#ClimateDiary As 2023 is ending, I recall my hopeful optimism a year ago that 2023 might be a #TurningPoint for climate awareness, carbon emissions plateauing and #Transition / #Regeneration - it being the 50th anniversary of Schumacher’s #SmallIsBeautiful and all that (see 🧵 in link) .
I kept on sharing this great cover (“the new world is almost born” #Gramsci). But has 2923 been a turning point? 1/5
#ClimateDiary 3/5 The monsters of fascism, tech billionaires and colonial capitalism in general are ever more powerful and ugly, and so much #BusinessAsUsual - eg #COP28
It’s also been a year of big #ClimateAction setbacks for me personally. There are always many setbacks, of course, but normally i am energised by new ideas and projects that I am hopeful about - right now, I don’t have exciting new plans, and last year’s optimism feels embarrassingly naive.
Greta Thunberg (@gretathunberg), brzmiąca nieco cynicznie...
"Co jakiś czas nasi przywódcy składają kilka obietnic i wyznaczają różne niejasne, niewiążące, często odległe cele. Następnie, gdy tylko nie uda im się ich osiągnąć, natychmiast wyznaczają nowe. I tak dalej.
"Może się to wydawać absurdalne, ale zdecydowanie działa - jeśli celem jest utrzymanie dotychczasowej działalności, wzrostu gospodarczego i wysokich wskaźników popularności.
"Ponieważ poziom publicznego zainteresowania i świadomości tych nieudanych zobowiązań dotyczących klimatu i różnorodności biologicznej jest bliski zeru, a media tęsknią za pozytywnymi wiadomościami w ramach swojej polityki obustronnego raportowania - nie może być tylko ponuro i ponuro! - ogólne przesłanie, które jest przekazywane, jeśli w ogóle, jest takie, że podejmowane są działania. Może nie zawsze wszystko idzie tak dobrze, ale hej, oni naprawdę bardzo się starają i na pewno poczyniono duże postępy - więc przestań być tak negatywny przez cały czas!".
Earth on verge of five catastrophic climate tipping points, scientists warn
“Tipping points in the Earth system pose threats of a magnitude never faced by humanity,”
Tim Lenton, from the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute.
"They can trigger devastating domino effects, including the loss of whole ecosystems and capacity to grow staple crops, with societal impacts including mass displacement, political instability and financial collapse. The tipping points at risk include the collapse of big ice sheets in Greenland and the West Antarctic, the widespread thawing of permafrost, the death of coral reefs in warm waters, and the collapse of atmospheric circulation in the North Atlantic."
What should happen to native forests when logging ends? Ask Victoria’s First Peoples
"Conservationists are celebrating a win sought for decades. The damage done by logging on biodiversity has been significant, with once common species now endangered and mature forests now fragmented and dotted with young fire-prone regrowth."
"Colonisation affected Country differently across Australia. But many effects are similar across the continent. European-style land management coincides with species extinctions across the continent. "
>> https://theconversation.com/what-should-happen-to-native-forests-when-logging-ends-ask-victorias-first-peoples-206412
Reading the black book: The number, timing, distribution and causes of listed extinctions in Australia
"We conclude that 100 Australian endemic species are validly recognised as extinct since 1788: a rate of loss of about 4.3 species per decade since European colonisation of the continent. This rate is not diminishing and we interpret this more-or-less constant but continuing rate of loss .."
Die ursprünglichen Schätzungen lagen um das Jahr 2050, da wir ohne grundsätzliche Pfadänderung die 1,5° Grenze übertreten. Das haben wir nun also jetzt, 2023, erreicht. Fossile Konzerne feiern Rekordgewinne und die neoliberalen Spinner fordern die Aufweichung vom Kohleausstieg.
