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.
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.
…
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
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.
The climate emergency needs a revolution: from governments supporting dogmas and special interests to supporting citizens.
Vote Climate One is working to inform Australians of the scientific facts relating to the ever growing climate emergency and what can be done politically to ensure that our governments actively join the battle to solve the emergency. We hope this will help drive a political revolution enabling this to happen.
Due to humans’ alteration of Earth’s atmosphere, the physical world we live in is generating a climate emergency
Scientific evidence shows this is the case
This image of a burning home in Lake Conjola in New South Wales, Australia, was taken in the middle of the day on New Year’s Eve. Credit…Matthew Abbott for The New York Times. Our Black Summer Bushfires should be more than enough to convince every Australian that we are facing a very real and very dangerous climate emergency.
Where scientifically validated facts are concerned, two weeks ago on the 20th of March the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) controlled by 195 nations of the world forming the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published their dire forecast for our future climate. This report’s Summary for Policy Makers was signed off by the delegated representatives of every one of the WMO member nations. This summary report crossing many different scientific disciplines concludes some 6 years of some of the most stringently peer-reviewed scientific research ever published. In other words, the forecast is based on a vast array of solid and tested evidence, not just anecdotes and beliefs.
In other words, where the IPCC says our future is dire if we don’t stop global warming, the actual reality is likely to be even worse, i.e., involving social collapse and even possible/likely human extinction within a century or two. Hence, our warning on Vote Climate One’s cover page:
Humans triggered the climate emergency over a little more than 100 years. In this geological instant of time we burned prodigious quantities of safely sequestered fossil carbon accumulated over millions of years to produce and release the greenhouse gas CO₂ and, even more potent greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This was done more-or-less accidentally with the invention of primitive, Victorian era-based steam- technologies. However, even the low tech used and applied by billions of people significantly changed the composition of an entire planet’s worth of atmosphere so it traps more solar energy to significantly warm the whole planet. Today, we are continuing to dump still more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, heating the planet even more.
Given that humans only took a century to accidentally create the climate emergency using steampunk technology, surely, by working together and using our most up to date science and technologies, we should be able to solve the emergency. Unfortunately dogma and selfish greed promoted by special interests controlling the planet’s resources are working against stopping greenhouse gas emitting activities. This, unavoidably, becomes fraught with politics: internationally, nationally, state, and even at local council levels. Political revolutions will be required at all levels to favor climate action.
Before we can work together to solve the climate emergency in the physical world, we must revolutionize our current political world working to protect special interests by keeping us divided
Puppet governments
Where politics is concerned, for several decades at least, Australian Governments (federal, state, and even many local councils) have governed primarily to serve entrenched party-political dogmas and vested special interests. Parliamentary parties have worked to impose their dogmas on the nation’s citizens rather than listening to them. Special interests influencing the governments include multinational companies in the resource and fossil fuel industries, super-wealthy individuals, land-developers and religious groupings. Parties (and party discipline) tends to support the interests who support their campaigns and provide them with favorable media. Our Climate Sentinel News article provides a case study of Liberal government in NSW: Is Premier Perrottet a far-right puppet, or the puppet master?
Unfortunately, the uncoordinated actions of people alone, no matter how well motivated, cannot possibly organize, marshal, and control all the resources and technologies needed for effective action on the climate emergency. This requires the tools of and coordination by government. Effective action to stop global warming requires stopping industrial carbon emissions. This just isn’t going to happen as long as puppet governments guided by fossil fuel industries continue subsidizing their puppet masters and jailing protesters campaigning to stop emissions. Several Climate Sentinel News posts document such cases under the search term “puppet master“.
Revolutionary political change is the solution
Vote Climate One concludes that the critical first steps in mobilizing effective climate action must be to: (1) inform citizens of the genuine reality of the climate crisis (i.e., via Climate Sentinel News); and (2) provide knowledge and tools to influence or replace parliamentary puppets of the special interests with MPs who will place citizens’ interests first (i.e., “Traffic Light Voting” and “Voting Guides“).
In other words, we aim to facilitate fundamental political revolutions in Australian parliaments: From ‘democracies’ guided by the greed of large special interests for profits and power; To a genuine democracies representing their citizens and being concerned with their health and well being.
In Australia’s political environment we think the best governments will be Labor in a minority (with labor more progressive than the usual opposition parties) where Greens and a diversity of greenish community independents hold the balance of power to prevent Labor from catering to vested interests.
This revolution has begun! Current state of the political revolution in Australia
Australian Parliament
In last year’s Federal election, the COALition majority government was decimated: replaced by a Labor government with a razor thin margin and a large cross bench with 14 green-light candidates.
