(HowStuffWorks) What Will Earth Look Like In 500 Years?

HowStuffWorks - Robert Lamb

What will the 26th century look like? Sompong Rattanakunchon/Getty Images

If you could travel back in time five centuries, you'd encounter an Aztec empire nearly at the end of its run, fresh paintings from Raphael, Titian and Durer, and cooler temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere. This was a world in the midst of the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850 C.E.) and a period of vast European exploration now known as the Age of Discovery.

But what if we could look 500 years into the future and glimpse the Earth of the 26th century? Would the world seem as different to us as the 21st century would have seemed to residents of the 16th century?

The answer to this question largely depends on the relationship between human civilization and our natural environment — its past, its present and, of course, its future. We've been altering Earth since at least the Agricultural Revolution of the Neolithic Age, and scientists disagree on exactly how many animal extinctions from even before that point should be lain at our feet [source: Boissoneault]. We manipulated the evolution of domestic plant and animal species, transformed the landscape and burned fossil fuels to power our way of life.

As a result, the planet's climate has changed — and is changing still. Some experts date the beginning of human climate change back to the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, others to slash-and-burn agricultural practices in prehistoric times. Either way, overwhelming scientific consensus indicates that human activity is almost certainly responsible for climate-warming trends over the last century.

According to NASA, carbon dioxide levels are up to 412 parts per million as of December 2019, up from 316 ppm in 1958 when scientists first started tracking CO2. Global temperature was up 2.07 degrees Fahrenheit (1.15 degrees Celsius) since 1880, says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Meanwhile, Arctic ice declines 12.85 percent per decade, and sea levels rise 3.3 millimeters per year, says NASA.

In other words, our planet is warming, extreme weather continues to increase and our natural surroundings are changing. These changes threaten the balance of already highly exploited natural resources. The United Nations warns that the resulting droughts, floods, heat waves and wildfires will only speed up land degradation and accelerate the danger of severe food shortages. Such shortages are exactly the catalyst that historically leads to social unrest, mass migration and conflict.

So, on one level, 26th-century Earth will have had to come to terms with climate change. According to some computer models, melting Antarctic ice could cause sea levels to rise by 1 foot (0.3 meter) by the end of this century and 26 feet (8 meters) by the year 2300.

VIDEO: What Will Earth Look Like In 500 Years? 2m 01secs

Perhaps our 26th-century ancestors will look back on their ancestors and see that we rallied before the flood. Perhaps they'll see that we made the sorts of technological, cultural and political changes necessary to prevent mass extinctions, political upheaval, environmental destruction and even civilizational collapse. Certainly, courses of action have been set in place to begin the work, as long as we can remain culturally and politically obliged to follow the course.

Or perhaps they'll look back on a people who willingly drove the world into ruin.

Along the way, however, our descendants will advance their technology — and while technology created the risks of anthropogenic climate change and nuclear warfare, it also provides us the potential to change course and improve.

AUDIO: What Will Earth Look Like In 500 Years? 6m 29secs

Theoretical physicist and futurist Michio Kaku predicts that in a mere 100 years, humanity will make the leap from a type 0 civilization to a type I civilization on the Kardashev Scale. In other words, we'll become a species that can harness the entire sum of a planet's energy.

On this Kardashev scale, a type I might resemble the world of Flash Gordon. A type II civilization might resemble Star Trek. A type III civilization might resemble Star Wars. With an exponential growth in energy, one can also compute when we might attain these cosmic milestones.

— Dr. Michio Kaku (@michiokaku) November 20, 2018

Wielding such power, 26th-century humans could be masters of clean energy technologies such as fusion and solar power. Furthermore, they'd be able to manipulate planetary energy in order to control global climate. Still, futurists disagree on the timing of such a hypothetical upgrade in our technological prowess — and the upgrade is far from assured. As noted skeptic Michael Shermer pointed out in a 2008 Los Angeles Times article, political and economic forces could very well prevent us from making the great leap.

Technology has improved exponentially since the 1500s, and this pace will likely continue in the centuries to come. Physicist Stephen Hawking proposed that by the year 2600, this growth would see 10 new theoretical physics papers published every 10 seconds. If Moore's Law holds true and both computer speed and complexity double every 18 months, then some of these studies may be the work of highly intelligent machines. Then again, he also predicted that overcrowding and energy consumption would make the Earth uninhabitable by 2600.

What other technologies will shape the world of the 26th century? Futurist and author Adrian Berry believes the average human life span will reach 140 years and that the digital storage of human personalities will enable a kind of computerized immortality. Humans will farm the oceans, travel in starships and reside in both lunar and Martian colonies while robots explore the outer cosmos.

These technologies may come in handy, at least for a privileged few, if serious changes aren't put in place to deal with climate change.