@GuidoKuehn Sonntagmorgen im linearen Fernsehen (war ne Ausnahme 🙈) bei @3sat
#businessasusual :
Alpenpanorama, fast überall liegt Schnee, zT fahren Skifahrer*innen fröhlich durch den frühen Sonnenschein. Volkstümliche Alpenmusik. Alles wie immer.
Auch bei #ZIB der Österreicher Tagesschau: Krieg im nahen Osten, Angst deshalb vor Gewalt in Klassenzimmern, Krieg in Ukraine, ein Kulturbeitrag, das Wetter (heiter bis wokig)
Wealthiest 10 Percent of Americans Responsible for 40 Percent of U.S. Emissions
“It just seems morally and politically problematic to have one group of people reaping so much benefit from emissions while the poorer groups in society are asked to disproportionately deal with the harms of those emissions,” said Jared Starr, a sustainability scientist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Our paper “No Research on a Dead Planet” is out today! Aaron Thierry is very much the lead author, but it’s been great working on this together with AT, Laura Horn and Charlie Gardner. Why do #Universities, #ClimateEmergency declarations and all, still largely continue with #BusinessAsUsual? For us it’s about #CognitiveDissonance as well as the structures of neoliberal #HE. HE needs to change & lead on true #ClimateAction. Open access @ScientistRebellion
"You worry too much. Everything's going to be fine. Humans are the most adaptable species on the planet. We've always adapted before, and so of course we also can adapt to climate change."
Ever hear something like that?
Andrew Dessler (@andrewdessler), a climate scientist and Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M, offers a response to the optimistic "We'll adapt" crowd...
“Humans have always adapted.”
If you’ve followed the climate debate, you’ve inevitably come across these soothing words, usually made by someone rich, often working for a think tank whose agenda is stopping action on climate change.
The argument taps into the romantic notion of human resilience, suggesting that adaptation is not just possible but a simple, cost-free solution to the climate catastrophe unfolding before us.
This view is overly optimistic. Adaptation, far from being an easy way out, is shaping up to be an absolute nightmare.
I have to be careful not to overdo my exposure to terrible news like this, and to balance it with things I enjoy that make me happy. Otherwise I'll lose myself in grief and rage.
More than a hundred dolphins have been found dead in the Brazilian Amazon amid an historic drought and record-high water temperatures that in places have exceeded 102 degrees Fahrenheit.
The dead dolphins were all found in Lake Tefé over the past seven days, according to the Mamirauá Institute, a research facility funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Science.
The institute said such a high number of deaths was unusual and suggested record-high lake temperatures and an historic drought in the Amazon may have been the cause.
The news is likely to add to the concerns of climate scientists over the effects human activity and extreme droughts are having on the region.
Below average levels of water have been reported in 59 municipalities in Amazonas State, impeding both transport and fishing activities on the river.
Authorities expect even more acute droughts over the next couple of weeks, which could result in further deaths of dolphins, CNN Brasil reported.
A severe drought in the Aamazon, with fish dying and drinking water contaminated...
What does that sound like? It sounds to me like Business As Usual. 😡
The Amazon rainforest in Brazil is in the grips of a severe drought that may affect around 500,000 people by the end of the year, limiting their access to food, drinking water, and other supplies.
Water levels have already dropped, and dead fish now float atop some of the rainforest’s winding rivers.
Their rotting corpses have contaminated the water supply in some areas, officials told the news agency Reuters, with more than 110,000 people facing repercussions.
In Manacapuru — a town two hours’ drive from the major city of Manaus, considered a gateway to the Amazon — fish launched themselves out of the scorching, shallow waters in a desperate attempt to survive. The smell of rot, emanating from the brown water, filled the air.
This drought is forecast to last longer and be more intense because of the El Niño climate phenomenon, which inhibits the formation of rain clouds, the civil defence authority said.
Climate change also exacerbates droughts by making them more frequent, longer and more severe. Warmer temperatures enhance evaporation, which reduces surface water and dries out soils and vegetation.
