The Climate Crisis – A Race We Can Win

[Mansoor Alsawad]

https://youtu.be/PJbzs5Bo8D4

Climate change is the defining crisis of our time and it is happening even more quickly than we feared. But we are far from powerless in the face of this global threat. 

The climate emergency is a race we are losing, but it is a race we can win.

No corner of the globe is immune from the devastating consequences of climate change. Rising temperatures are fueling environmental degradation, natural disasters, weather extremes, food and water insecurity, economic disruption, conflict, and terrorism. Sea levels are rising, the Arctic is melting, coral reefs are dying, oceans are acidifying, and forests are burning. It is clear that business as usual is not good enough. As the infinite cost of climate change reaches irreversible highs, now is the time for bold collective action.

Disasters linked to climate and weather extremes have always been part of our Earth’s system. But they are becoming more frequent and intense as the world warms. No continent is left untouched, with heatwaves, droughts, typhoons, and hurricanes causing mass destruction around the world. 90 per cent of disasters are now classed as weather- and climate-related, costing the world economy 520 billion USD each year, while 26 million people are pushed into poverty as a result.

Billions of tons of CO2 are released into the atmosphere every year as a result of coal, oil, and gas production. Human activity is producing greenhouse gas emissions at a record high, with no signs of slowing down. According to a ten-year summary of UNEP Emission Gap reports, we are on track to maintain a “business as usual” trajectory.

The last four years were the four hottest on record. According to a September 2019 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report, we are at least one degree Celsius above preindustrial levels and close to what scientists warn would be “an unacceptable risk”. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change calls for holding eventual warming “well below” two degrees Celsius, and for the pursuit of efforts to limit the increase even further, to 1.5 degrees. But if we don’t slow global emissions, temperatures could rise to above three degrees Celsius by 2100, causing further irreversible damage to our ecosystems.

Glaciers and ice sheets in polar and mountain regions are already melting faster than ever, causing sea levels to rise. Almost two-thirds of the world’s cities with populations of over five million are located in areas at risk of sea level rise and almost 40 per cent of the world’s population live within 100 km of a coast. If no action is taken, entire districts of New York, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi, Osaka, Rio de Janeiro, and many other cities could find themselves underwater within our lifetimes, displacing millions of people.

While science tells us that climate change is irrefutable, it also tells us that it is not too late to stem the tide. This will require fundamental transformations in all aspects of society — how we grow food, use land, transport goods, and power our economies.

While technology has contributed to climate change, new and efficient technologies can help us reduce net emissions and create a cleaner world. Readily-available technological solutions already exist for more than 70 per cent of today’s emissions. In many places renewable energy is now the cheapest energy source and electric cars are poised to become mainstream.

In the meantime, nature-based solutions provide ‘breathing room’ while we tackle the decarbonization of our economy. These solutions allow us to mitigate a portion of our carbon footprint while also supporting vital ecosystem services, biodiversity, access to fresh water, improved livelihoods, healthy diets, and food security. Nature-based solutions include improved agricultural practices, land restoration, conservation, and the greening of food supply chains.

Scalable new technologies and nature-based solutions will enable us all to leapfrog to a cleaner, more resilient world. If governments, businesses, civil society, youth, and academia work together, we can create a green future where suffering is diminished, justice is upheld, and harmony is restored between people and planet.

 

 

[JAZZOVER]

Climate change is the defining crisis of our time and it is happening even more quickly than we feared. But we are far from powerless in the face of this global threat. As Secretary-General António Guterres pointed out in September, “the climate emergency is a race we are losing, but it is a race we can win”.

No corner of the globe is immune from the devastating consequences of climate change. Rising temperatures are fueling environmental degradation, natural disasters, weather extremes, food and water insecurity, economic disruption, conflict, and terrorism. Sea levels are rising, the Arctic is melting, coral reefs are dying, oceans are acidifying, and forests are burning. It is clear that business as usual is not good enough. As the infinite cost of climate change reaches irreversible highs, now is the time for bold collective action.

[Typhoon Tip]

Perhaps ... but it's a grim prospect. The world is in the early phases of acceptance of this as an actual crisis. It will take too much time to do that ( unfortunately...). At some inevitable point in the [probably ] not too far off future, evidences of CC will have become the louder voice in the chorus of perceived travails ..etc. Expectations are going to be rudely usurped, when the enabling faux safety of the Industrial bubble begins to resonate with real imby-discomforts and (haha) the "inconvenience of truth" - whether it is unilaterally understood/accepted or not.    ( probably not ..which is why forced adjustment over the next 100 years will likely lend to scaled warfares ).

