Has an abrupt methane spike started?

William P. Hall on February 11, 2022

In a new Nature News article scientists consider a dangerously fast rise in atmospheric methane (= methane spike) from natural rather than human sources

The physical observations in this article present us with a very important choice, accept the evidence that continued global warming may trigger a methane spike that represents a truly existentially catastrophic risk to continued human existence, and do whatever is needed to stop and reverse the warming process, or to accept the risk by hiding from reality and continuing with business as usual. My colleagues and I on the Vote Climate One are optimists who think that if we fight the risk we can mitigate its dangers.

By way of providing some background to the Nature News article, methane spikes are potentially dangerous global warming phenomena where some scientists think abrupt processes in polar permafrost and continental shelves may release enough methane to boost global temperatures by several degrees over only a few decades — probably enough to cause global mass extinction in the near term — a real, high, and truly existential risk. Because of methane’s strength as a greenhouse gas, its strikingly non-linear physical responses to small changes ambient temperature and pressure around 0 °C, and its heavy involvement in a number of bio/geochemical processes, attempts to model its behavior mathematically tend to be chaotic. Mathematical simulation is made even more difficult due uncertainties in the total amount of methane potentially in play for a spike event. Thus, the observational record as discussed in the news item, combined with methane’s basic physics and chemistry is our best guide to the potential risks it represents in the evolution of our changing climate. The underlying science of methane’s behavior is solid, and thanks to its importance to the petrochemical industry, we know a lot about how methane behaves. “Natural gas” is the marketing name given to most methane found in Nature. And even in this industry its weird behavior can have catastrophic results.

However, it should also be noted that many scientists who accept that the IPCC’s reports represent the ‘best available’ science are still not convinced that that the ‘methane spike’ scenario is likely. Last month, I explored in a detailed presentation “Some fundamental issues relating to the science underlying climate policy: The IPCC and COP26 couldn’t help but get it wrong“, how the IPCC’s structure and policies cause it to downplay and minimize ‘sensational’ findings. If you are disinclined to accept the view that a global warming triggered methane spike is a genuine danger to humanity’s continued survival, please at least read and think about the sources of the controversy.

Tropical wetlands, such as the Pantanal in Brazil, are a major source of methane emissions.Credit: Carl De Souza/AFP via Getty, via Nature

Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane:

by Jeff Tollefson in Nature, News

As global methane concentrations soar over 1,900 parts per billion, some researchers fear that global warming itself is behind the rapid rise.

Methane concentrations in the atmosphere raced past 1,900 parts per billion last year, nearly triple preindustrial levels, according to data released in January by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Scientists says the grim milestone underscores the importance of a pledge made at last year’s COP26 climate summit to curb emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas at least 28 times as potent as CO2.

The growth of methane emissions slowed around the turn of the millennium, but began a rapid and mysterious uptick around 2007. The spike has caused many researchers to worry that global warming is creating a feedback mechanism that will cause ever more methane to be released, making it even harder to rein in rising temperatures. [my emphasis].

….

Read the complete article in Nature….

Why the evidence from the NOAA (US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) tables presented in the above article is so worrisome is discussed in detail in the 15 minute video by Prof. Eliot Jacobsin (a retired prof. computer science from UC Santa Barbara, Methane growth is accelerating, that includes the following graph shown on Biff Vernon’s Climate Geek Facebook post.

Increasing atmospheric methane concentration
The Graph of Doom.
For a neat explanation from Prof Elliot Jacobson, watch this:
https://youtu.be/HqZKibDw1K8

As explained in the video Jacobson uses the NOAA data to calculate the annual mean growth in atmospheric methane which is the difference between the net increase in methane emitted over a year (total emitted over the year minus amount consumed by environmental sinks) minus the amount remaining in the atmosphere that will have decayed over the course of the year. The NOAA link details how the basic measurements are made.

The following graphic from the Nature News item postulates where the increasing amount of methane is being emitted. The evidence suggests that the substantial majority of the emissions are from organic sources rather than fossil-fuel related resources (the article’s bibliography provides links to the sources for the numbers presented here).

Data sourced from Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

The Nature article is sensational enough, but the actual reality is probably even worse because they have said virtually nothing about the huge reserves of potentially easily released organically produced methane stored in Arctic soils. I explored this risk in June last year in a detailed presentation: “Portents for the Future – 2020 Wildfires on the Siberian Permafrost“. Here I showed how rapidly escalating wildfires may lead to rapid permafrost thawing that causes an abrupt methane spike by releasing massive reserves of methane currently locked away in ice-like frozen hydrates.