In an opinion piece posted at Common Dreams, Tom Weis says, "To keep pretending, year after year, decade after decade, that the U.N. process is working when everyone can see that it is failing, is its own kind of denial."
Here's more...
Every year, the world’s governments gather at what the United Nations calls a Conference of the Parties, or COP, to talk about lowering carbon emissions while they just watch emissions continue to rise. It is time to start calling these annual gatherings what they are: COP-OUTs.
COP28 is already shaping up to be the biggest COP-OUT of them all. Taking the dressed-up climate pageant to a new level of absurdity, the COP28 conference being held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from November 30 to December 12 is being chaired by — get this — an oil baron. The president of COP28 is Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
Lest you think the Biden administration truly gets that we’re in a climate emergency, John Kerry, Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, publicly praised Al Jaber’s appointment as “a terrific choice,” as if the idea of an oil baron presiding over international climate talks wasn’t preposterous on its face.
We need to stop thinking things will get better with the next COP-OUT, when things just keep getting worse. The hostile takeover of the international climate negotiations by fossil fuel industry arsonists is an unconscionable betrayal of our children’s trust and of all generations to come. Big Oil has not only been lying to the public for decades, it is knowingly perpetrating ecocide and crimes against humanity.
Our capitalist rulers are very clever. They realize that many people are concerned about climate change and want our governments to take action against it.
So they come up with cool-sounding ideas like "Carbon Capture and Storage" to make it appear as if something is being done — when in reality that same technology is being used to increase fossil fuel extraction and sales, producing even more profits for the oil and gas industry.
It's a win-win for the capitalists: They look good AND they make more money.
Business As Usual goes on...
When Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber opens the 28th annual UN climate conference in Dubai in November, he will be juggling two roles – convincing the world of the United Arab Emirates’ leadership in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while preserving the very industry that’s causing them.
In addition to his job as summit president, Al Jaber heads the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), which plans to increase its oil and gas output by 11% by 2027. The company says that more oil will mean less emissions, however — provided the industry builds enough facilities to capture carbon dioxide (CO2), the main gas causing the climate crisis.
On September 6, ADNOC finalized a deal to build a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in the UAE’s Habshan oil and gas field, extending the company’s existing CCS operations at a steel plant. Now projected to become one of the largest carbon capture plants in the Middle East, ADNOC says the facility will have the equivalent climate impact of removing 500,000 cars from the road.
In fact, the project will be used to squeeze even more oil from the ground. Most of the CO2 ADNOC already captures is pumped into existing oil wells, forcing residual crude to the surface in a process known as “enhanced oil recovery.”
It is a trend reflected across the sector: Of the 32 commercial CCS facilities operating worldwide, 22 use most, or all, of their captured CO2 to push more oil out of already tapped reservoirs. But the fact that existing carbon capture projects are mostly used to bring more oil to the surface has not stopped oil and gas companies championing the technology as a climate solution in the run-up to COP28.
That's from an excellent investigative piece by DeSmog, which makes it clear that Al Jaber is not the only villain. Oil companies in the US pioneered this devious plan years ago, and Europe soon followed.
Meanwhile, as long as people continue to believe this decades-old lie, why not just run with it?
Here is a somewhat comical but also highly indignant commentary about the folly of “Net Zero by 2050”…
We insiders — by which I mean anyone paying attention — know that the plan to mitigate the climate catastrophe with Net Zero by 2050 is complete bullshit. But maybe you’ve absorbed that knowledge without really understanding why. So let’s talk about it.
What does Net Zero actually mean? Net Zero is the point at which the CO2 burden in the atmosphere is no longer increasing. We’re still putting some up, but we’re also taking just as much out.
This definition immediately tips off two major problems.
The “still putting some up” part is a major issue because the fossil fuels industrial/political complex hears that and stops listening. The “still putting some up” part is their job, and somebody else can do the “take just as much out” part.
In other words, it's Business As Usual for fossil fuels, including continuing growth. Someone else can do the preserving-life-and-the-climate part.
