Tipping points Archives - Vote Climate One

Gov’t fiddling while Australia faces global burning

William P. Hall on August 24, 2023

Labor Gov’t slashes vital Antarctic research by $25 M while promoting fossil fuel production/export and gifting $200 million to Aussie sport despite the desperate need to understand how unprecedented Antarctic ice and oceanic conditions relate to the climate crisis.

Anthony Albanese and the federal Labor government are supposedly concerned to keep Australians safe. Yet, if you listen to what they say,

It is necessary to save money by cutting $25 m from Antarctic research into why such a record shattering low amount of sea ice has formed this winter — a phenomenon that seems to place the whole of the human species at risk of near term extinction if we fail to understand and mitigate the risk. See what the science journal Nature says about this: (16 Aug 2923) Australia’s Antarctic budget cuts a ‘terrible blow for science’
It is more important to spend $200 m in voters’ tax dollars on cake and fairy floss (for girls sports) because the Matildas came 4th in the contest for the World Cup (see more below).
It is more important to cater to whims of fossil fuel with subsidies the Australia Institute estimates to be worth $57.1 bn over the forward estimates (see more below).
It is more important to grovel to America and the UK by spending $268bn to $368bn over the next ~30 years ($10 bn per year!) for delivery of 8 nuclear subs able to project our ‘power’ around the world in the by and by (the majority of these costs would also go overseas) when we could build 20 air-independent subs, a huge kit of other defensive weapons & related infrastructure, with $hundreds of billions left over (see more below).

I would call this government malfeasance of the highest order!

NO SINGLE POLITICAL PARTY SHOULD EVER AGAIN BE GIVEN THE MAJORITY POWER TO GOVERN FOR ITS OWN BENEFIT !

A couple of news items and some basic data on our only planet may make the claim of malfeasance more real.

**Incredibly low sea-ice extent around Antarctica**. Since early May (i.e., for more than 3½ months!) there has been an all-time record low for the month of the year since records began in 1979. Sigma (σ) is a measure of the probability of observing a deviation of that amount from the average of all measures for that day, assuming the deviations are randomly distributed. -5σ is about one chance in 3.5 million, -6σ is about one chance in 500 million! – and we have seen these extremes day after day after day!!

News Corp, 2 Aug 2023

Vital research interrupted as Australian Antarctic Division faces budget woes

As many as 56 Antarctic research projects could be cancelled, delayed or restricted, said an email sent from the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) to its staff.

The email stated that the division was facing budget constraints and would need to locate $25 million in savings in order to deliver the planned projects, which include studies into the diminishing sea ice, declining penguin populations, and the “cleaner Antarctica program”, an initiative designed to remedy damage caused by human activity such as oil spills.

Further information from anonymous insiders confirmed that two of Australia’s Antarctic research stations would not be fully staffed during the upcoming summer season, when scientific research at the south pole is usually at its peak.

The announcement comes at a crucial time for scientists, many of whom say this research is more important than ever.

Just last week, it was reported that Antarctic sea ice levels are at a record low, with ice that is normally recovered over the winter being absent – an event that would naturally occur only once every 7.5 million years. [this assumes that the variation is random, but clearly, this record is not random as the deviation has lasted for months, and many other climate indicators are also going crazy at the same time for similarly long periods]

…

“It couldn’t be any more catastrophic to hear at the moment, considering we’re seeing these incredible changes, particularly the sea ice right now. We’re seeing so little sea ice relative to what we normally see this time of year.”

“If there’s a gap in data collection, it’s catastrophic for our understanding. If we have data up to a certain date, and then we have a gap for three years, five years, and then we start the data set again, it doesn’t make it useless. But it makes it really hard for us to get that understanding that we need.” [Especially when we need that information right now!]
Read the complete article….

**Global Sea Surface Temperature at an all time high since records began in 1981 — and still rising compared to previous high records for day of the year.** **ClimateReanalyze**r. Grey lines – Global average SST variation for each year from 1981 to 2021. Dotted line – global average SST, dashed line – 2σ above the average, Red line – global average SST variation for 2022. Note: for legibility, the image only shows temperatures from March 1 to Sept 17.

Sea Ice Thickness: Given that only a thin veneer of sea-ice is left over the Arctic Ocean with 3-4 weeks of melting time left, it seems possible that there may be “blue ocean” at the North Pole this year.

These three CICE charts are a product of the US Naval Research Lab’s GOFS 3.1 Global Ocean Forecasting System. See also Wikipedia: Measurement of sea ice. Other products for both poles provide similar ocean graphics for Sea Surface Salinity (SSS); Sea Surface Height (SSH) – as the ocean warms, it expands so the surfaces of warmer volumes will rise above mean sea-level; and CICE Speed and Drift. They also provide GIF animations of the last 30 days variation for all plots, and daily plots back to 2014. Except for the ice-related products, all of these measures are provided for global oceans and subregions.

Like most Australians, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been inspired by the Matildas’ World Cup performance Photograph: Mark Metcalfe/FIFA/Getty Images / From the article.

Tony Sheppherd, 19 Aug 2023 in The Guardian

Albanese government to pledge $200m for women’s sport after Matildas inspire Australia

In the wake of the Matildas’ World Cup performance, the government will unveil new funding and changes to TV bidding rights for sporting fixtures.

The Albanese government will promise $200m to improve women’s sporting facilities and equipment after the Matildas’ historic Women’s World Cup run sparked an unprecedented outpouring of support for women’s football.

As the Matildas prepare for their third-place playoff against Sweden in Brisbane on Saturday, the government will declare the national team had “changed sport forever”, while unveiling a new funding package and flagging moves to make more major events available on free-to-air television.

…

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, will announce a new grants program, called Play Our Way, with money available for all sports. The government expects soccer will need a significant amount, given clubs have seen a “mind-boggling increase in interest” in the wake of the World Cup.

The grant guidelines have not been completed, but the government said the money would go to “promote equal access, build more suitable facilities, and support grassroots initiatives to get women and girls to engage, stay, and participate in sport throughout their lives”.

[The total budget for the Antarctic Division is around $800 million…; The ANKUS Submarine Project will cost between $268bn to $368bn between now and the mid 2050s – assuming society doesn’t collapse from ‘global boiling’ and precipitate global mass extinction before then.]
Read the complete article….

**Cumulative area burned in Canada by year estimated from satellite detected hotspots since measurements began in 2003.** **Natural Resources Canada**. Black line is 2023. As at 23 Aug 2023 14,664,278 ha had burned (*off the scale of the automatically generated chart*) — 3 x larger area compared to the previous largest burn, 4,524,137, recorded for the whole of 2014. Note also that in previous years very little burning occurred after mid August. In other words 1.47 % of the total land area of Canada has burned so far this year, with no indication that the burning will be stopping any time soon.

**Sea Ice Concentration**: **Where thin ice still exists, most of that is fairly broken up with 30% or more of the surface within the pixel apparently open water.**

**Sea Surface Temperature**: **Warmish sea water, 2-4+ °C comes up to the edge of the thin ice, and even seems to be detected within the edge of the mapped extent (>15% concentration)**

Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere jet streams from ClimateReanalyzer’s Today’s Weather Maps. Normally each hemisphere has two circumferential jet streams: Polar and Sub Tropical. In the Northern Hemisphere the winds are mostly too slow to be considered as jet streams at all (> 60 kts) and essentially completely chaotic. This accounts for the frequent, long-lived, mostly motionless, and extreme heat domes promoting unprecedented flash droughts, wildfires, and floods. In the Southern Hemisphere, the winds are of jetstream strength, but again they seem somewhat confused and chaotic which may be associated with the extreme anomalies in sea ice.

What do these measures signify?

On its own, any one of the unprecedented deviations from ‘normal’ climate behavior over the last 40 years or more shown the the graphics above would be scary/remarkable. The fact that several different global measures are more or less simultaneously show similar degrees of (or even growing!) deviation over several months should be sounding emergency warning sirens around the world.

Reports posted to all Australian parliamentarians last month (available via VoteClimateOne.Org) provide more detail and explanation of these and other climate measures documenting the accelerating crisis: Cover Letter – 5 July 2023 and Australian MPs: Act Now! Later may be too late. These, in turn, link to still more recent data on Climate Sentinel News: Global Climate Change Now and an unedited collection of links to the latest news during August to date — Aug 2023 Climate extremes.

As explained, the nature, extent and duration of the deviations scream out that the complexly dynamical global climate system has been ‘forced’ by increasingly high global average temperatures out the semi-stable glacial-interglacial cycle where it is now beginning to fall (i.e., run away) towards climate apocalypse, collapse and global mass extinction in a much hotter ‘hothouse Earth’ state. The current rate of change in climate indicators is far faster than anything that can be reconstructed for even the worst of them all – the End Permian that also seemed to be driven by runaway warming as a consequence of greenhouse gas emissions. As explained in the documents cited in the previous paragraph, if we cannot mobilize effective action quickly enough to halt and reverse the global warming, our climate system seems to be crossing several tipping points that will drive us ever faster down the road to our extinction in Hothouse Hell. If we continue our present ‘business as usual’ attitudes of supporting the fossil fuel industry and gaslighting emergency actions to manage the climate crisis, and the climate trends seen in the last few months continue at the present pace, society may well collapse before 2050 with probable extinction of our species by 2100.

Note: In the cited documents above I suggested one of the tipping points being crossed was stoppage of Earth’s ‘thermohaline circulation‘ in the North Atlantic. At least I have found solid evidence showing that it is still working — even though hot water is covering the ocean surface — the depressed sea level and actual whirlpools E of Newfoundland and S of Greenland show deeper cool salty water is still being sucked down the usual plug-hole to the bottom of the ocean: last 30 days GIF of Sea Surface Height.

Is doom now inevitable or are there good reasons to think we can still climb out of the hole to a sustainable future? YES! Stainability is possible, but only if we act fast enough and hard enough!

Even if we have the threshold to runaway greenhouse, I remain optimistic enough to think if we act fast and hard enough we can still manage to find a survivable future. My reason is based on historical experience. I’m old enough to remember the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Consider the history that led up to this: It took something on the order of 150 years of work using steampunk technology starting with mining coal with picks and shovels to reach our current crisis point. However in the same 150 years our scientific understanding, technological prowess, and overall knowledge has grown exponentially over that same time with a doubling time of 2-5 years (see Homo habilis to Homo destructor ― How the rise of tool-making apes can destroy the world).

America’s mobilization for WWII shows what humans can do in an emergency situation if they work together. Until Dec 7 1941 when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Americans were isolationist deniers of the reality of Axis aggression (not unlike Trumpist ‘MAGA’). By 8 May 1945 Germany had been expunged and on 6 Aug. 1945 the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (and then Nagasaki a few days later) overwhelmed Japan. In 1941 nuclear fission was a wacky idea proposed by some academics. In 4 years nuclear science was developed, the Manhattan Project was conceived, several different kinds of production infrastructure (Hanford, Oak Ridge Facility, Savanna River (a bit after the War), Los Alamos, etc…) were designed and built, atom bombs were designed, built, tested, and used. In the area of engineering and logistics, an average of 5 highly capable destroyers were built each month for 32 months and an average of 3 Liberty Ships every 2 days between 1941 and 1945. were able to be assembled and launched each week. The United Nations was formed, etc.. Equally prodigious challenges were met in many other areas that completely changed world history. Yes, conscription, coercion, rationing, etc. was required – but the global challenge was met and the common danger vanquished….

Today, we have massively more knowledge and prowess than we did in the early 1940’s. Humans can do remarkable things if people and governments unite and work together to fight the common danger. There is no greater danger than the near term extinction of our entire species and most of the rest of Earth’s biosphere!

In other words, there is no time left for the slow process of electing climate activists to replace sitting puppets in our parliaments.

We need a government fit and able enough to declare the emergency and lead an emergency mobilization to research and manage the climate crisis. If we are to gain effective government coordination and support we have no choice but to change the minds of the parliamentarians we have now.

Measuring Labor’s prioritization of the climate emergency relative to supporting the fossil fuel industry and crazy defence projects

A good measure of our government’s national priorities is the amount of our tax money being allocated to supporting various kinds of activities, and how these amounts change over time.

