More on our warming World Ocean’s revenge…

William P. Hall on June 1, 2023

Following on from my May 22 post, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology is raising warning flags that the impending El Niño will be the worst yet.

There is actually a lot more on the front burner than El Niño. There are signs we may have just crossed a catastrophic ocean tipping point over the last three and a half months. The following thread of tweets and news items summarizes a very scary thread of observational data.

We may have broken Earth’s Thermohaline Circulation.

The data based on millions of satellite observations and hundreds of thousands of Argo Float profiles of ocean temperature, salinity and density suggests that the driver of major ocean currents distributing excess heat around the world has stopped working because it is choked with relatively hot and relatively fresh water.

In 2020 Argo collected 12,000 data profiles each month (400 a day) or around 436,500 profiles a year. Each profile provides for each increment of depth a a record of the variation in ocean temperatures, salinity, and pressure from 2,000 m deep to the surface, together with the precise global positioning coordinates where the probe surfaced.

In the past water flowing into the polar regions was quite salty because a lot of moisture evaporated from the surface in tropical and sub-tropical regions, leaving the salt behind to make the water more dense. However, because the water was hot the density was somewhat lowered due to thermal expansion it stayed on the surface because it floated over the surface of cooler but fresher water. As the salty water flowed into polar regions it cooled enough that even though it was being diluted by precipitation and runoff from melting snow and ice on the land, the cooling and increasingly diluted water become dense enough sink under the warm salty waters drawn towards the poles by the sinking polar waters. This circulation also carried oxygen into the depths and nutrients from the depths towards the surface in areas where deep water wells up to replace the surface water flowing towards the poles in tropical and temperate areas.

Wikipedia: Thermohaline circulation (THC) is a part of the large-scale ocean circulation that is driven by global density gradients created by surface heat and freshwater fluxes.

However, as global average temperatures rise and more heat is trapped in the ocean evaporation everywhere puts more moisture into the air that falls as rain in tropical and subtropical areas, diluting the warmer ocean surface waters. In polar and sub-polar areas the increased moisture greatly increasing the runoff from the land from rain and melting snow and ice, that further dilutes the increasingly diluted ocean surface water flowing into polar regions from tropical and subtropical areas.

The result is that the thermohaline conveyors driving the major ocean currents are probably being choked and possibly being completely stopped by masses of water that are too hot and dilute to sink. Even worse, the warm dilute water washing against the ice sheets and glaciers reaching the ocean melts ice at an increasing rate making the surface waters even fresher.

On 26 May, 2023 we are seeing an all-time low extent of sea ice since the satellite record began in 1979. http://kjpluck.github.io/seaice/

Denmark’s Polar Portal (below) shows the melting of the multi-year Arctic sea ice from its winter peak in June 2004 until now. [Click the picture to load the live site, scroll up to to see the “Sea Ice Thickness and Volume” title. Note the grey slider bar below the map. Click the “Animate Monthly” to load the animation — which will take some time to download the data. You may use the slider to scroll through the series of monthly maps, or you can control buttons below the slider to start and stop the animation or step back or forward one month at a time. The red color represents multi-year ice around 4 meters thick, lavender to blue ice is single year ice less than about 1.5 m thick.]

Note, there is an interesting but deadly physical twist here: As water temperature drops below 4 °C cold/freezing fresh water floats on top of warmer relatively salty water, and freezes-over in the winter at higher temperatures than saltier water. Paradoxically, floating ice and snow accumulating on the surface actually insulates the lower layer of warm salty water from further cooling, where the winter surface temperature may be 20-50 °C below freezing. However, the fronts of large glaciers flowing into the ocean may be grounded hundreds of meters below sea level or floating on even deeper warm water(!). This means they will still be melting rapidly from the bottom up even in the dead of winter when fresh water is freezing. The ice melt dilutes the polar oceans even more – so say nothing of raising sea levels that will, in turn, lead to the floating of glacier fronts, exposing even more areas to melting.

What is happening as I write this warning?

If you follow the threads and commentary attached to these tweets here, the links show what was happening a week ago.

The following Guardian articles highlight the existential risk we are facing.

Melting ice around Antarctica could cause a 40% slowdown of a global deep ocean current by 2050 if current greenhouse gas emissions continue, according to researchers. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images / from the article

Graham Redfearn – 30/03/2023 in The Guardian

Melting Antarctic ice predicted to cause rapid slowdown of deep ocean current by 2050

New research by Australian scientists suggests 40% slowdown in just three decades could alter world’s climate for centuries.

[Actually, the data presented here suggests that as of the last three months or so this stoppage has already begun!]

Melting ice around Antarctica will cause a rapid slowdown of a major global deep ocean current by 2050 that could alter the world’s climate for centuries and accelerate sea level rise, according to scientists behind new research.

The research suggests if greenhouse gas emissions continue at today’s levels, the current in the deepest parts of the ocean could slow down by 40% in only three decades.

This, the scientists said, could generate a cascade of impacts that could push up sea levels, alter weather patterns and starve marine life of a vital source of nutrients.

Read the complete article….
Antarctica’s Larsen B ice shelf. There has never been less ice around the continent than there was last week. Photograph: staphy/Getty Images/iStockphoto / from the article

Graham Redfearn – 05/03/2023 in The Guardian

‘Everyone should be concerned’: Antarctic sea ice reaches lowest levels ever recorded

With the continent holding enough ice to raise sea levels by many metres if it was to melt, polar scientists are scrambling for answers.

For 44 years, satellites have helped scientists track how much ice is floating on the ocean around Antarctica’s 18,000km coastline.

The continent’s fringing waters witness a massive shift each year, with sea ice peaking at about 18m sq km each September before dropping to just above 2m sq km by February.

But across those four decades of satellite observations, there has never been less ice around the continent than there was last week.

…

“We are seeing less ice everywhere. It’s a circumpolar event.”

In the southern hemisphere summer of 2022, the amount of sea ice dropped to 1.92m sq km on 25 February – an all-time low based on satellite observations that started in 1979.

Read the complete article….
Melting ice in Antarctica has affected a key global ocean current, research suggests. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images / from the article

Donna Lu – 26/05/2023 in The Guardian

Slowing ocean current caused by melting Antarctic ice could have drastic climate impact, study says

The Southern Ocean overturning circulation has ebbed 30% since the 90s, CSIRO scientist claims, leading to higher sea levels and changing weather.

A major global deep ocean current has slowed down by approximately 30% since the 1990s as a result of melting Antarctic ice, which could have critical consequences for Earth’s climate patterns and sea levels, new research suggests.

Known as the Southern Ocean overturning circulation, the global circulation system plays a key role in influencing the Earth’s climate, including rainfall and warming patterns. It also determines how much heat and carbon dioxide the oceans store.

Scientists warn that its slowdown could have drastic impacts, including increasing sea levels, altering weather patterns and depriving marine ecosystems of vital nutrients.

Read the complete article….

Markus Noll – 23/05/2023 in EarthArXiv

Exponential life-threatening rise of the global temperature

Global temperatures are rising. This paper demonstrates for the first time that the global temperature increase has not been linear but is exponential with a doubling time of about 25 years. Both the amount of carbon dioxide produced by the combustion of fossil fuels and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have also risen exponentially, with a similar doubling time. The exponential trajectories of rising global temperature, carbon dioxide emission, and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration support the idea that all three are entirely man-made. This analysis shows that during the past 70 years, the increasing use of fossil fuels results more from human activities than population growth, and that reducing the use of fossil fuels by 7.6% each year, the “7.6%-scenario”, can prevent annual global temperatures from surpassing pre-industrial temperatures by 1.6°C, a critical threshold to sustaining life on Earth.

Read the complete article….

Driven by exponentially increasing global temperatures, this process is also very likely to be accelerating at an exponential rate (doubling time of about 25 years).

Or worse!

What I think we are seeing in this data is that we have crossed a chaotically discontinuous ‘tipping point’. Prior to March 12, the thermohaline circulation was slowing as surface waters were gradually becoming warmer and more dilute, and thus less dense, decreasing the sinking rate of the cooling warm salty water that was driving the circulation. Around March 12, the surface waters actually became less dense than the deeper waters and thus stopped sinking at all to begin piling up in the polar regions where they would increase the rate of ice melting to be diluted still further.

