must implement measures to avert cataclysmic destruction of the environment.”

Chomsky questions survivability of humanity with one key sentence, as follows: “If there is to be any human history, which is very much in doubt.” This statement didn’t come from George Carlin in one of his cynical monologs on American ethics or morals. It’s Noam Chomsky, the father knows best figure of academia.

Chomsky speaks the same sentiments as the doomsayers of the world and in concert with an unlikely but factual United Nations doomsayer analysis, which is much deeper, and scarier, than publicly realized, more on that to follow.

Are they onto something?

Chomsky: The facts are clear. There are two major issues in front of us. The immediate crisis is severe. The crisis is coming to a head in Washington D.C., capitol of the most powerful nation/state in world history.

The fate of the world hangs in the balance of what happens in Washington. It’s not a secret. Indeed, New York Times energy environment correspondent Coral Davenport described a long carefully executed campaign to destroy organized human life on Earth in a recent NYT article: Republican Drive to Tilt Courts Against Climate Action Reaches a Crucial Moment, NYT, June 19, 2022.

Chomsky admits the Times article may seem outrageous, but he feels it is completely accurate. As explained therein, the campaign has been carried out meticulously for years by the Energy System. It’s enormous in institutional breadth, including fossil fuel companies, banks and other financial institutions and a large part of the legal community. It also has an international base of support called NATO.

Photo: NATO Secretary General, Mr. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, by NATO is licensed by CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Photo: NATO Secretary General, Mr. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, by NATO is licensed by CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

It’s not widely known but in the post cold war era NATO formally undertook an expanded mission based upon the following dictum by the Secretary General: “To guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is directed for the West and more generally to protect sea routes used by tankers and other crucial infrastructure of the energy system.” (Source: NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, 2004-09, outlining NATO’s mission at NATO conference)

The Energy System campaign has a strong political base in the Republican Party, especially since 2009. The McCain platform (2008) included a climate program until the Koch brothers got involved. And refused to tolerate it, launching a huge juggernaut bribery intimidation and enormous lobbying campaign to stop it, and going so far as to create a fake citizens group in opposition. They were successful.

Regarding Washington today and Davenport’s column: The Supreme Court, which is reactionary, will consider measures that restrict the use of fossil fuels to limit the effects of environmental destruction. If they strike down EPA authority, it’ll become a precedent for others winding their way thru the legal system. (Addendum- Subsequent to Chomsky’s speech, the far-right Court hammered the EPA, clobbering prospects for a green future in favor of a very dark world order.)

According to Chomsky, for most of history Homo sapiens lived in harmony with nature, until Aug 6 1945 the day that taught two stark lessons: (1) Human capacity reached a level to destroy everything (2) Very few seemed to care. The upshot: “Now, we are at the point when the major institutions of organized society are intent on destroying organized human life on Earth and the millions of other species.” And, too few seem to care enough to stop it.

The famous Doomsday Clock (University of Chicago) was reset during the Trump administration at two minutes to midnight for the first time since 1953. Now at 100 seconds. It will be set again in January, and Chomsky believes a good case can be made to move the second hand even closer to midnight, which is the final hour when humanity self-destructs, either with a bang or suffocation.

In addition to the primary concerns surrounding the dictates of the Doomsday Clock of a growing threat of nuclear war and of failure to prevent lethal global heating, a new concern has been added: The deterioration of rational discourse. ”Unless that gap can be closed, there’s no hope of closing the dread in time to save ourselves.”

Moreover, for Chomsky, there’s a deeper question. It is the famous Fermi Paradox… in brief: Where are they?

Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) was a distinguished astrophysicist (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1938) and he felt certain about the reality of a huge number of planets with conditions to sustain life to lead to higher intelligence, and that we were within reach of advanced communication.

But we cannot find a trace of them out there.

So, where are they?

According to Chomsky, one response that has been proposed and cannot be dismissed is that higher intelligence has actually developed numerous times throughout the eons but has always proven to be lethal. Similar to today’s merry-go-round tinkering with fission and excessive levels of greenhouse gases, “they discovered the means for self-annihilation but did not develop the moral capacity to prevent it. Perhaps that is inherent with higher intelligence. We are now confronted with whether that principle holds for modern humans.”

Watch out below!

The UN’s GAR2022 defines risks of an impending collapse of global society unless drastic remedial measures are adopted on a worldwide coordinated basis. However, get real, what are the odds of a worldwide coordinated effort?

The risk of global collapse, as dealt with in the UN Global Assessment Report or GAR2022 has received little or no media attention.

Yet, it is the first-ever UN flagship global report with findings that current global policies are “accelerating the collapse of human civilization.” The report does not suggest that collapse is a “done deal.” Rather, without radical change, it’s where the world is headed.

The collapse scenario suggested in GAR2022 is explained in much more detail in a separate contributing paper: Pandemics, Climate Extremes, Tipping Points and the Global Catastrophic Risk – How These Impact Global Target, published by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

The contributing paper discusses the impact of crossing planetary boundaries outside of what’s referred to as a “safe operating space for human societies to develop within a stable earth system,” resulting in Global Catastrophic Risk or GCR events. GCR events are defined as those events that lead to more than 10 million fatalities or more than $10T in damages.

