As this Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2022 (GAR2022) goes to print, the world finds itself in some of the darkest days in living memory. The war in Ukraine becomes more devastating every day, and COVID-19 has affected every corner of the world. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warns that without immediate and deep emission reductions across all sectors, keeping global warming below the 1.5°C threshold will be impossible.
In the years since the previous GAR, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown starkly how a hazard can cascade across systems, but also how people and societies can adopt new behaviours when the problem and the needs for action are clear.
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GAR2022 highlights country case study examples, tools and ideas for how to address systemic risk and transform how we think about risk – including addressing biases and prejudices of which we are sometimes not conscious. It also encourages action to make risk governance fit for purpose in the context of the climate emergency and an increasingly complex and interconnected world.
GAR2022 is a call to action to better understand and act to address systemic risk and to invest in building resilient communities and global systems. Whether we can achieve [this] in the coming years to 2030 is decisive in the race to reach the Sustainable Development Goal targets, for a sustainable and resilient future for all.
Why is this report important to Australian voters?
Even if you haven’t been impacted directly, evidence from a wide variety of sources surveyed and reported on Vote Climate One’s Climate Sentinel News documents the fact that increasing numbers of humans (including those of us living here in Australia) have been battered, impoverished, injured and even killed in a growing crescendo of ‘natural’ disasters and catastrophes. Many of these ‘extreme’ events are clearly associated with the accelerating warming of our planet. Clearly we need to improve our disaster risk reduction.
Not only are the disasters becoming more frequent, but they are both becoming more extensive in terms of their areas of impact and numbers of people harmed, and they are beginning to concatenate/overlap. Here, the next disaster may follow the first disaster so closely that people affected have not had time to recover fully from the first — greatly increasing their impoverishment and diminishing their hopes for a better future. The repeated floodings of northern coastal areas of NSW and areas of Queensland including Brisbane are clear examples of this.
In line with the UN IPCC’s Assessment Reports on Climate Change, the UN has published a series of Global Assessment Reports on disaster risk reduction and management. Here the focus is on identifying disaster risks and working out how to avoid/control the risks and minimizing the consequences of those that actually happen. Much of the analysis reflects the logic of a complex systems engineering analytical point of view.
Part I of the present report looks at the concept of risk in complex social systems and the roles of human actions in generating risk and what people need to learn from this.
Part II focuses on the roles of human biases and communications in creating and managing risks associated with the social systems.
Part III explores possible solutions for better understanding, managing risks, and risk mitigation strategies in the social systems exposed to the risks.
Contents of Chapter 12,
Here, Chapter 12 explores how we can transition from our existing chaotic and ineffective states of ‘ungovernance’ based on ‘beliefs’ of the day, to rational, evidence-based thinking about risky aspects of complex system in the real world. A couple of days ago, I considered in some detail the differences between believing and thinking in a major essay, Corrupt leaders, casual media, gullible believers.
How and to what extent our Government leaders come to understand and apply the ideas and concepts explored, explained, and developed in this UN Assessment Report will have a profound impact on the future qualities of life we can achieve as Australian citizens.
We Australians have a choice to make on Saturday 21st May
What kind of people do you want to be responsible for governing our country now that we are on the cusp of what will be probably the historically most crucial decisions relating to how we manage the accelerating climate crisis, along with possibly increasingly virulent pandemics (e.g., H5N1 Avian Flu potentially crossing species barriers) as ecosystems become more chaotic with warming: ● Scotty the marketing guru who is Capt Humbug for his troop of puppets and knaves peddling faith and belief in the fossil fuel industry? Or ● Independent thinkers and green parties who have publicly committed themselves to tackling the climate emergency as their first priority if elected to Parliament?
If you believe that our present COALition government will govern in your interests rather than their patrons in the fossil fuel and related industries, then go with the flow and don’t concern yourself with the likely consequences of going down their fossil fueled road towards runaway global warming. On the other hand, if you think it is better to work for a sustainable future where your children and their children can hope for a happy future, Vote Climate One can help you elect a government that will actively lead and support this effort.