Australians are paying increasingly high costs due to more frequent, extensive, and severe weather and fire events associated with the accelerating rate of global warming driving climate change. One would think our government would give high priority to understanding what causes the extremes in hopes that we can better prepare for and/or mitigate the ever worsening catastrophes caused by the climate extremes. There are good reasons for thinking that positive feedbacks from ‘polar amplification‘ play a major role in driving the crescendo of climate catastrophes. This winter’s shockingly low rate of sea ice formation around Antarctica that might happen once in 500,000,000 (FIVE HUNDRED MILLION) years through random variation given the observed variations over the last 40 years. (Earth’s land animals emerged from the water less than 500 million years ago.) Clearly the missing winter sea ice is associated with the other similarly improbable climate extremes noted above for this year. Clearly we need to understand scientifically what has caused this year’s anomaly and how it relates to the other extreme variations…….. Yet, because the Government is cutting their funding, the Australian Antarctic “division [is] facing budget constraints and [needs] to locate $25 million in savings in order to deliver the planned projects, which include studies into the diminishing sea ice, …”, etc. Clearly, our government has little interest in supporting Antarctic research critical for understanding climate change.

Some indication of who our Australian state and federal governments are supporting big-time (along with many other countries) is their apparent patrons in the fossil fuel industry (mostly comprised of overseas multinational companies).

Global fossil fuel subsidies reach $5.2 trillion, and $29 billion in Australia

$57.1b: Record Breaking Fossil Fuel Subsidies Following Climate Election

By comparison, it is interesting to see how concerned Federal Labor is to support action to protect citizens from the increasing catastrophic and existential threats from climate climate change driven by global warming.

The Federal Budget: what’s in it for climate

According to the numbers the Climate Council has provided, their steps towards climate action amount to $3,621,600,000 for some very fuzzily defined categories — $3.62 bn compared to $29 – $57 bn (depending on who you follow) in pretty definite subsidies and supports for the mostly overseas fossil fuel industry.

What do they get in return for this money? In FY2022 [1], fossil fuel companies donated $2 million to the ALP, Liberal and National parties. Not a lot, but it helps them with ‘winning the election’ costs. Total revenue from the industry is around $20 bn (still less than the subsidies!)

And then there is government management of the potentially existential cost of the climate emergency versus abject kowtowing to ‘his master’s voice’ via AUKUS

Rex Patrick, ex submariner in Oberon and Collins Class subs, sonar and electronic technologies expert, defence contractor, author for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and Federal Senator from South Australia, is what I would consider to be a qualified expert on naval technology. In one X-tweet Mr Patrick demonstrates just how mindlessly stupid allocating $368 bn to AUKUS would be — even for the purpose of acquiring military kit to defend ourselves from other nations:

Instead of 8 nuclear subs that may (or may not) be delivered for the currently estimated cost sometime by the Americans and UK able to project Australian power (for whose benefit?) to the other side of the planet, the same budget would supply 20 air-independent (= very quiet!) subs to protect Australian interests around our shores and in adjacent waters (e.g., Indonesian Archipelago) and a huge kit of additional defence hardware that could mostly be manufactured within the Australian economy — leaving $200 BILLION FOR MEASURES TO KEEP AUSTRALIANS SAFE FROM CLIMATE CATASTROPHE.

What is it about Australian governments in majority power that makes them so eager to work for the interests of (mostly overseas) special interest patrons rather than for the safety and well-being of Australian citizens who have voted to put them in power? To reiterate:

We need a government fit and able enough to declare the emergency and lead an emergency mobilization to research and manage the climate crisis. If we are to gain effective government coordination and support we have no choice but to change the minds of the parliamentarians we have now.

The only way this will happen is if they can be convinced that voters will remove them from Parliament at the earliest possible opportunity if the don’t. They only way they will be convinced they will be voted out is if enough voters flood their mail boxes, in trays, and phone lines with demands for climate action — or else! And, I’m pretty sure there are enough members of climate and environment action groups that if we all sent our emails, posts, phone calls, and even personal visits to electoral offices to deliver this message, that action will be taken.

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

Global Climate Change Now

William P. Hall on July 16, 2023

25/07/2023 (for the last version see 8/07/2023)

What’s this article about, and why is the date important?

As I write this, the average climate for our WHOLE PLANET is changing so freaking fast we can see visibly measurable changes in the averages from one day to the next!

The sudden speed up of changes in several climate indicators at the same time suggests that we may be crossing a critical tipping point in the complex interactions of important temperature related feedbacks controlling the behavior of Earth’s Climate System, as shown in the Featured Image. The speed-up is highlighted by the fact that the average air temperature 2 meters above the surface of our planet is at an all time record (and especially in the satellite era beginning in 1979). These changes will affect the whole 8,000,000,000+ humans and alive today along with all other life on the planet. The charts and maps presented here graphically illustrate measurements of important climate variables up to the last 1 to 4 days.

**Fig. 1**. ClimateReanalyzer’s Time Series plotting of Earth’s global average temperature at 2 meters above the surface from the NCEP Climate Forecast System (CFS) version 2 (April 2011 – present) and CFS Reanalysis (January 1979 – March 2011). CFS/CFSR is a numerical climate/weather modeling framework that ingests **surface, radiosonde, and satellite observations** to estimate the state of the atmosphere at hourly time resolution onward from 1 January 1979. The horizontal gridcell resolution is 0.5°x0.5° (~ 55km at 45°N). The **time series chart** displays area-weighted means for the selected domain. For example, if *World* is selected, then each daily temperature value on the chart represents the average of all gridcells 90°S–90°N, 0–360°E and accounts for the convergence of longitudes at the poles.

Again, every day since July 3 has been hotter than any maximum temperature recorded for any prior year back to 1979 when these records were compiled.

@EliotJacobson on Twitter shows this data a bit more legibly. The first record high was on 3 July, and daily average temperatures have remained in annual record high regions for a total of 12 ! continuous days through 14 July. The record is now 21 days!

Fig. 2. Progression of global temperatures higher than all time record temperatures back to 1979. ref. Eliot Jacobson.

The time gap between the instants of measurement depicted in the plots and charts and when they were printed are due to time delays between:

automatically recording millions of readings from hundreds of thousands of networked physical sensors and more millions of readings from remote sensors on a plethora of artificial satellites whizzing around our revolving planet several times a day (“Intensity of observation”, below, illustrates just how comprehensive the sensor network is);
accumulating and assembling the recorded data over the world-wide communications network;
proofing, processing and tabulating the received data on the world’s largest supercomputers; reanalyzing and plotting the observations in the form of charts and graphs comprehensible to humans;
publishing and publishing these outputs onto the public web, where they are accessible to anyone with a computer and the knowledge to find and understand the representations.

Based on the most recent measurements, the ongoing climate changes are accelerating in directions and speeds that will inevitably be lethal to the human and many other species within another century, more or less, if the changes are not stopped and reversed. These changes are a direct consequence of an unplanned experiment that humans began around 1½ centuries ago to burn geologically significant quantities of fossil carbon (e.g., coal, oil, ‘natural’ gas) into usable energy and greenhouse gases trapping an ever growing proportion of the total solar energy striking Planet Earth.

However, some of the combustion energy released by burning fossil carbon has also fueled an exponential growth of knowledge and technology able to produce the I am showing here. These plots provide the evidence our experiment is changing our global climate system to a state that will have existentially catastrophic consequences for Earth’s complex forms of life. This Hellish state is known as “Hothouse Earth“.

This fact that we now have the tools to actually see the evidence of our likely doom gives me some hope that our still exponentially improving technology may also provide us with the ability to stop further damage caused by our rogue experiment and repair enough of the damage already caused, to allow our species to continue evolving into the foreseeable future.

This raises the unavoidable and fraught question: Do we humans have the political will and capability to marshal and mobilize our technologies to engineer solutions that will allow us to avoid the abyss? This is the single most important issue facing the world today. If we don’t solve it, no other issue matters because — before long — no one will be left to worry about it.

Problematically, the world’s governments are dominated by puppets of the fossil fuel industry and related interests. They are doing as much as they can to PREVENT, DELAY, or MINIMIZE any actions that might hamper fossil fuel’s greed and short term interests for the world to burn yet more fuel. Hoping that we humans can solve this single, most important issue, VoteClimateOne is working to revolutionize our governments by replacing or changing parliamentary puppets to prioritize actions to solve the climate crisis first. Also, I am writing articles such as this to demonstrate and explain why this revolution is so urgent and necessary.

To demonstrate just how rapidly we are currently moving down the road to doom in what will be Earth’s Hothouse Hell, this article will be updated at least once a week until there is evidence of a downward trend to safer readings. We are certainly not seeing them yet!

4 NORTHERN HEMISPHERE HEAT DOMES AT ONCE
Break temperature records, all over, again and again
The Weather Network
At a global warming of 1.3°C
In 10 years 1.5°C
No intervention -unliveable futurehttps://t.co/VZ9MR6URXg #heatwave #climatechange #globalwarming pic.twitter.com/JJSLuR4oAK
— Peter D Carter (@PCarterClimate) July 25, 2023

Measuring progress towards existential catastrophe on Hothouse Earth

The world’s polar regions are critical. Ice and snow covering land and ocean reflects around 90% of the solar energy striking it. As temperature rises, more of the frozen water melts, allowing the exposed earth and water to absorb a much greater proportion of the solar energy during 24 hour-long polar polar daylight (open ocean absorbs ~94% of the energy striking it) , causing polar and global temperatures to rise in a potentially accelerating feedback cycle. In the animated graphic below, this process is clearly visible since the mid 1930s. This particular cycle won’t be broken until the ice is essentially all melted. By then there are several other feedbacks that will likely be in full swing.

**Fig. 3. Zonal-mean (averaged over longitude) temperature anomalies for each year from 1900 to 2022**. The x-axis is latitude (not scaled by distance), and the y-axis is the temperature anomaly. Data is from Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures (BEST; http://berkeleyearth.org/data/) using a reference period of 1951-1980. (Zachary Labe 2023. Climate Indicators.

Ocean measurements are critical

Because most humans live on continental land masses, immersed in the atmosphere, most climatologists are primarily concerned with what goes on in the atmosphere. However, because water covers some 70% of our planet’s surface and because of water’s physical properties, around 90% of the excess solar energy striking Earth is absorbed in the World Ocean. Heat is then transported around the planet in currents and is available to be released to drive climate. See below for explanations of how the major heat engines driving Earth’s Climate System interact and work.

**Fig. 4. Growing heat content held by our warming Ocean Current to Feb. 2023** (N OAA data)

Because these climate ‘engines’ are complex dynamical systems with many interacting components, where the interactions are often non-linear and sometimes even chaotic (in a mathematical sense their behavior is inherently unpredictable to any statistically define degree. Positive feedbacks in such systems can be potentially destructive because they lead to exponentially growing changes that lead to system breakdown (because infinity is impossible in the real world). Mathematical modeling of the interactions of small sets of variables can provide an appreciation of how such breakdowns may occur. Systems engineering as practiced in large defence engineering projects is based around a MilStd known as Failure Modes Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) to identify such kinds of failure modes in order to engineer system solutions mitigate or totally avoid circumstances where they might arise.

The charts and maps below show how some measures of the behavior of Global Climate System have been behaving over the last few months and days. I consider these to be critical because they are likely to be evolved in the kinds of positive feedbacks that can grow exponentially to cause systems failure or collapse.

A definition

Many of the charts represent values of particular variables averaged over the surface of the whole Earth (or some specified region) at a specified point or interval of time. Most maps use colors to indicate the value of a specified variable at a specified point or averaged over an interval of time. In most such cases these measures are presented in the form of “anomalies”. An anomaly is the difference between the particular measurement and the long-term ‘baseline’ average for that measure on that day or interval of the year. For example, the graph immediately below uses a 30 year average (from 1971-2000) for its baseline average. Anomaly plots are particularly useful to highlight changes taking place over time.