The UN papers do not specify whether any of several collapse scenarios has actually begun, but according to the report, the world is clearly “tending dangerously towards these collapse scenarios.” No precise timetables are given.

Are the UN Reports Watered Down?

The following article addresses the issue of tampering with UN reports: Nafeez Ahmed (special investigations reporter – Byline Times) UN Warns of ‘Total Societal Collapse’ Due to Breaching of Planetary Boundaries, Defend Democracy Press, 26 May 2022

Nafeez Ahmed, a British investigative journalist and a former Visiting Research Fellow at the Faculty of Science and Technology at Anglia Ruskin University (est. 1858) Global Sustainability Institute authored the referenced article in Democracy Press. The following commentary comes directly from his article:

But there are reasons to suspect that a collapse process has already started, even if it is still possible to rein in.

A senior advisor to the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and contributor to the Global Assessment Report who spoke to Byline Times on condition of anonymity, claims that GAR2022 was watered-down before public release.

The source said that the world had “passed a point of no return” and “I don’t feel that this is being properly represented in UN or media as of now”.

“The GAR2022 is an eviscerated skeleton of what was included in earlier drafts.”

The UN GAR2022 is a landmark document. It is the first time that the United Nations has clearly underscored the impending risk of “total societal collapse” if the human system continues to cross the planetary boundaries critical to maintaining a safe operating space for the earth system.

Yet, despite this urgent warning, not only has it fallen on deaf ears, the UN itself appears to have diluted its own findings. Like the fictional film Don’t Look Up, we are more concerned with celebrity gossip and political scandals, seemingly unable – or unwilling – to confront the most important challenge that now faces us as a species.

Either way, these UN documents show that recognizing the risk of collapse is not about doom mongering, but about understanding risks so we can make better choices and avoid worst-case outcomes. As the report acknowledges, there is still much that can be done. But the time for action is not after 2030. It’s now.

Postscript: Effective Monday, July 4, the Italian government put restrictions on water on cities and towns in the north. The Po River, a source for agriculture, is at a 70-yr low. Global warming is hammering the country as drought has started to affect south-central Italy as well. Meanwhile, in South America the city of Santiago is rationing water to a population of 6.8 million, as human-caused global warming knows no boundaries. China has reduced water usage from January to October 2022 for Guangzhou (15M pop.) and Shenzhen (12.5M pop.) because the East River is down 50% The US Bureau of Reclamation is rationing some of the seven southwestern states as Lake Mead approaches the Dead Pool, getting frighteningly close! Only recently the Bureau demanded cuts by all seven states w/i 60 days in what’s considered an emergency situation.

For additional factual evidence of spreading drought worldwide, Google these articles: (1) World Drought Gets Worse, Cities Ration, May 8, 2022 or (2) Drought Clobbers the World, August 27, 2021.

The world climate system is no longer normal.

What does it take to get governments of the world to unify a global plan to combat their own destruction? For decades leaders of the world have failed to take global warming seriously. What now?

Then again, as suggested by Professor Chomsky, we’ll find out if the Fermi Paradox holds true for modern humans, as it has, in theory, for advanced (higher intelligent) civilizations over eons. But, that’s lights out, so what’s to find out?

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 July 8, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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US Marine Press Takes on Hothouse Earth

Image by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash
Seal of the Navy image by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

US Marine Press Takes on Hothouse Earth

By Robert Hunziker

America loves its military. It should because it’s the most expensive defense force of all time. $778B was allocated for defense spending in 2022. China comes in a distant second at $229B.

All of which prompts a provocative question: What if the Marine Corps publishes a landmark study that claims recipients of the US government defense budget are collectively responsible for accelerating the danger of climate change to very dangerous levels, in fact, to unlivable levels?

As of June 2022, that’s precisely what’s happened.

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. This startling information is explained in detail in an eye-opening analysis in which hyperthreat is the primary subject, to wit: Plan E: A Grand Strategy for the Twenty-first Century Era of Entangled Security and Hyperthreats by Elizabeth G. Boulton, PhD, Publisher – Journal of Advanced Military Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2022.

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

The publications contain the following clause: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Marine Corps University, the U.S. Marine Corps, the Department of the Navy, or the U.S. government.

Publishing an article is ordinarily consistent with some level of tacit approval of its general tenor, especially when the article points an accusing finger at the publishing entities’ main source of existence. That’s tacit approval, in spades. Further to the point, by all appearances, the military seems to want Boulton’s thesis in the public domain as a wake up call and more likely as a brilliant strategy going forward.

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

All quotations within this article come from Boulton’s article or from the following synopsis of the article: Defence Agencies ‘Accelerating’ Risk of ‘Hothouse Earth’, US Military Study Warns, David Spratt, Climate Code Red, June 27, 2022.

A key finding in the landmark study, which applies war theory and military strategy to the dynamics of the climate and ecological crises, states that activities of military and intelligent agencies are: “Accelerating the likelihood of triggering a worst-case ‘Hothouse Earth’ scenario that would make the planet ‘unlivable for most species.”