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!
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 climate catastrophe if we don’t stop the warming process.
Scott Morrison and his troop of wooden-headed puppets are doing essentially nothing to organize effective action against the warming. In fact all they doing is rearranging the furniture in the burning house to be incinerated along with anything and everyone we may care about.
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.
Let’s hope that we can stop global warming soon enough to leave them with a future where they can survive and flourish.
Part III of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment published late on 4 April says net zero alone won’t stop global warming. Carbon capture is also needed.
According to the Third Part of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report published this week, our last chances to stop and reverse the still accelerating global warming are running out of time. If we don’t act effectively within the next three years or so, humanity will be condemned to extreme hardship and dieoffs as increasingly large areas of our only planet become effectively uninhabitable because of high temperatures and extreme weather, and our agricultural systems also begin to fail for the same reasons. I have already commented extensively on Parts I and II of the report and consequently have reached and written about many of the topics covered in Part III, and my conclusions from the evidence are even more grim than the IPCC’s. So, other than providing a bit of background on the IPCC and possible limitations of their authoring process, in this post I simply present links to 12 independent commentaries.
Background
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (!PCC) was established by the United Nations in 1988 to study and make recommendations relating to climate changes triggered by the greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere beginning in the Industrial Revolution by the burning of coal and other fossil carbons for energy production. It presents the most solidly based and peer reviewed scientific understanding of the rapidly expanding climate crisis there is. However, because of its political and academic foundations it has and will consistently under-represent novel and extreme consequences of the on-going global warming. (The reasons for this scientific reticence or ‘conservatism‘ are discussed and explained in detail in my presentation: Some fundamental issues relating to the science underlying climate policy: The IPCC and COP26 couldn’t help but get it wrong.)
However, even in the face of these constraints, the AR6 part 3 Report: Climate Change 2022 – Mitigation of Climate Change, accepts and is based on the extensive research reported in parts 1 and 2 of the full report that failure to stop and reverse global warming before temperatures reach 2.0 °C (or preferably 1.5 °C) will be catastrophic for humans and the biosphere.
Where are we now with the physical state of our atmosphere that drives climate change
NOAA Trends in atmospheric greenhouse gases as at 8 April 2022 / Data source NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases. / William Hall
The rising concentrations of the three most important greenhouse gases shown above record the physical physical measurements in parts per million or parts per billion (compared to the total number of gas molecules of any kind in the atmosphere) as reported from the Mouna Loa (Hawaii) climate observatory. Details on how the samples were collected, processed and measured are available on the observatory web site. One thing worth noting, is that the longest base-line record from the observatory itself at 3400 meters elevation in the oceanic sub-tropics (shown here) that peaked in February is not identical to the worldwide average CO₂ from multiple sites shown for the Global Monthly Mean CO2 that is still rising in March. NH₄ and N₂O graphs show global means.
It is also worth nothing that the atmospheric concentrations for all of the gases reflect both human generated emissions AND the Earth’s ‘natural’ emissions for each year. We can control human emissions, but the natural emissions increase significantly with each rise in global average temperature.
The chart below shows RELATIVE changes in the global average temperature for each year relative to the global temperature averaged over the 30 years years 1951 through 1980. Earth’s temperature is based on a balance between the absorption of energy from solar radiation at ‘visible’ wave lengths by the planet and everything on it, and the emission of infrared energy by the planet and everything on it. Greenhouse gases heat the planet by blocking some outgoing infrared wave lengths causing the planet to warm until enough energy can be emitted at shorter (more energetic) wavelengths to balance the incoming visible radiation. Again this is a purely physical process that can be measured to relatively high precision.