With no sinking water to keep the the thermohaline circulation working, it has effectively been jammed and we are now in a totally new climate regime that is likely to get a lot hotter, a lot faster.

If this isn’t a climate emergency, I don’t know what is.

As at May 30, the heat anomaly is still growing. The average surface temperature of the World Ocean is a good 0.2 °C hotter than it has been on this day since the satellite records began in 1979; and it is only 0.1 °C cooler than the hottest temperature ever recorded in this era for any time of the year.

Featured Image

Figure from https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1663936433801887744/photo/1. “Will a Super El Niño materialize like in 1997 and 2015? What will that mean for global Sea Surface Temperatures? And for global and regional weather extremes?” This seems to be answered by https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1663195220207362048/photo/1

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

A warming ocean will take its revenge on us

William P. Hall on May 22, 2023

Around 90% of the extra heat trapped by the greenhouse layer warms our Ocean to slow rising temperatures. We’ll pay the price.

The climate scientist, Bill McKibben reminded me of this fact in his regular newsletter, The Crucial Years, in his 18 May post, Maybe we should have called this planet ‘Ocean’. His post on ocean warming begins with an earlier version of the graphic here from ClimateReanalizer. These are updated daily, so the record here is only a day or two behind the current reality:

The page provides time series and map visualizations of daily mean Sea Surface Temperature (SST) from the NOAA Optimum Interpolation SST (OISST) dataset version 2.1. OISST is a 0.25°x0.25° gridded dataset that estimates temperatures based on a blend of satellite, ship, and buoy observations. The OISST data product includes SST anomalies based on 1971–2000 climatology from NOAA. The datset spans 1 January 1982 to present with a 1 to 2-day lag from the current day. OISST files are preliminary for about two weeks until a finalized product file is posted by NOAA. This status is identified on the maps with “[preliminary]” showing in the title, and applies to the time series as well. The time series chart displays area-weighted means of the selected domain. For example, if World 60S-60N is selected, then the SST values shown are area-wieghted means for all ocean gridcells between 60°S and 60°N across all longitudes.

Something very troubling is happening on and under the 70 percent of the planet’s surface covered by salt water. We pay far more attention to the air temperature, because we can feel it (and there’s lots to pay attention to, with record temps across Asia, Canada and the Pacific Northwest) but the truly scary numbers from this spring are showing up in the ocean.

If you look at the top chart above , you can see “anomaly” defined. [His chart was for 11 May. Mine, here, is the temperature on 19 May.]That’s the averaged surface temperature of the earth’s oceans, and beginning in mid-March it was suddenly very much hotter than we’ve measured before. In big datasets for big phenomena, change should be small—that’s how statistics work, and that’s why the rest of the graph looks like a plate of spaghetti. That big wide open gap up there between 2023 and the next hottest year (2016) is the kind of thing that freaks scientists out because they’re not quite sure what it means. Except trouble. [My emphasis]

… A little-noticed [but quite important] recent study headed by Katrina von Schuckmann found that “over the past 15 years, the Earth has accumulated almost as much heat as it did in the previous 45 years,” and that 89 percent of that heat has ended up in the seas. That would be terrifying on its own, but coming right now it’s even scarier. That’s because, after six years dipping in and out of La Nina cooling cycles, the earth seems about to enter a strong El Nino phase, with hot water in the Pacific. El Nino heat on top of already record warm oceans will equal—well, havoc, but of exactly what variety can’t be predicted.

Read the complete article….

McKibben’s second graphic (the up to date version is my “Featured Image”) shows a global plot of temperature anomalies (also compared to the same 1971-1980 baseline) for every ¼° – ¼° square of ocean surface. “Area weighting” is applied because ¼° of latitude (the width of the ‘square) becomes much narrower as either pole is approached, reducing the physical surface area encompassed by the lines on the globe.

Earth’s oceans cover around 70% of the globe’s surface. Despite the 2nd or 3rd week of record breaking heat, wildfires and drought in western North America extending from California through the western 2/5ths of North America into the Arctic Ocean and a second belt in northern Eurasia extending from Scandinavia and Finland to western Siberia, the ocean temperatures are relatively even more extreme. And, in fact, the crazy heat in the warming oceans may be the driving force behind the record land temperatures — and may well be triggering what is likely to be the most extreme El Niño event yet in the climate change record.

In any event, this data doesn’t just freak me out. It suggests that the door to Earth’s Hothouse Hell is beginning to open to suck us in.

Is this data reliable enough to support action?

Where the climate record is concerned, From the beginning of the satellite era, our oceanic temperature record is very good indeed, and not just because satellite remote sensing measures virtually every square degree of most of the globe every day, but the satellites’ measurements are calibrated every day against the ‘ground truth’ measurements from many hundreds of Argo floats surfacing each day from their 9-10 days probing the ocean depths. The graphic below shows the physical locations sampled by Argo floats over the previous month. Added to these are more detailed measurements collected by fleets of oceanographic ships and a few special moored buoys that continuously record measurements from the ocean surface to the abyssal ocean bottom.

Supercomputers amalgamate the raw input data and assemble the kinds of human readable outputs that you and I can understand at a glance. Thanks to the exponential growth of measuring technologies and data processing power the accuracy and detail of our scientific understanding of climate and weather extends far beyond anything we could know in past decades.

How is all the additional heat in the warming ocean likely to affect the planet we live on?

Melting ice

As the atmosphere and oceans absorb more solar energy, some of this excess energy will inevitably be absorbed melting ice in the cooler regions of the planet where ice has existed more-or-less in an equilibrium state, e.g., in the form of glaciers, ice sheets, and sea ice. The energy drives the equilibrium states towards more water and less ice.

One very obvious measure of ice melting is the rapidly shrinking area of the Earth’s surface covered by sea ice around the N and S Poles. Since the beginning of the satellite era this has been able to be measured accurately. The Australian Antarctic Program Partnership and the ARC Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science’s 2023 Science Briefing: On Thin Ice explains what is happening around our local polar ocean

The graphics below show the daily extents of sea ice over both polar oceans since the beginning of the satellite era in 1979 as plotted by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center‘s interactive Charctic application.

Record minimums or maximums are updated annually. Therefore, a newly-set record may not be reflected in the chart until after the annual update.
View additional years by clicking the dates in the legend.
Roll your cursor over the line to see daily sea ice extent values.
Zoom in to any area on the chart by clicking and dragging your mouse.
To see a corresponding daily sea ice concentration image, click on a line in the chart. Sea ice extent is derived from sea ice concentration. Images are not available for the average or standard deviation.
When reusing Charctic images or data, please credit “National Snow and Ice Data Center.”
Currently, some functions do not work in Internet Explorer. We recommend using a different browser.
For more information about the data, see About Charctic data.
If you have questions or problems, please contact NSIDC User Services at [email protected].

What is currently happening in the Antarctic Ocean is also freakish and worrisome!

Rising sea levels

Of course, all the melt water released by melting ice has to go somewhere — i.e., adding to the volume of the World Ocean. As this wasn’t enough, as water warms it also expands to raise the sea levels even more. The graph below from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, plots the rising tide of the swelling ocean since 1993 through June 2022. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate.Gov site’s Climate Change: Global Sea Level also plots the rise, and considers its implications in more detail.

The Conversation’s May 17 article, Global warming to bring record hot year by 2028 – probably our first above 1.5°C limit, looks at these facts and warns us that the time to act is NOW! CSIRO’s State of the Climate/Oceans covers most of the trends I have discussed here and more…

Daily change in global mean sea level, as measured by satellite altimetry, from January 1993 to June 2022 (solid line), the associated uncertainty at 90% confidence level (shading) and the trend (dashed line). The data have been adjusted for glacial isostatic adjustment and have been corrected for the TOPEX-A instrumental drift during 1993–1998. Data source: CMEMS Ocean Monitoring Indicator based on the C3S sea level product. Credit: C3S/ECMWF/CMEMS. 
https://climate.copernicus.eu/climate-indicators/sea-level

Help! We’re sliding down the slope to Earth’s Hothouse Hell! Sound the sirens and mobilize for WW III against global warming and the existential climate crisis!

