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Neanderthal Virus Exposure in the 21st Century

Image Courtesy of CDC
Image courtesy of CDC

Neanderthal Virus Exposure in the 21st Century

By Robert Hunziker

Across the entire breadth of the Northern Hemisphere Arctic permafrost is rapidly melting. Nobody knows what strange pathogen is going to pop out from within tons upon tons of permafrost muck. More significantly, imagine the public anxiety if scientists detect viruses older than the human species Homo sapiens, which emerged 300,000 years ago. But Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) fossil remains have been discovered dating back 430,000 years. So then, what if viruses beyond the advent of Homo sapiens, such as Neanderthal viruses, suddenly spread across the planet?

There is some evidence that because of Neanderthal liaisons with Homo sapiens some amount of “passing of genetic code for coping with some pathogens” occurred. Neanderthal genes do show up in 2-3% of Homo sapiens genetic makeup. But don’t assume that means immunity from ancient viruses. Nobody knows what lurks within generation upon generation of permafrost.

A recent headline in The Guardian d/d Jan. 21st, 2024 highlights the story: “Arctic Zombie Viruses in Siberia Could Spark Terrifying New Pandemic, Scientists Warn.”

There’s a distinct possibility that zombie viruses could emerge from the depths at any time thanks to global warming’s impact on the Arctic, which is warming 2-4 times faster than the overall planet. The US portion of Arctic permafrost covers 85% of Alaska; it stays frozen year-round and has been around for at least 500,000 years, reaching depths of 1,000 feet.

Throughout the Arctic the deepest permafrost is 4,900 feet, and according to Nature Journal, Arctic permafrost stores nearly 1,700 billion metric tons of frozen carbon. For comparison purposes, according to Statista, current annual global emissions of carbon dioxide CO2 are 37.15 billion metric tons. So, permafrost is holding the equivalent of 46 years of current CO2 emissions.

Scientists likely lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering: How much carbon emissions will permafrost add to agriculture, industry, and transportation emissions, resulting in a whacked climate system that’s terrorizing society.

For the first time in hundreds of thousands of years, commensurate with the onset of the 21st century, and due to the overwhelming force of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, permafrost is suddenly drooping/melting very fast. As a result, modern-day society is on a collision course with thousands of years of muck, giga-tons of greenhouse gases such as CO2 and CH4, and reams of ancient viruses and bacteria. It’s a vast, dark mysterious ancient world in an icy vault that’s unfolding right before our eyes.

The oldest permafrost researched by scientists goes to a depth of 50 meters (165 feet), and it’s 650,000 years old, discovered and analyzed by a German, Russian, and English team of researchers, led by Julian Murton, University of Sussex found near the village of Batagay in eastern Siberia. (Source: Scientists Find the Oldest Permafrost Yet Discovered in Siberia, Arctic Business Journal, June 22, 2021)

The dearth of research on permafrost brings some level of nail-biting into play, known as “The Research Gap” or (1) a lack of understanding of potential harmful microbes in the permafrost (2) which microbes might survive, or not, freeze-thaw cycles (3) if plants and humans will be infected by ancient microbes. It’s important to know that nobody knows the answers to this vast mystery. Humanity is literally a sitting duck for whatever pops out of the muck.

Could a pathogen from thousands of years ago wipe out or inflict damage to modern-day society or to a particular region? The risks to humans of ancient viruses are much higher than the risks of “known pathogens.” Modern humans likely have no natural immunity to fight off prehistoric viral infections. Society could be blindsided without preparation.

Therefore, scientists are working to establish an Arctic monitoring network for early detection of ancient zombie viruses. Alas, this is but one more unfortunate fallout from excessive anthropogenic global warming. The Arctic warming 2-4 times faster than the world is exposing an unexplored underworld of ancient viruses. Nobody is prepared. Melting permafrost is under-researched: it’s massive; it’s happening now; it could be humankind’s biggest challenge, and nobody knows what to expect next.

However, the proposed Arctic monitoring network hopes to pinpoint early cases of disease threats, including facilities for quarantine and medical treatment of infected people. For example, what if an ancient zombie strain of polio, which is very contagious, raises its ugly head? Already, studies by the French National Centre for Scientific Research has discovered 13 frozen viruses in permafrost, including the Pandoravirus, which is 48,000 years old. (Source: Scientists Have Revived a ‘Zombie’ Virus That Spent 48,500 Years Frozen in Permafrost, CNN World, March 8, 2023)

The symptoms of Pandoravirus: (1) hair loss (2) flaky skin (3) bulging eyes (4) twitching (5) skin discoloration. An infected person is easily recognizable as a victim. But will it kill, maybe yes, maybe no, probably no.

According to the renown French virologist Jean-Michel Claverie: “A viral infection from an unknown, ancient pathogen in humans, animals or plants could have potentially ‘disastrous’ effects.” His research is published in a 2022 study (Source: Zombie Viruses Are Waking Up After 50,000 Years as Planet Warms, Bloomberg News, October 9, 2023).

Eventually, melting Arctic permafrost could become the world’s biggest headache, not only as a death threat but as a double threat. The threat is much more than zombie viruses. It’s also industrial contaminates that have accumulated in permafrost regions that have been neglected in existing climate impact studies. According to a very recent major study: “We identify about 4500 industrial sites where potentially hazardous substances are actively handled or stored in the permafrost-dominated regions of the Arctic. Furthermore, we estimate that between 13,000 and 20,000 contaminated sites are related to these industrial sites.” (Source: Thawing Permafrost Poses Environmental Threat to Thousands of Sites with Legacy Industrial Contamination, National Library of Medicine, March 28, 2023)

Additionally, as described in an article entitled, Alaska’s Scary Orange Rivers, Dec. 29, 2023: Alaska’s wilderness rivers are turning orange as thawing permafrost exposes toxic substances. Boots-on-the-ground research of the rivers found (1) very low levels of dissolved oxygen (2) pH factors up to 100 times more acidic than normal (3) electrical conductivity comparable to industrial wastewater. Hard to believe it’s the wilderness!

Additionally, the team of scientists in Alaska’s Kobuk Valley National Park discovered blackened, dark patches in the soil like fresh asphalt found throughout the normally pristine Brook’s Range. Water flowing via small drainage streams out of the blackened patches had pH factors so low it was like vinegar.

What then is the sensibility of a society that allows its planet to be poisoned? And for how long will life-supporting ecosystems, gradually being poisoned, remain viable? There is something horribly amiss when wilderness parks turn toxic, but who really cares is even more puzzling yet.

Consider the scenario and the repercussions as 25% of the exposed land surface of the Northern Hemisphere is covered by permafrost that’s rapidly melting. It is loaded with toxic industrial substances and thousands of years of accumulated viruses and bacteria.

Very significantly, the group of scientists conducted the “first ever comprehensive sampling of an entire watershed” on a six-day mission in an area of Alaska famously known as “the final frontier.” Here’s what they observed: Traversing the river, they found murky water over orange rocks where only a couple of years ago it was clear and full of fish, not now. At some spots the water ran half orange and half green and at others further downstream the river had the color and opacity of pea soup. Forrest McCarthy, a former US Antarctic Program coordinator, said: “Most climate change is subtle. This is like, bam!” The team could not find any fish or insects in some areas of the vast Range, saying: “Biodiversity just crashed.”

That happened in the wild where salmon are supposed to be running in streams as bears swat away mosquitos and gnats. But not what the scientists found. Science is only starting to get a handle on what’s happening up north. The scientists came away shocked and dismayed beyond belief. What else is happening throughout 25% of the Northern Hemisphere is anybody’s guess.

Meanwhile, the US, Russia, China and others have big plans now that Arctic sea ice is a shadow of its former self. They want the oil; they want the minerals; they want the metals; they want the easier trade routes; they want it all. They have big plans, but apparently nobody has big plans for how to resolve 20,000 industrial contamination sites in the Arctic. It’s an open sore. (Source: Moritz Langer, et al, Thawing Permafrost Poses Environmental Threat to Thousands of Sites with Legacy Industrial Contamination, Nature Communications, March 28, 2023)

In the context of capitalistic growth to infinity, ecosystems throughout the Arctic are up for grabs. The US wants in, as do both Russia and China. They covet and practice gangster capitalism, a few bosses own pretty much everything. Will they be able to successfully navigate the challenges of toxic-laden ecosystems and zombie viruses, or will their new-found treasure trove of commodities take so much overriding precedence that zombie viruses and toxic-laden ecosystems are easily pushed aside? Until it’s too late. The End.
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This article was originally published on January 26, 2024 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Too Much Heat, Past and Present

Image by Pawel Czerwinsk
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski is licensed by Unsplash.

Too Much Heat, Past and Present

By Robert Hunziker

The ultimate consequences of global warming are difficult to truly understand by the public, policymakers and by pretty much everybody. In their hearts, they do not want to believe it’ll cause an extinction event. That’s simply too hard to believe, going too far. People cannot wrap their minds around the idea that civilization, poof, is gone. After all, extinctions are not features of human civilization. Or are they?

Archeologists tell us otherwise. Climate change and natural disasters have led advanced civilizations into utter ruin, extinction events. The Mayan Civilization, population 7-10 million, skilled as advanced astronomers that built elaborate cities without the use of modern-day machinery around 1500 BC went extinct. Archeologists believe the causes were: (1) environmental degradation (2) deforestation (3) soil erosion and (4) climate change altered rain patterns to bring devastating drought and famine.

And one of the greatest civilizations of all time, the Indus Valley Civilization (2500-to-1700 BC) more than five million people with some of the world’s best architecture and amazing technology, cities of 50,000 with roads and advanced sewage systems, homes with private bathrooms, 3,500 years ago went extinct. Researchers studied isotopic concentrations of stalagmites, and other archeological evidence, analyzing 5,700 years of rainfall patterns for the region, discovering evidence of severe drought at the time the civilization ended.