The second obvious problem with Net Zero is the very idea of “taking just as much CO2 out of the atmosphere each year as the fossil fuel industry is adding to it each year.” We know of only two ways to reduce the CO2 load of the atmosphere. One is time. But CO2 stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years, so time is not on our side.
The other way to reduce CO2 is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Carbon is “captured” from the atmosphere using a chemical solvent that absorbs CO2, after which it can be buried in the ground where the CO2 will stay safely out of the atmosphere virtually forever.
CCS technology both does and does not exist.
CCS does exist in that there are many ingenious systems for doing it, including several pilot programs demonstrating direct air capture, the holy grail of CCS. Many fossil fuelled electricity generation plants have been removing CO2 from their smokestack emissions for decades. Unfortunately, much of the currently captured CO2 is being injected into played-out oil wells, forcing more of the remaining oil to be recoverable, to burn as fuel. Totally self-defeating, as far as reducing the CO2 load in the atmosphere.
But CCS also does NOT exist in terms of a significant contributor to Net Zero. They remove so little CO2 from the atmosphere, and at such a cost, as to make them completely impractical. To make a dent in carbon emissions, hundreds of thousands of CCS plants are needed, if not millions. The cost is prohibitive. Not to mention the carbon costs of manufacturing all those plants.
But surely CCS technology will improve over the next decade or two. Maybe someone will even find a miraculous breakthrough that will make it truly practical?
Sorry, but no. It’s not that there hasn’t been enough research into CCS. It has been heavily researched and the science is known. It’s actually some pretty simple chemistry. We can tweak around the efficiency edges, but there are no breakthroughs waiting in the wings to be discovered.
Alex Mell-Taylor, author of the piece excerpted below, is angry. I can certainly understand why, and I'm angry too.
The article takes a look at China, Japan, Russia, the United States, and the EU, examining the cynical pledges and woefully insufficient efforts made by our so-called leaders to tackle the climate challenge.
We know it's not enough, and they know it's not enough, yet they continue to lie and pretend and push forward with Business As Usual...
We need to recognize that things are dire. We will potentially reach global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (at least temporarily) this decade. If we continue along this path and refuse to make radical changes on a systemic (not individual) level, we will face a world of increasing famines, sea rise, and a series of compounding effects that cascade into downright apocalyptic scenarios.
From China to Germany to the United States, I see a lot of far-off pledges and no immediate steps to radically halve current emissions, and certainly none to engage in strategies that reduce consumption such as Degrowth. Everyone is just banking on being able to switch their energy grids over “in time,” which, even disregarding the fact that electrification still has a carbon cost, this strategy assumes that the pollution made to get to that point won't be enough to wreck our environment.
The era of denialism is over, and in its place is the era of lukewarm commitments, where leaders pledge to build up solar, wind, and other renewables while simultaneously preserving fossil fuels well into the next decade, if not beyond.
At such an increase, we will move from 14% of the world being exposed to extreme heat waves to almost 40%. Droughts will be even more common, impacting tens of millions of more people annually. Potable water will become scarce. More species will die. The list goes on.
You should be angry over your leader's cowardice. You should not accept the lie that going "faster" is unreasonable. What is unreasonable is their hesitance: their insane holding pattern with the fossil fuel industry as they march us confidently into a more unstable world.
We need to operate under the assumption that our leaders, the ones who built the system now choking us to death, are wrong. That they will need to be fought against. That we will need to march, protest, and block infrastructure, as well as engage in other more direct actions that make them uncomfortable.
Our Mastodon friend Steve Genco (@sjgenco) has posted a long and highly informative article about fossil fuels, politics, and climate change. I'll provide just a few excerpts here, and I really hope you'll read the whole thing...
"The Oil Age May Not End the Way You Imagine It Will"
The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere when we exit the Age of Oil will be the defining factor that determines how much heat our descendants will have to endure for the next several thousand years.