House of Representatives Elections
COALition
Aust. Labor Party
Centre Alliance
Katter’s Australian
Australian Greens
Ind (Teal)
Ind (other)
2022
58
77
1
1
4
9
2
2019
77
68
1
1
1
3
1
-18
+11
(Sharkie)
(Katter)
+3
+6
(Gee + Dai Le)
(Majority ≥ 75): Labor 77 + Aston = 78; Red lights 61 – Aston = 60; Green lights = 15
Green lights include (Greens: 1 carryover and 3 new ones – replacing Libs in metro Brisbane) plus a swag of greenish community independents from 4 other states; Labor controls the lower house in majority but with a narrow margin. Several seats could easily go to independents in by elections.
In the 1 April (April Fool’s day!) by-election in Aston (Ferntree Gully – Rowville in eastern Melbourne), in a 6.44% swing, Labor gained another ex-safe Liberal seat. This is the first time since 1920(!) that any party in power has won a seat in a Federal by-election anywhere in Australia. Only 3 out of 32 booths in the once safely Liberal Aston had a majority of Liberal votes.
Liberals are left holding only 2 of 23 seats in Inner Metro Melbourne (Deakin and Menzies), 3 of 7 Outer Metro (Casey, LaTrobe and Flinders), and 0 of 3 Regional Metro areas (Bendigo, Ballarat, and Geelong).
Senate Elections
COALition
Aust. Labor Party
Greens
Pauline Hanson’s
Jacqui Lambie
United Australia
David Pocock
Lidia Thorpe
2022 Election
15
15
6
1
1
1
1
Total Senate 2022
31
26
11
2
2
1
1
1
Majority > 38: Labor 26; Red lights 36; Green lights 13 — (Labor + green lights) = 39
Where Labor has only 26 seats compared to 36 seats for the red lights, the green lights clearly hold the balance of power in the Senate. David Pocock (community independent) and Lidia Thorpe (elected as a Green) must be included along with the Greens party to give Labor a majority. David Pocock’s vote is critical in decisions where the red lights are unanimously against.
In our analysis of the results, Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Election Guide was accessed hundreds of thousands of times during the pre poll and election day voting period – which might have helped some candidates over the line to either second place (allowing preferences to be distributed to them) to pass the 50% two party preferred winning position. In the ACT Vote Climate One funded distribution of paper versions of the Guide in a few of the suburbs — where Pocock did statistically better than in suburbs we didn’t cover. This may have been a significant component in the winning margin.
Since the Federal Election we have had state elections in Victoria and NSW.
Victorian State Parliament
The Victorian Parliament has more resistant to revolutionary change because of the many barriers to Greens, minor parties and independents crafted into the electoral laws designed to favor the major parties. Victoria allows ‘group voting tickets’ for election to the Legislative Council and secretive backroom ‘preference trading’ among the mobs. Combined with this, Victoria’s heavyweight restrictions on campaign contributions and funding gravely hamper independents and minor parties’ abilities to campaign compared to major parties’ major funding.
Legislative Assembly
The Assembly (lower house) ended up with Labor holding 56 seats, Liberals with 19, Nationals 9 (red lights = 38), and Greens 4; where a majority is < 45. None of the 120 independents or candidates from 16 minor parties won a single seat. Labor’s 11 seat majority in the lower house combined with party discipline does little to hinder autocratic government from the Labor side.
On the other hand voting for the Legislative Council turned out well for green-light candidates. MLCs serve for 4 year terms, with all seats contested in each state election.
Legislative Council
For Legislative Council Elections in Victoria, the state is divided into 8 geographically defined electoral regions, with 5 members representing each region, for a total of 40 members. Elections are determined by ‘optional preferential voting‘. Voters have a ‘single transferable vote‘, which may be used either
‘above the line’, to vote one party’s group voting ticket listing all candidates for the region in the party’s preferred order, or
‘below the line’, where you must number at least 5 candidates in your preferred order, and may number all candidates for the region in your preferred order. If you number less than 5 or give more than one candidate the same number this invalidates your ballot.
The use of group voting tickets enables upper house elections allows voters’ intentions to be rorted in many ways as described by Glen Druery, the ‘Preference Whisperer’. However, despite all of this, after the 2022 election, green-light MLC’s on the cross-bench with 7 votes hold the balance of power.
Victorian Legislative Council Elections
Labor
COALition
Greens
Animal Justice
Derryn Hinch’s
Fiona Patten’s
Labor DLP
Legalize Cannabis
Liberal Democrats
Pauline Hanson’s
Shooters, Fishers, F…
Sustainable Aust.