That’s a very powerful statement that’s seldom found outside of spirited scientific analyses. Yet, it is lodged within the heartbeat of the US Marine Corps, a tacit endorsement that’s desperately needed for the political establishment to get the hint, hello out there, all is not well. For decades now Congress has handled climate change like a hot potato. That’s an amateurish way to approach an existential threat.

Moreover, and even more damning, the study argues that various agencies of government “have become the biggest danger to planetary security, in effect, working to accelerate the ‘hyperthreat’ of climate and environmental change.”

According to the study: “The hyperthreat impact is an unprecedented combination of rapid global warming and the unraveling of Earth’s ecological systems.” Of heightened concern, the study warns that the hyperthreat’s most dangerous course of action is provoking cascading tipping elements thereby accelerating a transition to: “Hothouse Earth state uninhabitable for most species.”

That statement has strong endorsements throughout the world of science, to wit: “In 2019, Ripple and colleagues (2020) warned of untold suffering and declared a climate emergency together with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from 153 countries. They presented graphs of planetary vital signs indicating very troubling trends, along with little progress by humanity to address climate change. On the basis of these data and scientists’ moral obligation to ‘clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat,’ they called for transformative change.” (Source: World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2021, BioScience, Oxford Academic, September 9, 2021)

Timeline for Action

The Boulton study places a timeline on taking action in order to prevent a worst case scenario: “Without concerted global action between 2022 and 2025, the most dangerous course of action is also the most likely course of action.”

Failure to address the danger within the 2022-25 timeline with proactive real time actual policies is explained in war terms: “The hyperthreat has ‘war-like destructive capabilities’ that make it hard to recognize the enormity of its destructive impacts or ‘who is responsible for its hostile actions.’ This is a phenomenon that humanity has never encountered before.”

The study identifies the difficult-to-grasp and stealthy nature of the hyperthreat by focusing on the main centre of gravity, which is its freedom of movement via invisibility and unknowability and human hesitancy to respond: “Human activity that fuels the hyperthreat is (1) often legal (2) has social license or (3) is understood as legitimate business or security activity; its contribution to slow violence is often obscured.”

For example, legitimate activity includes plans to exploit fossil fuel and natural ecological resources at rates and scales that exceed safe planetary boundaries: “Indeed, while declaring all manner of ‘net zero’ commitments, oil and gas firms continue to plan vast fossil fuel production projects. If executed, these would drive climate change beyond internationally-agreed temperature limits, leading to potentially catastrophic impacts.”

The world’s biggest oil and gas companies are projected to spend $932 billion by the end of 2030 developing new oil and gas fields, according to a new analysis of Rystad Energy, data by Global Witness and Oil Change International… And by the end of 2040, this figure grows to an even more staggering $1.5 trillion.” (Source: World’s Biggest Fossil Fuel Firms Projected to Spend Almost a Trillion Dollars on New Oil and Gas Fields by 2030, Global Witness and Oil Change International, April 12, 2022)

But, what if that same $1.5T was spent on renewables and mitigation measures, e.g., retrofitting buildings to maximum energy efficiency or sustainable public transportation or enhancing carbon sinks?

As for coal, China is now building or planning to build in China and elsewhere in the world new coal plants amounting to 176 gigawatts of coal capacity, enough to power 123 million homes. (New Scientist, April 26, 2022)

Additionally, “India Expected to Commission 10 Thermal Coal Power Plants in 2022-23, add 7,010 MW.” (S&P Global Commodity Insights, June 3, 2022)

“By seeking to protect the existing fossil fuel system, humanity’s security agencies are in effect working for the enemy.” Yet, this is not intentional behavior, rather, it’s the effect of national security institutions entangled within the status quo. It’s normal operational behavior.

Further clarification by Boulton: “After the Second World War, military strategy traditionally involved securing resources and protecting supply chains – all considered crucial to post-war rebuilding and prosperity narratives. But it is now clear that this very system, which military and security strategies are designed to support, is the primary driver of global insecurity.”

In a twisted manner, the very resources regarded as good and critical for functioning of the global system now threaten all forms of planetary life. “By applying economic, diplomatic, military, and other tools of force and power to participate in the ‘race for what’s left’ of Earth’s resources, humanity is unwittingly aiding the hyperthreat.”

Plan E

Dr. Boulton has elaborate plans to head off the biggest threat of all time, including a radical transformation of security paradigms. The next 8 years are pivotal. Defense resources need to develop a “whole of society approach, bringing into the fold numerous civilian capabilities to leverage Earth’s entire human population as an asset.”

The list of recommendations is beyond the scope of this article, but a couple of ideas follow herein:

For a full explanation, the link to Dr. Boulton’s article in the Journal of Advanced Military Studies, Marine Corps University Press go to: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/857233

One idea is establishment of a Global Climate Emergency Peace Treaty from 2022 to 2030 to allow nations to focus on the emergency hyper-response.

Another idea is to use international diplomacy to create a new, neutral, rules-based governing architecture for the world based on “ecological survival and safe Earth requirements… For this, we need to reimagine the role of great powers in the world, realigning geopolitical security with the overarching aim of containing the hyperthreat.”