To me, this is a loud and clear fire alarm that says that if we have any hopes for an optimistic future, it is time to unite and begin working all-out to fight the fire that is burning down our only house – the global ecosystem that feeds us and provides the oxygen we breathe. Even a 16 year-old child could see the danger and what we need to do.

greta-act-as-if-the-house-was-on-fire

Stark alternatives face the Australian Electorate in our upcoming federal election: accept the fearsome reality and fight the fire for our future … or … believe the con and continue with business as usual

Unfortunately, in Australia and many other areas of the developed world, irrespective of the science, deciding to fight the fire is intensely political. In Australia we are currently governed by a LNP COALition administration whose first priority is protecting and even subsidizing already immensely wealthy special interests in the fossil fuel and other environmentally exploitative industries. In his own words and actions on the front bench of Parliament our current PM made his priorities abundantly clear. Most of his COALition partners are more than willing to support and promote these same special interests.

The puppets show and tell
Captain Humbug (A.K.A. Scotty from Marketing) showing the parliamentary puppet troop what it is all about behind his then PM, ““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.” – Picture from The Conversation (15-02-2017). See also Katherine Murphy in The Guardian on 09/02/2017 for the live video — “Scott Morrison brings coal to question time: what fresh idiocy is this? What a bunch of clowns, hamming it up – while out in the real world an ominous and oppressive heat just won’t let up.”

On 20/12/2019 while on his secret Hawaiian holiday in the midst of Australia’s Black Summer wildfires, he also made it loud and clear that he doesn’t fight fires! As printed in black and white in an official transcript from the PM’s own office commenting on the deaths of two fire fighters, Scotty made it abundantly clear to John Stanley on 2GB Radio that HE doesn’t fight fires… “But I know Australians understand… that, you know, I don’t hold a hose, mate, and I don’t sit in a control room. That’s the brave people who do that are doing that job. But I know that Australians would want me back at this time out of these fatalities. So I’ll happily come back and do that.”

As a marketeer Scotty’s principle occupation along with his fellow LNP puppets has been CONvincing people to believe in whatever his clients want him to sell, which the evidence suggests is currently to protect and support the fossil fuel industry above any other consideration. Following on from Tony Abbott’s earlier denials and diatribes about global warming, Scotty and his puppet mates in the Parliament have with considerable success maintained a fog of humbuggery (i.e., denials, lies, misrepresentations, legislative action, blocking, misdirection) preventing any effective actions towards reaching net zero emissions that are considered detrimental to interests of the fossil fuel industry. Beyond this, they actively promote and subsidize the industry to help its continued growth. Not only does Scotty not hold a hose himself, but he and his puppets have done a bloody good job keeping other people from using hoses.

Clearly, If we are to successfully do anything in Australia to stop the carbon emissions contributing to increasing the risk our own species’ extinction we must first rid ourselves of the LNP Government that has blocked and stifled any real progress against the climate emergency.

Vote Climate One was formed to help Australians elect those candidate in their individual electorates who if elected can be trusted to focus on reality and put action on the climate emergency at the top of their Parliamentary priority lists. Our election information team is focused on contacting every formal candidate in each electorate for a statement on how they intend to address the climate issues and combining this with additional evidence from voting records (for existing and previous MPs), additional evidence from social media statements, press reports, and so on. Following our Traffic Light Voting System voters will have access to a complete list of candidates for their House and Senate electorates with stoplights indicating where we think they stand on the climate issue. Those marked with the green traffic light are those we trust to give priority to the climate issues. Those marked with the red traffic light LNP members and micro parties who clearly prioritize supporting special interests ahead of stopping carbon emissions, and other micro parties and independents who are likely to give their preferences to special interest supporters. The amber lights are used for the Labor Party and others who have not clearly stated that the climate is their first priority, but can at least be trusted to work on climate issues where Labor is in a minority government or in coalition with Greens and green light independents.

If enough people follow this guide, we should be able to elect a new government that will give our children and grand children a foreseeable and hopeful future.

Will you help us give our kids a bright future?
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Capt. Humbug is beseiged — even ignoring what really matters

William P. Hall on February 5, 2022

Global warming threatens human survival. Scotty from Marketing does nothing to help mobilize climate action but everything to stop it….

Katharine Murphy’s list of political liabilities Scotty from Marketing is trying make disappear with blather, smoke and mirrors, and endless humbug is already awesome – even without Blarney Bulldust’s apparently heart-felt honesty as expressed to Brittany Higgins last year when on the back-bench.

