The Science of
Climate Crisis
Listen to the science.214
~climate activist greta thunberg addressing donald trump
Climate science tells us just how dire our situation is, informing us how to respond, and to what degree. Comprehensive solutions must incorporate our emotional and spiritual responses as well as pragmatic actions. I therefore present a unique synthesis of climate science to provide poignant context for our climate healing journey.
The fourteen climate change-related themes presented here summarize the most compelling, surprising, and up-to-date (as of this writing) scientific evidence for our climate predicament. For the sake of concision, I have summarized these findings. You can find the full elaboration (including an additional theme) at my website (Resource 2: Weber, “The Science”), which I update as new studies emerge. In many cases, I cite popular articles that are more reader-friendly than posting lengthy and tedious scientific journal studies, though many of these studies are also linked in the articles provided. This will enable you to easily read more about any of the topics discussed.
The inner and outer climate cure measures I have proposed throughout this book would not be so urgent if our global crisis weren’t so dire. So, be forewarned, the following section does not paint a pretty picture, though there is some good news. As New York Times columnist and author David Wallace-Wells has written: “The number of ‘good news’ scientific papers … I could probably count on my two hands. The ‘bad news’ papers number probably in the thousands.” 215 The difficult news apprises us of the extraordinarily daunting challenges if we want to save ourselves and the planet. It’s imperative to have a comprehensive understanding of these issues to begin to truly grasp the scope of our problem and inform our responses.
Without a relatively in-depth understanding of the science, it’s easy to make wrong, unconscious assumptions. For example, you might assume that just because you can hold the miracle of an iPhone in your hand—a gadget possessing more than 100,000 times the processing power of the Apollo 11 computer that landed us on the moon fifty years ago 216—this implicitly means we have a cure for the climate problem. We don’t. There are, however, many partial and possible solutions currently being contemplated, implemented to varying degrees, and researched. You also might also not know that massive climate damages are unfolding worldwide, right now, and that worse changes are in store. As environmental scientist James Conca writes in Forbes, “… There is no way to reduce carbon emissions in the next twenty years sufficient to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.” 217
If at any point you feel overwhelmed with the information presented in this section (or especially in the full text online), I invite you to pace yourself accordingly. To learn the basics of climate science, you can watch the short video by National Geographic, “Causes and Effects of Climate Change.” 218
None of the information you’ll find ahead means we are doomed, at least not to extinction. It does describe our current condition and portends severe future challenges, especially if we do not do enough. No combination of readily implementable techno-fixes currently exists to save us from the worst of climate disruption. And, because retooling our entire economy and energy infrastructure would take a massive toll on the already-imperiled natural world (and humans too), I maintain that the optimal method for climate crisis mitigation is comprehensive degrowth.
Degrowth, or using less—a lot less—of everything that contributes to environmental and societal decline also means accepting a “lower” standard of living.219 This is a radically sane, most wise form of climate action, especially because it (1) starves capitalism and undermines mercenary dishonesty, (2) directly decreases pollution and greenhouse gases (GHGs), and (3) immediately benefits the environment because we extract less from it. Unfortunately, minimizing consumption, “lowering” our standard of living, and drastically localizing commerce is not how many in developed nations (which produce the most GHGs) choose to exercise privilege, as political blogger Kevin Drum explains in his essay, “Why Climate Change Is So Hard.” 220 Nor can the underprivileged afford to abdicate their meager livelihoods as they clear the Amazon rainforest for cattle raising, decimate the Indonesian jungle for palm oil plantations, and poison the land while mining rare metals like cobalt and lithium.221 If wealthier nations could decrease demand, exploitation of the Earth would also decline. Instead, we protect immediate, excessive comforts at the expense of sowing the seeds for a disastrous future. We are addicted to more progress, which means more consumption and more desecration of the natural world.
As we accept this continued progress and consumption, then, we must work from many different angles to turn the downward spiral of climate crisis upward. Just as we do not know the exponential effects of current disrupting climate feedback loops, we cannot know the combined, exponential effects of mitigating solutions. This said, I present here a summary of our current predicament, which themes include: temperature rise, emissions, heat records, oceans, ice, the Gulf Stream, Bitcoin and big pharma, tipping points, wildfires and floods, methane and permafrost, species extinction, IPCC conservatism, reforestation and deforestation, and bullying and censorship of climate scientists.