Dr Boulton explores how ecological thinking can be used to reinvent traditional political institutions. Multilateralism should become ecomultilateralism to facilitate cooperation on caring for ecosystems and disaster response. “Earth citizenship’ could allow nations to mobilise the world’s 18 million work-ready forcibly displaced people in hyper-response work.”

In essence, Plan E or a Grand Strategy for the Twenty-first Century Era of Entangled Security and Hyperthreats utilizes a transdisciplinary approach to the idea of framing climate and environmental change as a new type of threat, a hyperthreat and when properly framed: “This approach contrasts to prior literature and longstanding geopolitical discourse that identify the risks of taking a securitization approach.” Instead, the author argues that it is now riskier not to consider climate and environmental change within a mainstream geopolitical and nation-state security strategy.

Dr. Boulton’s detailed analysis, combined with a generous layout of how to tackle the issue, is perhaps one of the finest approaches extant, bringing together a well-reasoned all-in all-together approach of forces to defeat a monster by the same forces that bred and fed the monster at its inception.

The Boulton thesis is an extraordinarily important statement of facts about the invisibility and difficultly of identifying risks that, in point of fact, are normal operating behavior inbred into the socio-economic fabric of late stage capitalism which, according to the Boulton thesis, can be detoured and maybe even defeated but only by well-directed powerful universal action commencing this decade.

But, the window for achievement is narrow.

Postscript: The US Supreme Court has declared war against the EPA by hampering, effectively eliminating, public policy to control polluting fossil fuels. This dangerous ruling effectively pokes a stick in the eye of military security concerns about Hothouse Earth by its own military and tens of thousands of scientists throughout the world, as the US takes one more gigantic step back into an era known as the Wild West when rugged individualism ruled the domain with guns blazing.

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 July 1, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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CO2 Removal?

Photo by Jasmin Sessler on Unsplash
Photo by Jasmin Sessler licensed by Unsplash

CO2 Removal?

By Robert Hunziker

Last year, worldwide energy-related CO2 topped 36B tons. That’s a new world record.

“Carbon dioxide removal is essential to achieve net zero [greenhouse-gas emissions],” Diána Ürge-Vorsatz, vice-chair of the working group that produced the nearly 3,000-page UN climate panel report. (Source: UN Climate Report: Carbon Removal is Now ‘Essential’, MIT Technology Review, April 4, 2022)

“Removing the greenhouse gas from the air will likely be necessary, along with radical emissions cuts, to keep temperatures from rising 2°C,” Ibid.

According to the above-mentioned MIT report, we are now paying the price for long delays in addressing global warming despite decades of warnings. The levels of greenhouse gas the world can still release before pushing the planet past very dangerous warming thresholds has become alarmingly tight. Here’s betting the alarms will soon be blaring.

Along those lines, every global agreement to limit CO2, most recently Paris ’15, has bombed-out. A trail of broken promises has been ongoing now for decades. Will this time be any different, even with climate change turning brutally ugly?

Photo: Warming (Effetto Serra) by Roberto Rizzato is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
Photo: Warming (Effetto Serra) by Roberto Rizzato is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Worldwide heat is on a tear: (1) Japan tops 104°F for the first time ever (2) Kuwait hits 127°F (3) Record heat hits Spain, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic (4) Norlisk, Russia posts an all-time record high (above the Arctic Circle) 89.6°F (5) Beijing’s hottest day ever 111.2°F (6) Parts of the world experience power cuts and water shortages, especially Pakistan and India where people are dying in the streets (7) the US summer officially began with 65 million Americans exposed to regular highs above 100°F. Suffocating heat is found throughout the four corners of the earth.

Yet, average global temperatures are only 1.2°C above pre-industrial, and yet all hell is already breaking loose, including the Doomsday glacier in Antarctica as melting Arctic permafrost morphs into blasts of methane CH4. And, they (IPCC) claim we do not want to exceed 1.5°C or especially 2°C. Really? Oh please! Shit’s already hitting the fan!

Meanwhile, America, purportedly the leader of the free world, downplayed global warming for four of the most crucial years to do something constructive in one more lost opportunity. In 2017 then-President Donald Trump was shown a Time magazine cover: “How to Survive The Coming Ice Age” by deputy national security adviser KT McFarland. It made Trump’s day by reinforcing his personal beliefs and policies against global warming science.

Of course, the magazine cover was photo shopped, a fake cover put into Trump’s eager hands by one of many, too many, unqualified staffers who, in fact, was a Fox News analyst in a previous life, propagandizing right-wing crap on a suicide mission of the planet amidst unspoken secrets and sui generis handshake codes defining the primary recipe of suicide of the planet, well, actually the majority of people but not all of the people.

Throughout the 2017-2020 term, the Trump administration restricted and/or misused, and abused, science in more than 200 significant instances that will continue to bite hard for years to come: “The disregard for expertise in the federal government is worse than it’s ever been.” (Michael Gerrard, director Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, 2019) For example, Trump’s rollback of Obama-era climate regulations likely account for an extra 1.8B tons of greenhouse gases (Source: Rhodium Group).

Donald Trump speaking to California state officials, when visiting burned-out fire scenarios: “It’ll start getting cooler, you just watch… I don’t think science knows, actually.” Trump saw CO2 as a positive force for the planet. His experts told him so.