And, all of this is before considering how Capt. Humbug has so honestly [not] responded to help Australians deal with/mitigate the accelerating growth of the existential global climate emergency driven by global warming. Humbug’s solution is the make the whole problem invisible in a cloud of smoke and fairy dust so that the COALition’s patrons in the fossil fuel and related industries have not been shut down by the time the electorate fully wakes up to oncoming catastrophic collapse of human civilization on the way to extinction.

As Scott Morrison spoke at the National Press Club on Tuesday, sporadic bursts of fury were audible from a convoy of rightwing grievance outside. Photograph: Bianca de March/AAP

Frustrated, frazzled and under siege – Scott Morrison’s faith in himself takes a hit: The prime minister may be bruised and showing hints of self-pity, but his supporters still believe he can win – and so does he

by Katharine Murphy, 05/02/2022
in The Guardian

Scott Morrison doesn’t have to imagine the things that could cost him government in a few months’ time. Chaos and animus closed in this week.

New South Wales – the division supposed to deliver the Coalition its fourth federal term – made a big show of resisting Morrison’s urgent electoral imperatives, and the brinkmanship of his proxies intent on shoring up their own preselections. Morrison needed tranquility, and the state division of the Liberal party obliged him by roiling.

The bushfire in the Coalition’s base also burned through to Canberra. Protesters opposed to vaccine mandates – Australians who feel economically and culturally dispossessed by the creep of government during pandemic – spilled up the forecourt of Parliament House. There were sovereign citizens, anti-vaxxers, doomsday preppers, Trumpers and enraged owner-drivers, yes; but also grey nomads with packed lunches, Thermos flasks and sunsmart hats. …

…

Morrison on Tuesday was sorry, not sorry – sorry enough to soften the edges of prime ministerial arrogance, but not sorry enough to accept any serious liability. He was sorry he was too optimistic before the summer. He had got people’s hopes up, and Omicron had dashed them. He was sorry he hadn’t sent in the army sooner to correct the infamous vaccine “strollout”.

Read the full story….

Following on from Tony Abbott’s almost religious commitment to denying climate science, Scotty’s marketing backed up by his troop of puppets, buffoons, and knaves in Parliament have been for years almost totally successful in blocking any effective action against the climate emergency. This has been achieved through a rich mix of humbug, denial, lying, misrepresentation, blocking, delaying, and distracting smoke and mirrors.

If our children and grandchildren are to have any hope of surviving into the future, we have to remove the humbug troop from Parliament and replace them with sensible people who can be trusted to put action against the climate emergency at the top of their priority lists if elected. Vote Climate One’s, Traffic Light Voting System is designed to help you rank your preferences to do this, without telling you who you should vote for. With a new Parliament focused on what needs to be done to protect our burning house, we might be able to offer our families a viable future in a still functional biosphere.

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

New green ‘natural hydrogen’ may soon be coming from the ground in South Australia at low cost

William P. Hall on February 4, 2022

‘Natural hydrogen’ is a term for naturally occurring hydrogen sourced from the ground at low cost with zero (or at least minimal) greenhouse gas emissions

There is a ‘goldrush’ by petrochemical companies currently going on in South Australia where they are looking to stake claims on and prove the existence of underground reserves of nearly pure hydrogen gas. The article touts a “Potential to drastically cut costs” of hydrogen production.

Despite the lack of research, Australians – and indeed a number of companies internationally – remain undeterred, likely because of the potential for natural hydrogen to be three to four times cheaper than that produced via electrolysis or gas reforming with carbon capture. Gold Hydrogen estimates it should be able to produce natural hydrogen for less than $2.30 per kg, compared to manufactured hydrogen projects being produced at greater than $6 per kg.

Queensland company Gold Hydrogen has been granted the right to explore approximately 9,500km2 in the southern part of the Yorke Peninsula through to Kangaroo Island in search of natural hydrogen deposits.Gold Hydrogen

Natural hydrogen exploration ‘boom’ snaps up one third of South Australia

by Bella Peacock, 02/02/2022 – in PV Magazine

South Australia has found itself at the heart of a 21st-century gold rush, though this time for naturally occurring hydrogen. Since February 2021, 18 exploration licenses have been granted or applied for in the state by six different companies searching for natural hydrogen

In a rapid escalation from zero activity in February last year, exploration companies are now scrambling to look for what they believe could be the cheapest, easiest way to get their hands on the much hyped “future fuel”: hydrogen.