Global average temperature datasets from NASA, NOAA, Berkeley Earth, and meteorological offices of the U.K. and Japan, show substantial agreement concerning the progress and extent of global warming: all pairwise correlations exceed 98%. / CC BY-SA 4.0 File:20200324 Global average temperature – NASA-GISS HadCrut NOAA Japan BerkeleyE.svg (Version 12) – for more details on sources and construction of the graph see: Wikimedia Commons.
The early trends illustrated by these facts are what drove the formation of the IPCC and its series of increasingly desperate calls to action in its series of “Assessment Reports” involving thousands of well qualified research scientists working as authors over the years of it existence. The 6th Assessment Report discussed here consists of 3 parts: I – The Physical Science Basis: 3949 pages, published 7 Aug 2021; II – Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability: 3675 pages, published 27 Feb 2022, and III – Mitigation of Climate Change: 2913 pages, published 4 April 2022. Together the full 3 part report includes 10,537 pages of meticulously peer-reviewed content. My December 202 presentation, Some fundamental issues relating to the science underlying climate policy: The IPCC and COP26 couldn’t help but get it wrong details the IPCC’s rigorous processes for producing the reports. My major criticism is that these processes add years of delay between scientific observations and publication, that the political and academic/institutional environments lead to reticence and understatement of risks, and that an over-reliance on mathematization gives the impression that complexly and chaotically dynamical systems such as the generation of weather and climate are more accurate than they can actually be.
Whatever humbug our governments tell us, we won’t know if we can get off the road to Earth’s Hothouse Hell state until all of the above curves are actually trending downward. As long as they point upwards, it is a clear indication that we are headed towards runaway warming and the unsurvivable hothouse.
Simply stated, where the IPCC observes that the future of humanity is dire, the reality is that it will probably be even worse than that.
What do others make of the IPCC’s Part III report?
Following are 12 independent takes on the IPCC’s recommendations for what we can do that might mitigate the global warming that is already dialed into Earth’s Climate System. Urgently stopping human carbon emissions on its own is no longer enough to stop warming soon enough to avoid major catastrophic damage. We will also have to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere with still unproven technolgies:
One success story in the battle against climate change is that renewable energy sources, such as wind turbines, have dropped significantly in cost over the past decade.Credit: Vincenzo Izzo/LightRocket via Getty
Radical emissions cuts combined with some atmospheric carbon removal are the only hope to limit global warming to 1.5 °C, scientists warn.
Humanity probably isn’t going to prevent Earth from at least temporarily warming 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels — but aggressive action to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and extract carbon from the atmosphere could limit the increase and bring temperatures back down, according to the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report makes it clear, however, that the window is rapidly closing, and with it the opportunity to prevent the worst impacts of global warming. Above the 1.5 °C limit — set by the Paris climate agreement in 2015 — the chances of extreme weather and collapsing ecosystems grow.
If the world acts now, we can avoid the worst outcomes of climate change without any significant effect on standards of living. That’s a key message from the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The key phrase here is “acts now”. Jim Skea, co-chair of the IPCC working group behind the report, said it’s “now or never” to keep global warming to 1.5℃. Action means cutting emissions from fossil fuel use rapidly and hard. Global emissions must peak within three years to have any chance of keeping warming below 1.5℃.
Unfortunately, Australia is not behaving as if the largest issue facing us is urgent – in fact, we’re doubling down on fossil fuels.
In recent years, Australia overtook Qatar to become the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). We’re still the second-largest exporter of thermal coal, and the largest for metallurgical coal.
A new report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) outlines what progress has been made in tackling global warming so far – and what will be needed for the world to curb emissions and achieve its climate targets.
It is the third part of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report (AR6), a process that comes around every six or seven years and aims to provide a comprehensive view of the state of knowledge on climate change. (See Carbon Brief’s in-depth Q&A.)
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This report, by the IPCC’s Working Group III (WG3) “provides an updated global assessment of climate change mitigation progress and pledges, and examines the sources of global emissions”
Greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, say climate scientists in what is in effect their final warning.