How about another four years, starting in 2024?

But, reality is an altogether different story. As long as we continue to emit CO2, scientists, engineers, and chemists across the board, and this is universal opinion, agree that coastal cities will flood, e.g., Miami (already planning sea walls) droughts will empty reservoirs, e.g., Hoover Dam’s Lake Mead (dangerously close to “dead pool” status). That’s reality! Whereas, Trump is a photo shopped freak!

What to do?

Will carbon capture and removal save the planet?

Au contraire, the planet isn’t concerned in the least about carbon capture: “Earth is a wet rock floating through space; it doesn’t care if we drown our coastal cities or turn our farmland into desert.” (Source: The Life-or-Death Race to Improve Carbon Capture, Chemical & Engineering News, Volume 99, Issue 26, July 18, 2021)

But society at large does care whether they express it or not. Assuming carbon removal doesn’t work, then, life is about to get very complicated very soon. Dark shoots, rather than green shoots, are already popping up on a synchronized basis with ecosystems across the globe. Everything is turning sour altogether all at once. Water rationing for major cities like Santiago are already a reality. That’s what global warming’s 12-year Chilean drought did to water supplies, and it ain’t gonna stop at Chile.

Meanwhile and of major concern, because very little that really needs to be done to save society gets done, according to the IPCC, roughly 40B metric tons of annual CO2 emitted into the atmosphere must be cut to zero by 2050, but there are plenty of scientists who’ll say 2050 is way too late. No surprise there. And oh yeah, additionally, thereafter tons of CO2 must be removed from the atmosphere to return to any kind of semblance of equilibrium with the climate system. Good luck with that!

According to Global CCS Institute, a carbon-capture-and-storage think tank, the issue for carbon removal is compelling: “The target has been set; the timeline has been set.” And, the conversation has shifted from “What do we do” to “How do we do it?”

Well, the technology to accomplish carbon removal is available but the costs and the scale is nearly beyond human imagination, and in fact, beyond any kind of practical achievement. For example, the UN report says it’s nearly impossible to prevent 1.5C without substantial removal of carbon and avoiding 2C will be a challenge as well.

“Preventing the former with only minimal levels of carbon dioxide removal would require cutting global greenhouse-gas emissions to about 31 billion tons per year by 2030, as the median estimate… That means nearly slashing emissions in half in eight years.” (Source: UN Climate Report: Carbon Removal Is Now ‘Essential’, MIT Technology Review, April 4, 2022)

But, already according to the International Energy Agency, commitments by countries to reduce emissions or “APS (Announced Pledges Scenario) cover less that 20% of the gap in emissions reductions that needs to be closed by 2030 to keep a 1.5°C path within reach.” (MIT)

However, it’s noteworthy: “As the IPCC warns against new fossil fuels, it’s business as usual for big polluters… the world’s biggest oil and gas companies … are projected to spend $932 billion by the end of 2030 developing new oil and gas fields, according to a new analysis of Rydtand Energy data by Global Witness and Oil Change International… And by the end of 2040, this figure grows to an even more staggering $1.5 trillion.” (Source: World’s Biggest Fossil Fuel Firms Projected to Spend Almost a Trillion Dollars on New Oil and Gas Fields by 2030, Global Witness and Oil Change International, April 12, 2022)

And, coal is on the rise. China is now building or planning to build in China and elsewhere in the world new coal plants amounting to 176 gigawatts of coal capacity, enough to power 123 million homes. (New Scientist, April 26, 2022)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and environmental NGOs can advocate for net zero until the cows come home, until hoarse, until blue in the face, but the real world is headed in the opposite direction. The most appropriate watchwords should be “watch out below” or “fasten your seat belts” we’re about to liftoff with skyrocketing global temperatures and ecosystems collapsing as global drought combined with Wet Bulb Temperature turns society into a bunch of mush heads in concert with Trump’s new presidency.

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

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China’s Stubborn Coal Addiction

Photo of a smokestack by veeterzy on Unsplash
Photo by veeterzy on Unsplash

China’s Stubborn Coal Addiction

By Robert Hunziker

Mother Earth’s affair with coal goes back in time to when swampy forests predominated the planet 360 to 299 million years ago during the Carboniferous Period of the late Paleozoic Era. Over the course of millions of years dead plant matter submerged in the ancient swamps transformed by way of geologic forces of heat and pressure into moist low-carbon peat, and over considerably more time, voilà! It transformed into jet-black coal.

It took millions of years to compress the coal into a carbon rock that takes approximately 16 hours to burn in a stove or furnace.

Photo: Piece of coal in front of a coal firing power plant by Adrem68 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Piece of coal in front of a coal firing power plant by Adrem68 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

The resultant heat caused by burning a lump of coal is felt in the atmosphere within 95 days, which is the time it takes for its carbon emissions to trap enough heat in the atmosphere to equal the amount of heat generated when burning the lump for 16 hours in a furnace. But, it doesn’t stop there, as shall be explained in more detail.