In the last 12 months, six different companies have either been granted or applied for 18 Petroleum Exploration Licences across the state of South Australia, according to Australian energy consultancy EnergyQuest. Combined, the area under permit equates to around 570,000 square kilometres (km2) or 32% of the entire state, the consultancy has found, referring to the sudden influx as a “boom”.

Natural hydrogen

Until now, natural or native hydrogen has been largely overlooked – despite it being described as “widespread in nature” by natural hydrogen researcher Viacheslav Zgonnik in a 2020 paper. Natural hydrogen deposits form through chemical reactions underground, with Zgonnik saying the molecule has been detected at high concentrations, often as the major gas, in all types of geologic environments.

Read the complete article….

Caveat emptor. This could be good news in that a potential source of low or zero emissions hydrogen for power generation has been found that could replace natural gas. However, I suspect that most or all of the hydrogen will found to be associated with methane rich natural gas. My guess is that this will be used as an excuse by the fossil fuel industry members funding the exploration to produce and burn more natural gas with consequent greenhouse gas emissions going into the atmosphere.

I would watch this very carefully, and would hope that by the time any concrete decisions need to be made regarding real hydrogen production projects that we will have replaced Capt. Humbug’s LNP Coalition Government with trustworthy people able to make sensible decisions where project approvals and he like are concerned.

Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Voting System is designed to help you use our preferential voting system to elect these trustworthy people.

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

Have we reached the point of no return on the road to runaway warming ending in near-term global mass extinction (including humans)?

William P. Hall on February 3, 2022

Part 7 – concluding David Spratt’s guidebook to events along the road to Hothouse Hell: Have we triggered so many tipping points already that we are already at or past the point of no return?

Clearly, we wont know if we have passed the point of no return until it is too late to do anything about it. Spratt’s concluding comments to his guidebook need no embellishment from me. He lists 7 points. Basically I agree with all of him, except that I would state several of them even more strongly than he does:

A tipping cascade will be hard to stop!

Have tipping points already been passed for critical climate systems? (7) Summing up: Faster than forecast, cascades loom

01 February 2022

by David Spratt in Climate Code Red

Seventh in a series.   
Read 1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |  6  |  7

Reflecting on the evidence presented in this tipping point series, a number of conclusions may be drawn:

1. At just 1.2°C of warming, tipping points have been passed for several large Earth systems.  At just 1.2°C of global average warming, tipping points have been passed for several large Earth systems.  These include Arctic sea ice, the Greenland Ice Sheet, The Amundsen Sea glaciers in West Antarctica, the eastern Amazonian rainforest, and the world’s coral systems. The world will warm to 1.5°C by around 2030, with additional warming well beyond 1.5°C in the system after that. Yet even at the current level of warming, these systems will continue to move to qualitatively different states. In most cases, strong positive feedbacks are driving abrupt change. At higher levels of warming, the rate of change will quicken. The meme that “we have eight years to avoid 1.5°C and tipping points” should be deleted from the climate advocacy vocabulary. It is simply wrong.

2. System-level change is happening faster than forecast. In each case surveyed above, abrupt change is happening earlier and/or faster than projected only two decades ago. The 2007 Arctic sea-ice collapse was “100 years ahead of schedule”; in 2014 the tipping point for Amundsen Basin glaciers was one that “none of us thought would pass so quickly”. It was said that the guardrail for coral reefs was warming under 2°C, then 1.5°C; it is now clear that it is under 0.5°C. In 1995, the IPCC projected “little change in the extent of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets… over the next 50-100 years”. The 2001 IPCC report suggested that the Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets would not lose significant mass by 2100. Both have now passed their tipping points. The effect of the permafrost carbon feedback has not been included in the IPCC scenarios, including the 2014 report. And on it goes.

Read the complete article….

Earth on fire
It’s an Emergency!

In this now completed series of posts, Spratt has done an excellent job of summarizing the scientific observations that sound the klaxon fire alarm warning us that our planet is on fire. If we don’t wake up, smell the smoke, and mobilize global action to fight the fire, it will consume us humans along with most other complex life who share the still green(ish) planet with us.

The puppets show and tell
Captain Humbug (a.k.a. Scotty from Marketing) behind his then leader’s back, showing Barney Bulldust and the parliamentary puppet troop what he is promoting. ““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). Note: The fourth man — the holy ghost – later stabbed in the back by Scotty, was also previously a marketeer of the merchant banking type, by and for the special interests.