Transport Matters
2022
15
14
4
1
0
0
1
2
1
1
1
0
0
2018
18
13
1
1
3
1
0
0
2
0
1
1
1
change
-3
+1
+3
-3
-1
+1
+2
-1
+1
-1
-1
Labor 15, Greens 4, Cannabis 2, Animal Justice 1 (22); vs red-lights: Libs 8, Nat 6, Lab DLP 1, Lib Dem 1, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation 1, Shooters & Fishers 1 (18). With 21 needed for a majority in the upper house, Greens are clearly in the balance of power.
Way ahead for Victorian voters
Given that Labor is already relatively progressive on climate action, a green light majority on the cross bench may be in a position to block favorable treatment of Labor’s fossil fuel special interests, and to encourage strong action to shut down fossil fuel emissions. Victorians need to keep a close watch on their representatives and make sure via letter bombing, phone calls, and personal visits to electorate offices that they stay on the job to stop global warming!
New South Wales State Parliament
The NSW State election was held a week ago (1 April), but like Victoria the NSW’s election laws work against minor parties and independents. However, Vote Climate One may have had a bit more influence here. Liberal/Nationals were soundly defeated and Labor is in, but with a definite minority government. Labor is two short of a majority pending possible recounts. (The Liberals held the seat of Ryde by only 50 votes when the last of the postal votes were counted on 8 May).
NSW State Legislative Assembly Election
On the Labor/green-light side, Labor 45; Greens 3 (Ballina – thanks to the repeated extreme flooding events, plus Sydney electorates of Balmain & Newtown); and 3 green-light independents – one of them backed by Climate200, for a total of 51; where 47 votes are required to pass legislation.
There are also 2 orange-light incumbent independents with significant green credentials.
Note, for the count here I have reclassified Michael Regan (Wakehurst), listed orange light before the election. Due to time constraints our analysis missed his strong record of climate actions as Mayor of Northern Beaches Council and the fact that he was supported by Federal teal MPs, Zali Steggall (Warringah) and Sophie Scamps (Mackellar).
On the Lib/Nat red-light side there are 25 Libs; 11 Nationals and 4 independents (1 ex Lib and 3 ex shooters/fishers/farmers) for a total of 40.
This leaves NSW with a Labor minority government with Greens + green-light independents with a strong hold in the balance of power.
NSW State Legislative Council Election
The NSW Legislative Council has 42 members, elected by proportional representation in which the whole state is a single electorate. Members serve eight-year terms, which are staggered, with half the Council (21) being elected every four years. 22 votes are required for a majority.
All registered parties are listed ‘above the line’ on the ballot paper. All candidates running in the election for a party (as listed above the line) are listed for that party in preference order below the line. Unaffiliated independent candidates are only listed below the line.
A single ‘1’ above the line is formal and counts for the chosen party but has no preferences for other parties. If they wish, a voter may show a second, third and so on preference for other parties above the line. These preferences are implied to be preferences for candidate of each group as printed on the ballot paper.
If a voter wants to re-order a party’s candidates, pick candidates from different parties, or vote for candidates in any group without a voting square above the line, they must vote ‘below the line’ by numbering boxes for candidates. Electors must complete 15 preferences below the line for a formal vote. DO NOT number a sequences that crosses the ballot paper line.
NSW Legislative Council Election
Coalition
Labor
Greens
Pauline Hanson’s
Shooters, Fishers, +
Animal Justice
Cannabis
Lib Democrats
2023 election
7
8
2
1
1
0
1
1
Total Council 2023
15
15
4
3
2
1
1
1
In the Legislative Council 22 votes form a majority, and there are now 15 Labor, 6 green lights (4 Greens, 1 AJP, 1 Cannabis), totaling 21 votes, versus 21 red light votes (Coalition 15, Pauline Hansons’s 3, SFF 2, Lib Dems 1).
Note: According to the ABC on 9/04/2023, as this is being written:
There are still some uncertainties in the count. Four seats are still not finalized, but are likely to be filled by a seventh Liberal member and one each representing Legalise Cannabis, the Liberal Democrats and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers. These are included in the above table.
“The Legislative Council consists of 42 members. Traditionally one of the government’s members is elected President. The President only has a casting vote meaning votes are determined by the 41 members on the floor with a government needing 21 members to pass legislation. After appointing the President, Labor will have only 14 members, which means the new government will need votes from seven of the 12 crossbench members to pass legislation.”
Based on trends in the present count, only 6 on the cross bench will be green lights. In other words, Vested interests working through normally cooperative red lights in the upper house, may still have some ability to block important legislation on climate action.
