What’s on Deck on Climate Change?

Painting by Andrej Lišakov.

Expert Reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Peter Carter has new information on climate change meeting IPCC 6^This Evaluation of the worst case scenario. Carter said the climate system is several years ahead of expectations and is actually in IPCC Stage 6.^This Assessing the worst-case scenario decades early.

Climate change experts are at a loss for words to understand how and why the problem of climate change, which negatively affects planetary ecosystems, has been largely ignored. Evidence of this is seen at famous UN climate conferences where talk is cheap, such as COP29 in oil-rich Azerbaijan. These are annual events with a long history of bad consequences. This frustrating recession has been going on for over 30 years.

Meanwhile, climate deniers, including the entire Republican Party, have brainwashed the public into thinking that climate change is not what it is made out to be: “don’t worry, it’s a hoax, ignore the radical leftists, ignore the science, and oh, yeah, they’re communists.”

But the climate system does not listen to fairy tales. In a teardown of nightly headline news about super hurricanes: Cost of Catastrophic Hurricane Season in the USA Exceeds $100 Billion, According to Estimates, USA Today, November 1, 2024. And severe drought threatens the survival of the Amazon rainforestShrinking, the Mighty Amazon River Begins to Dry UpOctober 11, 2024, as Antarctic glaciers slide: Scientists in Chile Question Whether Antarctica Has Reached a Point of No ReturnReuters, 8 August 2024.

The world has changed like never before.

Meanwhile, insurance premiums for homeownership are soaring, especially in Florida and California. Climate change makes homeownership more difficult for some insurance companies in regions where radical climate change has reduced coverage the most: Cimate Change Should Make You Rethink HomeownershipNew York Times, October 29, 2024.

And: Climate Change, Disaster Risk and Homeowners Insurance, Congressional Budget Office, August 2024. How do deniers explain this?

When studying climate change, there are climate scientists and advocates of all stripes, but few make real impact. He understands and explains as much as Peter Carter. Their analysis gets to the heart of the climate change problem. He openly criticizes the failure of national economies to act quickly enough and goes on the warpath to crush climate deniers who preach lies.

Challenging Climate Times Ahead

Dr. Peter Carter (retired physician and founder of the Climate Emergency Institute, est. 2008) published a climate update: November 2024: Challenging Climate Times Ahead. The summary of his report is partly as follows:

Since the IPCC 2018 1.5C climate emergency warning, which required immediate mitigation efforts by the world’s major economies to keep temperatures at pre-industrial 1.5C, anyone who could have made a difference has sort of disappeared as the emergency gets worse and worse. Where are they?

As the number of active advocates dwindled, Carter appealed for help to take the cause to the world’s major countries, reaching out to climate scientists to tell it like it was, getting them publicly involved, and making the case that urgent mitigation measures needed to be radically taken. “a dire climate emergency.”

And he is looking for help to counter mass denial campaigns, especially in the US: “There is still dangerous denial of climate change.” Social media is full of ridiculous denials from fossil fuel companies and the Republican Party. It’s not just Trump who denies this; The entire Republican Party. Charlatans preach denialism at MAGA conferences.

But there is plenty of news to dispel the lies.

USA was victimized powerful hurricanes in a row, Although it is not completely unusual, its intensity is quite unusual and it is an extraordinary situation caused by sudden climate change. Hurricanes caused $100 billion in damage.

These events do not happen in isolation. Human impact has changed the climate, and it’s not for the better. It is important to connect the dots about what is happening before our eyes; In other words, fossil fuel companies, big banks and big economy governments are focused on climate change: “They must be held accountable… They are getting away with mass murder on a scale we have never seen before.” (Carter)

It is a scientific fact that as the lower parts of the atmosphere warm through greenhouse gases, they retain more moisture. Moreover, in tropical storms, water vapor increases five to seven times per degree Celsius, resulting in torrential rains, atmospheric rivers, and floods—some of the most damaging aspects of climate change.

For example, as the United Kingdom experiences heavier rains than usual, agricultural fields are flooded, resulting in a decrease in agricultural production. This new era of extreme climate behavior is affecting food supplies as the UK suffers from “adverse weathering impacts”: Climate Change Is a Growing Threat to UK Farming, Yale Climate Connections, October 25, 2024.

IPCC 6^This The assessment calls for urgent action on global emissions, but this call for action is nowhere to be found; It isn’t happening. That’s why we must force governments to stop subsidizing fossil fuels, a dead-end industry. We have known for decades that fossil fuels can be completely replaced by renewable energies. Fossil Fuel Subsidies Rise to $7 TrillionIMF, 24 August 2023. Imagine spending $7 Trillion a year on renewable resources; This is a 10x increase over current spending.

Shocking New News for 2024

“It is clear that climate change will no longer be decades in the future. “It’s clear that this is happening right now, so we need to adapt.” (Jim Skea, IPCC President)

“The whole of Europe, especially the Mediterranean, is vulnerable. “We see desertification occurring not only in North Africa, but also in some of the southern fringes of Europe, such as Greece, Portugal and Türkiye” (Jim Skea)

The Telegraph interviewed IPCC President Jim Skea: UN Climate Chief: It’s too late to save Britain from overheatingOctober 5, 2024. According to the interview, humanity has lost the opportunity to keep the global temperature at 1.5C. And limiting it to 2C will require a heroic effort.