A fascinating historical study of collapsed civilizations was published by the BBC: Are We on the Road to Civilization Collapse: February 18, 2019. Excerpts to follow:

The great historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975, London School of Economics and King’s College London) in his 12-volume magnum opus A Study of History analyzed the rise and fall of 28 different civilizations. He concluded: “Great civilizations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.”

Our deep past is marked by recurring failure: “Collapse can be defined as a rapid and enduring loss of population, identity, and socio-economic complexity. Public services crumble and disorder ensues as government loses control of its monopoly on violence. Virtually all past civilizations have faced this fate.”

“Collapse may be a normal phenomenon for civilizations, regardless of their size and technological stage. We may be more technologically advanced now. But this gives little ground to believe that we are immune to the threats that undid our ancestors. Our newfound technological abilities even bring new, unprecedented challenges to the mix. And while our scale may now be global, collapse appears to happen to both sprawling empires (the Roman Empire for example) and fledgling kingdoms alike. There is no reason to believe that greater size is armour against societal dissolution. Our tightly coupled, globalized economic system is, if anything, more likely to make crisis spread.”

Archeologists claim the following categories mostly influence collapse: (1) climatic change (2) environmental degradation (3) inequality and oligarchy (4) complexity, meaning how society functions, e.g., too heavy of a bureaucracy (5) external shocks like famine and plagues. Hmm.

As of today, whether an extinction event is in the cards or not, and science has clearly shown us that extinctions do happen with well-developed civilizations, the most pressing concern is rapidly rising fossil fuel emissions and global temperature that disrupts, dislodges, and upends life. Alas, many signals indicate it’ll get worse.

James Hansen Earth Institute/Columbia University predicts much higher global temperatures much sooner than the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is the UN body politic of climate change.

For decades now, Hansen’s prescience has effectively been global warming’s equivalence of Yoda-speak. As the lead NASA scientist in 1988, Hansen testified to the US Senate that the greenhouse effect had been detected, indicating that the climate was changing. Human activity, specifically burning fossil fuels, was changing the chemistry of the atmosphere and not for the better.

Thirty-five years later, November 2023, Hansen has issued yet another warning but with much greater gravity and resonance than his 1988 warning. His landmark 1988 speech about changing the atmosphere’s chemistry has now become reality: it’s immediately before us. That warning has turned real through imagery, in real time, of massive wildfires, massive atmospheric rivers, massive droughts, extraordinarily floods, as unprecedented climate events regularly appear on nightly TV news programs.

Now Hansen is warning that scientists are underestimating how fast the planet is warming. In fact, he’s concerned enough that he believes the impending crisis necessitates geoengineering the planet’s atmosphere. For many scientists this is not acceptable, unproven, and unnecessary.

A recent Time magazine article We Need Geoengineering to Stop Out of Control Warming Warns Climate Scientist James Hansen, Time, Nov. 2, 2023, claims few scientists share his belief that geoengineering will be necessary. Researchers challenge its efficacy and safety profile, expecting deleterious unintended consequences.

But, as Hansen readily states, we’ve been inadvertently geoengineering the atmosphere for as long as we’ve spewed greenhouse gases, like CO2. As a society, we’re effective at changing the atmosphere’s chemistry, even though it’s not intentional. Therefore, why not re-geoengineer in the opposite direction?

Seriously, cars, trains, planes, and industry have been geoengineering the atmosphere with CO2 for over 100 years.

According to Hansen, something must be done soon. He believes we’ll surpass 1.5C next decade and 2C by midcentury. These are global temperature markers above pre-industrial levels that manifest big challenging issues, and far ahead of what mainstream science expects.

For example, warming in-excess of 2C could unleash collapse of West Antarctica ice sheets, which are already compromised. The Antarctic continent is a standout feature of the planet containing 95% of the planet’s fresh water trapped in ice melted equal to 200 feet higher sea levels. Nothing more needs to be said about that.

In fact, forget the 200 feet, which would take centuries, just the first several feet will turn the world upside down, flooding the world’s major coastal cities. High tide will become high water flood levels in the streets of America’s coastal cities. Some of this is already starting to happen, e.g., Portland’s high tide broke all-time records, reaching 14 feet at the same time as record-breaking floods hit the US East Coast, January 14th, 2024. NOAA expects sea levels along US coasts to rise as much over the next 10 years as they did over past 100 years.

Recent flooding events are setting new all-time records. These are not run of the mill normal flooding events, not normal at all. An extreme example of the climate system’s new rambunctiousness is Pakistan’s 2022 massive flood covering one-third of the country with water, 33 million people impacted, 8 million displaced, 2 million homes destroyed, 1,700 killed, 12,867 injured, and a year later 1.5 million still displaced.

What would be the aftermath if 2 million US homes were destroyed by flooding?

In a recent webinar, Hansen cautioned: “The 2°C warming limit is dead, unless we take purposeful actions to alter the earth’s energy imbalance.” It’s a strong statement that few, if any, climate scientists have the guts to make.

However, breathing the word “geoengineering” raises the hackles of many climate scientists. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University calls Hansen’s arguments for the necessity of solar geoengineering “a misguided policy advocacy.” (Time, Nov. 2) According to Mann, the climate situation is extremely dire. But it can be handled by concerted efforts to decarbonize our economy, without resorting to geoengineering.

Whereas Hansen claims: “Emissions cuts alone will not be enough to ensure a safe climate in future years, according to Hansen and his collaborators. governments will have to impose carbon fees to help rapidly draw down emissions, they argue, adding it will also be necessary to research and deploy techniques to reduce incoming solar radiation, also known as solar geoengineering.” (Time, Nov.2)

Looking ahead, how should society approach a very spooky climate system that blindsides humanity with surprise after surprise, for example, according to The Weather Network: “Atmospheric rivers are becoming so intense that we need to rank them like hurricanes.” That’s a first as atmospheric rivers are a normal feature of the climate system but like all normal features these days, human activity, goosing up global warming, has intensified normal features by a factor of 10-to-100 times. Multiply 10 times anything… it’s a lot, or how about 100 times?

There’s paleoclimate evidence that today’s rate of CO2 emissions at over 2.0 ppm/year with resultant global warming “matching the results” of 1,000 years at 0.02 ppm/year occurring millions of years ago when only nature was involved. 2.0 ppm is 100 times faster than 0.02 ppm. That’s 100 times faster than nature, which is the crux of the global warming problem.

Nowadays, massive atmospheric rivers are competing with melting glaciers with flooding that can spur serious damage that major insurance companies never anticipated, as rates go up and up with some insurance coverage dropped in select states. And it’ll get worse unless and until human activity works to mitigate the interrelationship between fossil fuel emissions and global warming. James Hansen is saying we must enhance the planet’s albedo to reflect solar radiation back to outer space. There are ways to do this, maybe successful, maybe not.

According to Hansen, Earth’s energy imbalance is completely out of whack with more energy than ever before coming into the planet as absorbed sunlight rather than going out as heat radiated to outer space. This imbalance has doubled within only one decade, according to a study by NASA and the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration doubling over only 14 years is downright alarming: “A positive energy imbalance – which is what we have – means the earth system is gaining energy, causing the planet to heat up.” This is no small problem; it’s big; it’s new; it threatens life-supporting ecosystems.

Going forward, a very big question is whether a world consensus will be reached about whether, or not, geoengineering will be officially endorsed. Meanwhile, several tenuous ecosystems, e.g., Greenland’s northern-most glaciers recently discovered as “surprisingly tipsy,” implies an outlook of hesitatingly “keeping one’s fingers crossed.” According to climate scientists, there are multitudes of ecosystems bordering on dangerous tipping points.

Yet, fortunately for all concerned, at least the planet is good at snapping back from adversity, surviving five extinction events, but what of human civilization in the face of similar adversity? According to Toynbee, the track record is lousy.
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This article was originally published on January 19, 2024 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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The State of Capitalism’s Climate System

Photo by fikry anshor on Unsplash
Photo by fikry anshor on Unsplash

The State of Capitalism’s Climate System

By Robert Hunziker

Three years ago, 15,000 scientists declared a climate emergency by signing onto a State of the Climate Report. That signing led to annual updates, for example, the most recent version: The 2023 State of the Climate Report: Entering Uncharted Territory, Bioscience, vol. 73, issue 12, December 2023, Oxford Academic (aka: “The Report”).

The initial paragraph of The Report suggests a planetary juggernaut of cascading ecosystems altering life systems: “Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in uncharted territory… a situation no one has ever witnessed firsthand in the history of humanity.” Therefore, it’s fair to say nobody really knows how this uncharted territory will play out.

The Report is a compendium of all-time climate record events depicting big-time trouble, going in the wrong direction versus maintaining a healthy planet. In and of itself, the analysis in The Report, researched and authored by top notch scientists, should be enough for world policymakers to insist upon going back to COP28 in Dubai/2023, redoing the two-week UN climate conference and adopting effective solutions to replace the mealy-mouthed inadequate proposals adopted at COP28. The world deserves better.

Thirty years of UN climate conferences failing to move the needle to help Earth’s ecosystems thrive and survive, and not collapse, has unintentionally cast a dark shadow over scientists’ climate warnings within the context of a commanding capitalistic socio-economic system based upon infinite growth at center stage, humming along like “no worries” economic growth always bails us out, but what’s left behind?