Way ahead for NSW voters
Noting that the Liberal Democrats and Shooters, Fishers are farther to the right and dogmatic on energy policy and climate action than the Liberal Party, we must hope that the Liberals in the upper house will follow the lead of green lights in the lower house on climate legislation.
Voters concerned to see serious action on climate need to stay alert to what their representatives in both houses are saying and doing. Make sure they know via letter bombing, phone calls, and personal visits to electorate offices that they must stay on the job to stop global warming!
What will Vote Climate One do to help?
Insofar as our limited resources allow, we will endeavor to keep Australian voters up to date with the latest news on the still growing climate emergency (i.e., why we need action) and what our governments are doing to solve it. Towards this end, we will be establishing an email service you can subscribe to, and publish contact details for all federal and state parliamentarians so you can send them hearts and flowers or brick bats depending on how well they are addressing needs for climate action.
It seems to have taken the clear thinking of Greta Thunberg, then a 16 year-old school girl, who concluded school was pointless as long as humans continued their blind ‘business as usual’ rush towards extinction.
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 what 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 truly the only issue that matters. Even the IPCC’s hyperconservative Sixth Assessment Report that makes it clear we are headed for an existential 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 all of our offspring can have some hope for their future.
In our present situation where most governments still support and even fund fossil fuel production and use, the most effective actions we can take as individuals is to revolutionize our governments to prioritize action on climate change above all other things. Nothing else matters if we have no future….
If we can get climate savvy governments in power soon enough, we may be able to mobilize enough action to survive our accidental disruption of Earth’s Climate System so our kids and grandkids inherit a world they can live in…
This is who we are working for! Think of your families’ futures.
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.
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):
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.
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.
IPCC warns we have only a few years left when climate action can reverse human caused global warming to avoid a crescendo of climate catastrophes
Unfortunately, we are living in a world where the greedy self-interests of billionaires and multi-national corporations tend to control media and politics. These special interests are threatened by things that must be done to slow and stop global warming. They use their power over the media and politicians to deny the need for and to prevent critically important climate action. However, the real-world understanding reported in the concluding summary of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report on Climate Change (published this week) documents and explains the very real dangers and even mass deaths society faces if global warming is not stopped by 2030. We genuinely face a climate emergency that threatens human survival. To have any hope of organizing and implementing the kinds of statewide and national actions needed to stop the warming process citizens have to replace the parliamentary puppets of special interests with MPs who will genuinely work for the citizens who elected them. In New South Wales, how you vote this week is a life-and-death matter!
I have explained that this approval process is highly conservative and cannot avoid downplaying the extent and dangers of climate change. In reality, the actual dangers to humanity are likely to be a lot worse than described by the IPCC. New South Wales residents who are currently voting on their state government (polls close on 25 March) should note that all the modeling and predictions discussed in the Report are based on weather and climate data collected only up to 2020. The models and predictions do not include evidence on or predict how extreme climate events have actually been: e.g.,Black Summer bushfires, more than two years of unprecedented and widespread flooding, extreme heatwaves and drought, etc. If you are living on the land or close to Nature, you will know that the reality you are living with is already significantly worse than anticipated by the IPCC.
At nearly 8,000 pages, the full report is virtually unreadable. Every statement is documented, justified, and qualified. Fortunately, the World Resources Institute has done an admirable job of highlighting critical content in a readable way:
Cover Image by: Anirut Thailand/Shutterstock (from the article)
It also makes for grim reading. Across nearly 8,000 pages, the AR6 details the devastating consequences of rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions around the world — the destruction of homes, the loss of livelihoods and the fragmentation of communities, for example — as well as the increasingly dangerous and irreversible risks should we fail to change course.
But the IPCC also offers hope, highlighting pathways to avoid these intensifying risks. It identifies readily available, and in some cases, highly cost-effective actions that can be undertaken now to reduce GHG emissions, scale up carbon removal and build resilience. While the window to address the climate crisis is rapidly closing, the IPCC affirms that we can still secure a safe, livable future.
…
Looking Ahead
The IPCC’s AR6 makes clear that risks of inaction on climate are immense and the way ahead requires change at a scale not seen before. However, this report also serves as a reminder that we have never had more information about the gravity of the climate emergency and its cascading impacts — or about what needs to be done to reduce intensifying risks.
Limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) is still possible, but only if we act immediately. As the IPCC makes clear, the world needs to peak GHG emissions before 2025 at the very latest, nearly halve GHG emissions by 2030 and reach net-zero CO2 emissions around mid-century, while also ensuring a just and equitable transition. We’ll also need an all-hands-on-deck approach to guarantee that communities experiencing increasingly harmful impacts of the climate crisis have the resources they need to adapt to this new world. Governments, the private sector, civil society and individuals must all step up to keep the future we desire in sight. A narrow window of opportunity is still open, but there’s not one second to waste. [my emphasis]
As reported extensively in all Australian media today (21 May) the agreed IPCC summary says that near-term (i.e., ASAP!) climate action is urgent because the window is closing for us to secure a livable and sustainable future, and that: “The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years”. These and many other critically important points are clearly summarized in the Headline Statements, which are the overarching conclusions of the approved Summary for Policymakers. Taken together these provide a concise narrative as to why effective action on the climate emergency is so urgent.
If you care for your future and the future of your family and society, you need to take the IPCC’s cautions and warnings seriously. And consider what this means in a world where your political representatives are likely to be more concerned to satisfy the wants of their big donors and special interests rather than you or other citizens of their electorates. These big donors are developers, fossil fuel industries, miners, etc., who are more concerned about immediate profit rather than future survival.
Think: if you are a “rusted-on” voter who can be counted on to vote for the incumbent or party you have always voted for, especially in a ‘safe’ seat, your ‘representative’ has no reason to consider your future in any way, and can work full time for the special interests.
However, in Australia, we still live in a democracy where your considered vote can actually work to throw the bastards out, by electing someone you can reasonably trust to work for the community of those who vote rather than those who pay…. Given the nature and reality of the climate emergency, you should consider Vote Climate One’s motto:
We need to treat the climate emergency as a global war we are on track to lose unless we can focus our efforts on the only task that matters — reversing global warming. If we fail here no other tasks matter — our species will soon end up extinct no matter how we arrange the deck chairs on the burning ship.
If you need more evidence that we need to change our governments, there is plenty on our Climate Sentinel News blog covering both science and politics.
How to vote
We don’t tell you how to vote. We work to help you achieve the results you want when you vote.
In Australia, Vote Climate One works to assess and rank how we think every party and independent candidate on the ballot in Federal and all State elections will respond to the climate crisis. Thanks to modern computer technology this is actually do-able. How we rank candidates is explained in our Climate Lens Traffic Light Assessment process. Sometimes, we’ll even get on the phone to find out more. The undeniable task of the climate lens is to prioritise the protection of everything we hold dear. The hubris of our species needs a dose of the reduction perspective tranquilizer encapsulated in this painting by Peter Trusler.
Our conclusions are presented via downloadable and printer-friendly voting guides for each and every electorate in NSW. You can find the guide for your electorate here (in this case, Lismore). The electorate screen tells you how we can help. Parties and candidates we think will work for climate action are designated with green lights. Those who we think won’t or who haven’t given us much to go on, are designated with red lights, Those we think are better than the worst, but not fully trustworthy are designated orange.
If you are concerned to see action on climate change, number all the green-light independents and parties first. Thus, even if your number [1] selection doesn’t win, you still maximize the chances that someone else with good climate credentials will be elected. If you want detail to help you decide how to rank green-light candidates, the Research Tools provide links to candidate websites and other information about them.
As Rob and his grandchildren explain in the video, the printable voting guides make it easy for you to transfer your preferences to the ballot paper in the voting booth:
Remember, we are voting in hopes of leaving a happy future for our families and society.
About the featured image: Figure SPM.6 from Summary for Policymakers, AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023
There is a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all. There are a multitude of political choices that need to be made during this window. If we make good ones we can go on living in a world with a sustainable future. Bad choices will rapidly constrain our future to pathways that are likely to lead to societal collapse and eventual human extinction in a still rapidly warming world.
Figure caption: The illustrative development pathways (red to green) and associated outcomes (right panel) show that there is a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all. Climate resilient development is the process of implementing greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation measures to support sustainable development. Diverging pathways illustrate that interacting choices and actions made by diverse government, private sector and civil society actors can advance climate resilient development, shift pathways towards sustainability, and enable lower emissions and adaptation. Diverse knowledge and values include cultural values, Indigenous Knowledge, local knowledge, and scientific knowledge. Climatic and non-climatic events, such as droughts, floods or pandemics, pose more severe shocks to pathways with lower climate resilient development (red to yellow) than to pathways with higher climate resilient development (green). There are limits to adaptation and adaptive capacity for some human and natural systems at global warming of 1.5°C, and with every increment of warming, losses and damages will increase. The development pathways taken by countries at all stages of economic development impact GHG emissions and mitigation challenges and opportunities, which vary across countries and regions. Pathways and opportunities for action are shaped by previous actions (or inactions and opportunities missed; dashed pathway) and enabling and constraining conditions (left panel), and take place in the context of climate risks, adaptation limits and development gaps. The longer emissions reductions are delayed, the fewer effective adaptation options.