Critical Variables

Global Sea-Surface Temperature

The global sea surface temperature anomaly broke into all-time record for the day of the year around 15 March, and by the end of March it was an all time record high since 1981, 0.1 °C above the previous record set on 6 March 2015. This value is so extreme, that along with other variables noted below it suggests that the average rate of global warming observed over the last few decades may be shifting into a new regime where the rate of ocean-surface warming is skyrocketing. As at 29 June it is still 0.2 °C above the previous record for that date – with an uptick after 4 days of downward trend).

**Fig. 5a.** Time series visualizations of daily mean **Sea Surface Temperature (SST)** up to 23 July. Data from NOAA Optimum Interpolation SST (OISST) version 2.1. OISST is a 0.25°x0.25° gridded dataset that provides estimates of temperature based on a blend of satellite, ship, and buoy observations. The datset spans 1 January 1982 to present with a 1 to 2-day lag from the current day. Data are preliminary for about two weeks until a finalized product is posted by NOAA. This status is identified on the maps by “[preliminary]” appearing in the title, and applies to the time series as well. SST anomalies, which are included in the OISST dataset, are based on 1971–2000 climatology. The **time series chart** displays area-weighted means for the selected domain. For example, if *World 60S-60N* is selected, then each daily SST value on the chart represents the average of all ocean gridcells between 60°S and 60°N across all longitudes, and accounts for the convergence of longitudes at the poles. Hide or display individual time series by clicking the year below the chart; *Hide All* and *Show All* buttons are at the chart lower right. The map can be switched between SST and SST anomaly by clicking the toggle button at the map top-left. A sea ice mask is applied to the SST and anomaly maps for gridcells where ice concentration is >= 50%

**Fig. 5b. Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies**. Significant positive heat anomalies exist in normal sinking zones for cooled salty water.

**Fig. 5c.** Sea Surface Temperatures. ClimateReanalyzer’s SST current SST data can be accessed here.

The North Atlantic’s fever is still has a fever is still growing on 13 July. Warmer than usual water flooding up around southern Greenland right up to the edge of the melting sea-ice, with what looks like cold fresh meltwater flowing out of Baffin Bay along the west side.

Note that the ocean surface temperature is 5 °C right up to the edge of the sea ice, with warmer water than that intruding nearly as far as the ice front in Baffin Bay. The cooler (purple shaded) water flowing down close to the Canadian shoreline has been pushed back into Baffin Bay (between Greenland and Canada. There is no sign in either of the SST maps of ‘cool spots’ which are thought to be the sources of the ‘salty cold water’ forming the deep water branches of the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic. In fact, the ocean in these areas seems to be 10-15 °C. Northern Hemisphere ice extents are low for the date but not yet near record lows, unlike the South!

**Fig. 6a.** Record Sea Surface temperature in North Atlantic for
July 23, only 0.1 °C short of the previous all-time record, set more than a month later last year.

**Fig 6b.** **Sea Surface Temperature distribution in North Atlantic for 23 July 2023.**

Global Sea Ice

Antarctic Sea ice

Around the same time the global average sea-surface temperature began to skyrocket, the rate of sea-ice formation around Antarctica slowed — as would be expected if the surrounding ocean was becoming progressively warmer than has ever before been the case for this time of the year.

**Fig. 7a**. Time series showing he full annual cycle of the melting and freezing of sea ice around Antarctica from Jan 1979 up to 23 July. Seaice.visuals.Earth.

**Fig 7b**. Time series showing daily anomalies in the extent of sea ice around Antarctica from Jan 1979 up to 23 July highlighting the substantial slowing of freezing. Note differences in scale to 5a. **The deviation is 7.12σ**. Dark green shading = 3 sigma, light green = 5 sigma.

Sea ice extent anomaly is strongest in the Weddell and Bellingshausen Sea region. With the Indian Ocean region also showing what looks like the beginning of a strong deviation. The illustration is from the article from the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership that discusses the significance of the anomaly.

Fig. 8. Monthly anomalies in Antarctic sea-ice concentration and sea-surface temperatures for June 2023, showing more negative (i.e., reduced ice freezing) than positive anomalies. Note deep red is -70%, and lack of sea ice in Bellingshausen Sea (west of Antarctic Peninsula). Even though Antarctica is in mid-freeze season, Bellingshausen Sea is almost at summer sea-ice levels. (Source: interactive chart accessed at nilas.org). see also Polar View.

Sea ice extent anomaly is strongest in the Weddell Sea (area above the Antarctic Peninsula) and Bellingshausen Sea region (indicated by the arrow above). With the Indian Ocean region also showing what looks like the beginning of a strong deviation. See especially the article from the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership that discusses the significance of the anomaly.

Fig. 9. Color-coded animation displaying the last 2 weeks of the daily sea ice concentrations. Sea ice concentration is the percent areal coverage of ice within the data element (grid cell) in the Southern Hemisphere. These images use data from the AMSR-E/AMSR2 Unified Level-3 12.5 km product. The different shades of gray over land indicate the land elevation with the lightest gray being the highest elevation.

This graphic from NASA Earth Science’s Current State of Sea Ice Cover shows the slow rate of ice formation around Antarctica. The almost complete absence of ice in the Bellingshausen Sea is remarkable. It is only now in the last few days that it is beginning to ice over. There is also significant open water within the extent of the sea ice.

Arctic Sea Ice

So far, melting of the Arctic sea ice has not been particularly exceptional. With regard to sea-ice at both poles, it is also important to consider thickness and volume. Ice that is only a meter or two thick is accumulated over winter when there is no solar heating (sun largely or completely below the horizon) is normally only a year old. Solid ice reflects most of the solar energy heating it. However, the thinner the ice is, the faster it can melt as it begins to heat under the summer sun and possibly even rain(!), to say nothing of warm currents from the tropics. Around the North Pole, all of the bluish and purple ice shown in the map here can disappear fairly quickly as summer continues to leave open ocean to absorb most of the solar energy striking it that will delay freezing in the following winter.

Arctic sea ice beginning to thin and break up as far as the North Pole. Shades of blue within the ice cap show regions where less than 100 percent of the quadrangle are covered by ice. (Either due to exposed ocean water or puddles of rain/melt-water on top of the ice). In either case this is bad news for reflectivity of the ice cap.

**Fig. 12. Color-coded animation displaying the last 2 weeks from June 25 of the daily sea ice concentrations in the Northern Hemisphere**. These images use data from the AMSR-E/AMSR2 Unified Level-3 12.5 km product. The different shades of gray over land indicate the land elevation with the lightest gray being the highest elevation. From Current State of Sea Ice Cover

Atmosphere and land

Jet streams

**Fig. 13c. Global distribution of jet streams.**

Jet streams are the atmospheric equivalents to major ocean currents that influence all of the other weather systems on the planet to keep them moving latitudinally around the planet. They are driven by temperature differences between the tropical and polar regions of the Earth and Coreolus effects as winds blow towards or away from the poles. Where the temperature differs strongly between poles and equator the jet streams are well organized with high winds. As temperature differences decrease so do the wind speeds, and the streams begin to slowly meander until they may become quite chaotic. Winds less than 60 kt are not considered to be jet streams. At present there has been very little change in the pattern that existed a week and a half ago (as shown in Fig 8b) there are virtually NO jet streams at all in the Northern Hemisphere, and the winds that do exist are completely chaotic — a highly unusual situation. This leaves major heat domes basically motionless, facilitating the buildup and maintenance of record high temperatures.

See: Nature Climate Change, Lenton (2011) Early warning of climate tipping points.

Continental effects

Fig. 14. The taiga biome is found throughout the high northern latitudes, between the tundra and the temperate forest, from about 50°N to 70°N, but with considerable regional variation. (Wikipedia).

Some of the greatest impacts of the disrupted jet stream system are seen over the boreal/taiga forest zones of North America and Eurasia. Arctic tundra and much of the taiga is underlain by carbon rich peat and peaty permafrost soils that are thought to contain at least 2x more carbon than the current amount of carbon in our atmosphere. Depending on circumstances, significant amounts of that carbon can be released in the form of methane, that has more than 80x the greenhouse potential of CO₂ over the first 20 years of emission (20x over 100 years). Aside from greenhouse gases emitted by the burning forests and soils, significant amounts of the black carbon ‘ash’ will settle on Arctic snow and ice – speeding their melting when exposed to sunlight. Collectively, at least over the first few years following wildfire, the burning will provide yet another powerful positive feedback to speed snow and ice melting. Over a longer term, re-vegetation will sequester some atmospheric CO₂, but only if the forest is not burned again.

Fig. 15. By the end of June Canadian wildfires mainly in boreal forests have burned more area before the fire season is half over than in the previous record for a full year in 1989. Phys Org (30 June 2023). As at 24 July 11,582,531 ha have burned. The graph here, sourced from Natural Resources Canada gives the status as at 15 July. This is literally ‘off the chart’, and represents about 1.1% of Canada’s total land area.

Wildfires not only release the carbon contained in burned forests and tundra, but they can also burn the carbon rich peat soils. furthermore, burning off insulating vegetation and surface litter exposes permafrost to melting and release of CO₂ and methane from frozen hydrates.

If the burning releases more greenhouse emissions than can readily be recaptured by re-vegetating forests. These emissions may more than replace any emissions humans cut — providing positive feedback to drive global temperatures still higher. This is one of several crucial tipping points associated with stopping the thermohaline circulation.

Intensity of observation

A hint to how little you can trust claims of reality denying trolls, puppets, and the like, is provided by the number monitoring points that physically monitor the atmosphere at those locations around the surface of the planet we live on used PER DAY.

Atmospheric monitoring

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for the charts plotted on 6 July 2023 as shown below are based on measurements from 92,702 locations. Note 1: this map does not NOT include ocean monitoring points. Note 2: The DATA COLLECTED EVERY DAY by this web of sensors is available to, used, and interpreted by several different national and institutional climate monitoring centers. In other words, the conclusions are cross checked between different centers many times over. The charts above depict scientific facts, not hunches and personal opinions. For more detail on how the accuracy of the observations is controlled see ECMWF’s Monitoring of the observing system.

**Fig. 19. The type and location of 92,702 separate observations used on 6 July 2023 between 3:00 and 9:00 PM for 6 hourly data coverage used by the ECMWF data assimilation system (4DVAR)**. Each plot shows the available data for a family of observations. The current day’s chart can be downloaded here. **SYNOP** refers to encoded information collected and transmitted every 6 hours by more than 7600 manned and unmanned meteorological stations and more than 2500 mobile stations around the world and is used for weather forecasting and climatic statistics. SHIP **METAR** is a format for reporting weather information. A METAR weather report is predominantly used by aircraft pilots, and by meteorologists, who use aggregated METAR information to assist in weather forecasting.

Oceanographic monitoring

Argo

Argo floats profiles physical properties of the surrounding water, minimally ocean temperature, salinity, pressure (i.e., depth). Each float operates on a 10 day cycle, spending most of the cycle ‘resting’ at an intermediate depth. On the 10th day it sinks to a specified depth and begins recording inputs from its sensors as it floats up to the surface. The standard float sinks to a depth of 2 km (2,000 m) and records all the way up to the surface, where it then determines its GPS position to within a few meters and messages a passing relay satellite with its location and profile data before sinking to its resting depth waiting for the next profile position. As shown on the world map here, for June 2023, shows the locations of 3849 profiles received over the month. Of these ~1,400 recorded the profile from 2 km deep in the ocean to the surface. Some floats are designed to sink to the bottom and thus record a profile for the full depth of the ocean. A few include several additional sensors to levels for things like acidity, oxygen, nitrate, light level, and some more I don’t recognize. The Argo system is really quite amazing.

Some even have ice sensors allowing them to operate even in ice-covered waters by warning if they might be fatally damaged by striking ice overhead. For these, if they sense ice, they’ll record the profile in memory, and drop back and rest until the next cycle (which may again prevent surfacing). These interrupted cycles will keep repeating until the float can safely surface — in which case all of the aborted profiles will be messaged to the satellite relay along with the current one (better late than never!)

**Fig. 20. Argo floats operational in June 2023**. For the latest data see Ocean Ops dashboard

And then there is a plethora of other ocean sensor systems. The full gamut of them shown next. The various different types are named in the legend. Collectively, on 26 June 2023, the ocean sensing system measuring in-situ variables includes 7973 ‘platforms’ (including the different kinds of Argo Floats) and results from 104 ‘cruises’ of ships ranging from specialized oceanographic vessels to fishing boats. Some of these non-Argo systems also record partial or complete (i.e., to the bottom) profiles.