The Report makes the case that under the surface, and not clearly visible to society, a monstrosity of ecosystem turmoil threatens the entire foundation of capitalistic growth. The Report’s warnings are real, not fictional, not misleading but real warnings of a premature collapsing Earth system that’s the foundation for everything. This challenging situation has progressively gotten worse by the year, but it’s now starting to burst at the seams. The year 2023 exposed an off the charts dangerous climate system broadcasts on nightly news programs reporting massive wildfires, massive flooding, massive droughts, massive atmospheric rivers, massive everything, never witnessed previously. Scientists believe it’ll get worse.

According to the scientists: “We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered. Conditions are going to get very distressing and potentially unmanageable for large regions of the world… We warn of potential collapse of natural and socioeconomic systems… Massive suffering due to climate change is already here, and we have now exceeded many safe and just Earth system boundaries, imperiling stability and life-support systems.”

The Report states that 20 of 35 vital planetary signs are now at record extremes. This means that nearly 60% of the planet is huffing and puffing to stay on track of life-sourcing support. For example, the chart of Ocean Heat Content shows a nearly vertical upward thrust. This is viewed by scientists as especially troubling because of the knockoff impacts, including loss of sea life, coral reef bleaching, and intensified tropical storms. Hidden from view, the world’s oceans are under severe stress, not to mention extremely abusive overfishing, especially China’s inordinately large distant water fishing fleet of thousands of trawlers (“world’s worst abuser of sea laws” – IUU Fishing Index, US Coast Guard).

With 60% of the planet limping and few, if any, serious signs of governmental policy helping the 20 vital signs in various stages of deterioration, The Report addresses the root cause of trouble by identifying cause and effect, i.e., the ecological footprint of economic activity overwhelms any chances to heal the planet. In short, infinite economic growth and a steady state planet are like oil and water that do not mix.

According to the scientists, “economic growth, as it is conventionally pursued, is unlikely to allow us to achieve our social, climate, and biodiversity goals. The fundamental challenge lies in the difficulty of decoupling economic growth from harmful environmental impacts.”

More to the point, egregious, superfluous, redundant, unneeded wealth creation is at the heart of the problem. As it happens, sixty percent (60%) of planetary ecosystems hobbling along on crutches is the result of 10% of the world population enjoying a great ride at the top of a great economic bubble expanding year by year, as this minority of people lead the best possible lifestyle in classic double or triple or quadruple, or maybe even as much as 100 to 1,000 times overshoot. The 10% global footprint tramples the lowly 90%.

In a faux complexity of hopefulness, many GDP models assume that growth can be decoupled from emissions and from consumption-oriented environmental impacts and all will be hunky-dory, e.g., carbon capture will bail us out of the global warming imbroglio. However, The Report makes special mention of such assumptions as not realistic: “Negative emissions technologies are in an early stage of development, posing uncertainties regarding their effectiveness, scalability, and environmental and societal impacts. As such, we should not rely on unproven carbon removal techniques.”

In the final analysis, the hard truth is fossil fuel emissions must be halted at the source as soon as possible or future state of the planet reports will show surrealistic evidence of a sickly planet. At some point in time this image of a sickly planet will become unbearable, and the masses will turn extremely restless, similar to unwelcomed disruptions, as well as threats of disruptions, already becoming evident throughout the globe. Under the circumstances, this type of behavior is not at all surprising. After all, it’s only too obvious that nearly two-thirds of the planet’s vital signs are flashing code red, not code yellow. It’s too late for caution when immediate action is required.

According to the scientific evidence, the underlying message is clear: Do something different. The current trajectory is not working. What could policymakers of the world do differently to put the planet back to a steady state so that it doesn’t flame out near term? Climate change, like a wild roller coaster ride, is full of surprising turns and sudden rapid descent.

The Report contains ideas to hopefully shake off what looks like an inevitability of more and more failing ecosystems: “The fundamental challenge lies in the difficulty of decoupling economic growth from harmful environmental impacts. Although technological advancements and efficiency improvements can contribute to some degree of decoupling, they often fall short in mitigating the overall ecological footprint of economic activities. The impacts vary greatly by wealth; in 2019, the top 10% of emitters were responsible for 48% of global emissions, whereas the bottom 50% were responsible for just 12%. We therefore need to change our economy to a system that supports meeting basic needs for all people instead of excessive consumption by the wealthy.”

Frankly, that sounds like some version of socialism, but in America socialism is equated to Mephistopheles. But what if that’s not really true? What if socialism benefits everybody, except for the one percent?

Broadly speaking, The Report recommends: “Efforts must be directed toward eliminating emissions from fossil fuels and land-use change and increasing carbon sequestration with nature-based climate solutions.” All of which is doable., but honestly, that’s an often-repeated prescription that never seems to stick, never gains traction. If otherwise, if it gained traction, over time The State of the Climate Reports would fade into the sunset without anything to write about.

Nevertheless, the ecological overshoot of human demands on natural resources, or overexploitation, is seemingly an insurmountable issue that points a finger at endless growth and its sidekick overconsumption by rich countries and wealthy individuals. And since socialism is out of the running to fix ecological overshoot, one way forward is a circular economy. Instead of a throw-away economic system, learn to recirculate across the board, like British economist Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics designed to avoid ecological overshoot.

In the final analysis, The Report is more relevant now than ever before simply because nearly 2/3rds of the planet’s vital signs are screaming for help, but none is forthcoming. Therefore, and unfortunately, The Report is destined to grow and grow as ecosystems fail one by one, until one day Eureka! The State of the Climate Report will become sought after and studied and discussed by policymakers standing knee-deep in water.

Realistically, the issues described within this article about the state of the climate system do not get as much attention as warranted by policymakers or by the public. Assuming this article is read, the gist of it, alas, may be tossed aside as easily and quickly as our disposable-oriented society tosses aside paper wrappers, plastic containers, and pretty much everything, including nuclear waste, but where to?

Meanwhile, of special interest, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion (XR) Roger Hallam has decided to accept the inevitability of collapsing ecosystems. He is turning his focus away from climate demonstrations and disruptions of society, gluing people to buildings, roadways, and airplanes to the discovery of a new type of civilization. He’ll be conducting a worldwide zoom session January 14th at 8:00 AM Pacific Coast time. It’ll be a rare opportunity to learn about and/or join a new world order that’s not sinister. To register for the zoom meeting: Here’s the link.
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This article was originally published on January 12, 2024 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Antarctica Under Siege and XR Takes a Radical Turn

Photo by Derek Oyen on Unsplash
Photo by Derek Oyen on Unsplash

Antarctica Under Siege and XR Takes a Radical Turn

By Robert Hunziker

Antarctica has finally succumbed to rapid climate change. This past year (2023) brought changes to the icy continent that left climate scientists feeling a “punch in the gut.” (Source: Red Alert in Antarctica: The Year Rapid Dramatic Change Hit Climate Scientists Like a “Punch in the Guts,” The Guardian, December 30, 3023)

Antarctic sea ice cover crashed for six months straight to a level so far below anything else on the satellite record that scientists struggled for adjectives to describe what they were witnessing.

Global warming’s impact on Antarctica is serious, dangerous, threatening, hard to believe, and maybe unstoppable. Warnings like this, but not as serious as this, have been happening for years. As a result, too much negativity has turned the public numb to climate change. It’s been an endless stream of bad news that never gets good, always bad. But, in all honesty, that’s the nature of the beast unless reality is simply ignored.

Mainstream news recognizes the frustration, for example: “Global efforts to reach net-zero carbon emissions are failing in almost every way, with one exception: the boom in electric vehicles.” (Source: EVs Are the Only Bright Spot in Climate Fight, Study Shows, Bloomberg, Nov. 14, 2023)

At the other end of the spectrum, Extinction Rebellion -XR- famous for gluing people to airplanes, roadways, and fossil fuel hdqs doorways, and one of the most famous or infamous (take your pick) internationally organized groups against the root causes of global warming has heard enough bad news. It’s changing strategy by accepting reality.

Co-founder Roger Hallam just took XR off the streets, so to speak, with his 2024 new year email broadcast: “Balance: Building the Next Civilization in 2024,” which is a brilliant practical strategic change of heart. In Roger’s words: “Look, the carbon regime has totally fucked up, so the climate crisis is now locked in. We don’t need to create massive social disruption because it’s going to happen anyway! The regime will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. So, what next? We need to build the next civilization and stop fascism from taking us to a terminal hell.”

Roger sees the inevitability of what’s already set in motion, including the burgeoning fascist movement, and he sees the rotted failure of UN climate conferences (for over 30 years now) not addressing the root cause of ecosystem destruction. As a result, nothing is going to be done soon enough to make a difference. All the chatter about nuclear power and tripling renewables, blah-blah-blah, at the end of the day, will be greenwashing to appease people who see one “natural disaster” unfold after another on nightly news over the past couple of years, massive floods, massive droughts, massive storms, massive wildfires, and massive atmospheric rivers. Everything is massive these days.

In the real world, none of the proposed solutions for climate change meet the “scale of the problem” after more than 200 years of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Climate change is climate change is climate change, the same for eons, but the 21st century brand is radically different from anything in the paleoclimate record because it’s 10 times faster, in some instances 100 times faster. than ever before in paleoclimate history. Humans can’t keep up with the biogeological turbocharged monster. Scientists complain it’s happening so much faster than their models.

Ipso facto, ecosystems teeter throughout the planet, e.g., Greenland, in bad shape. Some scientists don’t even want to talk about Greenland any longer once it rained for the first time in recorded history at the Summit, 10,551 feet elevation.