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.
A compendium of graphs plots key indicators of our changing climate. Unless trends are reversed today’s lethal extremes will be ‘lethal ‘new normals’.
Climate scientist Zach Labe shows us in a collection of simple graphs from his WordPress page how many of Planet Earth’s vital signs have been changing over recent decades. He plots the best available data, and lets the plots tell the story without adding his redundant commentary.
However, If you want, you can still follow links that explains how the data was collected and analyzed. Click on Climate Visualizations at the top of the screen to open a pull-down menu, and then on FAQ and my methods at the bottom of that menu.
Plotting the reality
Four critical variables (the three critical greenhouse gases and global average temperature) show us how our changing climate is progressing.
The collection of graphs shows completely unambiguously that ever more heat energy is being loaded into our planetary climate system to make it hotter and more humid — where heat and humidity are the drivers for all kinds of extreme weather events.
If you look at the most recent years of Rising Temperature (beginning with 2020) you might think temperatures have stopped rising. However, this is almost certainly dangerously wrong. We have just finished an unusual three successive periods of La Niña conditions that result in below average global temperatures. GIven the generally increasing rate of temperature rise, the next El Niño periods are likely to be substantially hotter than the last ones (2014-2019) when Australia suffered the record-breaking bushfires of our Black Summer that even burned temperate rainforests that survived previous fires for many hundreds of years.
What do the graphs tell us?
In the past VoteClimateOne’s Climate Sentinel News has posted many articles attesting to the increasing frequency, extent and ferocity of extreme weather and the increasing chaos and costs these cause.
As the energy in the climate system continues to rise, catastrophes will increasingly overlap such that more damage and chaos will be caused by following events before recovery from earlier ones is complete. We are already seeing examples of this in NSW’s Northern Rivers and southwestern areas. At some point (in the not distant future — if global warming is not reversed) the still growing social and physical costs will lead to social and physical collapse of society.
Can you do something to change the picture?
At this point both major political parties in the NSW government are still defending and even subsidizing the fossil fuel industry’s (coal and gas) continuing increasing emissions of greenhouse gases.
It is time for you to help elect a government able to act effectively against the climate emergency by ensuring neither party has a majority to do things without people’s support. Hard-right members in either party who will do deals with anyone to stay in power to enforce their religiofascist dogmas tend to ignore even stark objective realities such as the climate crisis shown by Earth’s vital sighs. Such people need to be replaced by electing teals, other community-oriented independents and Greens who accept the reality of the climate emergency and are willing to prioritize acting on it.
My Climate Sentinel News article, Is Premier Perrettet a far-right puppet, or the puppet master?, documents and explains how the kind of ultra dogmatic hard-right politicians got into power that most need to be replaced by parliamentarians who will represent and work for the voters’ benefits. As the now deceased Lyenko Urbanchich, ex MLC David Clarke, federal Senator Alex Hawke, the Tudehope family and the Perrottet family have shown on the far right of the NSW Liberal Party, if your faction can fill key positions in party and factional organizations with collaborators who can organize cadres of ‘storm troops’, it is easy to put whoever the faction ‘leader(s)’ may want into Parliament. The party’s ‘safest’ seats are taken over by using the cadres to subvert preselections by branch stacking and simple thuggery or by bypassing preselection entirely with direct appointments (as has been demonstrated many times over the 40 years of history covered in my article).
Here I focused on the Liberal hard-right. But it should be recognized that Labor also has had and probably still has a very similar hard-right. This was made most evident in the impact Bob Santamaria had on the Labor Party in the 1950’s that led to it a near-lethal split to form the Democratic Labor Party. I have not had the time to adequately research the NSW Labor Party, but its leader, Chris Minns shares many characteristics with Dominic Perrottet, and has even backed and defended him over the treatment of climate protester Violet Coco. Like the Liberals, Labor also safe seats giving factions many opportunities to subvert real democracy. To me this is more than enough reason for VoteClimateOne to advise voters in such seats not to vote for factional puppets in hopes of making the seat marginal. Even if you don’t get rid of the puppet this time, you may be given a real opportunity in the next election to preselect someone actually representing you (rather than someone dogma) in the next election.
How to vote?
We won’t suggest who you should vote for. However we try to show you in our NSW voting guides where we think each candidate in your electorate stands relative to action on the climate emergency and whether we think there are reasons a particular candidate might be considered to be a puppet or less trustworthy on issues than others in the electorate. These recommendations won’t be complete or final until we have had a chance to work our way through those on the ballots provided by the Electoral Commission.