Following on from Tony Abbott’s almost religious commitment to denying climate science, Scotty’s marketing backed up by his troop of puppets, buffoons, and knaves in Parliament have been for years almost totally successful in blocking any effective action against the climate emergency. This has been achieved through a rich mix of humbug, denial, lying, misrepresentation, blocking, delaying, and distracting smoke and mirrors.

If our children and grandchildren are to have any hope of surviving into the future, we have to remove the humbug troop from Parliament and replace them with sensible people who can be trusted to put action against the climate emergency at the top of their priority lists if elected. Vote Climate Ones, Traffic Light Voting System is designed to help you rank your preferences to do this, without telling you who you should vote for. With a new Parliament focused on what needs to be done to protect our burning house, we might be able to offer our families a viable future in a still functional biosphere.

Will they have a future in the world we leave them? That is up to us. If we get it wrong, it will be too late for them…..
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

For the electricity grid to deliver power with zero emissions our steam punk grid will need to be re-thought and re-engineered

William P. Hall on January 31, 2022

A big step in solving the climate crisis will require the rapid stopping of human GHG emissions. Electrical power generation and distribution via the electricity grid is a big chunk where we already know how to stop emissions.

Achieving zero greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) will probably not be enough on its own to stop and reverse the process of global warming. We have allowed the warming to continue long enough to have triggered positive feedbacks from various natural sources. The rising GHG emissions from these will drive global temperatures ever higher. However, if we can reach zero emissions fast enough, we should be able to slow the rate of global warming for long enough to give some more time to geoenineer enough carbon capture and sequestration and/or solar heat reflection technology to stop and reverse the warming. We already know how to achieve zero emissions for electrical power generation and the electricity grid, so it only needs for us vigorously start the task NOW!

A couple of recent articles explain what is required. I’ll quote the slightly more comprehensive article here from The Conversation. A derivative article in Undark (associated with MIT University) gives a tighter focus on the technology per se.

Integrating solar panels with farming can provide partial shade for plants. Werner Slocum/NREL

by Charles F. Kutscher & Geoffrey Logan, 13/01/2022 in The Conversation

A 21st-century reinvention of the electric grid is crucial for solving the climate change crisis

In the summer of 1988, scientist James Hansen testified to Congress that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels was dangerously warming the planet. Scientific meetings were held, voluminous reports were written, and national pledges were made, but because fossil fuels were comparatively cheap, little concrete action was taken to reduce carbon emissions.

Then, beginning around 2009, first wind turbines and then solar photovoltaic panels decreased enough in cost to become competitive in electricity markets. More installations resulted in more “learning curve” cost reductions – the decrease in cost with every doubling of deployment. Since 2009, the prices of wind and solar power have decreased by an astonishing 72% and 90%, respectively, and they are now the cheapest electricity sources – although some challenges still exist.

Read the complete article….

Australia has the know-how to do all of this. What the country lacks is the political will and regulatory environment to make it happen. At least since the Abbott led LNP COALition government assumed power in 2013 has worked assiduously to subsidize (Australia Institute: In 2020-21, Australian Federal and state governments provided a total of $10.3 billion worth of spending and tax breaks to assist fossil fuel industries.) and protect its already super-wealthy special interest patrons any kind of government or popular infringements on GHG emitting operations and businesses. This support has been backed up by a continual barrage of humbug, denial, fake news, disinformation, legislative blocking, and misdirection. For their brain fogging techniques see: How decades of disinformation about fossil fuels halted U.S. climate policy; Climate Change Disinformation and How to Combat It; The Climate Denial Machine: How the Fossil Fuel Industry Blocks Climate Action; How Big Oil Lost Control of Its Climate Misinformation Machine; Wikipedia: Climate change denial; see also my 2017 presentation “Positive Feedback and the Evolution of Human Culture“. Capt. Humbug (a.k.a. Scotty from marketing), his deputy Blarney Barney (the man with the hat), and their large troop of wooden-headed puppets are still using these techniques very effectively to stifle any progress towards serious action to resolve the climate emergency.

We Australians don’t have to put up with this longer than a few more months. Short of staging a Trumpist style coup to retain government, it is entirely within our power as voters to replace all the puppets with trustworthy people who will put organizing climate action as their top priority if elected to government. Vote Climate One is producing Traffic Light Voting Guides to help you achieve this – but without telling you how to vote. Basically we are setting out to provide information on every candidate in every electorate that you can use to guide your preferences to maximally support maximize preferences for those you think should have the job while being doubly sure than you don’t preference anyone likely to pass their preferences to an electable puppet of the special interests.