A recent study about Greenland’s past is horrifying: “A recently discovered ice core taken from beneath the ice sheet decades ago has revealed that a large part was ice-free around 400,000 years ago, when temperatures were similar to those what we are now approaching. It’s an alarming finding that has implications for sea level rise. The study overturns previous assumptions that most of Greenland’s ice sheet was frozen for millions of years. Instead, moderate, natural warming led to large-scale melting and sea level rise of more than 1.4 meters (4.6 feet), according to the report in the journal Science.” The lead author of the study, Paul Bierman, University of Vermont: “When you look at what nature did in the past, as geoscientists, that’s our best clue to the future.” (Source: Long Lost Greenland Ice Core Suggest Potential for Disastrous Sea Level Rise, CNN, July 20, 2023)

Interestingly, and nerve-wracking, levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today are 1.5 times higher than 400,000 years ago when sea levels increased 4.6 feet. Melt events take time but how much time nobody knows.

According to Copernicus ‘Ice Sheets’, since 1980 the rate of ice mass loss tripled for Greenland (pre-1980s, it was stable and in balance) and Antarctica. And now accelerating. Tripling the rate of ice mass loss of the two largest chunks of ice on the planet is impossible to fathom.

According to the science, Antarctica is in big trouble, and it may be irreversible. Coastal cities could be under water; it’s just a matter of time; nobody knows how soon or later, but at the current rate of global fossil fuel emissions, it looks grim. After all, the fossil fuel industry has publicly announced intentions to go full-bore, like there’s no tomorrow, they are cranking up oil production big time, according to statements by big oil companies.  “Global fossil fuel production in 2030 is set to be more than double the level deemed consistent with meeting climate goals set under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.” (Source: Global Fossil Fuel Production Plans Far Exceed Climate Targets, UN Says, Reuters, Nov. 8, 2023)

Massively increasing oil production conforms to a recent James Hansen (Earth Institute-Columbia University) publication about exceeding the world’s most recognizable threshold, aka: the danger zone, the Climate Maginot Line or 2C above pre-industrial. Hansen’s prediction is way ahead of expectations, the upcoming decade, the 2030s. That’s early! It should be noted that scientists claim exceeding 2C wreaks havoc with life-sourcing ecosystems. For example, it’s already happening at above 2C with Arctic permafrost melting 2-4 times the average of global warming. Arctic rivers turn toxic and orange, one of the biggest sore thumbs on the planet, but Antarctica, the Amazon rainforest, Greenland, and the Great Barrier Reef are challenging.

A British Antarctic Survey found the record drop in sea ice led to a catastrophic breeding failure for animals. Meanwhile, East Antarctica recorded its biggest heatwave ever at 39C above normal. And making matters worse, a major study published in Nature found meltwater slowing down, by a nerve-rattling 30%, Southern Ocean Overturning Circulation; this has huge negative implications for global weather, especially for northern Europe, which could lose its warm tropical current flow. And the implications for marine life are a major concern.

Meantime, West Antarctica melting has tripled, and studies show accelerated melting of the ice shelves has locked in a cascading impact for West Antarctica which is in much worse shape than its eastern cousin.

Even worse yet for sea level rise expectations, Antarctica’s enormous loss of sea ice was never expected so early. According to Tony Press, former head of the Australian Antarctic Division: “There’s a chance that it could come back again, but there’s also a very, very high chance that sea ice in Antarctica has moved into a new state… You would not be an alarmist if you said you were really worried about that,” Ibid.

Researchers claim a permanent loss of sea ice would accelerate ocean warming, as dark water absorbs more heat than ice and amplifies the rate of global sea level rise by removing a buffer protecting the continent’s ice shelves.

Antarctica, like so many other ecosystems throughout the globe, such as the Amazon rainforest (20% gone for good, 40% severely degraded) no longer adhere to the flow of Mother Nature. Human activity dictates the flow.

Roger Hallam co-founder of XR has seen the future, and it’s an analog of the past but much worse. Now, he’s searching for answers to building the next civilization. Not a bad idea. But where?

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This article was originally published on January 5, 2024 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Alaska’s Scary Orange Rivers

Image courtesy National Park Service is in the public domain.
Image courtesy National Park Service is in the public domain.

Alaska’s Scary Orange Rivers

By Robert Hunziker

Global warming can add one more notch to its gun belt. The rapid onset of global warming is turning Alaska’s wilderness rivers orange. Global warming impacts Arctic temperatures 2-4 times warmer than the global average, and permafrost that’s been around since before humans sat round crackling cave fires is rapidly melting. Eons of frozen stuff is making its first appearance in tens of thousands of years, clobbering wilderness rivers with deadly toxicity.

Researchers believe the cause(s) is/are (1) acid from minerals leaching iron out of bedrock exposed to water for the first time in millennia and/or (2) bacteria mobilizing iron from the permafrost soil in thawing wetlands prompted by global warming.

A group of scientists at Alaska’s Kobuk Valley National Park reported numerous sightings of orange river water 60 miles from the nearest villages and 250 miles from road systems. Patrick Sullivan, an ecologist/University of Alaska, Anchorage, analyzed a screen of a sensor he had dipped into the water: “This is bad stuff.” (Source: Why Are Alaska‘s Rivers Turning Orange? Scientific American, January 1, 2024)

Dissolved oxygen in the orangish water was very low, the pH factor was 6.4 or 100 times more acidic than normal, and the electrical conductivity of the orange water was similar to industrial wastewater. Sullivan, stating the obvious: “Don’t drink this water,” Ibid. Honestly, think about the level of ridiculousness, it’s pristine (normally) drinkable water in the vast wilderness.

The scientists started their investigation of the water near the entry point of one of many streams to Salmon River that runs south from the peaks of Brooks Range, Alaska, known as “the last frontier,” which is a 650-mile line of slopes that separates northern Alaska from the rumbling Arctic coastline. A federal government act designated the Salmon River as a wild and scenic river with “water of exceptional clarity with deep luminescent blue-green pools and large runs of chum and pink salmon.” Sullivan: “It was a famous, pristine river ecosystem, and it feels like it’s completely collapsing now,” Ibid.

Ultimately, the Brooks Range rivers flow into the Arctic and Pacific Oceans.

Similar fate is discoloring rivers and streams throughout the Brooks Range. The researchers believe Russia and Canada are likely experiencing the same. Timothy Lyons, geochemist, University of California/Riverside said: “Almost certainly it is happening in other parts of the Arctic,” Ibid.

The scientists who studied the Range agree the major cause is climate change. For example, Kobuk Valley National Park has warmed by 2.4°C since 2006, and it’s believed the excessive heat has already begun thawing up to 40% of the permafrost. This is a good example of why global climate meetings, like COP28 recently held in Dubai, must come to grips with putting a stop to fossil fuel emissions, the number one agent on behalf of excessively harmful global warming.

The Brooks Range group of scientists conducted the first ever comprehensive sampling of an entire watershed on a six-day mission down the Salmon River. They believe a combination of (1) acid from minerals leaching iron out of bedrock exposed to water for the first time in millennia and/or (2) bacteria mobilizing iron from the permafrost soil in thawing wetlands is/are behind the dirty deeds, which means rusting will gradually “smother streams almost anywhere there’s permafrost,” inclusive of one-fourth of the entire Northern Hemisphere. This is a prime example of how far-reaching excessive global warming destroys the most pristine ecosystems on the planet and speaks to the necessity of halting fossil fuel emissions, yesterday. After all, this is what happens at 2°C above pre-industrial, ecosystems collapse. Only recently, Dr. James Hansen/Columbia University shocked science by saying 2°C will arrive during the 2030s, way-way earlier than IPCC projections.

Traversing the river, they found murky water over orange rocks where only a couple of years ago it was clear and full of fish, not now. At some spots the water ran half orange and half green and at others further downstream the river had the color and opacity of pea soup. Forrest McCarthy, a former US Antarctic Program coordinator, claimed: “Most climate change is subtle. This is like, bam!” Scientists claim they could not find any fish or insects in some areas of the Range, stating: “Biodiversity just crashed,” Ibid.

Meanwhile, 50 miles west of Salmon, the Agashashok River also turned orange-brown. Sullivan and company expressed shock by how fast streams started transforming, e.g., Clear Creek water was so acidic that it curdled the powered milk used for nightly tea, as the scientists traversed the Range.

On a trip to Timber Creek, 20 miles west of Salmon River, one of the members of the team who had fly-fished in the creek a few years ago, discovered: “More iron than fish… I looked at the creek, and I said, ‘this creek is dead. It’s just blanketed with metals,” Ibid. It’s what’s found in a national park, in the wilderness, don’t think about it too much, it’s deadly.

Additionally, the team discovered several blackened, dark ground patches the color of fresh asphalt scattered throughout the Range. At one patch they took a sample of the trickling water flowing out of a dark patch. It had a pH factor of 2.95, like vinegar. The ground burn was caused by acid, and according to the team: “If it’s got that low of a pH… it’s actively burning. There’s at least a dozen burns in this valley,” Ibid.

Brooks Range, Alaska is a preeminent example of how global warming enhanced by, driven by, fossil fuel emissions from cars, trains, and planes and industry impacts the most precious ecosystems of the planet where nobody lives but where life is supposed to thrive. It isn’t thriving any longer. Only an international forum like the UN climate change conferences held yearly, called COP, can come close to fixing this open sore on the planet, maybe?

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This article was originally published on December 29, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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COP28’s Unrealistic Tripling of Nuclear Power

Photo by Ondrej Bocek on Unsplash
Photo by Ondrej Bocek on Unsplash

COP28’s Unrealistic Tripling of Nuclear Power

By Robert Hunziker

UN climate conferences since 1992 have failed to follow thru with results, as CO2 emissions continue higher and higher with every passing year. In fact, post climate conference impact of adopted proposals has become something 0f an inside joke. The most recent conference, COP28, embraced nuclear power as a godsend challenging climate change.

“Triple Nuclear Power” still echoes throughout the halls of COP28. If one stands at the podium in the convention center now empty and listens intently, echoes reverberate “triple nuclear power” spewing out of red-faced maniacs from over 20 countries that committed to tripling nuclear power to bail our global asses out of a crazed climate system of epic proportions.