Featured image
Featured image from Dettre, M., (18/08/2022). Lismore City News, Questions over NSW flood victims’ buyback / More than a thousand people lost homes in the NSW Northern Rivers floods. (Darren England/AAP PHOTOS).
Health Minister Minster Mark Butler says ongoing trauma can manifest in increased rates of anxiety, post-traumatic stress and domestic and family violence: “Mental health is one of the government’s highest priorities and I recognise that these flooding events have been hugely traumatic for many people,” he said…. For some of these communities, this has been their fourth flood in 18 months.”
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.
Australian security leaders including the ex Defence Force Chief, Chris Barrie, and Air Force Deputy Chief, John Blackburn warn that global mobilization is required to deal with the existential threat (i.e., human extinction) from global warming: “Global inaction has resulted in climate change becoming an immediate existential threat to humanity and, together with nuclear war, is the greatest threat to the security of Australia and its people: “Global inaction has resulted in climate change becoming an immediate existential threat to humanity and, together with nuclear war, is the greatest threat to the security of Australia and its people.”
A submission to a defence review says Australia’s military could be a ‘significant contributor’ in mobilising against climate change. Photograph: Jonathan Geodhart/Australian Defence Force/AFP/Getty Images (from the article.
Australian Security Leaders Climate Group says measures needed to contain climate change will be disruptive, but better than ‘existential threat’ of the alternative
Australia must adopt a “wartime mobilisation” response to the climate emergency, former security leaders have told a review of the country’s defence policy.
The Australian Security Leaders Climate Group is calling for “a fundamental reframing of Australia’s defence and security strategy” away from geopolitical rivalry.
The group – whose members include the former Australian defence force chief Chris Barrie and former air force deputy chief John Blackburn – argues the country must push for unprecedented global cooperation on the climate crisis.
Despite the US and Australia vowing on Wednesday to “drive stronger global action to address the climate crisis”, the security leaders insist the issue is still being treated as an afterthought rather than a top-order threat.
Voters need to ensure that our elected representatives take the climate emergency as seriously as our Defence chiefs do, and enact the necessary laws and provide the necessary leadership to ensure this effort is mobilized at state, national and international levels.
In Australia, the prevailing view of mobilisation is that it is an activity associated with going to war. In the event of an armed conflict, the nation mobilises to support the Australian Defence Force. Against recent events, including the 2019–20 bushfires and Covid-19 pandemic, the ADF has mobilised to support the nation. As the range of potential hazards now encompasses high-end warfighting, grey-zone conflict, terrorism and organised crime, as well as domestic and offshore natural disasters, no single institution can sufficiently respond on its own.
Mobilisation should be redefined as occurring in response to all such events, drawing on all required and available elements from across the breadth of Australian society. But it must not be seen as just the response to a crisis; it should also include preparing for and, where possible, preventing such events, as well as supporting subsequent recovery efforts.
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.
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 Americanpaper 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]
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
UN Chief, Antonio Guterres warns world leaders at COP 27 summit that nations must cooperate or face “collective suicide” from climate change.
Guterres pulled no punches in his opening address to heads of state and other national leaders attending the climate summit: “Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish,” “It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact or a Collective Suicide Pact,” he added…. “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator,”
Chart showing a collection of indicators of human action and impact on the climate / AFP — from the article
by Laurent Thomet and Kelly Macnamara, 7/11/2022 in PhysOrg/Earth/Environment
The UN’s chief warned Monday that nations must cooperate or face “collective suicide” in the fight against climate change, at a summit where developing countries reeling from global warming demanded more action from rich polluters.
Nearly 100 heads of state and government are meeting for two days in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, facing calls to deepen emissions cuts and financially back developing countries already devastated by the effects of rising temperatures.
“Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish,” Guterres told the UN COP27 summit.
Read the complete article….
In his own words:
These are no empty words — Guterres is reporting on what the best science available to us we must do to avoid the highway to climate hell
Supporting Guterres’s stark warnings is a vast array of physical evidence (i.e., satellite and direct measurements) on climate change and theoretical modeling. This shows beyond any reasonable doubt that humanity is indeed accelerating down the “highway to climate hell”. Some of this evidence was reviewed in David Spratt’s series of articles in Climate Code Red, beginning in January. Those articles and my contextual comments covering them discussed some of the tipping points we may be passing on our progress towards the point of no return where positive feedbacks in Earth’s climate system.
The featured image in the present post and in my seven posts on the Spratt series is from a 2018 article by Steffen et al. in the prestigious science journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene“. The image is a highway map showing the alternative roads: to “climate hell” and suicide, or to planetary stewardship and survival on a “Stablized Earth”.