The world can still hope to stave off the worst ravages of climate breakdown but only through a “now or never” dash to a low-carbon economy and society, scientists have said in what is in effect a final warning for governments on the climate.
Greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, and can be nearly halved this decade, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to give the world a chance of limiting future heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
The final cost of doing so will be minimal, amounting to just a few percent of global GDP by mid-century, though it will require a massive effort by governments, businesses and individuals.
But the chances were narrow and the world was failing to make the changes needed, the body of the world’s leading climate scientists warned. Temperatures will soar to more than 3C, with catastrophic consequences, unless policies and actions are urgently strengthened.
The latest major climate assessment outlines the urgency and feasibility of rapid decarbonization to preserve the economy, health, and a stable climate.
In the just-released third installment of its Sixth Assessment Report (the first two volumes covered climate change causes and impacts), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summarizes the latest scientific research on efforts to mitigate climate change. Written by 278 authors from 65 countries, the new report can be summarized in one word: “urgency.”
To meet the Paris targets, the IPCC says that global emissions must peak immediately; that governments have not yet implemented sufficient policies to make that happen; and that continued expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure would create additional stranded assets potentially amounting to trillions of dollars in lost investments.
Smoke billows from a fire in an area of the Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil, September 2019. Photograph: Bruno Kelly/Reuters / from the article
by Peter Kalmus, 07/04/2022 in The Guardian Opinion
On Wednesday, I was arrested for locking myself onto an entrance to the JP Morgan Chase building in downtown LA. I can’t stand by – and nor should you.
“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals, but the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.” – United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres
I’m a climate scientist and a desperate father. How can I plead any harder? What will it take? What can my colleagues and I do to stop this catastrophe unfolding now all around us with such excruciating clarity?
Analysis: The third part of the panel’s report makes clear a century of rising emissions must end before 2025.
Thirty months: that is the very short time the world now has for global greenhouse gas emissions to finally start to fall. If not, we will miss the chance to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.
The conclusion of the world’s scientists, collated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and approved by all the world’s governments, says this reversal requires “immediate and deep” cuts in emissions everywhere.
The language of the third part of the IPCC’s report is less dramatic than the first two, which placed “unequivocal” blame on us for putting a “livable future” in grave peril. Rather than plainly stating the scale of the climate emergency, the new assessment spells out what needs to be done. Its text was therefore haggled over furiously by those states with much to lose.
The world has its best chance yet to reduce greenhouse gas emissions quickly, but hard and fast cuts are needed across all sectors and nations to hold warming to safe levels, the global authority on climate change says.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released today, says opportunities to affordably cut global emissions have risen sharply since the last assessment of this kind in 2014. But the need to act has also become far more urgent.
The report is the definitive assessment of how well the world is doing in finding solutions to rising temperatures. We each contributed expertise to the report.
Here, we explain key aspects of the findings and what it means for the world, including Australia.
The goal of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees is no longer likely to be achieved, the latest report of the United Nations chief climate body says, though scientists still believe warming may be stabilised and returned under the Paris Agreement’s more ambitious warming target after a period of “overshoot”.
The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published early on Tuesday morning Australian time, was evidence of a damning “litany of broken promises” and a “file of shame”, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a speech after the release of the report.
Mr Guterres, whose language on climate has become increasingly strong since the lead-up to the COP26 climate talks last year, catalogued the empty pledges that put humanity “firmly on track towards an unlivable world”.
He said governments and companies had lied to people about their commitments to reducing emissions, and that though the world needed to see a 45 per cent reduction in emissions by the end of the decade the world was on track for a 14 per cent increase.
Large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods is now “unavoidable” if the world is to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, according to this week’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The report, released on Monday, finds that in addition to rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse emissions, CO₂ removal is “an essential element of scenarios that limit warming to 1.5℃ or likely below 2℃ by 2100”.