The US, UK, UAE, and others signed a declaration. Since they couldn’t budge oil and gas, it was decided to favor nuclear power as a surrogate for fixing the rip snorting global heating imbroglio found from pole to pole, from ocean to ocean. It’s real, it’s palpable; it’s now, much earlier than forecasts, as 1.5C prematurely comes to surface during irregular episodes.

Yet, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the declaration by 22 countries calling for a tripling of nuclear energy by 2050 is more fantasy than reality: “Even at best, a shift to invest more heavily in nuclear energy over the next two decades could actually worsen the climate crisis, as cheaper, quicker alternatives are ignored for more expensive, slow-to-deploy nuclear reactors.” (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Dec. 13th, 2023)

Building nuclear power facilities has a long history that unfortunately casts a doubtful shadow over the idea of tripling by 2050. A now-famous plan by Princeton University in 2004 called for a “stabilization wedge” to avoid one billion tons of carbon emissions per year by 2055 by building 700 large nuclear reactors over 50 years.

In 2022, there were 416 operating reactors in the world. Starting in 2005 when the Princeton plan was announced, it would have meant building 14 reactors per year, assuming all existing reactors continued to function. However, over the 50-year cycle aging reactors and those going into retirement would ultimately require 40 new reactors per year. But throughout the entire history of nuclear power, on average 10 nuclear power plants connected to the electricity grid per year, and the number of new units was only 5 per year from 2011-2021.

Once again, like the sticky issue of direct carbon capture, achieving the scale of proposed solutions to climate change’s biggest weapon, or global warming, is beyond reality. Talk is cheap.

Meanwhile less expensive safer wind and solar easily trounce nuclear power’s newly installed output, by a country mile, to wit:

New nuclear energy capacity 2000-2020 42 GWe

New wind capacity from 2000-2020 605 GWe

New solar capacity from 2000-2020 578 GWe

Nuclear costs are prohibitively high: It’ll cost $15 trillion to triple nuclear capacity, assuming existing reactors continue to function, which will not be the case, raising this big bet well over $15T. Who’s putting up $15T?

And is there enough time to triple by 2050? From design to projected operation of the NuScale VOYGR plant takes 13 years. According to the International Energy Agency, the design and build phase for a country’s first nuclear reactor is 15 years. Several countries that signed on to the declaration to triple nuclear power are newbies.

According to a Foreign Policy article, Dec. 13th 2023 entitled: COP28’s Dramatic But Empty Nuclear Pledge: several reasons for skepticism about the nuclear energy triple buildout were enumerated, concluding: “The combination of macroeconomic pressures and regulatory restrictions means that neither pledges such as those made at COP28 nor memorandums of understanding with various industries, utilities, and governments should give anyone much confidence that a major expansion of nuclear energy is forthcoming.”

Nuclear expert Mycle Schneider, the lead author of the prestigious World Nuclear Industry Status Report (500 pgs.) now in in its 18th edition known for its fact-based approach on details of operation, construction, and decommissioning of the world’s reactors was recently interviewed by the Bulletin: Schneider’s publication is considered the landmark study of the industry.

Regarding NuScale, the US-based company that develops America’s flagship SMR (Small Nuclear Reactors), the company initially promised in 2008 to start generating power by 2015. As of 2023, they haven’t started construction of a single reactor. They do not have a certification license for the model they promoted for a Utah municipality. NuScale’s six module facility would cost $20,000 per kilowatt installed, twice as expensive as the most expensive large-scale reactors in Europe. And SMRs will generate disproportionate amounts of nuclear waste. No bargain here, assuming it even works efficiently enough, which is doubtful.

Schneider: “The entire logic that has been built up for small modular reactors is with the background of climate change emergency. That’s the big problem we have.” A sense of urgency cannot be met: “Considering the status of development, we’re not going to see any SMR generating power before the 2030s. It’s very clear: none. And if we are talking about SMRs picking up any kind of substantial amounts of generating capacity in the current market, if ever, we’re talking about the 2040s at the very earliest.”

Schneider on COP’s pledge to triple nuclear power: “From an industrial point of view, to put this pledge into reality. To me, this pledge is very close to absurd, compared to what the industry has shown.”

Looked at another way: “It took 70 years to bring global nuclear capacity to the current level of 370 gigawatts (GW), and the industry must now select technologies, raise finance and develop the rules to build another 740 GW in half that time… Why would anyone spend a single dollar on a technology that, if planned today, won’t even be available to help until 2035-2045?’ said Mark Jacobson, an energy specialist at Stanford University.” (Source: Nuclear Sector Must Overcome Decades of Stagnation to Meet COP28 Tripling, Reuters, Dec. 7, 2023) How about $15 trillion?

COP28 did not deliver on phase down of fossil fuels, and it’ll likely miss on tripling nuclear power. But once the results are finally known, it’s too late. The heat’s already on.

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This article was originally published on December 22, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Global Warming Slices and Dices Greenland

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

 

Global Warmng Slices and Dices Greenland

By Robert Hunziker

Northern Greenland is under attack by global warming at the same time as delegates to COP28 heap praise on a purported landmark deal to transition out of fossil fuels but beware of the true meaning behind the language. Its disingenuousness is a stamp of approval for much more climate upheaval imprinted onto one more UN Conference of the Parties, COP flop.

According to Dr. Friederike Otto of Imperial College London: “The lukewarm agreement reached at COP28 will cost every country, no matter how rich, no matter how poor. Everyone loses. It’s hailed as a compromise, but we need to be very clear what has been compromised. The short-term financial interests of a few have again won over the health, lives and livelihoods of most people living on this planet.” (COP28: Landmark Deal to Transition Away from Fossil Fuels Agreed- As It Happened, The Guardian, Dec. 13th 2023)

Down to Earth’s publication d/d Dec. 14, 2023 hit the nail on the head re COP28: “Despite the hottest summer in 120,000 years, the oil, gas, coal, and farming companies that are heating the planet can continue to expand production for the foreseeable future.”

Meanwhile, new research has identified extremely disturbing deep trouble brewing in Greenland: Three of eight major ice shelves in the northern region have collapsed or retreated, leaving five ice shelves as gigantic corks holding back major glaciers from rapidly flowing into the sea, in turn, raising sea levels beyond comfort levels. The three biggest are Petermann, Ryder, and Nioghalvfierbrae. This threesome alone equals 3.6 feet of sea level rise. (Source: Alarming Collapse of Greenland Ice Shelves Sparks Warning of Sea Level Rise, LiveScience, November 2023)

A separate study by Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences/The University of Texas found Greenland’s glaciers melting 100 times faster than previously thought. (Source: K Schulz, et al, An Improved and Observationally Constrained Melt Rate Parameterization for Vertical Ice Fronts of Marine Terminating Glaciers, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 49, Issue 18, Sept. 20, 2022)

Moreover, according to the Oden study: “The melting of the Greenland ice sheet is a major predictor of sea level rise. This frozen stretch of glaciers is the second largest on Earth and covers about 80% of the Nordic nation. If it melts entirely, as it did at the height of the Eemian interglacial period about 125,000 years ago, global sea levels could rise by 20 feet—or approximately 6.1 meters.”

An entire meltdown would take centuries, but we’re only concerned with the first several feet which will likely happen this 21st century, enough to flood coastal cities, for example, wiping out Miami Beach, unless Florida encircles the entire state with a gigantic seawall creating a medieval city/state moat.

For as long as anybody can remember, the eight ice shelves in the northern region of Greenland were always stable. However, stability has suddenly disintegrated, according to the report: “We show that since 1978, ice shelves in North Greenland have lost more than 35% of their total volume, three of them collapsing completely. For the floating ice shelves that remain we observe a widespread increase in ice shelf mass losses.” (Source: R. Millan, et al, Rapid Disintegration and Weakening of Ice Shelves in North Greenland, Nature Communications, November 2023)

There’s no emphasis required to know that COP28’s greenwashing compromise and the global warming threat to Greenland are not only interrelated but really bad news. And, once again, it exposes the hollowness of annual UN Conference of the Parties (COP) that should address the compelling issue of excessive CO2 emissions creating a blanket trapping global heat. Ipso facto, Greenland’s glaciers, 100 times faster, start filling up the oceans. This, in turn, creates the mystery of all mysteries as nobody knows how high, or when, sea level rise overwhelms coastal metropolises. But based upon the feebleness of 30+years of COP meetings that are attended by world leaders (154 heads of state at COP28), it looks dismal.

Amongst the referenced ice shelves, the Petermann ice shelf is a focal point. It lies at the seaward end of a deep sub-ice canyon that could open-up ocean penetration into the center of the entire Greenland ice sheet. The initial step to such a horrifying prospect would be loss of Peterman’s ice shelf.

“Ice shelves are the parts of an ice sheet that float on the water, preventing glaciers on the land from slipping into and melting in the ocean, which would increase sea levels. If the glaciers the North Greenland ice shelves support were to collapse, sea levels could rise by nearly 7 feet (2.1 meters).” (LiveScience report)

Therefore, the Millan scientific analysis should raise eyebrows of policymakers to the necessity of immediate powerful mitigation measures, not mealymouthed halfway-commitments that are broadcast as “landmarks,” oh, please! Yet brokenheartedly, the recently concluded Dubai 28th annual UN climate conference did not address the issue of excessive CO2 emissions forcing increased warming, other than to stress “transitioning” out of fossil fuels pretty much on a ho-hum basis. This approach has not worked for more than 30 years of COP meetings, frustration reigns supreme. According to COP28 president Al-Jaber, COP28 is a “true victory,” but “his comments clash with reactions by scientists who have praised parts of the UAE consensus but criticized its vague, weak and caveated language on fossil fuels, which are the main cause of climate change.” (The Guardian, Dec. 13th)

As a result of decades of weak COPs, there’s a price to be paid: “We are heading toward an ice-shelf-free Northern Hemisphere.” (Millan) The implications are horrendous and impossible to describe and based upon the results of COP28, a major question going forward is whether adaptation measures, such as tall seawalls, can be erected ahead of rising sea levels?