As is usual for the UN’s climate pronouncements driven by the UN’s IPCC findings that absolutely establish the dangers we face from global warming/heating, even this klaxon warning understates and downplays the magnitude of the crisis we face.

If we fail to mobilize genuinely effective action over the next decade to stop and reverse the warming crisis, our families will have their lives shortened due to increasing climate catastrophes and we will have condemned our entire species to death in Earth’s 6th global mass extinction within a century or two. We don’t have time to take more election cycles to elect new governments. Our existing governments must wake up, smell the smoke, and immediately begin acting to put out the fire before it destroys us all. If you are in government, read Guterres’ message in mind. YOU must act now!

Press Release

SG/SM/21799

16 May 2023

Planet Hurtling towards Hell of Global Heating, Secretary-General Warns Austrian World Summit, Urging Immediate Emissions Cuts, Fair Climate Funding

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message to the seventh Austrian World Summit, in Vienna today:

I thank the Austrian Government and Arnold Schwarzenegger for this opportunity.  The climate crisis can feel overwhelming.  Disasters and dangers are already mounting, with the poor and marginalized suffering the most, as we hurtle towards the hell of 2.8°C of global heating by the end of the century.

But, amidst all this, I urge you to remember one vital fact:  limiting the rise in global temperature to 1.5°C remains possible.  That is the clear message from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  But, it requires a quantum leap in climate action around the world.

To achieve this, I have proposed an Acceleration Agenda.  This urges all Governments to hit fast-forward on their net-zero deadlines, in line with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities in the light of national circumstances.  It asks leaders of developed countries to commit to reaching net zero as close as possible to 2040 — as Austria has done.  And leaders in emerging economies to do so as close as possible to 2050.

The Acceleration Agenda also urges all countries to step up their climate action, now.  The road map is clear:  phasing out of coal by 2030 in OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries and 2040 in all others; net-zero electricity generation by 2035 in developed countries, and 2040 elsewhere; no more licensing or funding of new fossil-fuel projects; no more subsidizing fossil fuels; and no more fake offsets, which do nothing to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, but which are still being used to justify fossil-fuel expansion today.

We can only reach net zero if we make real and immediate emissions cuts.  If we embrace transparency and accountability.  Relying on carbon credits, shadow markets, or murky accounting means one thing:  failure.  That is why I have asked CEOs to present clear net-zero transition plans, in line with the credibility standard presented by my high-level expert group on net-zero pledges.

And the Acceleration Agenda urges business and Governments to work together to decarbonize vital sectors — from shipping, aviation and steel, to cement, aluminium and agriculture.  This should include interim targets for each sector to pave the way to net zero by 2050.

The Acceleration Agenda also calls for climate justice, including overhauling the priorities and business models of multilateral development banks, so that trillions of dollars in private finance flow to the green economy.

Developed countries must also make good on their financial commitments to developing countries.  And they must operationalize the loss and damage fund, and replenish the Green Climate Fund.  I commend Austria for increasing its pledge to the Green Climate Fund by 23 per cent and urge others to deliver their fair share.

On climate, we have all the tools we need to get the job done. But, if we waste time, we will be out of time.  Let’s accelerate action, now.  Thank you.

Featured Image

Note that about half the surface of Earth’s Ocean is a good 2 °C hotter than the baseline average temperature for this day of the year

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Puppet politics: Majority governments work for themselves

William P. Hall on May 11, 2023

Labor puppets will work to benefit fossil fuel industries’ continued hyper-profitable exploitation come hothouse hell or high water flooding! How do we know this?

In the feature article here, Fake Reform: Jim Chalmers’ itsy-bitsy tax “hit” is a gift for foreign fossil fuel giants, Michael West Media compares the Australian experience with fossil fuel exploitation with the way Norway has managed their resources.

Gas giants are grinning too. Image: Jim Chalmers, AAP / from the article

Michael West – 07/05/2023, Michael West Media

Fake Reform: Jim Chalmers’ itsy-bitsy tax “hit” is a gift for foreign fossil fuel giants

Jim Chalmers’ long-awaited tweaks to the PRRT are the itsy-bitsyest “reforms” about, the equivalent of recycling old Christmas presents with a fancy new bow. Michael West reports on how the Treasurer is merely returning a couple of billion in gas sector subsidies, and only for a while.

“Chalmers slaps $2.4bn tax hit on oil and gas,” cried Murdoch’s The Australian. “$2.4bn gas tax hit on energy giants,” declared the AFR. Santos chief Kevin Gallagher was nowhere to be heard with his “Soviet-style” scaremongering. Is Australia still going the way of Venezuela and Nigeria, Kevin? 

Not on your Nelly. The foreign gas giants are profiteering from Australia’s resources like there is no tomorrow, and paying pocket fluff in tax to boot. Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ long-awaited tweaks to the PRRT are itsy-bitsy, the equivalent of recycling old Christmas presents with a bright new bow, really just “up-fronting” a piddling amount of gas revenue for the next few years, a clawing back of subsidies for a while. 

You know it’s a fake “hit” when the fossil media talks it up as a “hit” but the gas lobbyists from APPEA say it gets “the balance right”. Reality is there is no balance, just ongoing pillage.

Clearly our Government is receiving or expecting to receive some kind of quid pro quo that they think will help them stay in power. Staying in power is clearly more important to the party that has the majority in government than doing whatever is necessary to stop and reverse the carbon emissions currently forcing us all down the road to hothouse hell and global mass extinction.

How else could the robber barons of the FF industries count on our Government helping them to rip off such extraordinary profits from their pillaging of so many Australian non-renewable resources?

In Michael West’s article also see the linked video, “Another year of record fossil fuel subsidies. What’s the scam?“, and the more detailed article, “A tale of two fossil superpowers: what Australia can learn from Norway“.

Following this theme a little further, see the news from Alberta, Canada, that is currently burning to a crisp. This gives some of the evidence demonstrating how FF puppetry works through its ‘influence’ on the media:

Alberta Burns Due To Climate-Change Fueled Wildfires, Yet Provincial Government & Media Refuse To Mention It

The stark reality is that the successful puppetry of the fossil fuel industry to protect and possibly even enhance next year’s earnings is driving us ever faster down the global warming road that leads to human oblivion in the 6th global mass extinction. Even if the heating doesn’t kill us directly, the die-offs of increasing numbers of keystone species, will cause whole ecosystems (including human agricultural systems) to collapse, taking our species along as well.

The weather causing the fires in Alberta today is a sign of the times:

Note: The normal progression of waves in the Jet Stream is from west to east. In this time series, the Jet Stream is so disordered that the eddy is actually moving the heat dome from east to west!

What we are seeing here is the operation of a positive feedback look driven by increasing global temperatures. As the Arctic grows warmer, temperature differences driving the jet streams diminish. This change allows the streams separating frigid polar air from much temperate zone air to slow and meander both far north and south of their normal paths. As demonstrated above, this is how the monster heat dome causing the Alberta fires formed. Amongst other things, slow overall warming accompanied by periodic heatwaves like this over most of the world’s boreal forests has allowed bark beetles, normally killed off every year by winter freezing, to proliferate to the point that they are killing vast numbers of trees. This increases the forests’ vulnerabilities to fires and the ferocity of the fires themselves. Not only does this turn the carbon content of the trees into greenhouse gases, but the fires are often hot enough to ignite the peaty soil to release that carbon as greenhouse gases as well.

The feedback loop is further extended as underlying permafrost exposed by burning off of the insulating layers of vegetation and peat begins to release the vast accumulations of greenhouse gases held as icy gas hydrates.

In sum, fossil fuel interests have convinced (1) our government to protect and even extend fossil fuel’s profits from producing and burning Earth’s carbon stores into energy and greenhouse gases, and (2) our press from advertising the facts of this pillage to the people whose futures will be destroyed by the consequent global warming.