Reminds me in a lot of ways of the Neil DeGrasse Tyson quote, "The beautiful thing about science is it is true whether you believe it or not"  The Industrial bubble, created ultimately by scientific methods, enables denying the conclusions of science - now that's an interesting point-blank implication of the catch-22 and the Fermian explanation.  A reality that may one day be exposed when Gary Larson's humor becomes our metaphor.  His depiction was of two tattered-clad desert wanderers. They happen upon a last gasp chance of life-giving oasis, and instead of saving themselves ... the one brink-of-death turns his head to the other so to gripe, "What? No cups!" 

We are egregious as a species while celebrating our conceits ( but I certainly wouldn't want to live my life out as a lab-rat).

The options for Humanity are twice:

A lot of perceived hardships will permeate the pan-dimensional reality of the Global future.  Stress factors will reach criticality, breaching duress thresholds ( list of consequences? pick a dystopian novel; it is probably outlined).  Like a slower moving apocalypse,  environmental break-downs inopportunely add 'or-else' actionable factors with the remorseless timing of lobbing on-fire tennis balls at a one-armed juggler.  Pandemics, to failures of macro-agriculture, to perhaps even f'ing up the oceanic phytoplankton C02- O2 cycle ( that accounts for almost 1/2 the oxygen that aerobic organism need to live) - shit! something like that?  It'd really put the coup de grace on the "...We are losing" sentiments of Secretary-General António Guterres. This stuff will all have to be compensated before the words "... We can win" can be objectively determined as actually taking place. Yeah, the apocalypse is slow moving, but moving still too fast for our state of planetary controls to adapt in any kind of inconsequential way.  Ameliorating the quality of life will come down to altering attitudes of acceptance --> expectations and knowing at a personal dimension 'why this is real and what it will take to fix.'  Think, "Acceptance shall set you free."  Perhaps it will be slow enough, lobbing impact into the juggling act in a more mollycoddling sequences of onsets -i.e., not overlapping - giving us time to manifest technologies capable of super-charging our salvation engine in this race. Technology got us into this mess - it might even be poetic that we are now enslave to it.  There's you dystopian sci-fi novel right there, prequel to the "A.I. Wars," when humanity had no choice but to cede control.

- or -    

Die. Keep in mind, much of this bleak outlook isn't meant to merely gaslight or excoriate ( which somehow got so baked into the anathema over Climate Change, such that whenever anyone hears climate and change in the same sentence there is this antithetic knee jerk reaction based upon fake-science, utilizing any plausibly deniable rationalization that can be imagined). What was pretty elaborately outlined in the damning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports as of late, like that lobbied very recently by Guterras et al, that is based on "at present" response modes

Pick. Either deal with it by expediting the acceptance of unavoidable challenges with commitment and proactive resolve as though we were like, OMG, an "adult species"   ...Or, completing the metaphor, eschewing responsibility because we'd rather speed dad's sports car while drinking ... and well.

There isn't any cushy way out of this.  In order for the above 'lesser of two evils' to succeed is going to come down to also navigating the problem of momentum - and momentum in this context has different forces. 

One form of momentum is: it took 120 years to get western civilities up to speed in a quasi-cooperative and intrinsic codependent  life-procurement model, one that is entirely slaved to fossil fuel sequestration that is full spectrum purely provisional, ranging to quality of life socioeconomically constructed.   Yet, we are no longer asking; we are informing, we have to stop that 120 years of multi-generational, multiple billion population ways and means method, doing so on top of what amounts to a temporal dime - in other words, NOW.   Good luck. I have friends in the higher education/research ambit of Boston area universities, and over holiday cocktail gatherings or summer pool cookouts over the years... we've all come to agree. Global Warming's biggest solution hurdle both at present, hindsight and going forward, is sociological.  The solution exists on the other side of:  

( some 10% usage of fossil fuel combustion, an approximation assumed because we have technology to stop ...but          + 90% sociological "obsticularity"  ) / 2

Another form of momentum is in the natural domain. Just because in some magical child like dream of salvation, we could ever wake up tomorrow and completely arrest all fossil fuel burning, along with any other green-house emission loading, world over, the damage would take decades to correct.  Recent ocean science has determined that such a fantasy stop would NOT stop the oceans from rising several feet, first. Detrimental environmental impacts have been set into motion, and they don't stop dynamics just because we immediate remove the stimulus that set them into motion.  Large natural systems behave by Newtons First law, just like a small object does: they remain in motion until a force of sufficient momentum imposes change.  In that sense ... they slow down but don't stop on a dime. 