With an environmentally friendly Parliament, we can be working on the very serious work of surviving the climate emergency.

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

Insiders is back, (not) grilling leaders on the invisible emergency

William P. Hall on January 30, 2022

Anthony Albanese – Opposition Leader (30/1/2022) Front-running Labor PM candidate Albanese was on the grill today without a word being said about the only issue that really matters for our future – the invisible emergency of our impending extinction

Sometimes I wonder if ABC News is a willing stooge of the fossil fuel industry special interests or if they just don’t care about the biggest but effectively invisible emergency the human species has faced in our recorded history.

Science and the fossil fuel industry (at least Big Oil) have had no doubts about the contribution of greenhouse gas emissions to global warming for at least 40 years. Science has come to understand that uncontrolled global warming represents an existential crisis to the planetary biosphere (including humans). By contrast, the fossil fuel industry (again led by Big Oil) have considered only that public understanding of the crisis represents a real threat to their profits. This must be combated by doing everything they can to deny and discredit the science, and block any actions that might be taken to force a reduction in the burning of their products. Two of many reviews of this history of denial, lies, and sabotage are provided by Inside Climate News and Wikipedia. The WIkipedia article provides a comprehensive list of further references documenting these assertions.

Especially over the last five years, the accelerating growth in the scale of NB4 extreme weather and wildfire events are undeniable signs that the climate emergency is growing ever worse because nothing is being done to mitigate its causes. Much of this failure is a direct consequence of the effectiveness of the fossil fuel special interests’ activities to deny, distract, denigrate, misdirect attention from the stark reality of our still rapidly growing risk of near-term extinction. They have made the emergency effectively invisible.

Today’s Insiders shows how effectively people and even the major news media have been distracted away from giving any attention to the need for managing the real emergency. The first 20 minutes of the program were devoted almost entirely to Covid, Covid, Covid. Without any doubt Covid is a worrisome issue. It is a nasty disease (but by no means the worst). Even if absolutely nothing had been done to stop, mitigate or treat it, it might have killed 5% of humans – which in a few years may seem to be a minor blip compared to diseases like bubonic plague, that killed up to 50% of Europeans in the Middle Ages. However, because we know how to deal with viruses, Australia’s cumulative death rate beginning with the first Covid death is currently just 1.22 deaths per 10,000 people.

The interview with Albanese lasted 18½ minutes with virtually every question/answer tied to Covid in one way or another, with the last 2-3 more focused on how Albanese would work with National Cabinet. Following the interview, the Insider’s Panel waffled around several non-critical issues. The real emergency remained invisible.

Only around 50min 50 seconds into the program was anything remotely related to climate mentioned (and this is despite the fact that summer rains have created a flood emergency so extreme in South Australia that all rail links with NT and across the Nulabor have been cut – probably for a week or more – and trucks are having to drive 3,000 km out of their normal routes to supply the NT. The RAAF has had to be called in to supply central towns like Coober Pedy with basic foods to say nothing of other economic disruptions). In any event, the last two minutes of the panel discussion were devoted to Morrison’s promise (for what that is worth) to spend a billion dollars over the next 9 years on ‘protecting’ the Great Barrier Reef. A couple of panelists did mention that some comments had been made that these promises offered nothing to combat the primary source of danger to the Reef — climate change. However, even these brief notices focused only on Morrison’s promises, and not the danger from the invisible emergency.

My main point here is not to attack Insiders or the ABC specifically, but to point out how incredibly effective fossil fuel’s denial, disinformation and distraction campaign has been to remove consideration and discussion of the only issue that matters where humankind’s future survival on our only planet is considered. The LNP COALition has been supremely effective in transmitting and multiplying fossil fuel’s speaking points to stifle any effective discussion or action on the climate emergency. The reality that the LNP COALition Government puts the desires of their patrons in the fossil fuel industry above and before any genuine concerns for the Australian people is clearly evident in any action or speaking that contacts the favored industries. The end result is that Australia has taken no significant actions to even begin mobilization to combat global warming. They are giving their already super-wealthy FF friends a few more years of profit, at the expense of rapidly reducing the already few years we have to stop and reverse the warming before we pass the point of no return on the road to extinction.