Governments controlled by political parties in majority are easy targets for special interests, especially when the parties operate on the basis that the only issue that matters is to retain control of the government. They will represent the special interests of any person/group/industry they think can help them keep that control before the interests of the people in their electorates or people in general.

To mobilize and coordinate the necessary forces to turn off the downhill road to Earth’s Hothouse Hell, our governments need to work for us humans, not vested interests:

  1. we need to convince our elected and candidate representatives that we will absolutely not vote for them if they put a vested interest before our interests;
  2. that we need to elect enough independents from our own communities who will represent us to ensure that no major political party can form a majority government in its own right.

Item 2 ensures that community interests can veto legislation favoring special interests put up by the party in power.

Featured Image:

A protest against the US government’s decision to exit the Paris climate deal in 2017. ‘Ignorance-building strategies’ by fossil fuel companies have bred climate change scepticism among conservatives in the US and Australia. Photograph: Anthony Anex/EPA | from the Guardian article by Graham Readfearn (08/05/2018), “‘It’s all about vested interests’: untangling conspiracy, conservatism and climate scepticism“)

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Meteorologists report weather – they don’t make it!

William P. Hall on May 8, 2023

Meteorologists are being threatened and abused for forecasting and reporting record high temperatures and weather extremes.

Last week Spain recorded the highest April temperature on record (38.8 °C) following on from last year, 2022, its hottest year since records began.

Nearly 75 percent of Spain is susceptible to desertification due to climate change. Water reservoirs are at half their capacity and farmers unions say 60 percent of agricultural land is “suffocating” from lack of rain. Spain has asked Brussels to help by activating the EU’s agriculture crisis reserve funds (when many other areas of Europe are also suffering from drought).

Long drowned villages emerging from bottoms of desiccating reservoirs: The ruins of the Sant Romà church, exposed due to historically low water levels in the Sau reservoir, Spain in April. Photographer: Angel Garcia/Bloomberg

AFP – Agence France Presse – 05/05/2023, Barron’s

Insults, Threats Target Spain Forecasters Over Climate ‘Conspiracy’

Spain’s government on Friday came to the defence of the AEMET weather agency, which has suffered threats and abuse from climate conspiracy theorists over its forecasts during a record drought.

“Murderers”, “Criminals”, “You’ll pay for this” and “We’re watching you” are just some of the anonymous messages sent to AEMET in recent weeks on social media, by email and even by phone.

The threats were responding to forecasts and reports published by AEMET, notably over last week’s early heatwave, when Spain registered its hottest-ever temperature for April, reaching 38.8 degrees Celsius (101.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in Cordoba.

Read the complete article…

Drought → crop failures → famine?

Where the European/Mediterranean region is concerned, Spain is not the only country facing water crises. Even before the end of winter, the Guardian’s article of 4 March, ‘Very precarious’: Europe faces growing water crisis as winter drought worsens, Austria, Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland were all suffering problems from shortages of rain and runoff from the small amount of accumulated winter snow.

Australia has already lost a lot of agricultural productivity because of three years of La Niña flooding. For several months we couldn’t even buy frozen french fries (shades of the Irish Potato Famine). This may well be followed by even more damaging droughts when the next major El Niño surpasses the last two to reach 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial baseline, as seems likely given past trends.

As a target for those with an often visceral distrust of the established science of human-caused global heating, the Bureau of Meteorology’s temperature record might be seen as ground zero. Photograph: Bill Bachman/Alamy / from the article.

Graham Readfearn – 7/05/2023, The Guardian

Climate scientists first laughed at a ‘bizarre’ campaign against the BoM – then came the harassment

Former Bureau of Meteorology staff say claims they deliberately manipulated data to make warming seem worse are being fed by a ‘fever swamp’ of climate denial.

For more than a decade, climate science deniers, rightwing politicians and sections of the Murdoch media have waged a campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the Bureau of Meteorology’s temperature records.

Those records say Australia has warmed by 1.4C since 1910, the year when the bureau’s main quality-controlled climate dataset starts.

Extremely hot days come along more often than they used to, and the warming trends are happening everywhere, at all times of the year.

As a target for those with an often visceral distrust of the established science of human-caused global heating, the bureau’s temperature record might be seen as ground zero.

“This has frankly been a concerted campaign,” says climate scientist Dr Ailie Gallant, of Monash University. “But this is not about genuine scepticism. It is harassment and blatant misinformation that has been perpetuated.”

Read the complete article….

Attacking messengers because you dislike or fear the messages only impedes circulating knowledge that might help to solve real-world problems and save your life or the lives of your family members. That global warming causes record temperatures and droughts is a fact that causes problems…. Denying the fact does not make the problems go away! It only keeps the problem from being solved until it is too late to do anything effective.

When there are too many crop failures over too wide an area for too long, famine is the consequence, and can lead to. Continuing famine leads to starvation and, eventually, mass deaths.

Featured Image:

Situation of Combined Drought Indicator in Europe – 2nd ten-day period of April 2023 from Copernicus’s EDO – European Drought Observatory

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Updating IPCC AR6: still bound for catastrophe

William P. Hall on May 7, 2023

International group of climatologists launch a set of annually updated climate indicators to track human induced global warming through time.

This decade is absolutely critical for climate action if we are to avoid climate catastrophe. However, up to now we have lacked a standardized set of measures of the level of human-induced warming for tracking our progress over times as short as a year.

So far, the gold standard against which progress can be measured has been the IPCC’s cycle of Assessment Reports (e.g., the latest being AR6, completed this year). These have been published on cycle times of 6 to 7 years.

A team of 50 authors from major climate science institutes and universities around the world under lead author, Piers Maxwell Forster of the Priestly Centre University of Leeds, have set out to publish annually updated reliable global climate indicators in the public domain. This is based on the assessment methods used in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group One (WGI) report, to update the monitoring datasets and to produce updated estimates for key climate indicators. These include emissions, greenhouse gas concentrations, radiative forcing, surface temperature changes, the Earth’s energy imbalance, warming attributed to human activities, the remaining carbon budget and estimates of global temperature extremes. As these measurements are traceable and consistent with IPCC report methods, they can be trusted by all parties involved in UNFCCC negotiations and help convey wider understanding of the latest knowledge of the climate system and its direction of travel.

The preprint of their first update, Indicators of Global Climate Change 2022: Annual update of large-scale indicators of the state of the climate system and the human influence, was submitted for review (open for discussion on 05/05/2023) to the Copernicus journal Earth Systems Science Data.

Although still unreviewed, this work certainly provides the most up to date data on our progress towards reversing global warming while that might still be possible.

The news is bad. Although there are a few improvements in isolation, nothing we have done through the end of 2022 has been enough to perceptibly the rate of global warming.

Piers Maxwell Forster, et al. – 02/05/2023, Earth System Science Data

Indicators of Global Climate Change 2022: Annual update of largescale indicators of the state of the climate system and the human influence

Abstract. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments are the trusted source of scientific evidence for climate negotiations taking place under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), including the first global stocktake under the Paris Agreement that will conclude at COP28 in December 2023. Evidence-based decision making needs to be informed by up-to-date and timely information on key indicators of the state of the climate system and of the human influence on the global climate system. However, successive IPCC reports are published at intervals of 5–10 years, creating potential for an information gap between report cycles.

We base this update on the assessment methods used in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group One (WGI) report, updating the monitoring datasets and to produce updated estimates for key climate indicators including emissions, greenhouse gas concentrations, radiative forcing, surface temperature changes, the Earth’s energy imbalance, warming attributed to human activities, the remaining carbon budget and estimates of global temperature extremes. The purpose of this effort, grounded in an open data, open science approach, is to make annually updated reliable global climate indicators available in the public domain (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7883758, Smith et al., 2023). As they are traceable and consistent with IPCC report methods, they can be trusted by all parties involved in UNFCCC negotiations and help convey wider understanding of the latest knowledge of the climate system and its direction of travel.