According to the eminent atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira of Carnegie Institution for Science: “If a power plant is burning continuously, within 3 to 5 months, depending on the type of power plant, the CO2 from the power plant is doing more to heat the Earth than the fires in its boiler… CO2 accumulates, so by the end of the year, the greenhouse gases will be heating the Earth much more than the direct emissions from the power plant.” (Source: Greenhouse Gas-Caused Warming Felt in Just Months, Carnegie Science, June 2, 2015 via Geophysical Research Letters)

Thus and therefore, civilization is powered or energized by way of a tiny thread in geological time. Sixteen hours is only a blink of time within the context of millions of years, which helps to explain The Coal Equation: Millions (1,000,000s) of years of creation transformed by sixteen (16) hours of burning = Hundreds (100s) of years of overheating the planet.

All of which makes the 16-hour transformation to dust and vapor look very, very insignificant. But, it happens to be the most significant part of the equation, as sixteen hours changes the course of centuries, both before as well as after.

Metaphorically, sixteen hours of burning coal is a trigger mechanism for the biggest gun in human history, Bang! Millions of years of pent-up energy is released in a few hours. Welcome to the advent of global warming. It’s noticeable that coal is a non-renewable resource. Once burned, it’s basically gone as CO2 into the atmosphere as a blanket that heats the planet for a very long time.

Greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal are only one part of the global warming process. A new study shows that coal mining, in contrast to burning coal, also releases methane (CH4) emissions that, in fact, exceed the CO2-e of more than 1,100 coal-fired power plants in China alone. And, that’s before coal burning even takes place. Moreover, China’s coal mine methane emissions are 10xs the rest of the world combined. (Source: Global Energy Monitor: Global Coal Mine Tracker, March 2022)

What’s more, China’s tenacious love affaire with coal is on the rise once again. Commercial, industrial, and RE developments are much more important to the CPC than the challenging ramifications of The Coal Equation.

Worldwide: “Coal mining emits 52 million metric tons of methane per year, more than is emitted from either the oil sector, which emits 39 million tons, or the gas industry, which emits 45 million tons.” (Source: Ryan Driskell Tate, Bigger Than Oil or Gas? Sizing Up Coal Mine Methane, Global Energy Monitor, March 2022).

“A boom in new coal mines and mine expansions commissioned in China since mid-2021 threatens to raise global methane emissions by at least 10%… This explosion is at odds with pledges by China to reduce methane emissions over the rest of the decade.” In response to an acute domestic “energy crisis” at the end of last year, China commissioned new mining capacity that unleashed an estimated 2.5 million tonnes (Mt) of new coal mine methane emissions within a matter of months. (Source: Ryan Driskell Tate, et al, Why China’s Coal Mine Boom Jeopardizes Short-Term Targets, Global Energy Monitor, May 2022)

The Global Energy Monitor goes on to explain that China’s coal expansion is clearly at odds with pledges to phase down coal by mid-2020s. Based upon current plans, there’s no way China can meet its commitments to the world community. They’ll keep on burning and emitting black smoke filled with nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, and mercury along with CO2.

“The surge in new coal production to meet electricity shortages boosted China’s mine capacity 464 Mt, with actual output up at least 270 million tonnes, more than the annual output of South Africa (246 Mt), the world’s seventh largest coal producer… On top of the surge in new coal mine capacity last year, China has 559 Mtpa of new coal mine proposals under development, which is equivalent to the output of Indonesia (564 Mtpa), the world’s third largest coal producer,” Ibid.

Relevant coal data by the incomparably masterful work of Alex Smith’s Radio Ecoshock entitled Future Black As Coal d/d June 15, 2022 pinpoints crucial data on coal mining in China and worldwide, to wit: (1) Coal mines never stop emitting methane, even when they are closed or abandoned (2) A 2019 analysis by Carbon Brief discovered the unsettling fact that coalmines emit more methane than the oil and gas industry (3) The UN and major institutions in harmony with the UN are publicly making important climate change assumptions with severely underestimated figures.

“According to Carbon Brief, real methane from fossil fuels could be 20% to 40% higher than we have been told.” (Tate Report) That’s a blindsiding disaster in the making. But, it does help to explain how and why ecosystems throughout the world are coughing up blood.

Even more distressing yet, if all new mining projects now under development go into operation, global methane emissions from extraction of coal could rise by up to +21.6%. (Radio Ecoshock References)

In fact the Radio Ecoshock article carries a very ominous-looking graph of Global Methane emissions during the period June 1985 thru February 2022. Starting in 2018-19, it suddenly turns up nearly vertical or parabolic. This could be big-time trouble down the line that should rattle the cage of any and all users of coal and other fossil fuels and most certainly of the anti-coal protestors. But, those cages are ironclad.

Meanwhile, China undermines the goals of Paris ’15 as if nobody ever agreed to slow down carbon emissions. But, nearly every country in the world, including China, agreed to cut emissions to hopefully hold global temperatures below 1.5C-2C, pre-industrial. “Hopefully” is the proper adverb, and it should be in bold letters because “hope” may be all we’ve got at this juncture of an increasingly virulent climate.

Decidedly, in large measure, because of China, methane emissions are much worse and more pervasive than realized and probably not properly accounted for in IPCC calculations, which is somewhat comparable to driving blindfolded over a mountain pass.