That mathematics requires the obvious result of needing to impose corrective measures that are faster than the 120 years it took to get us to this point - as the immediate startling first run through of that arithmetic.  Can humans do that?  nope.  We are not a K1 Civility - or one capable of controlling and or harnessing planetary systems.  They should have an F-scale, or ability to f*ck one up, because we're definitely a 10 on that one...    Even if so, probably what emerges in the much longer vision is some new paradigm. The original state? lost, never really able to return to the virgin characteristic.  Complexity tucks the history of crimes and times into its sort of "ecological/geological fractals," almost like receding into a recessive trait. You just hope the new version is one favorable for whatever goal one needs - in our case, life.

These two different momentum curves positively re-enforce one another - obviously. The first ... makes the f*ing 2nd one happen!   The IPCC report was a grim one, and it is correct.  And the specter of it ...really is too large and too dystopian to really even comprehend in a lot of ways.  

 

[rclab]

4 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Perhaps ... but it's a grim prospect. The world is in the early phases of acceptance of this as an actual crisis. It will take too much time to do that than we have to dink around with ( unfortunately...) but, as that gets to a point where it is the louder voice in the chorus of perceived travails ..etc, expectations are going to be rudely forced upon us whether it is commonly understood or not

                                                                                                                 ( probably not ..which is why some of the adjustment over the next 100 years will include scaled warfare ) 

The options are either:

A lot of hardships permeate the pan-dimensional reality of the Global future.  Stress factors will reach criticality, breaching duress thresholds ( list of consequences? pick a dystopian novel ).  Like a slower moving apocalypse,  environmental break-downs inopportunely add 'or-else' actionable factors with the remorseless timing of lobbing tennis balls at a one-armed juggler.  Pandemics, to failures of macro-agriculture, to perhaps even f'ing up the oceanic phytoplankton C02- O2 cycle ( that accounts for almost 1/2 the oxygen that aerobic organism need to live) - shit! something like that?  It'd really put the coup de grace on the "...We are losing" sentiments of Secretary-General António Guterres. This stuff will all have to be compensated before the words "... We can win" can be objectively determined as taking place. Yeah, the apocalypse is slow, but too fast for our state of planetary controls to adapt in any kind of inconsequential way.

- or -    

Die.

Pick.

There isn't any cushy way out of this.  In order for the above 'lesser of two evils' to succeed is going to come down the problem of momentum - and it has a different forms. 

One form of momentum is: it took 120 years to get western civilities up to speed in a codependent life-procurement model that is entirely slaved to fossil fuel sequestration and subsequent socioeconomic constructs.   So, we have to stop 120 years of generational, multi-billion population species in what amounts to a temporal dime - in other words, NOW.   Good luck -

Another form of momentum is in the natural domain. Just because in some magical child like dream of salvation, we could ever wake up tomorrow and completely arrest all fossil fuel burning, along with any other green-house emission loading, world over, the damage would take decades to correct.  Recent ocean science has determined that such a fantasy stop would NOT stop the oceans from rising several feet, first.

These two different momentum curves positively re-enforce one another - obviously.  The IPCC report was a grim one, and it is correct.  And the specter of it ...really is too large and too dystopian to really even comprehend in a lot of ways.  

 

“For whom the bell tolls”? “It tolls for thee”. As always …..

[LibertyBell]

4 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Perhaps ... but it's a grim prospect. The world is in the early phases of acceptance of this as an actual crisis. It will take too much time to do that than we have to dink around with ( unfortunately...) but, as that gets to a point where it is the louder voice in the chorus of perceived travails ..etc, expectations are going to be rudely forced upon us whether it is commonly understood or not

                                                                                                                 ( probably not ..which is why some of the adjustment over the next 100 years will include scaled warfare ) 

The options are either:

A lot of hardships permeate the pan-dimensional reality of the Global future.  Stress factors will reach criticality, breaching duress thresholds ( list of consequences? pick a dystopian novel ).  Like a slower moving apocalypse,  environmental break-downs inopportunely add 'or-else' actionable factors with the remorseless timing of lobbing tennis balls at a one-armed juggler.  Pandemics, to failures of macro-agriculture, to perhaps even f'ing up the oceanic phytoplankton C02- O2 cycle ( that accounts for almost 1/2 the oxygen that aerobic organism need to live) - shit! something like that?  It'd really put the coup de grace on the "...We are losing" sentiments of Secretary-General António Guterres. This stuff will all have to be compensated before the words "... We can win" can be objectively determined as taking place. Yeah, the apocalypse is slow, but too fast for our state of planetary controls to adapt in any kind of inconsequential way.