The indicators show that human induced warming reached 1.14 [0.9 to 1.4] °C over the 2013–2022 period and 1.26 [1.0 to 1.6] °C in 2022. Human induced warming is increasing at an unprecedented rate of over 0.2 °C per decade. This high rate of warming is caused by a combination of greenhouse gas emissions being at an all-time high of 57 ± 5.6 GtCO2e over the last decade, as well as reductions in the strength of aerosol cooling. Despite this, there are signs that emission levels are starting to stabilise, and we can hope that a continued series of these annual updates might track a real-world change of direction for the climate over this critical decade.

Read the complete article….

Some of the observations:

The first set of observations shows that most human carbon emissions have not slowed, although, although the slowing economy over COVID have somewhat slowed overall growth (although this appears to have resumed in 2022). The only area where have actually significantly slowed emissions is for regulated fluorinated gases (F-gas).

Figure 1: Annual global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by source, 1970-2021. Refer to Sect. 2.1 for a list of datasets. Starred datasets (*) indicate the sources used to compile global total greenhouse gas emissions in panel a. CO2 equivalent emissions in panels a and f are calculated using GWPs with a 100-year time horizon from the AR6 WGI Chapter 7 (Forster et al., 2021). F-gas emissions in panel a comprise only UNFCCC F-gas emissions (see Sect. 2.1 for a list of species). Not shown in panels d and e are biomass combustion emissions from GFED (Van Der Werf 2017), which are included in the aggregate estimate in panel a.

The next set of figures shows how effective the various gases in greenhouse layer in the atmosphere are at capturing solar radiation (i.e., “effective radiation forcing”). In 2a right facing bars represent a net positive forcing of higher temperatures, while the left facing bars represent the reflection of extra energy away from Earth. 2b shows a fairly abrupt increase in the forcing between 1960 and 1970, presumably due to the increasing annual rates of greenhouse gas emissions. Note: if the Earth is to have any chance to begin cooling the anthropogenic forcing (grey) needs to trend down, not to continue rising higher as it does here!

Figure 2: Effective radiative forcing from 1750-2022. (a) 1750-2022 change in ERF, showing best estimates (bars) and 5-95% uncertainty ranges (lines) from major anthropogenic components to ERF, total anthropogenic ERF, and solar 610 forcing.
Figure 2: Effective radiative forcing from 1750-2022.  (b) Time evolution of ERF from 1750 to 2022. Best estimates from major anthropogenic categories are shown along with solar and volcanic forcing (thin coloured lines), total (thin black line) and anthropogenic total (thick black line). 5-95% uncertainty in the anthropogenic forcing is shown in shaded grey. Note solar forcing in 2022 is a single-year estimate.

Because Earth currently suffers an imbalance between the solar energy it receives and what it radiates away to outer space as heat energy, the difference between energy received and energy radiated is stored as heat by raising the temperature of various components of planet’s mass (i.e., as the heat inventory). Figure 3a shows that the vast bulk is being stored at different water levels in the ocean, with virtually all of the remained represented by melted ice and the surface layer of soil. Again, if we are to even begin to reduce the rate of global warming, the graph of energy change must be changed to a down slope rather than the continuously rising one show here.

Figure 3b compares the IPCC’s estimates with the somewhat higher estimates presented in this paper.

Conclusion

There is absolutely no good news in the vast array of evidence assembled into these few graphs (assuming the work stands up to peer review, which it almost certainly will). Nothing humans have done to date has had a visible impact on the ominous trends into the climate crisis of the 6th global mass extinction in a ‘Hothouse Earth’ that will simply be too hot for many keystone species to survive physiologically. Beginning with Steffen et al’s, “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene” and “Tripping down the road to Earth’s Hothouse Hell and Global Mass Extinction“, a series of articles in Climate Sentinel News explains that falling into the hothouse hell will be as easy as falling off a cliff.

As noted herein above, if we are to get off that road to Hell before it is too steep for that to be possible, we basically have to turn the graphs shown above upside down, so the trends are back towards where they were in the first half of the last century. We won’t be able to do this as long as our governments continue protecting and subsidizing the fossil fuel industries that are still making things worse from one year to the next. Basically our governments will have to work together and mobilize a global war against the climate emergency. Individually, as is the case in global war, we’ll probably have to accept rationing of critical or polluting resources and some curtailment of our usual freedoms to make things worse….

It will be hard, but consider this: It took us more about 100 years from beginning in 1927 with 2 bn people and steampunk technology to accidentally warm the planet to its present state. Starting now, with 2023’s highly advanced and incredibly more powerful technologies and scientific knowledge, we should be able cool the planet back to a sustainable temperature.

The first step has to be fixing our political systems so they work for all humans rather than working to make a few vested special interests become insanely wealthy and powerful individuals at the expense of the planetary biosphere.

Featured Image:

Summary from the Copernicus ESDD article bringing reported values from IPCC AR6 report up to date at the end of 2022. The causal chain from emissions to resulting warming of the climate system. Emissions of GHG have 1190 increased rapidly over recent decades (panel a). These emissions have led to increases in the atmospheric concentrations of several GHGs including the three major well-mixed GHGs (panel b). The global surface temperature (shown as annual anomalies from an 1850–1900 baseline) has increased by around 1.15°C since 1850–1900 (panel c). The human-induced warming estimate is a close match to the observed warming (panel d). Whiskers show 5% to 95% ranges. Figure is modified from AR6 SYR (Figure 2.1, Lee et al., 2023).

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Bad news for whales and oceanic carbon capture

William P. Hall on May 6, 2023

Warming oceans are bad news for twilight zone organisms carrying captured carbon into the abyss when they die (and whales eat).

An observation

A Hula Skirt Siphonophore (cnidarian) a ‘twilight zone’ inhabitant – via BBC News Climate and Society
Bristlemouth fish
Bristlemouth, the commonest kind of fish on Earth mops up smaller creatures in the twilight zones of Earth’s oceans. / NOAA / Ocean Explorer

Maddie Molloy – 03/05/2023, BBC News Climate and Society

Climate change: life in ocean ‘twilight zone’ at risk from warming

Climate change could dramatically reduce life in the deepest parts of our oceans that are reached by sunlight, scientists warn.

Global warming could curtail life in the so-called twilight zone by as much as 40% by the end of the century, according to new research.

The twilight zone lies between 200m (656ft) and 1,000m (3,281ft).

It teems with life but was home to fewer organisms during warmer periods of Earth’s history, researchers found.

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Read the complete article….

How warming works in the twilight zone

Closeup of long chain of Salp zooids (tunicate / feeds on phytoplankton). Photo by Larry Madin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Confetti squid. Photo by Paul Caiger, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Bobtail squid (order Sepiolida) are a group of cephalopods closely related to cuttlefish. Bobtail squid tend to have a rounder mantle than cuttlefish and have no cuttlebone. Photo by Paul Caiger, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Ocean Twilight Zone – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 04/05/2023

Why is it so important to understand life in the ocean twilight zone?

How much life is in the ocean twilight zone?

The twilight zone is home to more fish than the rest of the ocean combined. Most of these fish—and other organisms that live in the zone—are tiny, measuring just a few inches long or less. But some, like gelatinous siphonophores, can form chains that extend as much as 130 feet, making them among the biggest animals on Earth. Even the smallest twilight zone inhabitants can be powerful through sheer number, however. A tiny but fierce-looking fish called a bristlemouth is the most abundant vertebrate on the planet—for every one human, there are more than 100,000 bristlemouths. 

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How does life in the twilight zone affect global climate?

By migrating to and from the surface, eating, being eaten, dying—and even by pooping—organisms in the twilight zone transport huge amounts of carbon from surface waters into the deep ocean. That process, called the biological pump, plays an important role in regulating Earth’s climate.

…

Read the complete article….

The science behind the observations

Katherin A. Chriton, et al. – 27/04/2023, Nature Communications

What the geological past can tell us about the future of the ocean’s twilight zone

Abstract: Paleontological reconstructions of plankton community structure during warm periods of the Cenozoic (last 66 million years) reveal that deep-dwelling ‘twilight zone’ (200–1000 m) plankton were less abundant and diverse, and lived much closer to the surface, than in colder, more recent climates. We suggest that this is a consequence of temperature’s role in controlling the rate that sinking organic matter is broken down and metabolized by bacteria, a process that occurs faster at warmer temperatures. In a warmer ocean, a smaller fraction of organic matter reaches the ocean interior, affecting food supply and dissolved oxygen availability at depth. Using an Earth system model that has been evaluated against paleo observations, we illustrate how anthropogenic warming may impact future carbon cycling and twilight zone ecology. Our findings suggest that significant changes are already underway, and without strong emissions mitigation, widespread ecological disruption in the twilight zone is likely by 2100, with effects spanning millennia thereafter. [my emphasis]

Read the complete article….