Almost all of the data collected from the range of sensors is freely accessible via the public World Wide Web.

**Fig. 21. Location of ocean sensor platforms.**

Satellite remote sensing systems

As if the plethora of physical systems for directly measuring weather and climate is not enough. There is now a cloud of satellite-based remote sensing systems buzzing around our planet, making literally millions of observations every day of critical weather and climate variables. NASA EarthData’s What is remote sensing? gives a high level overview of some of the capabilities of these systems. You can be assured that the measurements made by the earth-based and space-based sensing systems are carefully cross calibrated to ensure the various systems are all working together towards a common view of the actual physical reality.

Major heat engine domains of the Earth System

Dynamic changes in the Universe through time are driven by spontaneous flows and transformations of energy from ‘sources’ at high potential to entropy and ‘sinks’ at lower potentials (e.g., water flowing down a hill). This flux can be used to drive other processes through a system of coupled interactions forming a thermodynamic system or heat engine. As governed by the universal physical Laws of Thermodynamics (especially the Second Law), as long as there is a potential difference between source and sink, the flux of energy between them will continue to spontaneously flow through the system/heat engine as long as long as the system’s net entropy production remains positive.

The ‘Earth System’ includes all the shell-like layered components of the planet from the edge of outer space to its center. The three main ones concerning us here from inside out are the geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. The biosphere formed in the interface between atmosphere and geosphere (on the planetary scale) is a microscopically thin turbulent layer of carbonaceous macromolecules and water combined with other elements and molecules exhibiting the properties of life. We humans form part of that biosphere.

The heat engines described here circulate masses of matter that transport heat energy from place to place within the Earth System.

Geosphere

The geosphere comprises Planet Earth’s, solid (‘rocky’) components. The geosphere’s heat engine is based on the geologically slow process of plate tectonics that drives continental drift.

Fig. 22. Geological heat engine at work. Mantle convection may be the main driver behind plate tectonics. Image via University of Sydney.

The plate tectonics engine is driven by the slow radioactive decay of unstable isotopes of elements such as potassium, uranium and thorium remaining from the formation of Earth some 4.5 billion years ago.

Enough heat has and is being generated by this decay to melt the planet’s core and heat and expand the overlying mantle rocks enough to make them less dense and plastic enough for them to form convection cells like you see in a pan of nearly boiling water. Hotter and less dense rocks float up towards Earth’s harder crust and spread out (carrying surface crust and even lighter continental rocks, i.e., ‘plates’) to become cool enough for gravitational force to pull the solidified plates back towards the molten core in subduction zones that also form oceanic trenches.

Heat transported from radioactive decay is released into the hydrosphere and atmosphere from conduction through the crust + hot springs and geysers; by molten basalt lava coming to the surface in oceanic and terrestrial spreading (‘rift zones’); and volcanoes associated with localized ‘hot spots of rising magma or with the rift zones. Lavas associated with the latter type of volcanoes are formed of lighter, lower melting point rocks forming a scum on top of the denser crustal rocks of the drifting plates.

Hydrosphere

Earth’s hydrosphere is the thin film of water between the geosphere and atmosphere forming the salty Ocean covering around 70% of the planetary surface along with lakes and streams of generally nearly salt-free water serving as feeding tendrils draining water condensed from the land. The hydrosphere also includes a solid component of ice and a gaseous component of vapor. These components have very different properties compared to water and each other.

The liquid component of the hydrospheric heat engine absorbs solar energy in the form of heat warming volumes of water, in the form of latent heat of fusion (i.e., melting of ice) absorbing about 80 cal/gm of ice melted, and latent of vaporization (i.e., turning liquid water into an atmospheric gas) absorbing about 540 cal/gm of water vaporized (6.75 times as much energy as required to melt the gm of ice). The heat absorbed becomes ‘latent’ in that the energy transforms the state from liquid to solid or from liquid to gas without changing the measurable or feel-able (i.e., ‘sensible’) temperature of the mass. When the water vapor condenses or the water freezes, of course the latent energies are released in the form of sensible heat.

Basically, the hydrospheric heat engine is driven by the absorption of excess amounts solar radiation (the source) in equatorial, tropical, and subtropical regions of the planet that is mainly carried by ocean currents towards the polar and sub-polar regions where the an excess of heat energy released from water and freezing ice is carried away from the planet in the form of long-wave infrared radiation to the cold sink of outer space. Many different local, regional, and global ocean currents are involved in moving energy around the planetary sphere. Proportionately, a small amount of geothermal heat energy is absorbed from the geospheric heat engine by water, and larger amounts of heat are exchanged with the atmospheric heat engine(s) in a variety of ways.

Water has some very peculiar properties that play very important roles in the climate system and biospheric systems, especially around the freezing point. Most materials contract and become denser as they cool. This is also true for pure water, down to a temperature of 4 °C when it begins to expand and become less dense until it begins to freeze. Ice at 0°C is even lighter such that it easily floats. This is because water molecules are shaped like boomerangs with the oxygen atom at the apex and the two hydrogen atoms sticking out at angles. When they are warmer they jitter around in a relatively random way, such that warming makes the molecules jitter faster and further, while as they cool the jitter slows and they come closer such that a given number of molecules take up less space. As the jitter slows further at and below 4 °C, molecules tend to spread out some to form a quasi crystalline structure approaching that of ice where they are more or less locked into that structure, where the solid water is significantly lighter than the liquid. The presence of dissolved salts and minerals depresses the freezing temperature. As as ice freezes, crystallization of the water also tends to concentrate and expel dissolved minerals and gases in extra-cold plumes of particularly dense and very cold salty water (i.e., brine) — cold enough that tubes of ice may form from the less salty water around the brine.

Water is also a god solvent, able to carry substantial amounts of gases, (e.g., oxygen, CO₂, methane – CH₄), salts, carbonates, nitrates, sulfates, metal ions, etc). The ocean carries a lot of salt – enough to play an important role in the ocean circulation system. Oxygen and CO₂ play essential roles in living systems, CO₂ and carbonates play important roles in interactions between water, the Geosphere and the atmosphere. CO₂ and methane in the atmosphere, along with water vapor, are the most important greenhouse gases, etc…..

Fig. 23. A summary of the path of the thermohaline circulation. Blue paths represent deep-water currents, while red paths represent surface currents. This map shows the pattern of thermohaline circulation also known as “meridional overturning circulation”. This collection of currents is responsible for the large-scale exchange of water masses in the ocean, including providing oxygen to the deep ocean. The entire circulation pattern takes ~2000 year. Wikipedia

The principal current system driving ocean heat transport is known as the ‘thermohaline circulation‘. Basically, seawater is warmed in the equatorial, tropical and subtropical regions of the world. It also increases in density due to the evaporation of water vapor into the atmosphere. However, parcels of water are kept hot enough that thermal expansion more than compensates for the densification from becoming saltier. However, as currents carry the hot, salty surface water further towards the poles, the water begins to cool until the warm salty water carrying a full load of oxygen becomes dense enough around 4 °C to sink through layers of still warmish but less salty water, carrying a full load of oxygen down to the bottom of the ocean. The salt in this descending water is diluted by mixing with relatively fresh ice water from terrestrial runoffs, melting glacial and sea ice, etc sourced from zones even closer to the poles than where the dense salty water normally sinks.

The main source of power that drives the thermohaline circulation heat engine is the conversion gravitational potential energy in the sinking masses of water as they sink to the ocean floor this sinking helps to pull surface waters into the ‘sinkhole’. Further assists to the circulation are provided by prevailing atmospheric winds pushing surface waters away from continental shores, pulling up cold, deoxygenated, CO₂ and mineral rich deep waters to the surface where they fertilize the blooms of micro-algae that add more oxygen and feed the whole food chains of larger organisms in the oceans.

Atmosphere

Fig. 24. (top) Plan and (bottom) cross-section schematic view representations of the general circulation of the atmosphere. Three main circulations exist between the equator and poles due to solar heating and Earth’s rotation: 1) Hadley cell – Low-latitude air moves toward the equator. Due to solar heating, air near the equator rises vertically and moves poleward in the upper atmosphere. 2) Ferrel cell – A midlatitude mean atmospheric circulation cell. In this cell, the air flows poleward and eastward near the surface and equatorward and westward at higher levels. 3) Polar cell – Air rises, diverges, and travels toward the poles. Once over the poles, the air sinks, forming the polar highs. At the surface, air diverges outward from the polar highs. Surface winds in the polar cell are easterly (polar easterlies). A high pressure band is located at about 30° N/S latitude, leading to dry/hot weather due to descending air motion (subtropical dry zones are indicated in orange in the schematic views). Expanding tropics (indicted by orange arrows) are associated with a poleward shift of the subtropical dry zones. A low pressure band is found at 50°–60° N/S, with rainy and stormy weather in relation to the polar jet stream bands of strong westerly wind in the upper levels of the atmosphere. From Wikipedia Hadley Cell.

The atmosphere includes the gaseous components of Earth’s global heat engine. The transport and transfer of heat energy and the Coriolis effect are the major drivers. The major sources of heat are direct conduction of sensible heat across the atmosphere : ocean/land interface, the conversion of latent heat into sensible heat through the evaporation and condensation of water vapor (mainly from the oceans), and direct solar heating (note: because the atmosphere is largely transparent to most radiation, most solar energy is not captured by the atmosphere itself.)

The diagram here shows how the transport of heat from the Earth’s surface to the top of the atmosphere where it radiates away as infrared to the heat sink of outer space organizes the wind systems into three major cycles. Note that the moisture laden warm air cools as it rises and releases a lot more energy as the water vapor condenses into rain or hail to keep the rising air warmer for longer.

Biosphere

The Biosphere (“Life”) – the totality of the living components of the planetary sphere, generally residing in the interface between the Atmophere and the Geosphere/Hydrosphere, where living things are characterized by their capacity to self-organize, self-regulate, and self-reproduce their properties of life through time.

The biosphere’s “Engine of Life” is predominantly driven by the complexly catalyzed formation of high energy chemical bonds from the capture of solar radiant or activation energy from redox reactions to combine oxygen and carbon to produce high energy carbohydrates (i.e., captured by chlorophyll in photosynthesis) used or ‘burned’ to fuel all kinds of metabolic activities and processes in living things. Living components of the Earth System have and depend for their continued survival and reproduction on their capacity to catalyze all kinds of energy transformations within and between the other Earth Systems. Over time the Engine of Life has profoundly affected the other planetary spheres. A tiny fraction of energy is captured in abyssal depths and deep in the earth through the process of chemosynthesis

Over evolutionary time the emergence and evolution Life has affected major global transformations involving many aspects of Earth’s other subsystems. Evolutionary processes are complexly dynamic and many of them include many potentially powerful positive feedbacks able to drive changes at exponential rates. All life can evolve genetically to live under a wide variety of environmental conditions over multi generational time scales due to natural selection at the genetic level.

A few species and humans in particular, can evolve culturally at intra-generational timescales to drive changes at exponentially explosive rates to the extent that WE are literally threatening all complex life on the planet with global mass extinction – quite possibly within two or three of our own generations!

Interpersonal competition to gain ever more personal power from the burning of globally significant quantities of fossil carbon in less than a century that was accumulated in the geosphere over millions of years by life processes has destabilized Earth’s Climate System. TODAY, we seem to be in the midst of flipping the global climate system from the Glacial-Interglacial Cycle most life has adapted genetically to live under, to the Hothouse Earth regime that very few organisms will be able to survive in without hundreds or thousands of generations or more of genetic adaptation. SEE FEATURED IMAGE!

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

Global Climate Change 8/07/2023

William P. Hall on July 15, 2023

08/07/2023

What’s this article about, and why is the date in the title important?

As I write this, the average climate for our WHOLE PLANET is changing so freaking fast we can see visibly measurable changes in the averages from one day to the next!