Links

• What will the Earth be like in 500 years? - The Conversation
• What Will Earth Look Like in 5,000 Years?
• What Will Earth Look Like in 50,000 Years?
• What's the Difference Between Global Warming and Climate Change?
• Quiz: Can You Tell Climate Change Fact From Fiction?
• How the Fermi Paradox Works

(AU ABC) Listening To The Planet: Understanding The Science Of Ecoacoustics

 ABC Science - Anna Salleh

From the symphony of nomadic birds on their journey across the continent, to the silencing of our forests by bushfires, ecoacoustics could help scientists track environmental change. (Supplied: David Rennie)

Imagine being able to hear the change of Earth's seasons, the effect of climate change on threatened birds, or the southward march of invasive cane toads. Like listening to the heartbeat of the planet, this is exactly the kind of thing researchers in the emerging field of ecoacoustics want to monitor.

Ecoacoustics is the study of sounds produced by the environment, ranging from animal calls to the wind and rain, and even human-made sounds like the hum of traffic.

But the study of biodiversity is a major focus, and Australia is leading the way here with a network of sound recorders planted across the continent, listening to our ecosystems.

Launched in 2019, the Australian Acoustic Observatory (A2O) has now planted hundreds of "ears" in the wild, from Cape York to the red centre, from the lush rivers of Tasmania to the dense forests of Queensland – and even on Cape Barren Island in Bass Strait.

The A2O recorders are solar powered and record onto a removable SD card – this site is in the Northern Territory . (Supplied: David Tucker)

Ecologist Lin Schwarzkopf from James Cook University, who helped design the acoustic observatory, says continent-wide recordings let scientists track all kinds of animals.

"We'll have a much better idea about the migratory routes of birds, how many birds are in these migrations, and where they stop to feed," she says.

"You could also detect the arrival of invasive species like cane toads."

This year, for Science Week, you too will get to listen to some of these sound clips collected by the A2O from across Australia.

Through the ABC's interactive, Hoot Detective, you will be able to help scientists identify owl calls, with the ultimate aim being to get a better idea of what species are where, and how well they're faring.

Experts need "citizen scientists" to help them process the endless hours of recordings being collected, says ornithologist Paul McDonald from the University of New England.

"You're faced with years and years and years of listening," Professor McDonald says.

"We can use the public to help look at a large amount of data in a relatively short amount of time."

Monitoring the environment 24/7  

Some of the acoustic sensors are near water, to capture the many animals that spend time in these areas. ( Tasmanian Land Conservancy Five Rivers Reserve: Matthew Newton) 

Ecoacoustics is particularly welcomed by biodiversity researchers who spend a lot of time on field trips to remote places to painstakingly count, trap and track animals — assuming floods and bushfires don't stop them.

"The beauty of this system is that we've got our recorders out there recording 24/7," Professor McDonald says.

"And they're picking up animals and events like rain that are occurring whether or not the researcher is there.

"It lets us monitor the whole country day in, day out, which is very exciting and something we haven't been able to do before."

Ecoacoustics could also help monitor the recovery of threatened species after events like bushfires, or the explosion in frogs after rain.

Frogs are another vocal animal that can be detected by acoustic sensors. (Wotjulum Frog/ Supplied WA Museum) 

"It's hard to express how little we know about some of these things," Professor Schwarzkopf says.

And while some scientists will focus on tracking individual species, others will be more interested in the overall 'soundscape', listening to the joyous turn of winter into spring — or something more sombre.

"We could possibly hear the end of the world as climate change increases, and it gets quieter as things go extinct."

Ecoacoustics is particularly useful for tracking animals that are hard to find, like the night parrot, koalas, and of course owls.

And storing sound collected over time will give scientists an acoustic "time machine" to explore historical changes to the environment, Professor McDonald says.

Evolution in the use of sound

Ecoacoustics is the latest stage in the evolution of the use of sound by ecologists and biologists.

Listen to Nature Track

Nature Track is a podcast that opens a window on the beautiful sounds of the Australian wilderness. Read more

"Every time there is a new advance in technology, biologists use it," Professor Schwarzkopf says.

It all started with researchers recording individual species, mainly to understand animal communication — a field often called 'bioacoustics'.

"People used to drag big old reel-to-reel recorders into swamps to record frogs," Professor Schwarzkopf says.

"Playback experiments" were next on the cards, where a researcher would, for example, play back a recording of a predator to test what effect this had on its prey.

But longer battery life, recorders that could be left outdoors, and eventually the advent of cheap storage for data, has all paved the way for ecoacoustics.

Some of the A2O recorders are located in places where owls live, like in this Tasmanian Land Conservancy’s Five Rivers Reserve. (Tasmanian Land Conservancy's Five Rivers Reserve: Matthew Newton) 

Computer engineer Paul Roe from the Queensland University of Technology, who leads the A2O, is naturally enthusiastic about this use of sound to monitor the environment.

He says that while remote sensing with satellites and drones is a good way to keep an eye on vegetation, recording sound is the most effective and "non-invasive" way of monitoring animals, especially over large areas.

"Acoustics' time has come," he says.

But scientists will have their work cut out for them making sense of the massive amount of data they're collecting.

With its initial five-year funding, the A2O will collect 2,000 years' worth of data, which amounts to 2,000 terabytes that will need massive cloud storage and powerful computer processing.