The “Trajectories” paper identifies various tipping points in the climate system where intrinsic temperature-related positive feedbacks would continue driving global temperatures higher when global warming reached those points. If the warming is not stopped, a “planetary threshold” (i.e., ‘point of no return’) will soon be reached where the intrinsic feedbacks become so strong that nothing humans could plausibly do would stop global temperatures being pushed high enough to produce a “Hothouse Earth” and global mass extinction (including humans). Fig. 1 (below) and the featured image provide a map illustrating how humans might be able to divert the evolution of our climate away from the heat driven highway over the planetary threshold (point of no return) where societal collapse and extinction becomes more-or-less inevitable.
Fig. 1. A schematic illustration of possible future pathways of the climate against the background of the typical glacial–interglacial cycles (Lower Left). The interglacial state of the Earth System is at the top of the glacial–interglacial cycle, while the glacial state is at the bottom. Sea level follows temperature change relatively slowly through thermal expansion and the melting of glaciers and ice caps. The horizontal line in the middle of the figure represents the preindustrial temperature level, and the current position of the Earth System is shown by the small sphere on the red line close to the divergence between the Stabilized Earth and Hothouse Earth pathways. The proposed planetary threshold at ∼2 °C above the preindustrial level is also shown.
As Guterres said, if we act soon enough and with enough vigor to stop carbon emissions and do whatever else is necessary, we may be able to find the left turn off the highway to climate hell. By being good stewards of our limited resources we may be able to find our way along the less probable road to a “Stabilized Earth” where Earth’s climate can return to the kinds of tolerable conditions humanity evolved and flourished in. After 45 years of hiding from the problem and allowing it to become progressively worse, saving our species from the highway to hell will take global mobilization of a monumental effort.
Otherwise, If we continue with business as usual supporting our fossil fuel puppet masters, the highway to hell will inevitably take us over the cliff to our doom. We have a choice. “Cooperate or perish”.
What must we do?
In Australia our present governments are still at least partially in league with the fossil fuel industry. Science tells us that we must stop all carbon emissions as fast as we possibly can. Yet all of our governments continue various subsidies for the industry, allowing them to continue developing new projects, trying to extend the life of coal-fired generators and selling cheaply produced natural gas (even in the states where it is produced) for some of the world’s highest prices to make astronomical profits for mostly foreign owners. Most of these schemes were perpetrated under COALition governments, but today’s national and Victorian Labor governments continue to support them.
We need to work to ensure no major party/coalition can achieve government without Greens and/or climate friendly community independents in the balance of power. This was achieved by one vote in the Senate (the ACT’s David Pocock). In Victoria, Labor’s Dan Andrews enjoys a presently dictatorial lead over a Liberal/National Party coalition. If we are to achieve the kinds of sweeping climate goals we need, Community oriented climate activists are going to need to be elected in both COALition and Labor Party held seats. Vote Climate One’s Climate Lens is designed to help you select climate friendly and trustworthy candidates, and to use Victoria’s preferential voting scheme most effectively to give your selected candidates the best opportunities to win the seat.
Using our Climate Lens in Victoria
In Australia, states probably have more capacity for effective climate action than the national government. Victoria’s upcoming state election should be an election focused on the only issue that really matters, climate.
Vote Climate One emerged to help people cope easily with complex ballots to focus on electing the kinds of candidates who we think can be trusted to legislate and lead effective climate action. We do this in two major ways: using our Climate Lens help you assess who is pro climate vs those who are not; and using Climate Sentinel News’s searchlight to highlight and explain the facts that show why climate change is so dangerous and climate action is so important.
Featured Image: Stability landscape showing the pathway of the Earth System out of the Holocene and thus, out of the glacial–interglacial limit cycle to its present position in the hotter Anthropocene. The fork in the road in Fig. 1 is shown here as the two divergent pathways of the Earth System in the future (broken arrows). Currently, the Earth System is on a Hothouse Earth pathway driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases and biosphere degradation toward a planetary threshold at ∼2 °C (horizontal broken line at 2 °C in Fig. 1), beyond which the system follows an essentially irreversible pathway driven by intrinsic biogeophysical feedbacks. The other pathway leads to Stabilized Earth, a pathway of Earth System stewardship guided by human-created feedbacks to a quasistable, human-maintained basin of attraction. “Stability” (vertical axis) is defined here as the inverse of the potential energy of the system. Systems in a highly stable state (deep valley) have low potential energy, and considerable energy is required to move them out of this stable state. Systems in an unstable state (top of a hill) have high potential energy, and they require only a little additional energy to push them off the hill and down toward a valley of lower potential energy.
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.