- or -    

Die.

Pick.

There isn't any cushy way out of this.  In order for the above 'lesser of two evils' to succeed is going to come down the problem of momentum - and it has a different forms. 

One form of momentum is: it took 120 years to get western civilities up to speed in a codependent life-procurement model that is entirely slaved to fossil fuel sequestration and subsequent socioeconomic constructs.   So, we have to stop 120 years of generational, multi-billion population species in what amounts to a temporal dime - in other words, NOW.   Good luck -

Another form of momentum is in the natural domain. Just because in some magical child like dream of salvation, we could ever wake up tomorrow and completely arrest all fossil fuel burning, along with any other green-house emission loading, world over, the damage would take decades to correct.  Recent ocean science has determined that such a fantasy stop would NOT stop the oceans from rising several feet, first.

These two different momentum curves positively re-enforce one another - obviously.  The IPCC report was a grim one, and it is correct.  And the specter of it ...really is too large and too dystopian to really even comprehend in a lot of ways.  

 

We need some really bad things to happen before we get the really good changes we need.

I have always believed that

 

[LibertyBell]

ps we also need to dramatically scale back animal farming and land use

[Typhoon Tip]

On a brighter note ... if perhaps a little less dystopian, we extend a pat on the back and positive re-enforcement [karma]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/20/world/carbon-capture-storage-climate-iceland-intl-cmd/index.html

Shockingly, that is CNN sourced. It is nothing shy of remarkable, that particular "information" depot of the greater IMC  ("Industrial Media Complex"), has published an article that is not an attempt to zap the reader with fear ( to get them exposed to ad revenue ...) so as to manipulate them into an expose of ads for profit attempt.

                      ( Honestly... the point in time in history the IMC figured out a way to convert television channel pings, mouse clicks, and thumb swipes into actual revenue, we were doomed. )

Obviously, we would need and huge constellation of those reclamation plants situated over the vast expanse of the planet, but it would be interesting if the deeper science in where and how many was determined relative to base-line circulation modes of the atmosphere. Because the complete C02 homogenization into the atmosphere begins there - I am curious how quickly source A becomes non-differentiable between x and y down stream... But also... helping to limit the reclamation of atmospheric carbon at the sources might alleviate the total cost ( "cost" in multiple facets in this context, ranging from resource to economics...etc..) by lending to efficiencies.  It seems this Sci-Fi potential solution, "carbon capture facilities" ...

It is for one ironic - if not fantastic on a personal note!  Jesus, I just wrote an op-ed in here last week that took an imaginative step in this very subject matter.

https://www.americanwx.com/bb/topic/52434-occasional-thoughts-on-climate-change/?do=findComment&comment=6139011  

It's a kind of pitch-synopsis for a Science Fiction vision that among a myriad of loaded implicitly-voiced consequences, there were these so-called "CRIM" facilities cited.  Weird...

But in that story, 'Carbon Reclamation Impact Matrices' - perhaps kitchy first stab at a catchy acronym.. In that story, CRIM is the layout of facilities that were placed all over the planet during the desperation era of "the big dying" that sets in mid century ... Only, CRIMs employ a more advanced technology than merely re-sequestration.  What they do is use the recent research ( albeit hugely more sophisticated by virtue of looking/anticipating forward by decades ..) a recent discovery of using combinations of metals to use actual C02 to create energy - so it is coupled advantage of supplying energy to a glutty species, while simultaneously cleaning the diapers of the same species ... interesting.   But it engenders consequence...and the rest of the 'Pendulum Ice Age' follows... etc.