The results of too much ocean heat (oceans absorb 80-90% of planetary heat) entering underneath the ice shelves has been studied in detail by scientists based at institutions in France, the US, and Denmark, using satellite data, ocean observations, and climate modeling to measure changes in the ice shelves’ spatial area and thickness. Grounding lines where the ice shelves come aground were evaluated. The areas where the floating shelves end, and the grounded glacier begins are retreating inland across nearly all the shelves, a key sign of weakening. This is a prime example of the nemesis of global warming fueled by rising CO2 emissions at work. COP28 was supposed to deal with issues like this. It did not.

As previously mentioned, Greenland’s ice shelf melt down is 100 times faster than expectations by the scientists, as of 2022. It’s literally impossible to drive a car 100 times faster than cruising speed; it cannot physically be done; yet humongous ice shelves are melting 100 times faster. It’s something to think about.

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This article was originally published on December 15, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Fixing the Climate Crisis – Part 2

Image by NOAA
Image by NOAA

Fixing the Climate Crisis, Part 2

By Robert Hunziker

How to Fix the Climate Crisis is a multifaceted affair; a National Geographic November 2023 article, The Race to Save the Planet, Can Technology Help Fix the Climate Crisis? that this two-part series is based upon focuses on the nexus of trouble, which is excessive levels of greenhouse gases, specifically CO2. Technologies to fix excessive CO2 in the atmosphere, as mentioned in the National Geographic article, are described herein:

The scope of the CO2 problem is very difficult to comprehend. The planet is big, and any solution involves the entire planet, or it is no solution at all. For example, CO2 disperses evenly throughout the planet. A Marshall Plan solution that bailed out Europe post WWII would simply be way too small. To effectively do the job requires an ultra-massive cooperative effort by nations of the world. In that regard, if the results of 30 years of annual UN climate conferences on climate change, like COP 21 at Paris in 2015, indicate what to expect, then the outlook is bleak. COP agreements over the past 30 years have not been kept by countries of the world, which ignore the biggest risks of all time to life on the planet.

There is no practical way to remove carbon from the atmosphere with enough umph to meet IPCC guidelines without major governments joining together. This is the biggest drag on combating excessive climate change conditions that are well beyond the forces of nature.

In pursuit of the best ways to fix the climate crisis Sam Howe Verhovek, author of Clear the Air/National Geographic visited the intellectual godfather of carbon removal, Klaus Lackner in Tempe, head of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions at Arizona State University. Dr. Lackner is experimenting with “mechanical trees,” which he claims are a thousand times more efficient at carbon removal than real trees and better at keeping it stored away. “As an evangelist for direct air capture, Lackner says the key question is not whether the technology works, but what price society will be willing to pay for it.” This has been and remains a major impediment. After all, it’s the biggest project in human history that requires all hands-on deck and trillions of investible funds.

Several nascent carbon removal and capture projects are now active worldwide. One of the largest is Climeworks, a Swiss company that received funding of $650 million from Microsoft, JP Morgan and Stripe. It’s the largest private investment the industry has seen so far. Funders are purchasing “verified offsets” which allows them to claim they’re operating a carbon neutral business. The company builds modular units each the size of a standard shipping container that captures carbon directly out of the air. The containers can be delivered by ship, rail, or truck and interconnected like Lego blocks. The company envisions thousands of units sucking up enough CO2 laced air to remove one megaton (a million metric tons) annually by 2030, 100 megatons/year by 2040, and by 2050 one gigaton (a billion metric tons) annually. For reference purposes, worldwide CO2 emissions in 2022 were 37.5 billion metric tons (GtCo2). According to The World Counts: From 1850 to 2019, 2,400 gigatons of CO2 were emitted by human activity. Around 950 gigatons went into the atmosphere. The rest has been absorbed by oceans and land. It is only too obvious that emissions must be stopped at the source in addition to removal technologies in order to meet IPCC guidelines of halting temperature increases to 2°C above pre-industrial.

Alas, Europe is warming faster than the global average. The mean annual temperature over European land the last decade has been running 2.04°C to 2.10°C warmer than during the pre-industrial period. (Source: Global and European Temperatures, European Environment Agency, June 29, 2023)

The EU is showing the world what to expect at 2°C above pre-industrial, i.e., ecosystems dry-out, including major water reservoirs and major river systems, Rhine, Po, Danube, and Loire nearly dried out in the summer of 2022 with major commercial barges stuck in mud, as over 100 communities in France and Italy ran out of ground water, and of special concern, France’s celebrated nuclear power industry (70% of total electricity) was threatened with shutdowns, and actually down-shifted, because of low water resources, as France for the first time in 40 years became a net importer of electricity (Source: Climate Change, Water Scarcity Jeopardizing French Nuclear Fleet, Balkan Green Energy News, March 24, 2023). This alone should be enough for nations to declare a red alert to stop fossil fuel emissions as soon as practicable, at the least, but no such declaration has been posted. Ironically, the world looks for nuclear reactors to help solve global warming.

Climeworks makes money by selling credits to companies like airlines or oil companies or any company that wants to claim carbon neutrality. At today’s prices to remove carbon, Climeworks revenues in 2050 would surpass Apple’s revenues, but Climeworks expects the price per ton of carbon removal to drop precipitously by 2050, as the market matures.

It remains to be seen if the carbon capture business can successfully scale up to meaningful size fast enough to inhibit what has become the equivalent of a runaway freight train called rapid global warming. To date, carbon capture devices in the world are sucking up 4% of what’s needed to be accomplished by 2030 to be on track to hopefully hold global temperatures down to something that’s livable. Obviously, at only 4% of what’s needed, there does not appear to be a panic-driven movement to come to grips with the biggest threat to life since the last big asteroid collided 65 million years ago (the Academy Award Best Picture nominee Don’t Look Up, Netflix, 2021 deals with this issue).

Meanwhile, deep in the outback of Australia, Aspira DAC, a company that’s a unit of Corporate Carbon, which also sells credits for certified carbon removal, is planning on a massive project of thousands of modules in the barren outback. Funded by Facebook, Google, and Stripe, Aspira is currently building test units the size and shape of a two-person tent with solar panels on either side which provides power for a fan that blows air across a polymer honeycomb device that filters CO2 that’s ultimately released into a collection system. Each module is designed to capture two metric tons of CO2. Aspira believes there could be “a million or two” modules over time. But first, when installations start next year, they are hopeful that the technology will work according to plan.

As mentioned in Part 1 of this two-part series, decades of failed carbon capture projects indicate controlling carbon is far more temperamental than backers let on. Capturing carbon is typically an eight-step process from production of CO2 to burial. At each stage, there’s a potential pitfall. Several major corporations have abandoned carbon capture projects (see Part 1) after spending billions.

Vesta, a San Francisco-based company, is experimenting with finely ground olivine, a magnesium iron silicate found in Earth’s mantle. In water, it absorbs CO2 in a natural chemical process that yields bicarbonates that in turn sequester carbon. If successful, it could bring carbon removal to two-thirds of the planet, the oceans.

A New South Wales company named PhycoHealth is working on an elaborate plan to use seaweed to remove carbon. Pound for pound, seaweed is 40 times more efficient than trees at sequestering carbon. According to PhycoHealth, “if we use the natural infrastructure of the ocean and create large seaweed islands, we could see a dramatic decrease in the main driver of climate change.” The company claims that seaweed has miraculous powers to heal the planet. Still, PhycoHealth, like all companies working on carbon removal, complains about the failure of governments to get involved enough to make a big enough difference. Like all nascent technology companies, government funding will be required to meet the scale of operations.

Another experimental solution bypasses carbon emissions by creating hydrocarbon fuels from nothing but sunlight and the air surrounding us. This is called the holy grail of carbon capture, a project of Aldo Steinfeld at ETH Zurich, Europe’s MIT. Aldo specializes in sustainable energy systems. Using a dodecagonal-shaped collection of mirrored panels the size of a beach umbrella, sunlight is sharply focused into an intense beam that splits CO2 and water into component parts in two separate streams, carbon monoxide, which is carbon dioxide reduction, and hydrogen in one stream, which forms the basis for “solar synfuel” and oxygen vented in the other. Thus, creating solar-synthesized fuel. According to Steinfeld: “The circular economy of it is the beautiful thing… Carbon doesn’t get added to the atmosphere — it’s getting collected and reused.” However, commercialization of Steinfeld’s solar synfuel demands a huge number of expensive solar panels to create a tiny amount of fuel. Once again, the scale of operations is an impediment that’s challenging to overcome. Even though Steinfeld’s energy utopia is possible via solar synfuel, it’s years, if not decades, away.

Paradoxically, the good news about global warming is its universal impact, bringing forward the sharpest minds to find solutions. It is not a hidden monster waiting to spring loose on humanity. We know all about it. The biggest obstacle to fixing the climate crisis is politics that’s been bought (lock, stock, and barrel) by the biggest beneficiaries of fossil fuel production.

According to Al Gore in a recent TED speech: To solve the persistent problem of excessive fossil fuel emissions, he suggests looking at the obstacles, which includes unrelenting opposition by the fossil fuel industry. Even though many people think they are onside and trying to help, he begs to differ: “Let me tell you … on every piece of legislation at every level of government, they’re in there with their lobbyists and revolving door colleagues doing everything possible to slow down progress. They have used fraud on a massive scale; they’ve used falsehoods on an industrial scale, and they’ve used their legacy political and economic networks… to capture the policy-making process.”