The time gap between the instants of measurement depicted in the plots and charts and when they were printed are due to time delays between:

automatically recording millions of readings from hundreds of thousands of networked physical sensors and more millions of readings from remote sensors on a plethora of artificial satellites whizzing around our revolving planet several times a day (“Intensity of observation”, below, illustrates just how comprehensive the sensor network is);
accumulating and assembling the recorded data over the world-wide communications network;
proofing, processing and tabulating the received data on the world’s largest supercomputers; reanalyzing and plotting the observations in the form of charts and graphs comprehensible to humans;
publishing and publishing these outputs onto the public web, where they are accessible to anyone with a computer and the knowledge to find and understand the representations.

Measuring progress towards existential catastrophe on Hothouse Earth

Ocean measurements are critical

**Fig. 2**. Growing heat content held by our warming Ocean Current to Feb. 2023 (N OAA data)

A definition

Critical variables

Global sea-surface temperature

**Fig. 3a.** This chart provides **time series** visualizations of daily mean **Sea Surface Temperature (SST)** up to 4 July from NOAA Optimum Interpolation SST (OISST) version 2.1. OISST is a 0.25°x0.25° gridded dataset that provides estimates of temperature based on a blend of satellite, ship, and buoy observations. The datset spans 1 January 1982 to present with a 1 to 2-day lag from the current day. Data are preliminary for about two weeks until a finalized product is posted by NOAA. This status is identified on the maps by “[preliminary]” appearing in the title, and applies to the time series as well. SST anomalies, which are included in the OISST dataset, are based on 1971–2000 climatology. The **time series chart** displays area-weighted means for the selected domain. For example, if *World 60S-60N* is selected, then each daily SST value on the chart represents the average of all ocean gridcells between 60°S and 60°N across all longitudes, and accounts for the convergence of longitudes at the poles. Hide or display individual time series by clicking the year below the chart; *Hide All* and *Show All* buttons are at the chart lower right. The map can be switched between SST and SST anomaly by clicking the toggle button at the map top-left. A sea ice mask is applied to the SST and anomaly maps for gridcells where ice concentration is >= 50%

**Fig. 3b. Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies**

**Fig. 3c.** Sea Surface Temperatures. ClimateReanalyzer’s SST current SST data can be accessed here.

The North Atlantic still has a fever on 4 July. Warmer than usual water flooding up around southern Greenland right up to the edge of the melting sea-ice, with what looks like cold fresh meltwater flowing out of Baffin Bay along the west side.

Note that the ocean surface temperature is 5 °C right up to the edge of the sea ice, with warmer water than that intruding nearly as far as the ice front in Baffin Bay. Cooler water may be flowing out close to the Canadian shoreline. There is no sign in either of the SST maps of ‘cool spots’ which are thought to be the sources of the ‘salty cold water’ forming the deep water branches of the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic. In fact, the ocean in these areas seems to be 10-15 °C. Northern Hemisphere ice extents are low for the date but not yet near record lows, unlike the South!

**Fig. 4a.** Record Sea Surface temperature in North Atlantic for Jul 4.

**Fig 4b.** Sea Surface Temperature distribution in North Atlantic.

Sea ice

Fig. 6. Monthly anomalies in Antarctic sea-ice concentration for early June 2023, showing more negative than positive anomalies. Note colour bar (deep red is -70%), and lack of sea ice in Bellingshausen Sea (arrowed). Even though Antarctica is in mid-freeze season, Bellingshausen Sea is almost at summer sea-ice levels. (Source: nilas.org). see also Polar View.

Fig. 7. Color-coded animation displaying the last 2 weeks of the daily sea ice concentrations Sea ice concentration is the percent areal coverage of ice within the data element (grid cell) in the Southern Hemisphere. These images use data from the AMSR-E/AMSR2 Unified Level-3 12.5 km product. The different shades of gray over land indicate the land elevation with the lightest gray being the highest elevation.

This graphic from NASA Earth Science’s Current State of Sea Ice Cover shows the slow rate of ice formation around Antarctica. The almost complete absence of ice in the Bellingshausen Sea is remarkable. There is also significant open water within the extent of the sea ice.

Jet streams

**Fig. 10c**. Global distribution of jet streams.

Jet streams are the atmospheric equivalents to major ocean currents that influence all of the other weather systems on the planet to keep them moving latitudinally around the planet. They are driven by temperature differences between the tropical and polar regions of the Earth and Coreolus effects as winds blow towards or away from the poles. Where the temperature differs strongly between poles and equator the jet streams are well organized with high winds. As temperature differences decrease so do the wind speeds, and the streams begin to slowly meander until they may become quite chaotic. Winds less than 60 kt are not considered to be jet streams. At present (as shown in Fig 8b, there are virtually NO jet streams at all in the Northern Hemisphere, and the winds that do exist are completely chaotic — a highly unusual situation. This leaves major heat domes and cold patches basically motionless, facilitating the buildup of record temperatures.

See: Nature Climate Change, Lenton (2011) Early warning of climate tipping points.

Continental effects

Fig. 11. The taiga is found throughout the high northern latitudes, between the tundra and the temperate forest, from about 50°N to 70°N, but with considerable regional variation. (Wikipedia).

Fig. 12. By the end of June Canadian wildfires mainly in boreal forests have burned more area before the fire season is half over than in the previous record for a full year in 1989. Phys Org (30 June 2023). As at 6 July 8.782,952 have burned (Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre).

Intensity of observation

Atmospheric monitoring

**Fig. 13**. This chart maps the type and location of 92,702 separate observations used on 6 July 2023 between 3:00 and 9:00 PM for 6 hourly data coverage used by the ECMWF data assimilation system (4DVAR). Each plot shows the available data for a family of observations. The current day’s chart can be downloaded here. **SYNOP** refers to encoded information collected and transmitted every 6 hours by more than 7600 manned and unmanned meteorological stations and more than 2500 mobile stations around the world and is used for weather forecasting and climatic statistics. SHIP **METAR** is a format for reporting weather information. A METAR weather report is predominantly used by aircraft pilots, and by meteorologists, who use aggregated METAR information to assist in weather forecasting.

Oceanographic monitoring

Argo

**Fig. 14.** For the latest data see Ocean Ops dashboard

Almost all of the data collected from the range of sensors is freely accessible via the public World Wide Web.

Satellite remote sensing systems

Major heat engine domains of the Earth System

Geosphere

The geosphere comprises Planet Earth’s, solid (‘rocky’) components. The geosphere’s heat engine is based on the geologically slow process of plate tectonics that drives continental drift.

Fig. 16. Geological heat engine at work. Mantle convection may be the main driver behind plate tectonics. Image via University of Sydney.

Hydrosphere

Fig. 17. A summary of the path of the thermohaline circulation. Blue paths represent deep-water currents, while red paths represent surface currents. This map shows the pattern of thermohaline circulation also known as “meridional overturning circulation”. This collection of currents is responsible for the large-scale exchange of water masses in the ocean, including providing oxygen to the deep ocean. The entire circulation pattern takes ~2000 year. Wikipedia

Atmosphere

Fig. 18. (top) Plan and (bottom) cross-section schematic view representations of the general circulation of the atmosphere. Three main circulations exist between the equator and poles due to solar heating and Earth’s rotation: 1) Hadley cell – Low-latitude air moves toward the equator. Due to solar heating, air near the equator rises vertically and moves poleward in the upper atmosphere. 2) Ferrel cell – A midlatitude mean atmospheric circulation cell. In this cell, the air flows poleward and eastward near the surface and equatorward and westward at higher levels. 3) Polar cell – Air rises, diverges, and travels toward the poles. Once over the poles, the air sinks, forming the polar highs. At the surface, air diverges outward from the polar highs. Surface winds in the polar cell are easterly (polar easterlies). A high pressure band is located at about 30° N/S latitude, leading to dry/hot weather due to descending air motion (subtropical dry zones are indicated in orange in the schematic views). Expanding tropics (indicted by orange arrows) are associated with a poleward shift of the subtropical dry zones. A low pressure band is found at 50°–60° N/S, with rainy and stormy weather in relation to the polar jet stream bands of strong westerly wind in the upper levels of the atmosphere. From Wikipedia Hadley Cell.

Biosphere

The “Engine of Life” is predominantly driven by the complexly catalyzed formation of high energy chemical bonds from the capture of solar radiant or activation energy from redox reactions to combine oxygen and carbon to produce high energy carbohydrates used or ‘burned’ to fuel all kinds of metabolic activities and processes in living things. Living components of the Earth System have and depend for their continued survival and reproduction on their capacity to catalyze all kinds of energy transformations within and between the other Earth Systems. Over time the Engine of Life has profoundly affected the other planetary spheres.

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

Australian MPs: Act now! Later may be too late!

William P. Hall on June 3, 2023

Human activities are triggering self-reinforcing existential climate risks that are growing more lethal with time — our extinction is likely

Over the last 200 years prodigious amounts of carbon-based fossil fuels (coal, oil, methane) have been burned to produce waste gases (mostly CO₂) and useful energy to drive the Industrial Revolution, our affluence, our toys, our technologies, our wars, and everything that has followed. The fossil carbon humans have extracted from the Earth and burned in an instant of geological time took our planet millions of years to accumulate and store in the geosphere (i.e., rocks & soil). In the same geological instant, the waste gases released from the burning are fundamentally changing Earth’s atmosphere (the air we breathe, etc…). Because of the physical properties of CO₂ molecules and other atmospheric emissions, this has trapped enough additional solar heat in the atmosphere to significantly raise average temperatures around the world. In turn, the added heat is already causing unprecedented climatic disasters. These existential climate risks will only become more frequent and catastrophic as temperatures continue to rise. (See CO2: Past, Present, & Future – one of many dozens of articles covering the same facts, and Climate apocalypse).

However, natural regulatory processes in the climate system have kept the environment stable enough for more than 800,000 years up until the 20th Century – enough time for humans to evolve and develop the social systems, agriculture, technology, and cultural riches we benefit from today.

Image modified from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Atmospheric CO₂ levels (blue line) and temperature (red line) from year 1,000 to 1978. Data for CO₂ from Vostok ice core, Law Dome ice core, and Mauna Loa air samples. Data for temperature from Vostok ice core. CO2 measured here is in parts per million (ppm = by weight), which is similar to ppmv (by volume).

As shown in the graphs above, the shock to the composition of the atmosphere caused by these human generated changes is increasingly disrupting natural climate regulation. If we do not quickly stop and repair the damage we have done to the atmosphere, then over the next few decades increasingly extreme, frequent and extensive climate changes and catastrophes will be causing more death and destruction to our societies than we have the capacity to repair. In turn, this climate collapse will lead to agricultural, economic and social collapse followed by mass die-offs and probable human extinction within a century or two.

Business as usual cannot cope with a global systems breakdown. Nor can uncoordinated individual actions. However, at least for a few more years before systems breakdown has progressed too far, we should still be able to assemble the technology and knowledge to avoid this doom. Beginning with primitive Victorian era steam-punk technologies backed by a very limited scientific understanding of climate and geophysics, humans took over 150 years to burn enough fossil fuel to accidentally cause the present crisis. Today we have now developed a deep and detailed scientific understanding of how the world works and vastly more powerful technologies. With will, leadership, and cooperation at international, national, state, and local areas we should be able to locate, diagnose and repair aspects of the climate system we have broken to re-stabilize it in a state we can live with.

However, to do this we will have to revolutionise many of our governments. We need to change them from their usual businesses of representing and working for the special interests of their donors, patrons and puppet masters (many of them associated with fossil fuel industries), to a new business of truly representing the needs of the citizens they supposedly represent – – especially in the face of the growing climate crisis.

If you are an MP, you need to join this revolution!

The factual scientific evidence of the consequence we face if we fail to stop and reverse global warming is overwhelming. However, I recognize that a life in politics where almost everything can be ‘negotiated’ does not prepare most politicians to understand the difference between responding to non-negotiable facts of physical reality and the business-as-usual of getting elected/re-elected and trading influence.

In the remainder of this work I present some of the overwhelming evidence of the dangers we face from an increasingly destabilised climate system driven by unrestrained global warming, and why our governments must change and act if we are to have any hope of surviving the existential global crisis this is causing. Because this evidence is based on scientific laws developed over some 400 years of testing and practical use, it is totally independent of whatever people might want to ‘believe’ now about how the world works.