Here we enter the realm of human choice. On the one hand, we could stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow. Climate scientists tell us in no uncertain terms that each tenth of a degree of global warming we inflict on the planet will bring with it potentially catastrophic effects, including the likely triggering of irreversible tipping points that could render the planet not just hotter, but essentially uninhabitable by humans (not to mention millions of other species).
On the other hand, economists and politicians tell us if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, we would destroy the world economy, bring industrial civilization to its knees, and probably put the lives of a large fraction of the human population in jeopardy. And they’re probably right. So we could do it, but we won’t do it.
There is of course a deep irony in the fact that while we continue burning fossil fuels to prop up our global economy, those fossil fuels continue to heat up the planet and produce climate damage that is equally threatening to our global economy, if not more so.
🔴 Exxon has announced plans to double its shale oil production in the US over the next five years.
🔴 Shell announced earlier this year that cutting the world’s oil and gas production would be “dangerous and irresponsible.”
🔴 Both Shell and BP have reneged on prior plans to cut oil and gas production, now claiming that such moves would dampen profits.
🔴 As reported in the New York Times in April 2023, hundreds of new oil and gas extraction projects have been approved in the last year, and dozens more are expected to be approved.
🔴 The industry has co-opted the UN COP process so successfully that Saudi Arabia was able to remove any mention of phasing out fossil fuels from the 2022 IPCC report.
🔴 Based on projections by Rystad Energy, the 20 largest oil and gas companies are expected to invest $932 billion in developing new oil and gas fields over the next 9 years. By the end of 2040 the figure grows to a staggering $1.5 trillion.
🔴 Fossil fuel subsidies remain astronomical and governments are showing little enthusiasm for eliminating or even reducing them.
In essence, governments are paying fossil fuel companies to continue ratcheting up global warming to a level that could plausibly result in human extinction. But that’s not how governments see it. In their view, they are keeping the global economic engine running because, just like the internal combustion engine in your 2010 Ford pickup, if that engine isn’t provided with fuel, it will stop running.
Both outcomes are happening simultaneously, because currently political leaders fear the end of capitalist accumulation (aka economic growth) more than they fear global warming. This is the major obstacle to any well-meaning plan for voluntary degrowth as a viable response to climate change and resource depletion.
It's not necessary, they tell us, for everyone to change their lifestyles in order to fight climate change or promote climate justice. We don't have to stop eating meat, or buying fast fashion, or driving our huge SUVs to work every day. No one needs to stop flying around the world using their private jets, or taking luxury cruises on their million-dollar yachts.
Why? Because capitalism can solve the climate crisis! 👏
Really? Yes!!
(Well, no, not really. That's a fantasy being sold to us by billionaires who have no interest in real change.)
Now we have a new investigative report coordinated by the Guardian along with researchers from Corporate Accountability, a non-profit transnational corporate watchdog, that drives home the point.
"Offset Projects That Sold Most Carbon Credits Are Likely Junk"
The vast majority of the environmental projects most frequently used to offset greenhouse gas emissions appear to have fundamental failings suggesting they cannot be relied upon to cut planet-heating emissions, according to a new analysis.
The global multibillion-dollar voluntary carbon trading industry has been embraced by governments, organisations, and corporations including oil and gas companies, airlines, fast-food brands, fashion houses, tech firms, art galleries, and universities as a way of claiming to reduce their greenhouse gas footprint.
It works by carbon offset credits being tradable “allowances” or certificates that allows the purchaser to compensate for one ton of carbon dioxide or the equivalent in greenhouse gases by investing in environmental projects that claim to reduce carbon emissions.
But there is mounting evidence suggesting that many of these offset schemes exaggerate climate benefits and underestimate potential harms.
This is a long article filled with damning evidence revealing the cynical attempts of both business and government to lie and cheat as they push forward their climate-wrecking Business As Usual agenda.