Why is all this important to know?

Ocean fertilization to stimulate algal growth over the surface of the abyssal ocean offers a means to capture CO₂. A food chain of pelagic consumers ranging from the twilight creatures harvesting the algae and their larger predators up to whales can then capture and package the carbon capturing algae into a range of parcels from fecal pellets to dead whales that will drop to the ocean floor.

The nature of biological systems is that they are self-reproducing and can grow exponentially under suitable conditions. ‘farming’ these consumers to optimize the carbon capture and transport it to the bottom is something that might realistically have the capacity to actually reduce atmospheric CO₂ on a fast enough timescale to slow, stop and reverse global warming.

However, the articles above show that a warming ocean substantially reduces the viability of the twilight organisms that provide the packaging service. Thus, if we don’t implement this biological sink before significantly more warming occurs, this opportunity to reverse the warming process may be lost.

Featured image: Antarctic krill Euphausia superba (copyright Uwe Kils, Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, RUTGERS University). Along with bristlemouth fish, krill are major components in the food chain of the twilight zone’s biological carbon pump potentially sequestering carbon in the abyssal depths of the world’s oceans. The world oceans’ surfaces, away from the shallows, are comparatively sterile because the water lacks micro nutrients (e.g., iron, manganese) required to support phytoplankton. Thus, vast areas of the oceans lack effective biological pumps to sequester carbon. Fertilizing these sterile areas of the oceans with trace nutrients and farming the twilight zone (i.e., seeding with appropriate species to provide the biological pumping mechanism) may establish a sufficiently extensive mechanism to sequester globally significant amounts of carbon in the abyssal depths.

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Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Ominous climate crisis trends for 2023 onward

Climate News Links on May 4, 2023

Berkeley Earth shows March 2023 was abruptly warmer than February and tied for the 2nd warmest March globally since records began in 1850.

Berkeley Earth’s global temperature readings are ominous news where the climate crisis is concerned.

Berkeley Earth is an independent climatology research organization established in 2010 to systematically address five major concerns that global warming skeptics had identified, and did so in a systematic and objective manner. The first four were potential biases from data selection, data adjustment, poor station quality, and the urban heat island effect. Their analysis showed that these issues did not unduly bias the record. The fifth concern related to the over-reliance on large and complex global climate models by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the attribution of the recent temperature increase to anthropogenic forces. They obtained a long and accurate record, spanning 250 years and showed that it could be well-fit with a simple model that included a volcanic term and, as an anthropogenic proxy, CO2 concentration.

Berkely Earth has several major objectives for their continuing work:

  • Further scientific investigations on the nature of climate change.
  • Continued identification, investigation, and illustration of opportunities for applications of our global temperature dataset and air pollution data, and work with global industries and governments to inform and support immediate and long-term decision-making on global warming. 
  • Continue as the world leader in the collection, analysis, and presentation of world air quality information. 
  • Establish and strengthen partnerships with national and international media, NGOs, industry leaders, government decision-makers to explore and promote ways to communicate and utilize our data.  
  • Increase the collection, analysis, and presentation of ocean data.

The climate science community accepts Berkeley Earth’s independently constructed reports among the standards used for cross-checking the accuracy of other reports (i.e., as independent observations of what should be the same reality).

The global mean temperature in March 2023 was 1.52 ± 0.10 °C (2.74 ± 0.18 °F) above the 1850 to 1900 average, which is frequently used as a benchmark for the preindustrial period. The global mean temperature anomaly in March 2023 exhibited a sharp increase in temperature relative to February 2023, rising more than 0.2 °C (0.36 °F). This was driven by sharp warming on land, 0.4 °C (0.72 °F), and moderate warming in the oceans, 0.1 °C (0.18 °F). Such large month-to-month shifts are uncommon, but not unheard of, occurring approximately 5% of the time.

March 2023 Temperature Update

Robert Rohde – 12/04/2023, Berkeley Earth

The following is a summary of global temperature conditions in Berkeley Earth’s analysis of March 2023.

  • Globally, March 2023 was abruptly warmer than February and tied for the 2nd warmest March since records began in 1850.
  • March global average temperatures exceeded 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above the 1850 to 1900 baseline, becoming the 10th time this has occurred for a monthly average.
  • On land, March 2023 was the 2nd warmest March since 1850.
  • Warm conditions occurred in much of Asia, parts of Europe and North Africa, the Arctic, southern South America, and several oceanic regions.
  • Unusually cool conditions were present in parts of the Western United States and Canada, as well as much of the Southern Pacific.
  • The Pacific exhibits neutral conditions with a transition to El Niño considered likely later this year.
  • 2023 is on pace to be the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th warmest year, but considerable uncertainty remains, including a substantial 38% likelihood that 2023 could become a new record warm year.
Read the complete article….

The global heat rise in March and April is more than reflected in the average sea-surface temperature (SST) anomaly over most of the Earth outside the polar regions not included in the following measurements depicted by the University of Maine’s ClimateReanalyzer.org, whose supercomputers reconstruct and record a wide range of climate observations from many thousands to millions of data points for the planet every day. Even as the SST is falling significantly at the end of April after reaching an all-time record, it is still way higher than any previous record for this time of the year.

Some idea of the quality and magnitude of the input data can be found by following the links below the graphics in this document.

Daily variation in the Global Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly from 1981 through May 1, 2023. Climate Reanalyzer / Climate Change Institute / University of Maine

Current sea surface temperatures also indicate the likelihood that the next El Niño is brewing that will drive global average (and many local) temperatures to new record highs.

Sea Surface Temperaure Anomalies for 2 April 2023. Climate Reanalyzer / Climate Change Institute / University of Maine. Note the anomalous patch of very hot water west of the equatorial coast of South America and the warm patch extending west of this along the Equator. This is a strong indicator for a developing El Niño condition.

We can conclude from these observations, that there is no evidence that the process of global warming has stopped or even slowed. If we don’t stop it soon, humans – and for that matter – all life on Earth will suffer from the failure. Political as well as personal action is required if we are to give our offspring a viable future.

Featured Image

Berkeley Earth’s plot of Global Warming by Month through the end of February 2023: “The most significant spatial features of year-to-date temperatures are the end of La Niña, warmth across much of the northern mid-latitudes, and several ocean hotspots. Year-to-date, 3.9% of the Earth’s surface has experienced average temperatures that are a local record high. In addition, 0.01% of the surface has been record cold year-to-date.” https://berkeleyearth.org/march-2023-temperature-update/.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

NSW: If you haven’t voted, please THINK first

William P. Hall on March 24, 2023

Unwelcome reality is that we face an extremely dangerous climate emergency. Politicians must shift from business as usual to emergency mode.

Anyone who pays attention to weather and climate will know that lethally dangerous extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, wildfires have been growing increasingly more extreme, widespread, and frequent. These will keep getting more and more lethal as long as our planet keeps getting warmer. This is an emergency!

The scientific evidence as summarized in the 8000 page report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (a United Nations organization comprised of the representatives of the 180 nations involved in the World Meteorological Organization) is so overwhelmingly comprehensive and complete that is no longer contestable. The Australian Climate Council explains it. Our own Climate Sentinel News blog surveys the vast array of evidence and considers its implications and government’s reactions in more depth. Three major articles focus on NSW (click the image to open the article):

David Spratt, of the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration is one of many sources documenting the causes and naturse of the dangers we face. Spratt posted 7 articles detailing major tipping points towards catastrophes likely to be crossed as the world continues to warm. His latest article, “Reclaiming ‘Climate Emergency’” considers the kinds of political shifts required to move from business as usual’s ignoring crisis situations to actively managing them. Spratt summarizes the shifts in the table replicated from the article replicated here:

Before you fill in your ballot papers, please think about which candidates/parties on the ballots have the willingness, ability, or capacity to deal with the genuine emergencies we face. Will wishful thinking, party dogma or denial or reality be enough? I.e., usiness as usual – the normal mode for the major political parties, and some of the minor parties or independents. If you can vote in your electorate for someone who seems ready, willing and able to deal with climate emergency issues, please do so.