Since the mid-1990s, the ultimate hazard has been determined to be 2 degrees higher than in the pre-industrial period, and coincidentally, Dr. According to Carter, this is a disaster on a global basis. All tipping points will be triggered at this level… then it is too late.

The most feared tipping point is permafrost melting, which emits more CO2 (carbon dioxide) and CH4 (methane) than ever before. It melts in arctic and subarctic regions and emits three main greenhouse gases, CO2, CH4 and N2O (nitrous oxide). Atmosphere CH4 is getting very high.

“The observed increase in methane emissions is consistent with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s The most pessimistic greenhouse gas scenarios“If these trends continue, global temperatures are predicted to rise above 3°C by the end of the century.” (Source: 2024 Global Methane Budget Reveals Worrying Trends, European Space Agency, 9 October 2024)

Dr. According to Carter, scientists agree that the permafrost condition may be irreversible. In the latest State of the Cryosphere Report, scientists claim that permafrost melting is so bad/threatening that people should be “scared.” This alone should motivate worldwide mitigation measures to curb CO2 emissions.

Unfortunately permafrost now officially competes with cars, trains, planes and industry: “An international team led by researchers at the University of Stockholm found that from 2000 to 2020, carbon dioxide uptake on land was largely offset by emissions from there.” (Source: NASA Helps Us Find Out How Permafrost Affects Near-Term Global WarmingNASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, October 29, 2024)

Moreover, some of the most shocking news is the State of Climate Change Report in 2023; Large increases in global surface temperatures were partly linked to El Niño, but were not strong enough to increase temperatures so radically. Clearly something else was at play. When the massive heat experience in 2023 is reflected in IPCC projections, it reaches the “worst-case scenario category” because the planet is currently above worst-case scenarios measuring radiation at 8.5 W/m² (watts per square meter). planet-warming forcing. This is a serious problem.

(Additional Note: According to NOAA data, the Earth’s average radiative forcing in 2000 was about 2.43 W/m², and most of this forcing was due to increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. “Before the industrial age, incoming and outgoing radiation existed in a very close balance and Earth’s average temperature was more or less constant” – MIT Climate Portal)

One important source behind the problem is clear: We have never produced or burned more coal than we do today. It’s the worst thing we can do. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global coal use in 2023 reached an all-time high, driven by strong demand in China and India, and production also reached record levels… Global coal demand for 2024 is expected to remain largely stable 2023 with production levels. This crushes Paris ’15.

The World’s Carbon Sinks Are Failing

The world’s carbon sinks are losing efficiency. This is terrible news. The Global Carbon Project over the past three years has found that land and ocean carbon sinks are starting to lose efficiency. Dr. According to Carter, “this is a terrifying development.” We may be losing up to 50% of our most important natural buffers. The IPCC did not expect this to happen until after 2050, but now it has happened.

A recent study claims that the planet’s overall carbon pool absorbed zero or negligible amounts of carbon last year. This is the shock of the year. Actually the shocking event of the century. This is a game changer and a devastating climate curse.

Global Carbon Project 2^And Evaluation Looking at the status of methane CH4 and nitrous oxide N2O, it was seen that each greenhouse gas followed the “IPCC worst-case scenario”. This is Dr. It confirms Carter’s overriding thesis that we are pushing the climate system to the edge of a dangerous spiral.

Carter: “Yeah, obviously it’s time to panic…. But mysteriously there is no panic in the world.” 2^And The assessment found that all three greenhouse gases are increasing faster than anyone thought possible.

Is there hope?

Dr. Carter says we need to communicate with people and tell the truth. We must let the world know that we face a global climate change emergency. All kinds of emergency declarations were initiated in 2018 with the alarming IPCC 1.5C warning but are now obsolete; gone. This warning can be reinstated. And we must harass politicians “to stop fossil fuels, to stop destroying our future.” And hold companies accountable. And stop harassing and jailing peaceful climate protesters.

There are possibilities of hope because we have renewable energy sources that can replace fossil fuels many times over. But fossil fuels are growing at the same rate or faster than renewables. It’s a road to nowhere.

In summary, the climate system is trending above the IPCC’s worst case scenario, and Dr. In Carter’s words: “It’s time to panic: Yes, panic.” But who really knows this? And who really knows but could care less? Somehow something has to be done before the world suddenly wakes up one day and realizes it’s too late: “We’re screwed.”

Academy Award Nominee don’t look up (2021) is a perfect analogy for today’s situation.

Synopsis: Astronomy graduate student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) discovers a comet the size of Mount Everest heading straight for Earth. The political establishment, warned by Dibiasky and Mindy, is brushing off astronomers while they are busy campaigning and adopting a political slogan to win the election: “Don’t Look Up.”

Sound familiar?