CDR refers to a suite of activities that lower the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere. This is done by removing CO₂ molecules and storing the carbon in plants, trees, soil, geological reservoirs, ocean reservoirs or products derived from CO₂.
As the IPCC notes, each mechanism is complex, and has advantages and pitfalls. Much work is needed to ensure CDR projects are rolled out responsibly.
Limiting global warming to 1.5C or 2C would mean “rapid and deep” emissions reductions in “all sectors” of the global economy, says the latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Instead, emissions have continued to rise – albeit at a slowing rate – and it will be “impossible” to stay below 1.5C with “no or limited overshoot” without stronger climate action this decade, says the new document, which forms part of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report (AR6).
It outlines how these emissions cuts could be achieved, including “substantial” reductions in fossil fuel use, energy efficiency, electrification, the rapid uptake of low-emission energy sources – particularly renewables – and the use of alternative energy carriers, such as hydrogen.
The new UN report shows the world is not on track to hold the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, the more ambitious Paris Agreement target, and that the window to achieving the goal is closing fast.
One of its lead authors, Australian National University Professor Frank Jotzo, says it may no longer be plausible that the world can make the necessary immediate global reduction in emissions.
But the report also presents a range of solutions that, if applied immediately, could limit global warming, some of which have not been part of previous versions.
What do we know about the LNP’s concerns and abilities to mitigate the climate crisis?
As noted in my previous post, many communities are already well prepared to switch from fossil to renewable energy sources as soon as the supply and distribution issues can be resolved. Given that governments supposedly exist to protect and keep their citizens safe from external threats (i.e., global warming) in this case) we should be able to expect that that they would be promoting and facilitating the growth and spread of renewable energy technologies. But, at least in the case of Australian federal and some state governments, they are dong precisely the opposite: denying the science, and blocking and humbugging efforts to research, develop, promote, and roll out renewable technologies across all of our communities.
We have to replace the COALition Government in Parliament with people we can trust to put action on climate change as their first priority before we can have any hope that the government will do its job to facilitate and support effective action to stop global warming and mitigate its effects. Not only do we need to replace Capt Humbug and his troop of fossil fuel puppets, but the clean-out should also include micro-party members such as mining multi-billionaire Clive Palmer’s one-man fake news bureau Craig Kelly, and Pauline Hanson’s anti-science nut Malcolm Roberts.
If you doubt my interpretation, let the fossil fuel industry puppets and humbuggers tell you in their own words how hard they are working to keep growing their patrons’ greenhouse gas emitting industries in the face of the oncoming climate catastrophe.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he is supportive of Australia’s fossil fuel industry – and particularly coal, which he… says will be around for “decades to come”. “When it comes to the coal industry, it’s worth $35 billion to us every year in exports, and that’s money Australia needs to grow our economy,” Mr Morrison said. “What you need in today’s energy economy is you need to continue to run your coal-fired power stations for as long as you possibly can and that is our policy … we want them to run as long as they possibly can.” Coal-fired power stations will continue to run to back up renewable power sources, although Mr Morrison said gas would play a larger role in the energy mix in years to come. Mr Morrison added that building a new coal-fired power station would be difficult because of the state government planning powers, which would “probably never allow them to do it”. For the video see: The Australian, 14/03/2022, Commentary/coal-will-be-around-for-decades-to-come-scott-morrison/video. See also ‘We will keep mining’, says Australian prime minister Scott Morrison about the future of coal.
If that wasn’t enough, here’s a choice of some of Scotty’s thinking about stopping our slide down the slope to runaway global warming and possible near-term extinction:
We need to turn away from the the road to hothouse hell, and we won’t do this by continuing with the kind of business as usual Scotty from Maketing and his fossil fuel puppets are spruiking!
It seems to 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 WG2 Report that looks at climate change’s global and regional impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities makes it clear we are headed for climate catastrophe if we don’t stop the warming process.