Still, it’s a given that China will switch to renewables in a panic mode once their major shipping ports start flooding on a regular basis. But, when is it too late to do something, or anything at all?

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 June 24, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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The Overshoot Dilemma

Photo by Kelly Sikemma; Unsplash
Image by Kelly Sikkema; Unsplash

The Overshoot Dilemma

By Robert Hunziker

Climate change and global warming, which is the largest part of the ‘change’ aspect, is suddenly getting the kind of special treatment that’s reserved for national tragedies. A special commission has been established to investigate a way out of the biggest human-caused failure of all time.

It wouldn’t be quite so disturbing if it were not for the fact that the truth about the widespread danger from fossil fuels has been in the public domain for decades now.

People in the highest positions academically, politically, and the business community have known for decades that CO2 emissions will eventually overheat the planet. But, none of them had the balls to stand up to the fossil fuel companies and right-wing hacks and the despicable denier core of charlatans. They are as guilty as the denier hacks.

Whenever society at large is under extraordinary threat, aka existential threat, special commissions composed of prominent members of the establishment pop up to study the situation and make recommendations. Only recently the 911 Commission (2002) and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (2009) are two prime examples. These special commissions have a common genesis of responding to a threat to the established way of life.

Hooray (maybe, maybe not, but at any rate sorrowfully) climate change has now joined the ranks. It’s officially designated an extraordinary threat to society. As of May 2022 the Climate Overshoot Commission has been established. Its first meeting is June 2022 at Lake Como, Italy.

The commission is composed of a wide swath of pristine leadership personalities, including past presidents, prime ministers, ministers of foreign affairs, professors, former heads of international organizations like the WTO. Indeed, they are a shiny brass group with credentials up the wazoo.

The commission will consider the risks attendant to overshooting 1.5°C and the range of response options for addressing overshoot. Based upon their mission statement, 1.5°C overshoot is preordained.

But honestly, isn’t this commission comparable to creating a commission to study what to do after the dam breaks?

Why study an overshoot of 1.5C? Ecosystems throughout the planet are already nearly overshooting or maybe actually overshooting in some cases at only 1.2C above baseline. By the time 1.5C hits there may not be enough pieces left to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

The commission may have the wrong idea and wrong target. If the commission is going to tackle the manifold risks of climate change, they should focus on the root cause, not the after effects. Why should a commission spend time and energy trying to figure out how to handle a totally unprecedented blowup of the climate system, when they should focus on the root cause of global heat and try to stop it before exceeding 1.5C?

Maybe the answer is to pivot to the Special Commission on Removing Fossil Fuel Infrastructure.

Several ecosystems (the Great Barrier Reef) are already in trouble. In that sense the commission may be needlessly spinning its wheels. Moreover, the signs of irreversible collapse is discussed in several key situations described in a recent landmark study: Dana M Bergstrom, et al, Combating Ecosystem Collapse from the Tropics to the Antarctic, Global Change Biology, Vol. 27, issue 9, February 25, 2021.

The Bergstrom study examined 20 ecosystems from Australia’s coral reefs to terrestrial Antarctica and discovered forces of ecosystem collapse driven by global climate change and regional human impacts. Nineteen (19) of the twenty (20) ecosystems are already bordering on irreversible damage.

According to the study group, an estimated 30% of global land area is already degraded, directly affecting nearly one-half of the world’s population. Ecosystems are deteriorating globally. “The endpoint of disruption and degradation of ecosystems is potentially or actually irreversible collapse.” The study found destructive processes at an advanced stage.

“We assessed evidence of collapse in 19 ecosystems (both terrestrial and marine) … extending from northern Australia to coastal Antarctica, from deserts to mountains to rainforests, to freshwater and marine biomes, all of which have equivalents elsewhere in the world,” Ibid.

In other words, their domain of study is a facsimile for what’s happening throughout the planet. In their words: “We assessed evidence of collapse.” The evidence was ubiquitous, wherever they looked. “Our analysis clearly demonstrates the widespread and rapid collapse, and in some cases the irreversible transition rather than gradual change at a regional scale.” (Bergstrom)

Here’s a summation of the Bergstrom study findings: “The 19 ecosystems presented have collapsed or are collapsing according to our four criteria (see Table S1 for details). None has collapsed across the entire distribution, but for all there is evidence of local collapse. Rapid change (months to years) has occurred in several cases (Figure 2c, Table S1). We identified 17 pressure types affecting the 19 ecosystems (Figure 1). The key global climate change presses are changes in temperature (18 ecosystems) and precipitation (15 ecosystems), and key pulses are heatwaves (14 ecosystems), storms (13 ecosystems) and fires (12 ecosystems). In addition, each ecosystem experienced up to 10 (median 6) regional human impact pressures (presses and/or pulses) (see Figure 1). Habitat modification or destruction has occurred in 18 ecosystems, often at substantial levels, but over a relatively small spatial scale in the Antarctic ecosystem. Run-off with associated pollutants was the most common single human impact pulse (6 ecosystems).”

Note that “the key global climate change presses” are all directly or indirectly a result of global warming. Hence, the primary target for any commission should be how to prevent global warming in the first instance, not what to do once it’s exceeded a flash point of 1.5C above baseline. Then, it may be too late.