Al Gore: “The climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis. There’s no other way to look at it.”

Yet, as an aside, many climate scientists insist there’s much more at stake than fossil fuels. They claim an equally big issue, maybe more challenging, is too many people living on a finite resource, also known as the human footprint, which is now using 1.75 Earths to exist (Global Footprint Network); the lines crossed into negative territory in 1977. This “experiment” with nature has no historical precedent; none of the prior five extinctions in Earth’s paleoclimatic history happened by intentional abuse, misuse, and destruction of nature’s ecosystems. That’s unique to Homo sapiens. Indeed, it’s doubtful “the experiment” will leave a legacy.
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This article was originally published on November 10, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Note: This article will also be posted on the Facing Future Now! Facebook group. If you would like to comment on this article, please go to the Facebook group and post your comments there under the article posting.

Facing Future Now! https://www.facebook.com/groups/530755592068234
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On the agenda for next week: The COP28 Showdown – An article about what to expect at the most controversial UN climate conference of all time at Expo City, Dubai – The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly referred to as COP28 from November 30th until December 12th, 2023.

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Fixing the Climate Crisis

Photo by Markus Spiske is licensed by Unsplash
Photo by Markus Spiske is licensed by Unsplash

Fixing the Climate Crisis

By Robert Hunziker

National Geographic’s November 2023 cover story is entitled The Race to Save the Planet. Can Technology Help Fix the Climate Crisis? by Sam Howe Verhovek. This headline puts climate change squarely in crisis mode, and by implication “the race to save the planet” signals the onset of a mad scramble to work our way out of the biggest jam in human history.

It’s hard to find a climate scientist who does not agree with that sentiment. According to the renowned climate scientist Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards, University College London: “I know a lot of people working in climate science who say one thing in public but a very different thing in private. In confidence, they are all much more scared about the future we face, but they won’t admit that in public. I call this climate appeasement and I believe it only makes things worse. The world needs to know how bad things are going to get before we can hope to start to tackle the crisis.” (Source: ‘Soon the World Will be Unrecognizable’: Is it Still Possible to Prevent Total Climate Meltdown? The Guardian, July 30, 2022)

In the same spirit of McGuire “telling it like it is,” Verhovek’s National Geographic article makes a profound statement that should be emblazoned on every cell phone in the world and read every day: “Getting to zero carbon emissions won’t save the world. We will need to remove carbon on a massive scale. To do that will require a planet-wide effort to match anything that humankind has ever achieved.”

That is a tall order, a very tall order indeed when consideration is given to how disjointed, at odds, and hateful the world is today. Politics has become a basket case of venomous snakes. Yet, saving the planet requires a coordinated “planet-wide effort to match anything that humankind has ever achieved.” Hmm.

Proposals to save the planet run the gamut from mini-nuclear reactors scattered all over the planet (Oh. please! don’t), carbon capture & sequestration, a trillion planted trees, factory farms replaced by classic agricultural practices (absolutely necessary), soil restoration, geo-engineering schemes to reflect incoming solar radiation, re-freezing the Arctic and much, much more.

Verhovek’s National Geographic article is artistically drafted in the spirit of honesty about the true capability, or not, of climate fixes he found around the world. He traveled to see them. Refreshingly, his approach to the subject matter is brutally honest. There are lots of novel concepts underway that seemingly have potential. But time is of essence and the scale of operations required to get the job done is absolutely staggering, almost beyond imagination. Is it beyond worldwide cooperation?

As of our new 21st century, the planet’s climate system has radically shifted by becoming a hinderance and threat to society in sharp contrast to the past several thousand years of the Holocene not-too-hot, not-to-cold Goldilocks era that supported human existence as a partner in life. Now, unfortunately, global warming has become public enemy number one and a threat to life.

The climate system has rapidly changed because of a deleterious energy imbalance, which is the “proximate cause of global warming” according to Dr. James Hansen, the world’s leading climate scientist. Energy imbalance is the heart and soul of extreme global warming, and it has turned nasty and challenging, a threat to existence.

Energy imbalance or “sunlight in versus sunlight out” is currently running at a rate of 1.36 W/m2 as of the 2020s decade. That is double the 2005-2015 rate of 0.71 W/m2 (Source: James Hansen, Global Warming is Accelerating. Why? Will We Fly Blind? September 14, 2023). W/m2 is “watts per square meter.” According to Dr. Hansen’s description: “There is more energy coming in (absorbed sunlight) than energy going out (heat radiated to space).”

Alas, doubling the rate of energy imbalance within only one decade is not good; in fact, it is horrible, something that causes scientists to unblinkingly stare at the ceiling in the middle of the night. That imbalance is why so many crazy climate disasters have been simultaneously hitting the planet from coast-to-coast and pole-to-pole. The entire climate system is out-of-kilter, topsy-turvy.

Mainstream news has been covering these disaster scenarios extremely well over the past couple of years, as radical climate change struts its stuff for all to see on national TV, major rivers drying up, the Amazon suffering repeated devastating bouts of blistering drought, spontaneous Noah’s Ark floods hitting every continent, massive hurricanes, and Arctic permafrost starting to come apart at the seams across one-quarter of the Northern Hemisphere, exposing decades of recklessly handled industrial toxicants and eons of global warming’s favorite drug CH4 (methane) a “global warming high” that’s to die for.

World news outlets have been so full of disaster scenarios in real time that debate and denial about climate change falls flat on its face; the proof is on the nightly news. For example: “Extreme heat has unleashed rain like never before. Unusually violent downpours have hit every inhabited continent this year. From Storm Daniel in Libya to Typhoon Doksuri in China, the damage has been severe.” (Bloomberg ESG News, Nov. 1, 2023)

What’s to be done?

Can the climate system be fixed?

Today’s broken climate system has been 200+ years in the making, ever since humans first discovered a powerful relationship between industrialization and fossil fuels. And a two-hundred-year-old problem cannot be fixed overnight or within years, maybe decades. The scale of the problem is too big for anything resembling a quick fix.

Complicating matters, the technology that so many optimists are counting on is indeterminate as to scale and proficiency. One of the most celebrated efforts to capture carbon from the atmosphere was recently abandoned. Occidental Petroleum: An Oil Giant Quietly Ditched the World’s Biggest Carbon Capture Plant, Bloomberg News, October 23, 2023. According to Bloomberg: “Occidental Petroleum is leading the global charge to vastly expand the use of technologies that suck up carbon dioxide. The failure of the company’s biggest-ever bet shows the challenges ahead.”

Putting carbon capture into perspective: “After decades of deployment, however, total carbon capture capacity globally is only about 45 million tons of CO2 per year. That’s just 4% of carbon capture needed by 2030 to be on track for net zero by 2050, according to the IEA. And beyond the usefulness of producing more oil, the technology has also been the beneficiary of a decade of policy incentives, including new laws from the US government to increasingly subsidize the burying of CO2.” (Bloomberg, Oct. 23rd)

Century (OXY) now finds itself on a growing list of CCS projects that failed to live up to lofty expectations. Decades of failed projects indicate controlling carbon is far more temperamental than backers let on. Capturing carbon is typically an eight-step process from production of CO2 to burial. At each stage, there’s a potential pitfall: “Examples of misfires abound in the previous generation of CCS. In Mississippi, a much-heralded “clean coal” project at Southern Co.’s Kemper power plant ended up scrapped due to technical problems as costs blew up to $7.5 billion. Chevron Corp. has consistently failed to run its Gorgon CCS plant in Australia as expected after seven years and $2.1 billion invested due to engineering problems around sinking the CO2.” (Bloomberg, Oct. 23rd)

“CCS is ‘a mature technology that’s failed,’ said Bruce Robertson, an energy finance analyst who has studied the top projects globally. ‘Companies are spending billions of dollars on these plants and they’re not working to their metrics.” (Bloomberg, Oct.23, 2023)

With that rather jarring introduction, what does National Geographic have to say about saving the planet?

According to the article: “But what all these efforts have in common is that to their many detractors, the very idea of sucking all this carbon out of the air is a diversion from the far more urgent task of radically cutting carbon dioxide emissions to begin with… More than 500 environmental groups, for instance, have signed a petition urging U.S. and Canadian leaders to ‘abandon the dirty, dangerous might of CCS,’ or carbon capture and storage, a major form of carbon removal. The petition blasts the concept as ‘a dangerous distraction driven by the same big polluters who created the climate emergency.” This criticism is directed at ExxonMobil, Chevron, and others claiming they will clean up the carbon problem. It is believed this same ruse will be front and center at COP28, the UN climate conference, to be held in Dubai, the heartbeat of fossil fuels, in a few weeks.

Verhovek rightfully takes to task the myth perpetuated by the oil and gas industry that carbon can be removed from the atmosphere so they can keep on producing forever. For example, as stated by Al Gore in a recent speech, What the Fossil Fuel Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know:  Gore showed a photo of a DAC project in Iceland, one of the originators of carbon removal, which will be enhanced enough in 7 years so that each DAC unit will be able to capture 27 seconds worth of annual emissions There are 8 units. Do the math. Gore’s response: “Are you kidding me!”

On a cost-effective basis, DAC is not credible. Moreover, the biggest obstacle to DAC is physics, CO2 makes up ~0.035% of the air, meaning DACs will vacuum the other 99.96% to get ~0.035% out of the air. Gore’s statement about scale: “Oh, please! It’s a bad joke and cannot possibly meet the scale required just to keep up with current emissions. Meanwhile oil companies are using DAC to effectively gaslight the public.”