Scott Morrison and his troop of wooden-headed puppets are doing essentially nothing to organize effective action against the warming. In fact all they doing is rearranging the furniture in the burning house to be incinerated along with anything and everyone we may care about.
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. Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Voting System will help you use your preferential votes wisely on behalf of our young one’s future.
Give the children a future worth running towards rather than misery and probable death in the collapsing shambles of global mass extinction along the road to Hothouse Hell
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.
For the first time, researchers have spotted short-term, regional fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) around the globe due to emissions from human activities.
Using a combination of NASA satellites and atmospheric modeling, the scientists performed a first-of-its-kind detection of human CO2 emissions changes. The new study uses data from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) to measure drops in CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 pandemic from space. With daily and monthly data products now available to the public, this opens new possibilities for tracking the collective effects of human activities on CO2 concentrations in near real-time.
The urgency of tackling climate change is even greater for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and other First Nation peoples across the globe. First Nations people will be disproportionately affected and are already experiencing existential threats from climate change.
The unfolding disaster in the Northern Rivers regions of New South Wales is no exception, with Aboriginal communities completely inundated or cut off from essential supplies.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have protected Country for millennia and have survived dramatic climatic shifts. We are intimately connected to Country, and our knowledge and cultural practices hold solutions to the climate crisis….
Castlemaine (Vic.) author Lynne Kelly explains how Aboriginal song lines and similar tools in other primary oral cultures accurately preserve and transmit survival knowledge down through hundreds of generations.
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.
Anyone with even a passing interest in the global environment knows all is not well. But just how bad is the situation? Our new paper shows the outlook for life on Earth is more dire than is generally understood.
The research published today reviews more than 150 studies to produce a stark summary of the state of the natural world. We outline the likely future trends in biodiversity decline, mass extinction, climate disruption and planetary toxification. We clarify the gravity of the human predicament and provide a timely snapshot of the crises that must be addressed now.
The problems, all tied to human consumption and population growth, will almost certainly worsen over coming decades. The damage will be felt for centuries and threatens the survival of all species, including our own.
Featured image: Said to be the longest traffic jam in the world — in China (https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/worlds-worst-traffic-jam-drone-6594560): Source: unknown, but appearing in many places.
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.
Representatives of most nations of the world are now sign-off on the overview of IPCC’s Mitigation of Climate Change report due out April 4.
Current carbon-cutting commitments still put us on a catastrophic path toward 2.7C of warming by 2100. (From the article)
by Amélie Bottollier-Depois, 18/03/2022 in PhysOrg
UN report to lay out options to halt climate crisis: Nearly 200 nations gather on Monday to confront a question that will outlive Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: how do we stop carbon pollution overheating the planet and threatening life as we know it?
The devastating floods in Queensland and New South Wales highlight, yet again, Australia’s failure to plan for natural disasters. As we’re seeing now in heartbreaking detail, everyday Australians bear the enormous cost of this inaction. It’s too soon to say whether the current floods are directly linked to climate change. But we know such disasters are becoming more frequent and severe as the climate heats up. In 2019, Australia ranked last out of 54 nations on its strategy to cope with climate change.
Featured Image: The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2021) projects that ten year extreme weather events will become more common compared to the pre-industrial era. Based on data from Fig. SPM.6 of: Climate Change 2021 / The Physical Science Basis / Working Group I contribution to the WGI Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change / Summary for Policymakers. IPCC.ch SPM-23. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (9 August 2021). Source states: ● Hot temperature extremes over land – 10-year event – Frequency and increase in intensity of extreme temperature event that occurred once in 10 years on average in a climate without human influence; ● Heavy precipitation over land – 10-year event – Frequency and increase in intensity of heavy 1-day precipitation event that occurred once in 10 years on average in a climate without human influence; ● Agricultural & ecological droughts in drying regions – 10-year event – Frequency and increase in intensity of an agricultural and ecological drought event that occurred once in 10 years on average across drying regions in a climate without human influence. / Date: 29/20/2019 / Author: Femkemilene / Licensing: Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 4.0 International.