More to the point, we as a society know much more about how to control greenhouse gas emissions at the source than we know about mitigation of ecosystem damage once 1.5C is breached or metaphorically after the dam bursts.

Where’s the commission to get off fossil fuels?

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 June 14, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Polar Scientist Explains Peril of Thwaites

Photo: Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, by sjrankin is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
“Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica” by sjrankin is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Polar Scientist Explains Peril of Thwaites

By Robert Hunziker

Ted Scambos, a polar scientist with 20 trips to Antarctica under his belt, makes a living trekking across glaciers, measuring the speed, thickness, and structure of ice. Dr. Scambos (University of Colorado/Boulder) recently penned an article: Ice World: Antarctica’s Riskiest Glacier is Under Assault From Below and Losing Its Grip. The Conversation, June 7, 2022.

Photo: Interview with Ted Scambos by NSIDC is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
“Interview with Ted Scambos” by NSIDC is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Scambos is a lead principal investigator for the Science Coordination Office of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (SCO project). How many glaciers in the world have a team of scientists dedicated to an international collaborative research effort?

Answer: Thwaites is the single most dominate factor influencing the integrity (survival) of every coastal city in the world, and it is clearly at risk.

According to Scambos: “Antarctica is a continent comprising several large islands, one of them the size of Australia, under a 10,000-foot-thick layer of ice… Its glaciers have always been in motion, but beneath the ice, changes are taking place that are having profound effects on the future of the ice sheet – and on the future of coastal communities around the world.”

Significantly, the ice sheet was “nearly in balance as recently as the 1980s,” meaning annual snowfall replaced annual ice flows. As a result, the early ice research in Antarctica involved trying to find any kind of dramatic changes but with little success.

However within only a couple of decades in the context of thousands of years of stability, everything suddenly changed. According to Scambos: “But now, as the surrounding air and ocean warm, areas of the Antarctic ice sheet that had been stable for thousands of years are breaking, thinning, melting, or in some case collapsing in a heap. As these edges of the ice react, they send a powerful reminder: If even a small part of the ice sheet were to completely crumble into the sea, the impact for the world’s coasts would be severe.”

Photo: "Camp on Thwaites Glacier" by NSIDC is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
“Camp on Thwaites Glacier” by NSIDC is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

West Antarctica’s Thwaites glacier is the continent’s prime candidate for a major collapse. In contrast to East Antarctica’s solid core of small mountain ranges underneath the ice bed, West Antarctica was once the ocean bottom. Its ice gets warmer and moves much faster. Only 120,000 years ago it was likely an open ocean and definitely 2 million years ago. Accordingly: “This is important because our climate today is fast approaching temperatures like those of a few million years ago… The realization that the West Antarctic ice sheet was gone in the past is the cause of great concern in the global warming era.” (Scambos)

Thwaites is the “big boy” glacier of West Antarctica. It is the widest glacier on the planet at 70 miles across. At issue, recent changes on the vast continent have been sudden and fast, much faster than ever expected. As for Thwaites in particular: The height of the surface has been dropping by up to three (3) feet each year. Huge cracks are forming at the coast, and ice now flows at over a mile per year. That flow rate has doubled since 1990.

The net result is a new era of geologically rapid ice flow officially underway for the 21st century. This is not a welcomed event. Nobody knows for sure how it will play out or how soon, but the risk is unfathomably scary, punctuated by the dispiriting fact that scientists’ models that predict future climate change are almost always late to the party. This makes it nearly impossible to plan for the next catastrophe, like Thwaites glacier.

As further explained by Scambos: Under the ice the geological structure of Thwaites is “a recipe for disaster.” Until only recently, Thwaites had not measurably changed since it was first mapped in the 1940s. All of that has changed now that global warming has intervened. It’s what’s happening hidden underneath that spooks scientists: “Ocean water well above melting point is eroding the base of the ice.”

All of which impacts the entire structure. Mapping of Thwaites now exposes fractures and huge cracks along with the speed of flow all-in suggesting the monster may ‘give way’ within only a few years, which would be a horrendous step towards more rapid ice flow to the sea.

Bottom line: “West Antarctica could soon begin a multi-century decline that would add up to 10 feet to sea level. In the process, the rate of sea level would increase several fold, posing large challenges for people with a stake in coastal cities.” (Scambos)

But, when does the first foot of sea level register on shorelines? Nobody really knows for sure.

Meantime, as the world wonders aloud why and how the planet’s solidest long-standing ice sheet is ever closer to crumbling, it’s frankly disgusting and outrageous that it’s even an issue, especially considering decades of warnings by scientists about the risks of fossil fuels that spew CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, blanketing heat. Now, because of human recklessness in the face of warning after warning, an ominous horrific cycle of meltdown has already started at the worst possible location on the planet where 150-to-200 feet of water has remained frozen in time throughout all of human history… until now.

Forthwith, it’s payback time after decades of human stupidity bordering on lunacy in the face of science that has been right all along. Smart people know to adhere to the science.

Recommended reading: How Trump Damaged Science – and Why it Could Take Decades to Recover, Nature, October 5, 2020.

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 June 10, 2022 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.