Yes, “gaslighting the pubic” as big-big money has entered the scene of carbon removal, Microsoft, JP Morgan and others invested $650 million in Climeworks, the Swiss-based company that has bold, elaborate plans to capture carbon. To be discussed in more detail in part 2 to this article.

According to Sam Verhovek: “But as important as that money is for spurring R&D, it’s a minute fraction of what would ultimately be needed to make a genuine difference in reversing or at least slowing climate change. That figure would likely be measured in trillions of dollars, amounting to one of the largest industrial undertakings in all of history.” Whew!

The End: Fixing the Climate Crisis Part 1

Fixing the Climate Crisis Part 2 – next week: Technological fixes already underway or on deck as described in Verhovek’s article. Hopeful technologies are abundant.
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This article was originally published on November 3, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Note: This article will also be posted on the Facing Future Now! Facebook group. If you would like to comment on this article, please go to the Facebook group and post your comments there under the article posting.

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20,000 Toxic Sites in Sagging Arctic Permafrost

Thawing permafrost in Herschel Island
Photo of thawing permafrost in Herschel Island by Boris Radosavljevic is licensed by CC BY 2.0 DEED

20,000 Toxic Sites in Sagging Arctic Permafrost

By Robert Hunziker

New studies show the Arctic heating up 4-times the overall rate of global warming. This startling rate in one of the most sensitive environments in the world could trigger toxic disasters in up to 20,000 industrial contamination sites.

Twenty-five percent (25%) of the Northern Hemisphere is covered by permafrost that’s melting the fastest ever. The risks of toxic leaks at industrial sites are immeasurable. Nobody really knows for sure how it ends, but it has started.

“Industrial contaminants accumulated in Arctic permafrost regions have been largely neglected in existing climate impact analyses. Here we identify about 4500 industrial sites where potentially hazardous substances are actively handled or stored in the permafrost-dominated regions of the Arctic. Furthermore, we estimate that between 13,000 and 20,000 contaminated sites are related to these industrial sites.” (Source: Moritz Langer, et al, Thawing Permafrost Poses Environmental Threat to Thousands of Sites with Legacy Industrial Contamination, Nature Communications, March 28, 2023)

This percolating threat is starting to become reality as Arctic climate conditions shift into overdrive, heating up like never before. As stated in the Langer study: “The latest data analyses suggesting up to four-fold faster warming, substantially changing the ground stability.”

“Substantially changing the ground stability” is the last thing anybody wants to hear.

Previously, it was thought that the Arctic was warming roughly 2+times faster than the rest of the planet, but this new data suggests 4-fold, which is roughly twice the rate of past warming. It is a shocker with potential to kick-start release of massive amounts of extremely dangerous toxic materials, including radioactive waste, in permafrost throughout the Far North.

“For decades, industrial and economic development of the Arctic assumed that permafrost would serve as a permanent and stable platform: Past industrial practices also assumed that perennially frozen ground would function as long-term containment for solid and liquid industrial waste due to its properties as a hydrological barrier… A number of experiments were conducted in Alaska, Canada, and Russia in which toxic liquids and solids, including radioactive waste, were deliberately placed in permafrost for containment,” Ibid.

“Between 1955 and 1990, the Soviet Union conducted 130 nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere and near surface ocean of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago off the coast of north-west Russia. The tests used 224 separate explosive devices, releasing around 265 megatons of nuclear energy. More than 100 decommissioned nuclear submarines were scuttled in the nearby Kara and Barents seas. While the Russian government has since launched a strategic clean-up plan, the review notes that the area has tested highly for the radioactive substances’ caesium and plutonium, between undersea sediment, vegetation, and ice sheets…The United States’ Camp Century nuclear-powered under-ice research facility in Greenland also produced considerable nuclear and diesel waste. When it was decommissioned in 1967, waste was left in the accumulating ice, which faces a longer-term threat from changes to the Greenland Ice Sheet.” (Source: Rapidly Warming Arctic Could Cause Spread of Nuclear Waste, Undiscovered Viruses and Dangerous Chemicals, New Report Finds, Aberystwyth University, September 30, 2021)

In 2021 the Russian newswire Tass claimed the country was at “the finish line,” removing thousands of tons of radioactive material from the Arctic. However: “Since the 1990s, the Bellona Foundation has been involved in discovering and documenting nuclear hazards and radiation threats in Arctic Russia and based on that experience, the organization asserts that Likhachev’s announcement is untrue — Russia is nowhere near the “finish line” in these efforts.” (Source:  Rosatom Says Nuclear Cleanup in Arctic Done- Far from the Case, Says Bellona, Bellona, June 7, 2023)

The problem may be magnified beyond what’s already known simply because, to date: “There has been no assessment of the environmental impact of these activities on the Arctic as a whole,” Ibid. In other words, nobody really knows what’s happened or what’s happening. This is a new under-researched arena of study that has horns protruding like glistening daggers in the night.

The following research of danger lurking in the Arctic should spook the daylights out of anybody: “Over 110 of Russia’s decommissioned nuclear submarines still have operating nuclear reactors, which, according to Russian designs, means two reactors per vessel or more than 220 individual reactors. There is nowhere to put the liquid waste or to store the spent fuel, so the reactors have to keep operating with only skeleton crews. While, in the past, one country’s failure to safely dispose of its military hardware might rightly have been viewed as its own problem, the case of nuclear submarines cannot be seen in the same light. The proliferation threats these vessels pose is global, due to the large amounts of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium—the key ingredients of nuclear weapons—contained in their fresh and spent fuel. This enormous stockpile of fissile material, which is currently not well protected from theft or diversion, presents an attractive target for a potential proliferator, whether a rogue state or sub-state actor.” (Source: Dismantling Russia’s Nuclear Subs, Arms Control Association, May 19, 2021)

Throughout the Arctic, the issue of what to do for remediation or cleanup is compounded due to the loss of ground stability which limits access to impacted sites and use of heavy equipment. As such, permafrost melt creates a barrier to cleanup. The Langer study found that many former industrial-use facilities are now abandoned and difficult to access.

In the face of clear warnings, the scope of danger is increasing in real time because of new industrial development. There are no international environmental regulations for the Arctic as formulated for the Antarctic in the Madrid Protocol that requires transparent documentation of contamination and potential sources of hazardous substances. However, governance for the Arctic falls under an umbrella organization called PAME (1991) that established an Arctic Council. PAME does delineate environmental issues and shipping issues with a softball approach that does not appear to have teeth for enforcement.

At the same time as scientists uncover more and more risks of toxic materials, the situation is made all the worse because of increased economic interest and commercial development in a less forbidding melting Arctic. But that is merely a ruse as it’s more forbidding than ever before; a melting Arctic is filled with unexpected dangers lurking right around the corner. There is risk of multiple contaminated sites leaking at the same time whilst new industrial development runs amok. Alas, this is starting to look like an exercise in madness at a level of human stupidity seldom witnessed in the history of civilized society. Such situations likely never end well.

Oceana Warns That Irresponsible Industrialization of the Arctic Could Lead to Catastrophic Consequences Worldwide, Oceana – “Protecting the World’s Oceans”:

“This sea ice loss has also opened the Arctic to the immediate threat of rapid industrialization. As Arctic sea ice melts, Arctic waters have become susceptible to new threats of increased industrial fishing, shipping, and oil and gas exploration and development. Increasing human activities could significantly accelerate the threats facing the Arctic, which would have cascading effects all over the world.”

The Norilsk Diesel Tank Incident

The disaster scenario is already playing-out for all to witness: The Norilsk Diesel Tank Incident d/d June 2020: A regional emergency was declared in the city of Norilsk when the supporting posts in the basement of a storage tank of diesel fuel suddenly sank because of cascading permafrost causing 21,000 tonnes of diesel to pour into rivers and lakes in Russia’s Arctic North. President Vladimir Putin declared a state of emergency. Just wondering: How many diesel tanks are located in the Arctic permafrost?

The scope of the Arctic permafrost problem is beyond belief with (1) pesticides like DDT packed in barrels and buried in the permafrost (2) increasing oil leaks by pipelines that stretch throughout the landscape (3) radioactive materials buried around former and current military bases, and (4) deposit reservoirs containing numerous industrial toxicants. Making matters even worse yet, only recently Canada’s massive fires are bringing into focus a whole new dynamic. Wildfires could be sending up plumes of toxicant-laden smoke that spreads across the land and to adjoining countries, like the USA.

Throughout the Arctic, airport runways are sinking, roads are cascading, and buildings are tilting, as some of the most toxic materials known to humankind sit in waiting to be released into the environment because of man-made global warming; once again proving the ancient proverb: “You reap what you sow.” According to Darcy Peter, a permafrost researcher at Woods Hole Research Center: “I’ve heard of dozens of houses falling in, and a few churches. There are multiple graveyards that are falling in, and there’s nothing that anybody can to.” (Eos, June 24, 2020)

Analysts that research and study Arctic permafrost say: “It’s a ticking time bomb.”

As the Arctic fall season of 2023 turns into an icy Arctic winter, which is a shadow of its former self, COP28 is scheduled to be held in Dubai where oil sheiks have taken over control of the science-based UN COP/28 meeting aka: Conference of the Parties for the UN Climate Change Conference starting in a few weeks, late November, when nations of the world and at least 100+ prime ministers and presidents show up for photo ops with Bono to allegedly challenge climate change with 80,000 attendees roaming the decorated halls, similar in many respects to extravagant US auto shows, that presupposes “all will be well, just hang in there, we’ll find solutions.” That would be historic!

Will climate scientists attend?
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This article was originally published on October 27, 2023 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Note: This article will also be posted on the Facing Future Now! Facebook group. If you would like to comment on this article, please go to the Facebook group and post your comments there under the article posting.

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