Laws of physics, geology, chemistry and biology

The scientific laws of physics and chemistry describe how the universe we live in works, irrespective of anything we humans might want to believe. Because atoms and molecules work the way they do, burning carbon releases ‘greenhouse’ (i.e., heat trapping) gases into the atmosphere. Because the increased concentration of these gases in the atmosphere traps reduces the amount of solar energy leaving our planet, the world is growing warmer.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s (NOAA) Mauna Loa observatory’s records show the longest available continuous series of meticulous(!) measurements of important greenhouse gases. Variation in the two most important gases are shown below. The amount of these gases in the atmosphere increased every year since the recording began (except for methane which showed slight decreases in three out of 5 years beginning in 2000). More importantly, the rate of CO₂ increase has also increased in 5 of the 6 decades in the record (i.e., it’s getting worse even faster now than it was earlier!). These kinds of graphs are based on many discrete observations taken every day for many years at particular locations (in this case Mauna Loa, Hawaii) that are replicated by similar observations from other stable locations around the world (e.g., Cape Grim, Tasmania – see also CSIRO Atmospheric Composition and Chemistry).

NOAA Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases / **Trends in CO₂** **(carbon dioxide) /** **Trends in CH₄** **(methane).** The average amounts of gas are plotted (red dots) on a monthly basis. The average increase in the amounts of gas are plotted yearly. Source gml.noaa.gov.

Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere act as a thermal blanket causing the Earth’s temperature to rise by reducing the amount of solar heat lost to space — same heat in, less heat out: inevitably everything covered by the blanket gets warmer. Just how much warmer is measured by the ‘temperature anomaly‘.

It should be no surprise that dumping millions of years worth of carbon accumulation into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases at an accelerating rate over 200 years or so has significantly affected global temperatures.

Berkeley Earth’s **Global Temperature Report for 2022** – Posted on January 12, 2023 by Robert Rohde.
The global mean temperature in 2022 is estimated to have been 1.24 °C (2.24 °F) above the average temperature from 1850-1900, a period often used as a pre-industrial baseline for global temperature targets. This is ~0.03 °C (~0.05 °F) warmer than in 2021. As a result, 2021 is nominally the fifth warmest year to have been directly observed, though the years 2015, 2017, 2018, 2021, and 2022 all cluster closely together relative to their uncertainty estimates. In particular 2022 and 2015 are essentially tied, and 2022 could just as easily be regarded as the 6^th warmest year. This global mean temperature in 2022 is equivalent to 0.91 °C (1.64 °F) above the 1951-1980 average, which is often used as a reference period for comparing global climate analyses. ***The last eight years stand out as the eight warmest years to have been directly observed.*** (Note: Berkeley Earth’s methodologies and their differences from other groups providing similar global temperature records are described here.)

Around ninety percent of the excess heat Earth absorbs is held in the oceans, and water in its three forms (gas, liquid and ice) is the main transporter for distributing that energy around the planet.

**OCEAN HEAT CONTENT CHANGES SINCE 1955 (NOAA)**
Data source: Observations from various ocean measurement devices, including conductivity-temperature-depth instruments (CTDs), Argo profiling floats, and eXpendable BathyThermographs (XBTs). Credit: NOAA/NCEI World Ocean Database. A more detailed graph including additional measurements from instrumented mooring arrays, and ice-tethered profilers (ITPs) covers the period 1992 – 2022. Credit NASA ECCO . Covering more than 70% of Earth’s surface, our global ocean has a very high heat capacity. It has absorbed 90% of the warming that has occurred in recent decades due to increasing greenhouse gases, and the top few meters of the ocean store as much heat as Earth’s entire atmosphere.
Note: If you want to grasp how many and what kinds of precision measurements – cross-checked across a variety of measurement platforms go into constructing these graphs, I suggest taking the time to go through one of ECCO’s presentations: ECCO: Integrating Ocean and Water.

Water (= H₂O) is a major component in the climate system and the main carrier of energy driving weather and climate change.

Each of water’s three physical states: water vapour (=gas), liquid water, and frozen water (=ice), together with transitions between the three states, all play important roles in the absorption, storage, transport, and release of heat around the planet. In its own right water vapour is also the most important and variable greenhouse gas.

Of all the natural materials forming the outer layers of the Earth, water has the second highest heat capacity of any known chemical compound. A lot of energy needs to be absorbed or released to warm or cool a quantity of water by even one degree — the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 gm water by 1 °C at standard pressure and temperature has its own name, the calorie. (An old unit of measure, but the easiest to follow here.) This same amount of heat is released when the 1 gm cools by 1°. To raise the temperature of 1.3 sextillion litres just by 1° of the world’s oceans takes the absorption of a humongous amount of heat!

Water (Hydrosphere) and Air (Atmosphere)

Water in the world Ocean

At temperatures above 4 °C, water expands as it warms. In other words, a parcel of water composed of a given number of molecules occupying space expands in volume as it warms from 4 °C to boiling. Thus, as the ocean warms, sea levels rise. Water running off the land from melting glaciers and ice sheets causes sea levels to rise further and faster.

Warmer waters lying over cooler waters of the same salt content tend not to mix. However, as warm salt water evaporates, salt is left behind, making the remaining surface water denser, until it becomes heavier than cooler water below, allowing the warm water to sink and mix with the cooler water. This helps to suck in ocean currents to replace parcels of the cooling saltier water as they become denser and sink into the depths.

Thus, ocean currents are important engines for transporting heat around the globe.

Water in the atmosphere

Boiling or evaporating 1 gm of liquid water to gas (i.e., invisible steam) at one atmosphere of pressure takes approximately 540 calories of energy (= ‘heat of vaporisation/evaporation‘)! Similarly, when H₂O gas condenses to form visible steam (i.e., a mist of liquid water) the same energy of vaporisation is released as heat.

When liquid water freezes to form solid ice it releases ~80 calories/gm, while 80 calories of energy needs to be extracted from the surrounding environment to freeze 1 gm of liquid water to ice.

The gas laws discovered in the 1800s through practical experience with the thermodynamics of steam and internal combustion engines govern the relationships between temperature, volume, and pressure of gases. As heat energy warms a parcel of gas at a standard pressure, the absorbed energy causes the gas molecules comprising the parcel to move faster – resulting in increased volume (lowering the density of the parcel compared to surrounding parcels that have not changed in temperature). Or, vice versa increasing pressure will cause the gas parcel to heat up. Similarly, cooling gas will shrink in volume (i.e., become more dense) as its temperature decreases, or warming gas will increase its volume becoming less dense as it is heated. This is why parcels of warm air tend to rise in generally cooler air and vice versa.

Finally, another set of laws describes the solubility of water vapour in Earth’s atmosphere, and the solubility of the various gases forming the atmosphere in water. A parcel carrying the maximum concentration of a dissolved material is said to be ‘saturated’. Normally any excess over the point of saturation is precipitated out of the solution. Where precipitation of water vapour in the atmosphere is concerned, the precipitated water is called dew (if it collects on a surface), mist (if the droplets are small enough to remain floating in the atmosphere), rain (if droplets are large enough to fall to the ground) or snow (if it is cold enough for the precipitation of solid water). Hail is precipitated as liquid droplets that coalesce and freeze on the way to the ground. Basically, the capacity for the atmosphere to carry water as dissolved water vapour and the rate at which the vapour evaporates from the liquid increases substantially with temperature.

Note that the process of evaporation absorbs a lot of energy (i.e., the vapour stores the energy that drove the evaporation as latent heat) which is released as sensible heat when the dissolved vapour condenses and precipitates. Warm air can hold a lot of water vapour while cold air can only hold a little vapour. Thus a warm air mass is often able to suck moisture out of vegetation and soils, but as that mass rises in elevation and cools a temperature may be reached where the air is saturated (this is called the ‘dew point‘) and possibly massive amounts of water are precipitated as rain or snow together with the release of huge amounts of latent heat as sensible heat causing the air mass to rise still higher (e.g., into towering anvil topped cumulonimbus clouds). The rising air is liable to suck in high speed winds and possibly even form small and large hail, cyclones, and tornadoes. The higher the temperature of the air mass is when the dew point is reached, the more precipitation, heat and wind is generated.

As global warming increases baseline and average temperatures around the world, the amount of energy contained in parcels of water vapour increases, and thus increases the total amount of energy available to drive extreme weather events.

Water on the land and in the biosphere

Liquid water is a powerful solvent for all kinds of minerals and flows downhill wherever it can. Flowing water is relatively dense, and therefore an important agent for the transport of solid materials ranging from particles of sand to potentially huge boulders and even buildings. Consequently, standing and flowing waters are the major agents of dissolution, erosion and storm damage: especially when combined with storm-force winds.

All living things on Earth are partially comprised of water, with humans being about 60% water and even trees 50% water. The water in and around living things acts a) as a solvent and as a medium of transport for the dissolved gases required for photosynthesis (where this exists) and respiration; b) as a medium of transport for the ions, molecular nutrients and waste products of cellular metabolism and growth; c) as a structural element in the three-dimensional folding of proteins and other macromolecules; and d) as a structural element in the maintenance of hydraulic rigidity of the shapes of cells and vesicles, and even whole organisms.

Every type of living thing requires the availability of a minimum amount of water of a minimum quality to survive. Conversely, too much water and/or water of the wrong quality (i.e., it may be transporting harmful substances as particles or in solution) or wrong temperature (i.e., the shapes and activities of proteins involved in metabolism unavoidably change with changing temperature) may also kill.

Air in the water

Atmospheric gases (e.g., nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide) are more soluble in cold water than warm water. In other words, cold water can carry a lot more dissolved O₂ and CO₂ than warm water can.

CO₂ is relatively soluble in water because it readily forms carbonic acid. This is important for global warming because the oceans currently absorb about 30% of all global CO₂ emissions, thus slowing the rise of global temperatures due to the greenhouse effect. However, this is bad news for life on Planet Earth for three reasons: First, as the gas is increasingly absorbed into the water some of it turns into carbonic acid. This makes the water more acidic, dissolving calcium from shells and bones – contributing to the die off of plankton, corals, shellfish and bony fish. Secondly, given that CO₂ is the waste product of respiration it slows the respiration of all marine and aquatic organisms. Three, as water temperature rises CO₂ becomes substantially less soluble. This can be catastrophic for global warming because it acts like a time bomb. Rising temperatures drive significant amounts of CO₂ out of solution in the ocean, back into the atmosphere, where it acts as a positive feedback driving global temperatures still higher in a potentially vicious cycle.

O₂’s solubility in water is limited, but dissolved O₂ is critical to life for all complex organisms that respire water. This includes all aquatic or oceanic organisms: many bacteria, most protozoa, single-celled and multicellular algae (net O₂ producers by day, overnight they must extract O₂ at night for respiration) up to whole forests of giant kelp, giant squids, whale-sharks, and the largest whales. In the pre-industrial world O₂ levels in most waters were close to saturation. Any degree of warming beyond what species are adapted to live in reduces the amount of O₂ the water can carry. Species will begin dying when the O₂ levels fall below levels the different species have evolved to tolerate. For example, along the Southern California coast where I grew up, whole forests of giant kelp die off when the ocean temperature rises to around 23 °C. So do the myriad of other species living in those forests that may still be able to respire, because at some to many points in their lifecycles they required something the kelp provided. Other kelp forests around the world, and in Australia are also dying off, e.g., the once rich kelp forests of Tasmania – possibly even more comprehensively than they have in California (e.g., northern Tasmania).

Barka: The forgotten river – The Menindee fish kills

And then there are the horrific die-off events in the rivers and lakes of Australia’s Murray-Darling region, where the combination of blistering heat combined with off-the-charts CO₂ levels is absolutely lethal to whole ecosystems. This year’s event even killed carp that can breathe air!

How will our Atmosphere, Hydro-/Cryo-sphere, Geosphere and Biosphere respond to global warming on the real Planet Earth?