Insiders shows us that it is high time for us Australians to wake up from our humbug induced stupor, smell the smoke, and start putting out the fires that are burning up our house. Because they are effectively smothering us in a thick fog of lies, bulldust and blather that effectively hides all kinds of malfeasances, our first order of business in the election will have to be replacing wooden headed puppets of the fossil fuel and other special interests with respectable people who have committed to prioritize action on the climate emergency. We can help you do this with our Traffic Light Voting System.

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

Abrupt Arctic changes warn that we are slipping faster towards the precipice on the road where we cannot avoid the Hothouse Hell and extinction

William P. Hall on January 28, 2022

Part 3 of David Spratt’s guidebook to events along the road to Hothouse Hell: Collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Continuing from David Spratt’s look in Part 2 of his guidebook at evidence that the West Australian Ice Sheet is beginning to collapse; here, in Part 3 he turns his attention north, to signs that Greenland’s Ice Sheet is also beginning to collapse. As before, we are looking at the impacts of a probable sequence of events along the global warming road to Earth’s Hothouse Hell. These are leading us to what Steffen et al. described as the Earth System’s Hothouse (see the featured graphic above) in their 2018 Proceedings of the National Academies of Science paper, Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene. The potentially cascading impacts of these events were also summarized in Lenton et al’s 2019 comment paper in Nature, Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against. An additional danger is that these may also cascade rapidly to cause a large change abruptly. The bottom line is that if we cannot stop the warming and backtrack to a lower temperature world, we cannot avoid the Hothouse and the road will end in the mass extinction of most species of complex life on our only planet, including ourselves.

There is no evidence that anything other than a rapidly mobilized war effort by humans will stop the cascade passing the point of no return to runaway warming and global mass extinction. If we want to leave any kind of future to our children and grandchildren, we had better pay heed to the warning signs that Spratt is pointing out, and start mobilizing and acting NOW!

Broken-up Arctic ice

24 January 2022

Have tipping points already been passed for critical climate systems? (3) Greenland and the Arctic: Abrupt change

by David Spratt in Climate Code Red

Third in a series.
Read 1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |  6  |  7

“The Arctic is screaming”, says Mark Serreze, Arctic climate expert at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Arctic warming is racing ahead of the worst-case estimates, now heating four times faster than the global average, and the region is undergoing abrupt climate change, understood as a transition of the climate system into a different mode on a time scale that is faster than the responsible forcing. In other words, it has passed a tipping point for rapid, system-level change. 

Researchers say that the Arctic “is currently experiencing an abrupt climate change event …  climate models underestimate the abruptness of the recent changes observed in the Arctic (and) climate models underestimate this ongoing warming”. [Models do not account well for warming due to sea-ice loss, but losing the reflective power of Arctic sea ice in the summer months would advance the 2ºC threshold by 25 years”.]

Read the complete article…..

If we do nothing to stop the inexorable warming process we started with the proliferating carbon burning used to fuel the Industrial Revolution and our continuing competition to control the world the Climate System will complete its flip into Earth’s Hothouse Hell state. It will be very unlikely that we can avoid the hothouse and extinction along with the rest of the biosphere that supports our lives.

From the time the Abbott Government was elected in 2013 the LNP COALition Governments (currently under Capt. Humbug, (a.k.a. Scotty from Marketing) and his henchman Blarny Bulldust (The Man with the Hat) have worked hard to protect and and advance the interests of their patrons with special interests in the fossil fuel and related resource exploitation industries. Thus, for nearly a decade, The COALition’s humbug, denial, parliamentary blocking, disinformation, distraction and stupidity has successfully disrupted virtually every attempt to act against greenhouse gas emissions or even to slow the continued expansion of these lethal industries. Every year the COALition has been in power we are that much closer to the point of no return where our extinction is the only plausible outcome.

So what can Australians do to begin improving our odds to avoid the Hothouse Hell? One very obvious action is to replace the COALition government with people we can trust to put action on the climate emergency at the top of their goals in office and who have the capacity to organize and lead Australia’s mobilization of a global effort to stop and reverse global warming.

Our Traffic Light Voting System explains how we can help you do this without telling you how to vote.