"We've translated the problem of in-the-field observation into one of data analysis," Professor Roe says.

"We still need to analyse the data to see what's going on.

"We're trying to make ecology a big data science."

A20 researchers Paul Roe and David Tucker checking on a recorder in the field. (Supplied: David Tucker)

Enter citizen scientists … and artificial intelligence

This is where citizen scientists come into play.

Through projects like Hoot Detective, scientists are recruiting anyone with a connected digital device to help them pick out animal calls from sounds they've collected.

A tool known as the spectrogram is used here — it's a graph that plots frequency against time, and gives a visual representation of a sound clip.

As humans identify sounds in the spectrogram and feed what they've discovered back, that information can be used to train computer programs to automatically recognise calls.

This the sound of a young boobook owl trilling as seen in a spectrogram. (Supplied: Australian Acoustic Observatory) 

These "automatic recognisers" use the same sort of complex machine-learning algorithms involved in face recognition, which need lots of examples to learn from.

"If you want to scale ecological monitoring, you need to find a way to automate it," Professor Roe says.

But while finding individual species in lots of data for humans or computers can be likened to finding "a needle in a haystack", ecoacoustics also involves "zooming out" to "understand the haystack" itself.

For this, researchers can use what's called a "false colour spectrogram", which summarises the information so it fits on your computer screen and codes different sounds in different colours.

"So you can look at a whole night of data in one picture," Professor Roe says.

While you can still zoom in like you do on Google Maps to the level of individual species, zooming out is useful for other things.

"You may not know what you're looking for. You might be just trying to find patterns of change," Professor Roe says.

These false colour spectrograms show different soundscapes over a 24-hour-period – in site 1 you can only hear the wind, whereas in site 2 (a shrubland) there are lots of calls. (Supplied: Marina Scarpellil)

Getting the big picture

Marina Scarpelli is one ecoacoustics researcher who wants to zoom out and get the big picture.

"I am interested in how different ecosystems have different sounds," says Ms Scarpelli, who is doing a PhD at the Queensland University of Technology.

She planted small sound recorders close together in different vegetation types on a semi-arid property in Queensland.

After that she created colour-coded spectrograms using mathematical filters called "acoustic indices," tuned to different sounds in the recording, from birdsong to wind.

"Acoustic indices give you a fingerprint of the sound or the environment," says Professor Roe, one of her supervisors.

"So you can use that a bit like a bar code to characterise the environment and how it's changing."

Marina Scarpelli attaches a small sound recorder to a tree as part of her early research. (Supplied: Marina Scarpelli) 

Early results from Ms Scarpelli's analysis show the shrubland had more birds than the woodland, while areas without vegetation were so quiet, all that could be heard was the sound of the wind that whipped up during the day.

"We could clearly hear the differences and we can also see the differences in the spectrograms," Ms Scarpelli says.

She says the findings were expected because most of the birds in the shrublands are insect-eaters, and insects prefer shrubs to trees.

"Everything ended up making good ecological sense."

Now she has developed a reliable method, Ms Scarpelli will be using A2O data to analyse the acoustic "barcodes" of everything from tropical forests to deserts.

She hopes work like hers helps give us a better idea of our impact on the Earth.

“We know humans are changing the environment really fast, and not for the best in most cases," she says.

"Sound can be a good way to measure how the changes are happening."

Many A2O recorders are on protected properties like this. (Bush Heritage Australia: Tom O'Hara)

Links

• Using ecoacoustic methods to survey the impacts of climate change on biodiversity (pdf)
• Climate Change Music: From Environmental Aesthetics to Ecoacoustics
• Climate change is breaking Earth’s beat
• Ecoacoustics: The Ecological Role of Sounds
• The Australian Acoustic Observatory (pdf)
• Confronting Climate Change Through Sound

(Washington Post) A Critical Ocean System May Be Heading For Collapse Due To Climate Change, Study Finds

Washington Post - Sarah Kaplan

‘The consequences of a collapse would likely be far-reaching’

An aerial view of Rhode Island shorelines. A weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation could bring extreme cold to Europe and parts of North America, raise sea levels and disrupt seasonal monsoons. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

Human-caused warming has led to an “almost complete loss of stability” in the system that drives Atlantic Ocean currents, a new study has found — raising the worrying prospect that this critical aquatic “conveyor belt” could be close to collapse.

In recent years, scientists have warned about a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which transports warm, salty water from the tropics to northern Europe and then sends colder water back south along the ocean floor. Researchers who study ancient climate change have also uncovered evidence that the AMOC can turn off abruptly, causing wild temperature swings and other dramatic shifts in global weather systems.

Scientists haven’t directly observed the AMOC slowing down. But the new analysis, published Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change, draws on more than a century of ocean temperature and salinity data to show significant changes in eight indirect measures of the circulation’s strength.

These indicators suggest that the AMOC is running out of steam, making it more susceptible to disruptions that might knock it out of equilibrium, said study author Niklas Boers, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

If the circulation shuts down, it could bring extreme cold to Europe and parts of North America, raise sea levels along the U.S. East Coast and disrupt seasonal monsoons that provide water to much of the world.

