Pearls and Irritations - Julian Cribb
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| AUTHOR Julian Cribb AM is an Australian science
writer and author of six books on the human existential
emergency. His latest book is “How to Fix a Broken Planet”
(Cambridge University Press, 2023)
|
As
the nations bicker, squabble and fight among themselves, their ultimate
disintegration becomes more certain and more imminent with each passing
day.
Enthralled
by the spectacle of leaders of paralysing stupidity disgorging lies,
bombs and bombast ad lib, many people seem to have forgotten
or chosen to overlook the real monster that is creeping up behind them,
sharpening its claws to bring down the entire civilisation.
In a new paper “Indicators of Global Climate Change 2024”,
50 of the world’s leading climate scientists warn that human climate
emissions are achieving records, dumping 56 billion tonnes (+/-5bt) of
greenhouse gases (CO2 equivalent) into the atmosphere in 2024.
Here are a few of their key points:
- Fossil fuels and industry contributed 38bt of greenhouse emissions in 2024;
- Land use changes (eg deforestation) caused 4bt in emissions (+/- 3bt) in 2024;
- Methane release contributed 9bt (+/-3bt) in 2023, much of it attributed to forest fires, drying wetlands and melting tundra;
- NO2 contributed 3bt;
- Fluorinated gases contributed 2bt;
- There are 52 different gases known to cause global heating which are now mixing into the atmosphere; and
- Collectively these man-made sources now add 2.97 watts of heat energy to every square metre of the Earth’s surface. This creates an Earth Energy Imbalance of about 1 watt per square metre, which is what drives global heating and climate perturbation.
In
2023, the scientists say, average global temperatures hit a record 1.44
degrees above their pre-industrial (1850) level. Last year they set a
record of 1.52 degrees. These high temperatures were a result of
human-caused warming combined with natural events such as El Nino.
While
warming overall continues to set records each year, the encouraging
news is that the rate of warming appears to be easing, the researchers
add.
However, the grim news is that the Earth’s remaining carbon
budget, to keep average temperatures at or below +1.5 degrees Celsius —
the Paris target — is only 130 billion tonnes. At our present rates of
emissions, that could be gobbled up by 2028.
Even allowing for natural
fluctuations in the planet’s climate, the target will be dead and gone
by 2030, the scientists warn. More seriously, land temperatures — always
hotter than global temperatures — will be close to +2 degrees.
Since
2019, global sea levels have risen by 26mm — about an inch — due to
land ice melting and thermal expansion. The rate is accelerating. It may
not sound much, but, by the end of the century, the seas would have
risen by between 0.5 and 1.9 metres, displacing anything from 200 million to half a billion people and inundating 136 major cities.
Searing
heat, hurricanes, droughts and flooding coastlines will create havoc
with a world food supply already on a knife-edge due to acute water
scarcity, devastating loss of topsoil, ecosystem decline and the spread
of toxic chemicals.
In a climate-menaced world, simultaneous crop failures in several of the Earth’s main breadbaskets
are now seen as unavoidable. Because the food chain is global, this
means every person on Earth now faces food scarcity and/or soaring
prices when the crisis hits. History shows that one of the first things
people do en masse when starving is tear down their governments.
Underlying
this ruin is the selfishness of nations, each focused on its own
perceived wants and needs at the expense of all, led by
psychopathically-damaged, male-dominated regimes. Leaders such as Trump,
Putin, Netanyahu, Mohammed bin Salman, Khamenei are committed — whether
they grasp it or not — to the ultimate destruction of their own people
by ruining the Earth’s ability to support them.
Regardless of what people choose to believe, nations are only a temporary phase in human affairs,
a temporary form of self-organisation that is past its use-by date.
Emerging only since the Napoleonic wars nations are a form of
ultra-tribalism that pits ever-larger groups of humans against another
without regard to the universal consequences.
Nationalism, patriotism
and their tawdry symbols are the justification for slaughter on a global
scale in wars that have, since the 1850s, claimed more than 200 million
lives. Nations are entities that, as a rule, place their own immediate
wishes above the good of humanity, to the detriment of all.
The
pathological character of modern political leadership — its lust for
conquest, self-aggrandisement and dominion at the expense of human life —
has side-tracked the world’s attention from the issues which genuinely
affect our common future and which require global solutions. It has
diverted us from our own survival, as a civilisation – and maybe as a
species.
The media, the commentariat, the political machinery, the
technology explosion and global corporate greed feed this lust for
distraction daily, contributing to a humanity, as Darwin might have
described it, “less fit to survive”.
Many great thinkers have
recognised that, unless we agree to work together globally, humans will
not last. Innumerable organisations have been founded to try to achieve a
common human purpose. All have so far failed – in the face of the
overwhelming urge for diversion to the petty spites and ambitions of the
nations.
Only when humans decide to act together, as a single species on one planet, will our chances of survival begin to improve. The Earth System Treaty offers one pathway to this. The Earth Charter is another and the Sustainable Development Goals a third. The Planetary Boundaries explain just how close to self-destruction we truly are – and how rapidly we are approaching it.
There
are solutions aplenty to our plight. But they are not on the agenda of
the ruling elites of most nations or corporations, who care only for
themselves and the short term. These are the true foes of humanity. The
ones who will sacrifice all our children, theirs included, to gratify
their own immediate lust for power.
The Earth’s surface area is about 510 trillion square metres. That indicates how much surplus heat the planet is now trapping.
Links
- Indicators of Global Climate Change 2024
- Global sea level very likely to rise between 0.5 and 1.9 meters by 2100 under high-emissions scenario
- Risks of synchronized low yields are underestimated in climate and crop model projections
- Food or War
- The nation state is on the skids...
- Earth System Treaty
- Earth Charter
- Sustainable Development Goals
- Planetary
boundaries
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