The other aspect, how much energy does it take to run the contraptions?   It would be a complete gain in the war on anthropomorphic -forced climate change if that energy came from entirely renewable sources - the article above focuses on Iceland's geological advantage of using the Earth's interior ( virtual ...) limitless source - so for that one facility, that is true.  But one facility,

"... about 10 metric tons of CO2 every day, which is roughly the the same amount of carbon emitted by 800 cars a day in the US. It's also about the same amount of carbon 500 trees could soak up in a year...."

would need to be scaled up to service a planet.  And, notwithstanding .. the technology itself may have room to advancement/sophistication ...The future could certainly evolve more proficiently - 'costing lest energy in, in order to get the same or better cleaning goal numbers out.'  Engineering is never a final result...

You know you are onto an interesting Sci-Fi premise, though ... when you advance a synopsis, then reality emerges on the other side of that vision that plays a direct homage to the original idea.   Maybe these metal/CO2 processing energy plants could be integrated into the ORCA facilities, and there you go - 

[LibertyBell]

2 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

On a brighter note ... if perhaps a little less dystopian, we extend a pat on the back and positive re-enforcement [karma]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/20/world/carbon-capture-storage-climate-iceland-intl-cmd/index.html

Shockingly, that is CNN sourced. It is nothing shy of remarkable, that particular "information" depot of the greater IMC  ("Industrial Media Complex"), has published an article that is not an attempt to zap the reader with fear ( to get them exposed to ad revenue ...) so as to manipulate them into an expose of ads for profit attempt.

                      ( Honestly... the point in time in history the IMC figured out a way to convert television channel pings, mouse clicks, and thumb swipes into actual revenue, we were doomed. )

Obviously, we would need and huge constellation of those reclamation plants situated over the vast expanse of the planet, but it would be interesting if the deeper science in where and how many was determined relative to base-line circulation modes of the atmosphere. Because the complete C02 homogenization into the atmosphere begins there - I am curious how quickly source A becomes non-differentiable between x and y down stream... But also... helping to limit the reclamation of atmospheric carbon at the sources might alleviate the total cost ( "cost" in multiple facets in this context, ranging from resource to economics...etc..) by lending to efficiencies.  It seems this Sci-Fi potential solution, "carbon capture facilities" ...

It is for one ironic - if not fantastic on a personal note!  Jesus, I just wrote an op-ed in here last week that took an imaginative step in this very subject matter.

https://www.americanwx.com/bb/topic/52434-occasional-thoughts-on-climate-change/?do=findComment&comment=6139011  

It's a kind of pitch-synopsis for a Science Fiction vision that among a myriad of loaded implicitly-voiced consequences, there were these so-called "CRIM" facilities cited.  Weird...

But in that story, 'Carbon Reclamation Impact Matrices' - perhaps kitchy first stab at a catchy acronym.. In that story, CRIM is the layout of facilities that were placed all over the planet during the desperation era of "the big dying" that sets in mid century ... Only, CRIMs employ a more advanced technology than merely re-sequestration.  What they do is use the recent research ( albeit hugely more sophisticated by virtue of looking/anticipating forward by decades ..) a recent discovery of using combinations of metals to use actual C02 to create energy - so it is coupled advantage of supplying energy to a glutty species, while simultaneously cleaning the diapers of the same species ... interesting.   But it engenders consequence...and the rest of the 'Pendulum Ice Age' follows... etc.

The other aspect, how much energy does it take to run the contraptions?   It would be a complete gain in the war on anthropomorphic -forced climate change if that energy came from entirely renewable sources - the article above focuses on Iceland's geological advantage of using the Earth's interior ( virtual ...) limitless source - so for that one facility, that is true.  But one facility,

"... about 10 metric tons of CO2 every day, which is roughly the the same amount of carbon emitted by 800 cars a day in the US. It's also about the same amount of carbon 500 trees could soak up in a year...."

would need to be scaled up to service a planet.  And, notwithstanding .. the technology itself may have room to advancement/sophistication ...The future could certainly evolve more proficiently - 'costing lest energy in, in order to get the same or better cleaning goal numbers out.'  Engineering is never a final result...

You know you are onto an interesting Sci-Fi premise, though ... when you advance a synopsis, then reality emerges on the other side of that vision that plays a direct homage to the original idea.   Maybe these metal/CO2 processing energy plants could be integrated into the ORCA facilities, and there you go - 

I see you found the articles on creating steel without fossil fuels!

 

[Vice-Regent]

Do you think we can win a race against ourselves? I think it's time to take a step back and reign in our ego's.

[rclab]

“A race against ourselves” would seem to describe a no win situation. As always….