“This is an increase in understanding … of how close to a tipping point the AMOC might already be,” said Levke Caesar, a climate physicist at Maynooth University who was not involved in the study.

Boers’s analysis doesn’t suggest exactly when the switch might happen. But “the mere possibility that the AMOC tipping point is close should be motivation enough for us to take countermeasures,” Caesar said. “The consequences of a collapse would likely be far-reaching.”

The foundations of a house that used to sits along the water near a beach in South Kingstown, R.I. Changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation could lead to rising sea levels on the U.S. East Coast. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

The AMOC is the product of a gigantic, ocean-wide balancing act. It starts in the tropics, where high temperatures not only warm up the seawater but also increase its proportion of salt by boosting evaporation. This warm, salty water flows northeast from the U.S. coastline toward Europe — creating the current we know as the Gulf Stream.

But as the current gains latitude it cools, adding density to waters already laden with salt. By the time it hits Greenland, it is dense enough to sink deep beneath the surface. It pushes other submerged water south toward Antarctica, where it mixes with other ocean currents as part of a global system known as the “thermohaline circulation.”

This circulation is at the heart of Earth’s climate system, playing a critical role in redistributing heat and regulating weather patterns around the world.

As long as the necessary temperature and salinity gradients exist, AMOC is self-sustaining, Boers explained. The predictable physics that make dense water sink and lighter water “upwell” keep the circulation churning in an endless loop.

But climate change has shifted the balance. Higher temperatures make ocean waters warmer and lighter. An influx of freshwater from melting ice sheets and glaciers dilutes North Atlantic’s saltiness, reducing its density. If these waters aren’t heavy enough to sink, the entire AMOC will shut down.

It’s happened before. Studies suggest that toward the end of the last ice age, a massive glacial lake burst through a declining North American ice sheet. The flood of freshwater spilled into the Atlantic, halting the AMOC and plunging much of the Northern Hemisphere — especially Europe — into deep cold. Gas bubbles trapped in polar ice indicate the cold spell lasted 1,000 years. Analyses of plant fossils and ancient artifacts suggest that the climate shift transformed ecosystems and threw human societies into upheaval.

“The phenomenon is intrinsically bi-stable,” Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution President Peter de Menocal said of the AMOC. “It’s either on or it’s off.”

But is it about to turn off now?

“That’s the core question we’re all concerned about,” said de Menocal, who was not involved in Boers’s research.

In its 2019 “Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate,” the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected that the AMOC would weaken during this century, but total collapse within the next 300 years was only likely under the worst-case warming scenarios.

The new analysis suggests “the critical threshold is most likely much closer than we would have expected,” Boers said.

The “restoring forces,” or feedback loops, that keep the AMOC churning are in decline, he said. All the indicators analyzed in his study — including sea surface temperature and salt concentrations — have become increasingly variable.

It’s as though the AMOC is a patient newly arrived in the emergency room, and Boers has provided scientists with an assessment of its vital signs, de Menocal said. “All the signs are consistent with the patient having a real mortal problem.”

The sun rises on the Atlantic Ocean in Barra Del Chuy, Uruguay. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Physical oceanographers like him are also trying to confirm the AMOC slowdown through direct observations. But the AMOC is so big and complex that it will probably take years of careful monitoring and data collection before a definitive measurement is possible.

“Yet everyone also realizes the jeopardy of waiting for that proof,” de Menocal said.

After all, there are plenty of other indications that Earth’s climate is in unprecedented territory. This summer, the Pacific Northwest was blasted by a heat wave scientists say was “virtually impossible” without human-caused warming. China, Germany, Belgium, Uganda and India have all experienced massive, deadly floods. Wildfires are raging from California to Turkey to the frozen forests of Siberia.

The world is more than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it was before humans started burning fossil fuels, and it’s getting hotter all the time.

And the apparent consequences of the AMOC slowing are already being felt. A persistent “cold blob” in the ocean south of Greenland is thought to result from less warm water reaching that region. The lagging Gulf Stream has caused exceptionally high sea level rise along the U.S. East Coast. Key fisheries have been upended by the rapid temperature swings, and beloved species are struggling to cope with the changes.

If the AMOC does completely shut down, the change would be irreversible in human lifetimes, Boers said. The “bi-stable” nature of the phenomenon means it will find new equilibrium in its “off” state. Turning it back on would require a shift in the climate far greater than the changes that triggered the shutdown.

“It’s one of those events that should not happen, and we should try all that we can to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible,” Boers said. “This is a system we don’t want to mess with.”