Vote Climate One can make it quick and easy for you to choose.

Use our VOTING GUIDES: NSW State Election 2023 to learn more about what the the parties and independent candidates in your electorate offer. How we thoroughly assessed parties and independents is described in Climate Lens Traffic Light Assessment.

Those we found to be generally tied to vested interests and/or unrealistic party or personal dogmas; or deniers of the climate crisis are flagged with red lights without any detailed justification. We use the orange light for those individuals and parties we thought might help or at least not impede required climate action, but could not fine enough evidence they would actually drive climate action.

Green lights were granted only where we found enough good evidence that a candidate or party could be trusted to put action on the climate emergency high on their priorities in Parliament. In these cases we also provide voters with links to some of the information justifying our ranking.

All this is distilled in our easy and quick to use voting guide for each electorate showing our ranking of all the candidates you can vote for. Grandad Rob, with a little help from a couple of youngsters in his tribe, demonstrates:

With a lot of work, our species and families may just might be able to survive the 21st Century.

Featured image:

From Lismore City News: 16/03/2022 – Flooding on February 28 was the worst Lismore had ever experienced, reachning 14.4m and leaving devastation in its wake.

For that matter following the horrific bushfires of the Black Summer of 2020-2021 and extensive droughts catastrophic floods began soon after with a rare sequence of La Niñas when vitually all areas of NSW experienced major flooding at least once, if not several time since.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

On the down-hill road to extinction

William P. Hall on December 11, 2022

Now the Victorian Election is over, we we must keep our politicians feet to the fire. Strong, early, and competent action against global warming is the only issue in Parliament that really matters if we are concerned for the futures of our families, or indeed, for our species and the majority of life on our planet. If we don’t stop and reverse the still accelerating global warming our world will soon be so hot that humans and many other species will be experiencing major die-offs and collapses of critical ecosystems before the end of this century on our way to extinction.

The featured article here shows how close we already to this precipice of no return — even without considering the added stress of human caused global warming.

Our road to extinction began with killing off megafauna

In his ‘overkill’ hypothesis, Paul S Martin proposed in 1966 that humanity’s expansion out of Africa into Eurasia, and then into Australia and the Americas led to the extinction of most of the very large terrestrial animals (“megafauna”). The large animals were easy to kill because they had no prior experience with two legged hunters. Hunters feasted and multiplied until the easy prey in a local area was all killed off within a generation or two as humans continued to multiply and expand into new territories — until entire species were exterminated. By its very nature the fossil record is sparse and little evidence of an actual killing spree has been found, but in most of the areas humans colonized out of Africa there was a healthy variety of megafauna before there was evidence of human habitation. And once evidence of human habitation appears in the record there is no more evidence for megafauna, suggesting that large animals were hunted into extinction within a few decades of their first encounters with our distant ancestors.

Martin published his seminal paper while I was doing preparatory studies at Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville before starting my PhD in evolutionary biology at Harvard. The debate continued throughout my time at Harvard as evidence accumulated and was discussed. Martin’s North American paper was published in 1973 as I received my degree and began my teaching career. Some scientists still argue today that climate change was responsible for most of the extinctions and not humans. However, accurately dated fossils and evidence for human hunting reviewed in a 2015 research article by Surovell, show a good fit with Martin’s overkill hypothesis rather than close correspondence with the climate changes.

Once humans are present in the landscape and as our evolving technology grows ever more powerful, this presence affects all living things. Our expanding population and exponentially increasing consumption, control, and destruction of biological resources is progressively leading towards total exploitation or extermination of the natural biological resources we depend on for our own survival. Most extinctions – especially of little creatures – has resulted from human obliteration of their habitats through increasingly mechanized and fossil-fuel driven agriculture.

This post’s featured image shows what a few years of plowing did to the plains of SW Colorado during the ‘dust bowl’ droughts in the 1930’s. Simple farming managed to obliterate all life for as far as as the camera could see…. Actually, the tractor is plowing along the contour lines of the slope working to repair some of the damage so at farming could resume when the rains returned again. The Guardian article below did not include the photo I used, but describes the situation:

A replica of cave paintings in Chauvet cave, France, created around 36,000 years a go. More than 178 species of megafauna are estimated to have been driven to extinction betweeen 52,000 and 9,000 BC. Photo: Patrick Aventurier/Getty Images [from the article]

by Phoebe Weston, 25/11/2022 in the Guardian

Humans v nature: our long and destructive journey to the age of extinction

The story of the damage done to the world’s biodiversity is a tale of decline spanning thousands of years. Can the world seize its chance to change the narrative?

The story of the biodiversity crisis starts with a cold-case murder mystery that is tens of thousands of years old. When humans started spreading across the globe they discovered a world full of huge, mythical-sounding mammals called “megafauna”, but by the end of the Pleistocene, one by one, these large animals had disappeared. There is no smoking gun and evidence from ancient crime scenes is – unsurprisingly – patchy. But what investigators have learned suggests a prime suspect: humans.

Take the case of Genyornis, one of the world’s heaviest birds, which was more than 2 metres tall and weighed in excess of 200kg. It lived in Australia until, along with many other megafauna, it went extinct 50,000 years ago. In North America, giant beavers weighing the same as a fridge and an armadillo-like creature called a glyptodon, which was the size of a small car, existed until about 12,000 years ago, when they, too, went extinct. In all, more than 178 species of the world’s largest mammals are estimated to have been driven to extinction between 52,000 and 9,000BC.

For a long time, these extinctions were thought to be linked to natural changes in the environment – until 1966, when palaeontologist Paul S Martin put forward his controversial “overkill hypothesis” that humans were responsible for the extinctions of megafauna, destroying the romantic vision of early humans living in harmony with nature.

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[T]oday … we are not just killing megafauna but destroying whole landscapes, often in just a few years. Farming is the primary driver of destruction and, of all [surviving] mammals on Earth, 96% are either livestock or humans. The UN estimates as many as one million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction.

Read the whole article….

We hit the accelerator on the downhill road to extinction with fossil fuel burning and habitat destruction

I came face-to-face with the catastrophe we humans are speeding towards some than six years ago as I was finishing a 10+ year book project on the coevolution of humans and our increasingly powerful technologies, “Application Holy Wars or a New Reformation“. This combines significant threads from my own life-history (paleontology, evolutionary biology, systems ecology, theory of knowledge, organizational theory, engineering & the exponential growth of computer technology), to explore and explain how our hominin ancestors (close cousins of the ancestors of chimpanzees and bonobos) have become so powerful that we are profoundly impacting our planet’s atmosphere, oceans, land surface, and biosphere.

As I focused on finishing the project by forecasting future trends in this coevolution, it became clear that further effort was largely pointless — because few if any people would be available to actually read the book. We face a population crash and social collapse in the global mass extinction event we are forcing on our only planet. I concluded that what time I had left would be far better spent trying to focus people’s and our leader’s attentions on the crisis that we are rushing towards in hopes of organizing actions to delay and perhaps avoid the oblivion.

Several of my works (plus much of the material I have collected on Climate Sentinel News) map out how the evolutionary road we are on leads to a catastrophe if we are unable to put on the brakes and turn off the road to extinction to find a way back up the hill before it is too late:

… Victor Anderson, a visiting professor in sustainability at Anglia Ruskin University, also argues biodiversity loss has been seen by some as a middle-class, trivial or even rightwing issue….. He says the issue continues to be difficult, not least because every aspect of industry is entwined with nature’s destruction. “I think tracing through the causes of biodiversity loss is a bit frightening, because it does lead you to the whole way in which the world economy operates.”