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.
‘Strategic Intelligence’ app relating to all kinds of transformational issues, esp. Climate Change has been created by World Economic Forum
WE Forum’s Strategic Intelligence maps provide logical maps to the complex tangle of relationships among facts, risks, threats, issues, tools and actions involved in working out how to transform an existing problem area into some kind of a solution. The maps don’t claim to show you how to solve the problem, but at least they give a fair idea of where you need to look for solutions and what they might involve.
Transformation Maps can help you explore and make sense of the connections between different economies, industries and global issues. It is a dynamic way of exploring the transformational forces that relate to a topic, such as Climate Change or Artificial Intelligence, co-curated with leading universities and international organizations.
The featured image shows the major domain of interest in the middle, e.g., Future of the Environment surrounded by a wheel of grouped topics (e.g., relating to Risks) that in turn link to individual issues (e.g., Arctic) that takes you to the Arctic Domain. Note – for each domain the right side of the page explains what the current group topic or Domain is about. Registration for public access gives you a lot for free. There are also paid monthly subscriptions that allow you to use the system as your own tool for tracking complex interactions.
There is one bias in the World Economic Forum’s approach here that may concern some Climate Sentinel News followers. As stated in their video, their aim is to further sustainable development. Arguably, given the state of ecological overshoot we are in, we should be far more concerned to down-size our impacts on our limited planetary resources rather than engage in further development. Nevertheless, other than reminding all to ‘consider the source’ and recognize that it is not the last word, I would not hesitate to recommend it as a useful tool for navigating the complexity of transformation.
The video explains the concept:
WE Forum also provide access to a vast array of current documentation relating to specific areas of interest through their Discover function:
What does this mean for Australian Voters and candidates?
What this WE Forum application shows is how complex and complicated the tasks are that we face in trying to transform the current global climate emergency into a foreseeable future extending beyond near-term mass extinction. In our Climate Sentinel blog posts I think I the evidence presented overwhelmingly documents that our current LNP Government of fossil fuel puppets, fools and knaves will not and could not cope with the complexity of interacting issues that have to be dealt with if the climate emergency is to be solved.
Captain Humbug showing the parliamentary puppet troop what it is all about. ““Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared, it won’t hurt you. It’s coal.” With these words Australia’s Treasurer Scott Morrison taunted the Opposition, attempting to ridicule its commitment to renewable energy.” – The Conversation (15-02-2017)
In the upcoming Federal Election we must take advantage of the possibility to replace this tragic comedy routines of the LNP with sensible intelligent people able and willing to put dealing with the complexities of the climate emergency at the top of their agendas if elected to Parliament. Our government needs to wake up, smell the smoke, and to have any hope of putting out the fire urgently mobilize whatever it takes to fight the emergency both locally and globally rather than working to protect the special interests feeding the fire. Even a child can see that doing anything else is rearranging the furniture as the house (our planet) is burning up.
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 type of candidates Vote Climate One hopes to see elected may actually want to use the WE Forum’s Strategic Intelligence app described here for help in working through the tangle mitigations and partial solutions that will be required to mitigate and put out the fires that are warming the globe. We have designed our Traffic Light Voting System to help you establish your preferences from first to last for the House and Senate candidates in your electorate based on how likely they are to help defeat the climate emergency. With good choices we may soon have at least an Australian government doing what it can to provide a path towards a bright future for our offspring rather than the end.
Our young ones walking an unknown future. Hopefully there will be something there for them to reach.
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.
by Bob Berwyn, 23/02/2022 in Inside Climate News Global Wildfire Activity to Surge in Coming Years: A new U.N. report says communities need to prepare for the growing threat by refocusing on prevention, rather than just reacting to fires as they happen.