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

Another step down the road to Earth’s Hothouse Hell and extinction

William P. Hall on January 27, 2022

Part 2 of David Spratt’s guide-book to events along the road to Hothouse Hell: collapse of the West-Antarctic Ice Sheet

This post continues David Spratt’s account of how we humans seem to be passing critical tipping points in the dynamics of Earth’s Climate System initiating the positive feedbacks of runaway global warming to Earth’s Hothouse Hell. Steffen et al. described the dynamics and existential consequences of this process in their 2018 Proceedings of the National Academies of Science paper, Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene. The feature graphic above from that paper maps out alternative destinations we can reach from where we are now. There are two roads,

  • a wide easy one leading to the cliff of no return, where we can no longer stop Earth’s runaway warming to global average temperatures 10 – 15 °C hotter than present that will be lethal to most species of complex organisms, and
  • an already hard to reach path where we climb back up the hill through effective “stewardship” (Steffen et al’s word), and reverse the warming process to stabilize the climate system in a way that will give humans and what remains of a probably already tattered biosphere a long term future.

Thanks to the technologies we began developing in the Industrial Revolution we have fueled our endless competition with one-another to control our one world with the increasingly profligate burning of fossil carbon to increase greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Rising temperatures are then initiating a variety of other temperature-related positive-feedback processes emitting more greenhouse gases or having other effects to increase the rate of temperate rise that has started us down the road to Earth’s Hothouse Hell.

When the positive feedback reaches a point where it can sustain further temperature increases, it can be said that it has passed a tipping point, that may begin a rapid cascade of further tipping points as described in Lenton et al’s 2019 comment paper in Nature, Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against. There is no evidence that anything other than a rapidly mobilized war effort by humans will be able to stop the cascade passing the point of no return to runaway warming and global mass extinction. If we want to leave a future to our children and grandchildren, we had better pay heed to the warning signs that Spratt is pointing out, and start mobilizing and acting now.

Where Thwaits Glacier meets the Antarctic Ocean

20 January 2022

Have tipping points already been passed for critical climate systems? (2) West Antarctica and the “doomsday” glacier

by David Spratt in Climate Code Red

Second in a series.    Read  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5

The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica has an eastern ice shelf 45 kilometres wide as it flows into the Amundsen Sea. On 13 December 2021, scientists announced that the ice shelf is likely to break apart in the next five years or so, resulting in a speeding up of the glacier’s flow and ice discharge, possibly heralding the collapse of the glacier itself, and triggering similar increases across the Amundsen Sea glaciers.

The researchers explain: “Over the last several years, satellite radar imagery shows many new fractures opening up… which like a growing crack in the windshield of a car [can] suddenly break apart into hundreds of panes of glass. We have mapped [the] pathway the fractures might take through the ice [and conclude] the final collapse of Thwaites Glacier’s last remaining ice shelf may be initiated … within as little as five years” (emphasis added).

… 

The fracturing of the ice shelf means more warm water will penetrate under the ice sheet, helping to free the underbelly of the glacier from the grounding line rock underneath, and allowing water to flow into the deep basin under the glacier, causing the glacier’s collapse. This would raise sea levels by 65 centimetres, though the timing of such collapse — the “doomsday” scenario — is highly uncertain. Since neighbouring glaciers flow into the same basin, the demise of Thwaites could eventually lead to the loss of all of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), resulting in more than three metres of sea level rise, and putting at risk the lives and livelihoods of 250 million people.

Read the complete article…

There is no doubt that observable and understandable evidence from the real world that Spratt, I and others point out is telling us that we are on the road to Earth’s Hothouse Hell and the current climate emergency is already dire and getting worse. In the face of this truly existential crisis, Australia is governed by Captain Humbug’s LNP COALition. Based on watching and listening to them in action, they are a troop of wooden-headed puppets, charlatans, knaves and pathological liars.

Their COALition’s focus in Parliament seems to be protecting the special interests of their patrons in the greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuel industries and related exploiters of Australia’s resources. Beginning with the holier than thou Abbott and currently led by Capt. Humbug (Scotty from marketing) and Blarney Bulldust (the man with the hat), as long as the COALition has been in government, their constant flow of humbug, legislative blocking, denial, disinformation, disruption, distraction etc., has effectively protected their patrons by stifling the mobilization of any real action on the climate emergency (e.g.., stopping GHG emissions cold).

Vote Climate One understands and accepts the real world evidence that humanity faces a genuinely existential crisis: we’ll soon become extinct if we do not stop and reverse global warming. Our group was formed with the single goal – to create some hope for the future by helping the Australian people remove Capt. Humbug and his nasty and evil troop from our Federal Parliament by replacing the puppets and knaves with honest parties and individuals who have convinced us that they can be trusted to place acting on climate change as their first order of business in Parliament.

Our Traffic Light Voting System explains how we can help you do this without telling you how to vote.

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