Meteorology, climate science, earth systems science extend the basic laws of physics, chemistry and a little bit of biology into the real world. However, even a brief review of some of the basic laws of physics and chemistry above for water, oxygen, and CO₂ gives some hint of just how complex weather and climate change really are. Earth’s Climate System that generates weather and climate change in the world we live in is a complex dynamical system composed of probably hundreds of variables often interacting with one another in non-linear. Some of these interactions are poorly understood or even unrecognised even by the scientists studying them.

Even though the Earth System is absolutely and fundamentally governed by the physical laws of nature, trying to predict future weather and climate conditions is fraught with difficulties of two kinds. First, complex systems of many variables, where some of the variables have non-linear positive feedback relations with one another, often behave chaotically under some or even many conditions. (See also climate change feedback.) Second, is that some of the variables are probably still unknown to science or not well understood. Even the largest supercomputers in the world capable of performing more than 100 quadrillion calculations per second and working with millions of daily observations from around the world can only make usefully accurate weather predictions out to around 8 days before wandering off into random noise.

For these reasons, predicting the future trends of global warming with a high degree of accuracy and certainty is frankly impossible. However, what is almost certain is that if we do not stop and reverse the process of global warming there will be major disruptions to all of these systems which will make much of the Earth uninhabitable for complex life.

How trustworthy are the sciences and the warnings?

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deals with the uncertainties by running large numbers of similar earth/climate system models (ensembles) with slightly varying inputs on supercomputers to forecast possible future trends and their likelihoods. These outputs are analysed statistically to determine frequent trends and the range of uncertainties around these trends. Thus, many believe that the models give us a relatively good idea of how changes in specific environmental variables are likely to change the climate.

Unfortunately, with regard to managing climate risks, the reality is that this approach is too conservative because:

It filters out some or all of the instances of chaotic extreme deviations from the likely results because these are usually considered to be consequences of “system breakdown” in what is assumed to be a bad model — even though system breaking ‘exponential blow-ups’ are to be expected in complex dynamical systems. In other words, the bad result where the model ‘breaks down’ may well be a realistically valid prediction of the model.
Most scientists agree that the RATE of climate change is increasing with time. However, the delays in knowledge flow between observation of reality and assessment and presentation of results mean that there is a lag built into the IPCC reports. That is, the delays inherent in analysing and writing up the results, delays in conducting peer review and publishing the original research, conceiving and constructing and running the mathematical models based on those results to forecast the future, analysing and writing up the results of the modelling, delays in publishing these results; and then comes the added time cost to incorporate the published results in an IPCC Report. This IPCC process alone takes a minimum of 2-3 additional years of three drafts, two peer reviews, and a final sign-off by the political appointees of the 170 countries comprising the UN’s World Meteorological Organization. Thus, the years-old input data providing a baseline for the models’ predictions necessarily do not include the array of record-breaking temperature, greenhouse gas, and weather readings associated with the increasingly extreme weather events of the last few years.
Finally most IPCC scientists are associated with academic and research institutions funded by governments, where academic progress and promotions depend on not being too novel or controversial (i.e., exhibiting ‘scientific reticence‘). This leads to scientific self-censorship — downplaying alarming findings, reinforced by the need that IPCC Reports require political approvals by government appointees to be published.

The following graphic is the IPCC’s own depiction of their authoring and review process.

The graphic and a comprehensive description of IPCC’s writing and review processes are given in their document, Preparing Reports. In turn, even more detail on how each kind of document is prepared, reviewed and signed off is provided in the IPCC [Documentation] Procedures, according to the the **Principles Governing IPCC Work** that lay down the role, organisation and procedures of the IPCC. *These guiding Principles establish comprehensiveness, objectivity, openness and transparency for all IPCC Work*
.

Note, this and other issues with the IPCC’s predictions are examined 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.

Thus, when the formal IPCC reports publish their predictions for the future consequences: it follows that this is a gold-standard, scientifically correct but somewhat rose-tinted statement of the best possible outcomes we can hope for from the present state of the escalating climate emergency. The actual future is most likely to be worse, or even more worse.

Given all of these factors, it is virtually impossible that the IPCC reports are in any way overstating the magnitude and dangers of the climate crisis. Those who claim the IPCC reports are ‘alarmist’ are seriously misinformed or else aim to be deliberately misleading.

How do we know all of this?

There is a vast array of direct observational evidence from the real world (e.g., the graphs of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and rising global temperatures presented above) showing that our global climate is already deteriorating at historically and even geologically unprecedented rates. A few recent observations sample this kind of evidence.

Identifying, analysing, and managing climate risks

Most climate scientists have backgrounds in mathematics, physics or geology where they are used to working with well behaved regular systems — not complex dynamical systems with potentially chaotic and unknown variables where the models are inherently fallible in their predictions of the future. Although the mathematical theory of chaos emerged from early attempts to model climate, few have any formal grounding in complex systems or chaos theory. Consequently, they tend to believe their models can predict the future with some degree of statistical accuracy, rather than accepting that models are good for explaining what can happen but not what will or won’t happen.

Scientists (including a few climate scientists) who continue to deny that current climate change is mainly due to human activity are often used to dealing with changes over long periods of time, where natural and well understood processes are more or less adequate to explain how climate has changed in the past. Many of today’s deniers formed their opinions years ago (e.g. 1980s) when even climate specialists actively debated the extent and causes of climate change. In people prone to denial, ‘confirmation bias’ then begins to reinforce conclusions, where data fitting their belief is eagerly accepted, but seemingly contradictory data is critically scrutinised and rejected.

Over time, with the overwhelming additional data supporting unnaturally accelerated climate temperatures on land, air and sea, almost all genuine climate scientists have come to conclude that human activities are in fact changing the climate. The holdouts are usually in those other disciplines that have a default assumption that natural processes always explain changes in climate.

And then, there are those who have totally unscientific reasons for denying that humans cause climate change.Following on my career as an evolutionary biologist (PhD Harvard 1973) with strong backgrounds in geology, physics, systems sciences (systems ecology, genetic systems, cybernetics), I was employed for 17 years as a knowledge management systems analyst and designer with what became Tenix and then Tenix Defence through the life-cycle of “Australia’s most successful naval surface combatant project – by far” – the ANZAC ship project. I worked very closely with the company’s engineering systems analysts and risk managers (often the same people did both). The ANZAC Project was so successful because the prime contract was performance-based rather than specifications based. We were contracted to deliver for a fixed price certain capabilities and reliabilities in service rather than meticulously detailed products.

Large defence systems – especially like warships and aircraft with their multitudes of subsystems, assemblies and piece parts, are complex dynamical systems that are inherently but unpredictably fallible due to unanticipated dynamics, human errors, or unpredictable failures of critical parts. It was the job of contract analysts, systems engineers, design engineers and knowledge managers (me), to work out a ship design and construction process that could be trusted to meet the customers’ requirements within the negotiated fixed price.

Failure Modes Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA)

The critical analytical tool in Tenix’s success, apparently unknown to climate science, is application of the Military Standard, Failure Modes Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) within a risk analytical and management framework. Briefly, this involves (1) tabulating all conceivable failures and the potential consequence of the particular failure mode (i.e., its criticality) for every component of the system that might have a detrimental effect on the system’s safety or functionality, (2) preparing at least a matrix for every failure mode showing the approximate likelihood of failure, and (optionally) the likely consequences/costs to the system should the failure occur, and the costs to repair or mitigate the mode.

Applying FMECA to global warming

Should we ignore a risk because its consequences are so severe we fear accepting that it is real?

The following graphic plots an analytical matrix for the risk of human extinction from a failure to stop global warming at a safe global temperature for human survival. A serious analysis of this risk (that is unthinkable to many) demands examining the physical realities associated with each dimension of the matrix and looking for solutions to reduce consequences and likelihood of the risk happening, and to provide the maximum time possible to manage it; or alternatively, to entirely avoid the activities causing the risk. Unfortunately, given that the risk from global warming is associated with the project to power industrial, technological, and population growth by burning fossil fuels that began 150 years ago. Thus we have no choices but to live or die with the consequences arising from this project.

Slides 10 and 76 from Hall (2016). The angst of global warming – our species’ existential risk.

Our planning to manage the risk must consider the third dimension — TIME. How much time do we have to manage the risk if we are to avoid its consequences? The possible consequences of the risk are existential – i.e., extinction of human society as we know it or even the entire species. The probability is likely to be certain if we do not stop and reverse global warming. The timescale is imminent, i.e., within the expected lifespan of today’s children.

Should we heed the science and the warnings?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established by the United Nations to research and provide the “best” scientific advice available to governments of the world regarding the science, trends, and likely progress of climate change. The Panel’s staff is selected and overseen by all the member states of the World Meteorological Organization. The peer review is exhaustive and intensive – probably more so than for any other scientific endeavour ever.

For reasons I have detailed it would be virtually impossible for any formal publication of the IPCC to overstate the dangers represented by climate change. Where the IPCC says that even the current trends will be catastrophic if realised, I would say that they are ‘existential’: A word the IPCC rarely uses and never defines.

Most dictionaries (e.g., see OneLook Dictionary Search) only define the word in terms of ‘existentialism’ – a branch of philosophy. In discussion of the climate crisis, in the framework of global catastrophic risk, “an existential danger threatens the very existence of something” (ref. Macmillan Dictionary).

The Wikipedia article on Global Catastrophic Risk defines “existential” in these terms:

Existential risks are defined as “risks that threaten the destruction of humanity’s long-term potential.” The instantiation of an existential risk (an existential catastrophe) would either cause outright human extinction or irreversibly lock in a drastically inferior state of affairs. Existential risks are a subclass of global catastrophic risks, where the damage is not only global but also terminal and permanent, preventing recovery and thereby affecting both current and all future generations.Note: This discussion of definitions may seem to be highly pedantic. It isn’t. It is deadly serious. Humanity faces a serious risk of triggering a global mass extinction event akin to the End Permian event that was “Earth’s most severe known extinction event,^[11]^[12] with the extinction of 57% of biological families, 83% of genera, 81% of marine species^[13]^[14]^[15] and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species.^[¹⁶^] It is the largest known mass extinction of insects.^[17]” If you are declaring a state of emergency, it does not help to describe the emergency in soothing terms.

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

Climate emergency! The one election issue that matters

William P. Hall on May 18, 2022

Today’s Breakthrough Institute report shows we are tipping climate thresholds like dominoes as we slide down runaway warming’s road to Hell

Featured Image: Cover picture from the emailed announcement received 17/05/2022 of Breakthrough Institute’s new publication “Climate Dominoes“, by David Spratt and Ian Dunlop. This report summarizes the vast array of evidence showing that the climate emergency we currently face is truly existential as we progressively trip over important thresholds increasing the rate of warming as we slide down the road to a global mass extinction event in Earth’s “Hothouse” Hell.

Where the current election is concerned, stopping the warming and managing the associated climate emergency are genuinely the only issues that matter. If we fail to stop the warming we started as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution, there will soon be no humans left to be concerned about anything. Making the economy the most important election issue without putting climate repair as the absolute first priority only ensures there will soon be no economy at all.

[Climate Dominoes] should be read and acted on by governments and their advisors, by the financial communities of the world, and by scientists, engineers, social scientists and philosophers. Precautionary action is needed now to avoid, to the extent possible, further tipping points being triggered.

This is a code red situation. No government is taking it seriously enough. We must urgently seek productive collaboration between sub-national, national, and international bodies to do more to combat climate issues equitably, with determination and speed.
From the Forward by Prof. Sir David King, Fellow of the Royal Society

Good leaders are guided by physical reality, not belief and dogma; and history has proved that science is our best tool for understanding that reality

Climate Dominoes encapsulates the body of Earth and climate science that our would-be Parliamentary leaders and members should consider as Australia progresses through time into evermore threatening climatic future …. A future that will be determined by the laws of physics and biology; irrespective of whatever fables, faith, belief, dogma and a miasma of self-serving humbug, bulldust, misrepresentation, and outright lies made by a bevy of puppet politicians representing super-wealthy vested interests.