Links

• Tens of millions of people have been moving into flood zones, satellite imagery shows
• Virtually all emperor penguin colonies doomed for extinction by 2100 as climate change looms, study finds
• Scientists see stronger evidence of slowing Atlantic Ocean circulation, an ‘Achilles’ heel’ of the climate
• What is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation? 
• Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
• Guest post: Could the Atlantic Overturning Circulation ‘shut down’?
• Scientists may have solved a huge riddle in Earth’s climate past. It doesn’t bode well for the future.
• Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate
• Amid summer of fire and floods, a moment of truth for climate action
• Why the U.S. East Coast could be a major ‘hotspot’ for rising seas

(AU SMH) Remote Cape Howe On The Ocean Front Line For Climate Change

Sydney Morning Herald - Miki Perkins

At the windswept eastern tip of Victoria lies a remote marine wilderness on the front line of climate change and the warming of the Australia’s oceans.

About 20 kilometres from Mallacoota, Cape Howe Marine National Park interests scientists because of its proximity to the powerful East Australian Current, which travels down the eastern coast of Australia.

Cape Howe is experiencing the effects of climate change at an accelerated rate and scientists are taking notice.

Climate change is strengthening this current and providing a dispersal method for tropical species to move into southern waters, including marine pests such as urchins.

Rangers doing underwater surveying work to measure the impact of climate change at Cape Howe.

Keen to track these changes, scientists from Parks Victoria and Deakin University have been surveying reef life using remote underwater video cameras. Dive teams have also surveyed marine life to discover how this rich, underwater ecosystem is changing during climate change, and what this means for the rest of Victoria.

“With this area being at the forefront for climate change, what we see helps us forecast what might happen further along the coast, and help us make better decisions about how to manage the biodiversity and ecological values,” says Tess Hoinville, a marine diving and monitoring officer at Parks Victoria.

Cape Howe Marine National Park

Simply reaching Cape Howe can be challenging: the dive survey sites sit at the edge of a vast continental shelf, buffeted by strong currents and waves.

But once divers sink below the surface, they float above rocky reef, seagrass, sponge beds and crayweed and common kelp forests. The area boasts an abundance of fish like wrasse and banded morwong, as well as octopus and Australian fur seals.

A rare grey nurse shark at Cape Howe.

On the most recent survey, in April, divers were thrilled to see a very rare grey nurse shark. There are only two records of grey nurse shark sightings in Victoria, including one from Mallacoota Inlet in the early 1970s.

But they also saw species that likely travelled from further north on the warming current, like black sea urchins, a marine pest. This urchin has extended its historical range from NSW into eastern Victoria and Tasmania due to warming waters, with its larvae unable to survive in colder temperatures.

There has been an increase in the number of black sea urchins at Cape Howe.

By overgrazing the seaweed on a reef, these urchins create extensive “barrens”, leaving nothing but bare rock, which are unable to support marine life.

Despite the increased presence of urchins, Cape Howe is still incredibly diverse and rich in its fish species, says Daniel Ierodiaconou, an associate professor of marine science at Deakin University.

Cape Howe has some of the highest fish diversity of any part of Victorian waters.

“It’s still incredibly diverse in terms of the fish that we’re seeing – it’s a mixing bowl,” says Associate Professor Ierodiaconou.

Biodiversity

Inside the battle to save Tasmania’s giant kelp forests

There are some strategies that work to remove urchins. About 100 kilometres further east of Cape Howe, at Beware Reef, off the coast of Cape Conran, a successful program over two years has culled 25,000 black sea urchins. The kelp forests have regrown.

Speaking by phone on a ship returning from a Norfolk Island fish survey trip, Associate Professor Ierodiaconou said the fish diversity surveys were part of a national and global effort to use video technology under water to document diversity. “Often, it’s baseline information that we’re capturing for the very first time.”

Links

• Video: What Cape Howe tells us about climate change
• Research Area Cape Howe Marine National Park
• What will a warming East Australian Current change along the way?
• Narooma on NSW south coast revealed as a hot spot for global ocean warming 
• The fight to save the 'armpits of the coast' to store carbon
• Threatened blue carbon ecosystems store carbon 40 times faster than forests
• Things warm up as the East Australian Current heads south
• East Australian Current - Wikipedia

(The Guardian) Our Leaders Look Climate Change In The Eyes, And Shrug

The Guardian - Hamilton Nolan

It is not good to be too pessimistic on the climate crisis. That said, it sure does seem like we’re screwed

‘Capitalism is a machine made to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left.’ Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock

Author Hamilton Nolan is a freelance writer and columnist based in New York. He is the Washington Post public editor for the Columbia Journalism Review and Labor reporter for In These Times. He is a contributor to The Guardian, MSN, The New York Times, Gizmodo, New York Daily News, News.com.au, Salon, and Stuff.co.nz.

If you have cultivated an Edgar Allen Poe-like appreciation for the macabre, there is a certain sort of amusement to be had in watching the developed world deal with the insistent onslaught of climate change.

Like many horror stories, this one features a main character full of futile determination to maintain a sense of normalcy even as the ominous signs of doom become ever more impossible to ignore.

We can chuckle knowing that the monster is going to come for our designated protectors. We stop chuckling knowing that it’s coming for all of us next.

It is easy to imagine that a real live existential threat to our way of life would prompt any society to assume war footing and marshal everything it has to fight for survival. Unfortunately, this response only takes hold in actual war situations, where the threat is “other people that we can shoot and kill in glorious fashion”.