The story of the biodiversity crisis is a tale of decline spanning thousands of years. From hunting huge mammals to extinction to poisoning birdlife with pesticides, humans have treated nature as an inexhaustible resource for too long. Environmentalists, Indigenous peoples and scientists have been sounding the alarm about the biodiversity crisis for more than half a century, and yet no meaningful action has been taken. Much has already been lost, but there is still lots to play for.

Featured article

Collapsing biodiversity on its own is a shocking indicator that human impacts on the natural world are exterminating a vast array of other species through direct killing and habitat destruction. We are also making the entire planet less friendly to life in general through global warming, increasing the acidity of watercourses, lakes and oceans, and poisoning the environment many other ways.

Inevitably, the circle of biological collapse is folding back on humanity itself. The biosphere provides a vast array of “ecosystem services” (oxygen in the air, drinkable water, pollination of crops, soil renewal, fisheries, etc….) that we and our domesticated plants and animals depend on for life. Beyond that, our continued burning of fossil carbon is raising Earth’s surface temperature to levels that are lethal for many plants and animals. As I write this, much northern Australia faces extreme heatwave conditions in the mid 40s, that are easily lethal to unprotected humans and many other organisms:

Maximum temperatures are expected to be in the low to mid forties over inland NT and in the mid to high thirties across northern parts of the Top End, while overnight temperatures will be in the mid to high twenties. Severe to Extreme heatwave conditions are expected to increase in area and intensity and reach a peak early next week before beginning to ease. (http://www.bom.gov.au/nt/warnings/heatwave.shtml; see also Extreme heat health alert issued across Northern Territory). Similar warnings have also been issued for northern WA and QLD.

Such conditions can easily cause local extinctions to many species unable to migrate long distances to recolonize depleted areas. Many other organisms that depended in one way or another on the now extinct species will also go extinct because they are unable to replace that dependency – leading to a cascade of extinctions leading towards the ‘sterilized earth’ situation depicted in the featured image. As more and more extinctions occur along with increasingly frequent and widespread ecosystem collapses, Homo sapiens (our own species) will almost certainly be included in the casualties lost for all time. This conclusion is where ‘business as usual’ is driving towards.

I’m not the only one issuing this warning; Antonio Guterres – UN Chief said: We’re racing down the “highway to climate hell” and pointed to the only realistic way to avoid this end to our history on Earth: “Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish,” Guterres told the UN COP27 summit. “It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact or a Collective Suicide Pact,” he added.

Avoiding this suicide won’t be easy given the vast sums of money fossil fuel and other self-serving special interests are willing to spend whatever it takes to protect their short-term interests in maximizing their extraction of burnable fossil fuels and minimizing their costs to stay in business. No thought seems to be given to the fact that this path may well doom them and everyone else to extinction within a few more decades of business as usual as our whole biosphere collapses in global mass extinction.

At least Australians and Victorians seem to be moving our governments in the right direction to begin mobilizing effective action to protect what is left of our natural environment and to stop and reverse global warming. In the last few months, we have proved we are able to elect governments that claim to be interested in doing this (even though they also still seem to be working to protect fossil fuel special interests).

What we must do now is to hold our elected parliamentarians feet to the fire to ensure that they actually take the climate emergency seriously and begin mobilizing to fight the fires.

We need to turn away from the the Apocalypse on the road to hothouse hell, and we won’t do this by continuing with business as usual!

In the same way I saw no point in finishing my book, it seems to have taken the clear thinking of Greta Thunberg, a 16 year-old girl who concluded school was pointless as long as humans continued their blind ‘business as usual’ rush towards extinction.

greta-act-as-if-the-house-was-on-fire
Listen to Greta’s speech live at the World Economic forum in Davos 2019. Except for her reliance on the IPCC’s overoptimistic emissions budget, everything she says is spot on that even she, as a child, can understand the alternatives and what has to happen.

In other words, Wake up! Smell the smoke! See the grimly frightful reality, and fight the fire that is burning up our only planet so we can give our offspring a hopeful future. This is the only issue that matters. Even the IPCC’s hyperconservative Sixth Assessment Report that looks at climate change’s global and regional impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities makes it clear we are headed for an existential (“i.e., UN Newspeak for “extinction is likely”) climate catastrophe if we don’t stop the warming process.

In Greta’s words, “even a small child can understand [this]”. People hope for their children’s futures. She doesn’t want your hopium. She wants you to rationally panic enough to wake up, pay attention to reality, and fight the fire…. so our offspring can have some hope for their future.

And above all…. make sure that your elected parliamentarians take this situation very seriously indeed!

Let’s hope that we can stop global warming soon enough to leave them with a future where they can survive and flourish.

Featured Image: A farm tractor plows terraces after the contour of the land is determined on the southwestern plains of Colorado, March 25, 1938. Associated Press file photo from an August 1, 2017 Denver Post article by Patrick Traylor | [email protected], PHOTOS: The Dust Bowl in Colorado and the Great Plains, showing what was left of humanity’s work a few decades after trying to occupy the land.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Climate Council warns of wet future for Oz

William P. Hall on November 28, 2022

Climate change, driven by burning fossil fuels, contributing to the Great Deluge, is consigning Australia to escalating climate disasters

Most of Australia’s East Coast from Cape York south to the Victorian border has had over a meter of rain by the end of October — with the rains still continuing. Some of these areas have had more than 2 meters, and a few more than 3 meters! Many rainfall records have been smashed in all of the eastern states: Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania; leading to almost constant flooding through the whole area that is continuing today. The latest reports from the BOM tell us the rains will continue into summer.

This is clearly a function of global warming. Physical laws dictate that as air temperatures rise, the air can carry more water vapor before it begins to condense as rain. Higher temperatures increase the rate of evaporation of water from soils and standing water – encouraging drought. Seemingly contradictory warmer air can precipitate more water in areas where it is raining. As the water condenses out as rain it also releases its ‘heat of fusion’ — and more heat is available to drive more extreme winds able to carry rain to high elevations before the rain freezes to fall back to Earth in devastating hail storms. Over larger areas there is also more energy available to fuel increasingly powerful cyclones.

Increased water means increased plant growth, increased temperature increases the rate at which soils and vegetation dry out — ensuring ever more catastrophic wildfires.

Ever more floods, fires and tempests cause increasing damage to infrastructure and people’s livelihoods and property until the catastrophes follow one another so closely that there are simply not physical or human resources left to repair the damage from one catastrophe before the next catastrophe causes even more damage. If the warming is not stopped this progression leads inevitably leads to social collapse (as we are already seeing in parts of the world), agricultural collapse (and famines as we are already beginning to see in Africa and the Middle East), ecological collapse (as we are already seeing in marine habitats with coral reef communities, kelp beds, sea grass meadows), and finally, population collapses when the land has literally been swept bare (areas in Africa are already on the edge of the cliff).

With the collapse of society, humans will quickly lose the scientific and engineering capabilities to fight further climate change already dialed into the system, such that there will be little hope of avoiding near-term global mass extinction. Continuing ‘business as usual’ support of the fossil fuel industry more-or-less ensures this grim outcome.

The Climate Council’s report, presented below, presents the facts and explains what they mean here in Australia, and some of the things we can to moderate and mitigate the expected damages. This is a good start, but I would be a silly liar if I said this was all we need to do in order to keep from utterly destroying our future.

The great deluge: Australia’s new era of unnatural disasters

Vote Climate One will continue to do whatever we can do to encourage serious government leadership and action to fight climate change. Please do what you can to pressure your representatives to counteract the self-serving special interests who consume our resources and return little or nothing from the super-profits they take overseas.

If we can help get climate savvy governments on the problems that really matter, they may be able to mobilize enough action so we can survive our accidental disruption of Earth’s Climate System so our kids and grandkids inherit a world they can live in….

Let’s hope that we can stop global warming soon enough to leave them with a future where they can survive and flourish

Featured Image: Rainfall and Flooding 2022 – Queensland to Tasmania. Current year data from 1 January to 2 November, sourced from Bureau of Meteorology, 2022. Graphic from Chapter 2, The Great Deluge: Climate Extremes in Action, in the featured article.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.