Who would you prefer to have in government to represent you in the current climate emergency? — ranting puppets of narcissistic special interests (e.g., fossil fuel multi-billionaires) trying to make you believe in fairy tales about how good life is now and how much better their magic future will be for you while they squeeze the last cent of profit out of killing the world? … Or the alternative: qualified, ethical, independent thinkers and doers from your own community who understand how science works in order to see and understand the actual reality you live in……. Which kind of candidate would you trust to manage the real and growing climate emergency you can see and feel around you seriously look at the reality around you? E.g. increasing heatwaves, raging wildfires, dust storms, windstorms, floods, pandemics, dying reefs and forests, eroding shore lines, etc….

Following is the text of the Climate Dominoes’s overview that describes the main thesis of the work, and its absolute relevance to our upcoming election in Australia and the would-be leaders we are electing. Other than some added emphasis (in italics) and parenthetical comments, I have not changed the text. It is here because I completely agree with it, and so readers will understand that many scientists besides myself also see the same dangers. Superscript numbers refer to references that can be found at the end of the published document.

OVERVIEW: WHEN TIPPING POINTS COLLIDE

As global heating reduces the extent of floating Arctic sea-ice each northern summer, heat-reflecting ice is replaced by heat-absorbing dark ocean water, adding energy to the Arctic system, and driving more melting. This is a “positive feedback”, a self-reinforcing change. Examples abound in the climate system. On Greenland, for example, warming is reducing the height of the ice, and this lower elevation means it will melt more, because the temperature is higher at lower altitudes.

Sixteen years ago, James Hansen warned that: “The problem that we face now is that many [climate] feedbacks that came into play slowly in the past, driven by slowly changing forcings, will come into play rapidly now, at the pace of our human-made forcings, tempered a few decades by the oceans thermal response time.” ” ⁴

Those feedbacks can drive non-linear (or abrupt) change that is difficult to forecast. That happened to Arctic sea-ice in the summer of 2007, when a collapse in the ice extent led one experienced glaciologist to exclaim that it was melting “100 years ahead of schedule”;⁵ actually, the scientific understanding was 100 years behind reality! The same thing is happening in Antarctica now, according to the new observations of the Thwaites Glacier.

A group of eminent scientists point to “biosphere tipping points which can trigger abrupt carbon release back to the atmosphere… permafrost across the Arctic is beginning to irreversibly thaw and release carbon dioxide and methane… the boreal forest in the subarctic is increasingly vulnerable”. [Note: Working directly with the satellite record, I have made an extensive study of rapidly growing frequency, size and ferocity of wildfires in the Siberian Arctic that totally validates this point.] They say that other tipping points could be triggered at low levels of global warming with “a cluster of abrupt shifts between 1.5 °C and 2°C…” ⁶

Positive feedbacks, with or without abrupt change, can drive a system past its tipping point, which is a critical threshold at which small change causes a larger, more critical change to be initiated, taking components of the Earth system from one state to a discreetly different state. In other words, the system has reached a point of fragility such that it will move to a different state due to its own internal dynamics, even if there is no further external forcing (such as additional warming). [Climate Sentinel News has a number of articles on tipping points.]

An overview from Australia’s Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes describes a number of key aspects of tipping points:⁷

The implications of tipping points are not thoroughly quantified in the major IPCC analyses. [See my review of the limitations in the IPCC’s scientific methodology and publishing. Their work almost inevitably understates the magnitude of the climate emergency.]
Some tipping point changes are irreversible on timescales of centuries to millennia.
We do not know exactly how close we are to a tipping point, or even whether we have already passed it. We also do not always know if the changes are reversible, and if so, on what timescales.
There are tipping points that while not yet triggered may already be fully committed to. For example, the warming required for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to permanently melt might have already been reached.
Climate models lack the mechanisms to robustly simulate many tipping points, and the interactions between tipping points that could lead to cascading impacts. Therefore our understanding of the risks is limited.
Since the risk is hard to quantify, global negotiations around climate change have not appropriately taken into account the risks of initiating tipping points, which is essentially a gamble on the future of the Earth’s climate.

Tipping may be irreversible on relevant time frames, such as the span of a few human generations. For example, ice sheets can disintegrate abruptly — and drive up sea levels — much faster than they can gain mass. So whilst sea levels could rise two or three metres this century — and rates as high as five metres per century have been recorded in the past — it could take thousands of years to reset the ice and get sea levels back down.

This is an example of hysteresis, or bifurcation of a system, where it may be more difficult, or impossible, to return to its previous state. Extinctions are an example of the latter. Carbon Brief explains: “In some cases, there is evidence that once the system has jumped to a different state, then if you remove the climate forcing, the climate system doesn’t just jump back to the original state – it stays in its changed state for some considerable time, or possibly even permanently.” ⁸

Major tipping points are interrelated and may cascade,⁹ as illustrated. Interactions between these climate systems could lower the critical temperature thresholds at which each tipping point is passed.¹⁰

For example, Earth is approaching a temperature range above which the photosynthesis rate is projected to decline, affecting the storage of carbon in the terrestrial biosphere (the “land sink”).¹¹ This will accelerate the warming rate, trigger further sea-ice loss, more melting on Greenland and freshwater injection into the North Atlantic, helping to further slow the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), often known as the “Gulf Stream”. This in turn would change rainfall patterns over the Amazon and further weaken its carbon stores and Earth’s land sink. And so it goes on.

Physical interactions among the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, AMOC and the Amazon rainforest tend to destabilise the network of tipping elements. The polar sheets are often the initiators of these cascade events,¹² with evidence that Greenland and West Antarctica have passed their tipping (see following sections).

In 2012, James Hansen warned of scientists’ fear about the Arctic and the cascading of tipping points triggered in the Arctic: “Our greatest concern is that loss of Arctic sea ice creates a grave threat of passing two other tipping points – the potential instability of the Greenland ice sheet and methane hydrates… These latter two tipping points would have consequences that are practically irreversible on time scales of relevance to humanity.” ¹³ [Note: there is even more to the methane story than just methane hydrates as discussed in my presentation on the Siberian wildfires linked above.]

Cascading events may in turn lead to a “Hothouse Earth” scenario, in which climate system feedbacks and their mutual interaction drive the Earth System climate to a “point of no return”, whereby further warming would become self-sustaining (that is, without further human-caused perturbations).¹⁴ This planetary threshold could exist at a temperature rise as low as 2°C, possibly even in the 1.5°C–2°C range.¹⁵

The problem, elaborated in a 2019 paper, “Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against”, is that time is close to running out: “We argue that the intervention time left to prevent tipping could already have shrunk towards zero, whereas the reaction time to achieve net zero emissions is 30 years at best. Hence we might already have lost control of whether tipping happens. A saving grace is that the rate at which damage accumulates from tipping — and hence the risk posed — could still be under our control to some extent” (emphasis added).16

Likewise, former UK Chief Scientist Sir David King warns that: “What global leaders do in the next three to-five years will determine the future of humanity.”17

Tipping point analyst Prof. Tim Lenton says that the evidence from tipping points alone “suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency: both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute… If damaging tipping cascades can occur and a global tipping point cannot be ruled out, then this is an existential threat to civilization”.¹⁸ [As discussed in my IPCC presentation, linked above, few scientists will actually point out what should be emphasized is that they are actually discussing is a threat to the continued existence of the human species — i.e., near term human extinction]

Who is most qualified and likely to lead “productive collaboration between sub-national, national, and international bodies to do more to combat climate issues equitably, with determination and speed”? Our existing COALition Government of spin merchants, clowns, knaves and fools representing special interest, or an alliance government led by Labor kept focused on the climate emergency by Greens and a ‘teal’ flock of genuine community-based independent thinkers and doers forcing the career politicians to stay focused on the job of solving the climate crisis.

Just how extraordinary many of the teals are is documented in earlier articles in this series (click title to open link):

Wentworth Showdown: blue-blood Lib vs teal independent. (2022-04-30)
Hughes: ‘safe’ COALition seat, interesting contest (2022-04-30)
Goldstein: ‘safe’ Lib apparatchik threatened by teal (2022-05-02)
Curtin, WA’s safest Lib seat now ultra-marginal (2022-05-04)
Nicholls: Can a super-safe Nat Party seat turn teal? (2022-05-05)
Kooyong: Testing importance of climate action to voters (2022-05-07)
Hung Parliament: chaos vs independent thinking (2022-05-16)
Elect climate savvy teals to force climate action (2022-05-16)
Teal Independents: birth and spread of the movement (2022-05-17)

Applying your decision to preferential voting on the ballot

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.

Our Climate Sentinel News provides access to factual evidence about the growing climate crisis to support your thinking; and our Traffic Light Voting System gives you easy to use factual evidence about where each candidate in your electorate ranks in relation to their commitment to prioritize action on the climate emergency. This should make it easier to decide your voting preferences before confronting a long ballot paper in the voting booth.

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.

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

In other words, wake up! smell the smoke! see the grimly frightful reality, and fight the fire that is burning up our only planet so we can give our offspring a hopeful future. This is the only issue that matters. Even the IPCC’s hyperconservative Sixth Assessment Report that looks at climate change’s global and regional impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities makes it clear we are headed for an existential 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

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

Help! Australian native ecosystems are collapsing now!

William P. Hall on March 28, 2022

The Apocalyptic horseman of ecosystem collapse is already thundering through Australia’s native ecosystems. His friends aren’t far behind

by Dana M Bergstrom et al., 29/02/2022 in The Conversation

‘Existential threat to our survival’: see the 19 Australian ecosystems already collapsing

In 1992, 1,700 scientists warned that human beings and the natural world were “on a collision course”. Seventeen years later, scientists described planetary boundaries within which humans and other life could have a “safe space to operate”. These are environmental thresholds, such as the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and changes in land use.
Crossing such boundaries was considered a risk that would cause environmental changes so profound, they genuinely posed an existential threat to humanity.
This grave reality is what our major research paper, published today, confronts.
Read the complete article….

This article is sourced from the major research paper by Bergstrom, et al., 25/02/2022 in Global Change Biology, Combating ecosystem collapse from the tropics to the Antarctic

Featured image: 19 Australian ecosystems that are already collapsing.In the featured article, clicking on each of the 19 below the article will give a summary of what comprises the ecosystem, its status and the pressures causing its collapse.

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

Tipping points: How do we know when we are tripping?

William P. Hall on March 28, 2022

The idea of a ‘tipping point’ is more than academic. Once you trip over it you are on a downhill slide towards Hell at the bottom of the hill

Fig. 2 from the research paper by Beringer et al., 22/03/2022 in Global Change Biology – **Bridge to the future: Important lessons from 20 years of ecosystem observations made by the OzFlux network**.
Summary of the significant scientific and technical outcomes from the OzFlux network after two decades: Blue relates to discovery, information and knowledge outcomes; grey outcomes relate to assessments across site, regional and global scales; yellow refers to the capacity building outcomes for researchers and green indicates technical outcomes for observations and modelling.

by Caitlin Moore et al., 25/03/2022 in The Conversation

In 20 years of studying how ecosystems absorb carbon, here’s why we’re worried about a tipping point of collapse

From rainforests to savannas, ecosystems on land absorb almost 30% of the carbon dioxide human activities release into the atmosphere. These ecosystems are critical to stop the planet warming beyond 1.5℃ this century – but climate change may be weakening their capacity to offset global emissions.
This is a key issue that OzFlux, a research network from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, has been investigating for the past 20 years….
The biggest absorbers of atmospheric carbon dioxide in Australia are savannas and temperate forests…. as effects of climate change intensify, ecosystems such as these are at risk of reaching tipping points of collapse.
Read the complete article….

Featured image: Shutterstock from the featured article.

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

Jump onto early tipping signs to maximize remediation chances

William P. Hall on February 12, 2022

Tipping points should be identified early and acted on fast to tackle the climate crisis. Social change needs to be dramatically accelerated.

by Damian Carrington, 11/02/2022 in The Guardian
Identify A-ha moments to trigger fast climate action, say UK scientists: Using ‘tipping points’ can unlock the changes needed on energy, food and plastics, analysis shows

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

Jump onto early tipping signs to maximize remediation chances

William P. Hall on February 12, 2022

Tipping points should be identified early and acted on fast to tackle the climate crisis. Social change needs to be dramatically accelerated.

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:

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….

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.