When the threat comes not from enemy people, but from our own nature, we find it much harder to rise to the occasion. Where is the glory in recognizing the folly of our own greed and profligacy? Leaders are not elected on such things. We want leaders who will give us more, leading us ever onwards, upwards and into the grave.

The latest demonstration of this comes from the G20, that coalition that is as good a proxy as any for the combined will of the world’s richest countries. The latest G20 meeting wrapped up last week without firm commitments on phasing out coal power, or on what steps nations will promise to take to try to hold global warming to 1.5C. This goal is both necessary and, perhaps, unlikely – a report by scientists found that China, Russia, Brazil and Australia are all pursuing policies that could lead to a cataclysmic five degrees of warming.

The G20 is a perfect model of our collective failure to build institutions capable of coping with deep, long-term, existential problems that cannot be solved by building more weapons. On the one hand, the head of the United Nations says that there is no way for the world to meet its 1.5C warming goal without the leadership of the G20; on the other hand, a recent analysis found that G20 members have, in the past five years, paid $3.3tn in subsidies for fossil fuel production and consumption.

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Wildfire fighters advance against biggest US blaze amid dire warnings. Read more

The same group that claims to be bailing out humanity’s sinking ship with one hand is busily setting it aflame with the other hand. It is not good to be too pessimistic on climate change, because we must maintain the belief that we can win this battle if we are to have any hope at all. That said, it sure does seem like we’re screwed.

As overwhelming and omnipresent as the climate crisis is, it is not the core issue. The core issue is capitalism. Capitalism’s unfettered pursuit of economic growth is what caused climate change, and capitalism’s inability to reckon with externalities – the economic term for a cost that falls onto third parties – is what is preventing us from solving climate change. Indeed, climate change itself is the ultimate negative externality: fossil-fuel companies and assorted polluting corporations and their investors get all the benefits, and the rest of the world pays the price.

Now the entire globe finds itself trapped in the gruesome logic of capitalism, where it is perfectly rational for the rich to continue doing something that is destroying the earth, as long as the profits they reap will allow them to insulate themselves from the consequences.

Capitalism is a machine made to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left

Congratulations, free market evangelists: this is the system you have built. It doesn’t work. I don’t want to lean too heavily on the touchy-feely, Gaia-esque interpretation of global warming as the inevitable wounds of an omniscient Mother Earth, but you must admit that viewing humanity and its pollution as a malicious virus set to be eradicated by nature is now a fairly compelling metaphor.

Homo sapiens rose above the lesser animals thanks to our ability to wield logic and reason, yet we have somehow gotten ourselves to a place where the knowledge of what is driving all these wildfires and floods is not enough to enable us to do anything meaningful to stop it. The keystone experience of global capitalism is to gape at a drought-fueled fire as it consumes your home, and then go buy a bigger SUV to console yourself.

This year, the G20 is patting itself on the back for “[recognizing] carbon pricing as a potential tool to address climate change for the first time in an official communique”. This would have been encouraging 30 years ago, when we should have established a carbon tax after it became clear that carbon emissions cause tangible damage to the environment. In 2021, this sort of diplomatic marginalia is the equivalent of a child on the Titanic proudly showing his parents his completed homework, just as the ship slips beneath the waves.

Of course we need a price on carbon. Of course we need extremely strict emissions regulations, massive green energy investments, and a maniacal focus on sustainability fierce enough to radically change a society that is built to promote unlimited consumption. But, to be honest, there is little indication that we will get those things any time soon. The path we are on, still, is not one that leads to a happy ending. Rather, it is one that leads to the last billionaire standing on dry land blasting off in his private rocket as the rest of us drown in rising seas.

Capitalism is a machine made to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left. We can either fool ourselves about that until it kills us, or we can change it.

Links

• Plans of four G20 states are threat to global climate pledge, warn scientists
• Ending climate change requires the end of capitalism. Have we got the stomach for it?
• The fight against climate change is a fight against capitalism
• Capitalism Caused Climate Change; It Must Also Be the Solution
• UN blasts world leaders for failing to seal £72bn-a-year deal on climate
• The Guardian view on climate progress: the need for speed
• The world in 2021 – how global politics will change this year
• World is in danger of missing Paris climate target, summit is warned
• Scientists warn world will miss key climate target

(Anthropocene) A New Study Provides A Nuanced—And Ultimately Hopeful—View Of The Climate Generation Gap

Anthropocene - Sarah DeWeerdt

Older cohorts started out less concerned (circa 2009), but worry has increased across all age groups at a similar rate over the last decade

Image: 123RF

Climate concern is increasing among all age groups, raising hopes that different generations can work together to solve the climate crisis, the authors of a new study say.

There’s lots of evidence that climate change awareness and concern have increased over the past decade or so. But some people have posited the existence of a climate generation gap, with younger people more concerned about climate change than older people.

The idea of the generation gap is logical – after all, younger people will be around longer to experience more of the effects of climate change, and the people in charge of governments and corporations who have the most to lose from overhauling the current economic system tend to be older. But actual evidence for such a generation gap is mixed.

In the new study, researchers analyzed 10 years’ worth of data from an ongoing study of social and political attitudes in New Zealand. As part of the survey, respondents were asked to rate their agreement or disagreement on a 7-point scale with the statements “climate change is real” and “climate change is caused by humans.”

The researchers sorted 56,513 study participants born between 1936 and 1995 into a dozen 5-year birth cohorts. Then they constructed three models of the evolution of climate belief and tested which one best fit the data: Do climate change beliefs decline as people age, do patterns of change in climate belief differ across different cohorts, or do birth cohorts vary in their starting point of climate change beliefs but not in their rate of change over time?

The data are consistent with the third possibility, the researchers report in Nature Communications. They found that both acceptance of climate change and agreement that it is human caused increased at similar rates among all age groups from 2009-2018.

However, younger cohorts started out at a higher level of climate belief at the beginning of that period.

“A climate change generation gap is present in baseline levels of climate change beliefs, but the rate of increase in levels of climate beliefs does not differ across age cohorts,” the researchers write. “Both younger and older people are accelerating in their belief at a comparable rate.”

There was no difference in climate beliefs by gender, in contrast to some studies that have found higher climate and environmental concern among women.

“Our findings provide a more nuanced and necessary qualification of the so-called climate change generation gap,” the researchers write.

The findings are good news because they suggest that climate beliefs aren’t set in stone, and that media coverage of and advocacy around climate change over the past several years are having an effect across all age groups, they say.

In addition, climate action will require efforts by all generations working together – and the new results suggest that’s possible.

Links

• Ten-year panel data confirm generation gap but climate beliefs increase at similar rates across ages
• Employment in the energy sector will dramatically expand as economies decarbonize
• Collective battery storage could be the secret ingredient to a climate-friendly grid
• Researchers devise a scheme to treat carbon debt like financial debt
• First of its kind study quantifies how tree shade can cancel urban heat island effect
• Climate lawsuits lag considerably behind state-of-the-art climate science
• Cities have a green infrastructure blind spot
• To help save the climate, ask yourself if that videoconference could be a voice call
• Can zero emissions and economic growth go together? Yes, but conditions apply.
• The social contagion of solar packs a lot of power

(AU) The Climate Emergency – A Need For Radical Honesty – Laced With Courage And Compassion: Part 1

Pearls and Irritations - Jonathan Page

We have all been abandoned by our “leaders”, a pathetic coterie of self-focused, ignorant and immature individuals who lack courage, compassion and the capacity to recognize an impending catastrophe, with likely societal collapse and massive loss of life (already beginning). There is no possibility of technological salvation.

 

Author Jonathan Page has been a medical oncologist for 40 years, previously working in major teaching hospitals in Sydney, but now focuses on palliative care and important issues of the psycho-spiritual domain. He also has an interest in ecological matters and human rights.

I’ve been a medical oncologist for 40 years, treating patients with advanced cancer. What can I say about the intractable COVID 19 and Climate Crises?

Perhaps, “The human civilization now confronts the challenging interconnected crises of COVID 19 and Climate Change, (not to mention the crises of health inequity, racism, poverty and child abuse, each exacerbated by all the others)”?

As the great 20th-century philosopher, John Lennon sang:

“I’m sick and tired of hearin’ things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded, hypocrites
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth”.

In oncology, we often see multiple crises. A previously well patient may present with a serious refractory infection, say pneumonia, in itself a crisis for patient and family alike. Weeks of treatment go by. There is no improvement. Further testing reveals the Big Crisis, underlying cancer. Now life itself is threatened. But there is more. This 50-year-old woman, Joan, lives in an abusive relationship, a third crisis.

In oncology, following the discovery of a cancer, there are often two consultations. In the first, I would spend much time with Joan by herself, and then with the family, obtaining as much information as possible about her past, even from early life, and other important factors, including aspects of the ongoing lung infection, her personal strengths and supports, and her emotional response when told of the cancer and its clear threat to life. Further investigations would be necessary to characterise the cancer in detail and thus plan the best treatment.

So too with COVID 19 and Climate Change, I will approach these crises gently in this Part 1, with a presentation of the “further investigation” and stark reality in Part 2.

In the second meeting with Joan, I would discuss the further results with Joan. Over the years I have had to “break bad news” to so many patients, essentially telling an anxious and desperate patient that their cancer is treatable but not curable. They will thus die sooner than they expected. Some patients indicate early that they do not want to hear this news. Sometimes a family member intervenes to ask me not to break this bad news, that is not to tell the truth, even indirectly or in stages. Clearly, there are ethical issues here. A person generally has a right to know the truth about their own life.

Over the years, despite informing hundreds of patients of their shortened lives, I find that this important duty never gets easier, and nor should it, since I am relating deeply with one person, this particular patient, whose name is Joan, with her own life, that she has kindly shared with me, including details never shared with anyone else. So, I share and feel the reality of her shortened life, with the knowledge that so many dreams will not be fulfilled. Eyes moisten. I can only really be truly present for Joan if I have already become familiar with my own eventual demise, although always necessarily beyond comprehension. I reassure Joan that she will be cared for with compassion right through until the end.

Unfortunately, because of the pneumonia, Joan was never able to receive treatment for her cancer, and died some weeks later, still in hospital.

As with this second consultation, confronting intolerable realities, so in Part 2 I will present current data indicating the truly perilous status of the Climate Emergency.

Just as the pneumonia and lung cancer are related to each other in many complex ways, so too with COVID 19 and Climate Change, reflecting man’s inexorable destructive exploitation of our precious planet. The great majority of indicators of ecosystem health and biodiversity now show rapid decline. The Sixth Great Extinction on this planet has begun. The population sizes of vertebrate species have fallen 68% since 1970. Around 1 million species of all life forms already face impending extinction.

Whilst we are rightly focused on the immediacy of COVID 19, we should not forget the evolving malignancy of Climate Change. Indeed, as with Joan, this malignant process can rapidly become irreversible, possibly amenable to minor mitigation, but ultimately following a trajectory determined by physical laws oblivious to human preferences.

Despite decades of alarming scientific data and witnessing and experiencing directly the catastrophic consequences of the Climate Emergency (wildfires and alarming record temperatures on many continents, unprecedented flooding in Europe and increasing Atlantic hurricane intensity and so on), very little action has been taken.

The reasons for this dangerously inadequate activity by governments in the face of increasing existential risk are not well understood but likely include:

1. “Scientific reticence” (a self-censoring process when dealing with truly unpalatable data); and also here;
2. The recent “under-presentation” of opinion and risk (based knowingly on incomplete data for political acceptability); for example, the IPCC 2018 statement that zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 would restrict a global temperature rise to 1.5⁰C; when in fact there was only a 50% chance of doing so, but this also excluded other adverse factors – notably tipping points, so we are now actually at the undesirable 2⁰C, with an urgent need to reach zero by 2030 (not 2050);
3. “Psychic numbing” and the “nothing response” (noted by the courageous psychiatrist, the late Beverly Raphael, during the nuclear threats of last century);
4. Significantly, most politicians have limited cognitive and emotional maturity, mostly residing in level 3 of 8 possible levels in Grave’s Model of Human Development. In level 3, (Egocentric Power) the principles include:

• Living in a world of haves and have-nots, where it’s good to be a have;
• Avoiding shame, defending reputation, seeking revenge, being respected; remaining self-focused with no awareness of the world;
• Gratifying impulses immediately; exploiting the world;
• Fighting remorselessly and without guilt to break constraints;
• Not worrying about consequences that may not come.

Higher levels of maturation in our “leadership” would allow: the finding of meaning and purpose in life (spiritual progress), a sense of self-sacrifice, seeking order, stability and peace, controlling impulsivity, responding to guilt, promoting righteous living, enabling others to flourish, becoming aware of the world as a complex, sensitive, interactive, interconnected biosphere (Gaia).

In the world of oncology, patients (like Joan) are often faced with an existential threat, the equivalent of their own internal “climate emergency”, (a terminal illness). They would then receive meticulous care, guided by compassion and honesty, remaining fully informed about changing circumstances, with their loved ones also supported. Importantly, there would be a commitment by the caring team to maintain this deep engagement to the end of life, with no possibility of abandonment.

In the very real world of Climate Emergency, as tipping points are passed, with a rapidly worsening prognosis, we have all been abandoned by our “leaders”, a pathetic coterie of self-focused, ignorant and immature individuals who lack courage, compassion and the capacity to recognize an impending catastrophe, with likely societal collapse and massive loss of life (already beginning). There is no possibility of technological salvation.

Furthermore, they have abrogated their fundamental duty to protect the vulnerable, particularly children, who are already aware of the crisis (note Greta Thunberg), and experience eco-anxiety and grief, and internationally, participate in “SS4C” (School Strikes for Climate) demonstrations in large numbers. A major recent Australian protest by children took place on May 21^st 2021 against the bizarre plan for our federal government to fund a $600m gas-fired plant.

Not surprisingly adult eco-anxiety and solastalgia (climate grief) are also high, or often internalized, (and thus to manifest as other disturbances of mood and behaviour).

Since our leaders have access to the best climatological and psychological advice, their bewildering inaction over decades now represents a major crime, not only against humanity but against all life. There are now new categories of crime to consider: Ecocide, Auto-Speciescide, Eídocide (killing of an entire species) and Gaicide.

More evidence and analysis in Part 2.

Links

• The Climate Emergency: a need for radical honesty – laced with courage and compassion: Part 2
• What goes around comes around: carbon tariffs bite our exports
• The EU tariff plan is good news for Australia’s place in the World
• “Fossil fuel economy has reached its limits”: EU to slash emissions and drag Australia with it
• After many years the Great Barrier Reef ‘in danger’ listing shouldn’t come as a surprise.
• South Australia’s impressive renewable energy transition
• Carbon Offsets are a Delusion
• Australia ranked dead last in world for climate action in latest UN report