1. Temperature Rise
Many scientists now report the likelihood of catastrophic climate breakdown occurring much sooner than the proverbial 2100 doomsday date cited in many scientific studies and popular climate change headlines. Highly respected Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann says, “We are seeing increases in extreme weather events that go well beyond what has been predicted or projected in the past. Increasingly, the science suggests that many of the impacts are occurring earlier and with greater amplitude than was predicted.” 222 This view is pervasively echoed among climate scientists. Stanford researchers have warned that if we continue business as usual, “annual temperatures over North America, Europe and East Asia will increase 2–4 °C by 2046–2065.” 223 These levels, which equate to a 3.6–7.2 degrees Fahrenheit rise, portend disaster.
2. Emissions
A 1.5 °C temperature rise above preindustrial levels is considered to be a catastrophic threshold beyond which significantly more severe climate disruption effects will likely result.224 The IPCC says that to keep preindustrial temperature rise below +1.5°C, by 2030 we must reduce global carbon emissions by 45 percent.225 But a little-known fact of the report is that to meet this goal, emissions must peak in 2020.226 According to a landmark study by a group of top scientists from the World Meteorological Organization, not only are emissions not expected to peak in 2020, they are not expected to peak even by 2030.227 We are therefore perilously behind in safeguarding our future.
Even if we were to have stopped all our emissions in 2017—which we did not, and instead have increased them through 2018 and 2019—another peer-reviewed study 228 shows that at least a +1.3°C temperature rise above pre-industrial levels is already baked in to the climate equation for 2100. Scientists call this phenomenon “committed warming.” This is because CO2 emissions take many years (10.1 to be exact, explained shortly) to exert their full warming effect.229 In other words, even if we stopped all emissions now, newly released CO2 released prior to the stopping point would take another decade to exert its full effect.
The time lag for a molecule of CO2 to exert its maximum warming effect was previously thought to be about forty years.230 But a more recent, peer-reviewed study shows “it takes just ten years for a single emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) to have its maximum warming effects on the Earth.” 231 This means our emissions reach maximal effect during most of our lifetimes, not just in our children’s, and not beginning in 2100. After this time, CO2 remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years.232
Though it is theoretically feasible, we cannot in fact stop all emissions now, according to Myles Allen, a climate scientist contributing to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. He says computer models show the soonest we can reach net-zero carbon—and still keep the lights on—is between the years 2040 to 2050; this means “we may well already be committed to a 1.5 degrees Celsius” global temperature rise.233 Harvard atmospheric scientist James Anderson states that we must not only halt carbon pollution and remove it from the atmosphere, but also engage in a “new effort to reflect sunlight away from the earth’s poles” to slow the melting ice caps. And this must be done … by 2023.234
Culminating in 2050, the United States is set to unleash the world’s largest influx of CO2 emissions from new oil and gas development. “U.S. drilling into new oil and gas reserves—primarily shale—could unlock 120 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions, which is equivalent to the lifetime CO2 emissions of nearly 1,000 coal-fired power plants.” 235 Despite urgent IPCC warnings, fossil fuel giants hope to invest trillions of dollars into new field exploration and development in the next decades.236 Fearing that fossil fuel demand might decline, petrochemical companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, and Saudi Aramco are poised to increase plastic production (which utilizes oil, gas, and their byproducts) through 2050, driving half the world’s oil demand and growth toward this aim and doubling the amount of plastic produced by 2040.237
Translating our energy consumption into more fathomable terms, Mark P. Mills writes in Forbes, “Roughly 85 percent of global energy comes from oil, coal and natural gas. For perspective, consider that if global hydrocarbons were all produced in the form of oil and stacked up in a row of barrels, that row would stretch from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles, and would grow in height by a Washington monument every single week.” 238 Take that in for a moment.
Adding to the problem, energy requirements in developing countries, led by China and India, are projected to double by approximately 2040.239 Massive wildfires and other natural disasters also contribute both to atmospheric and terrestrial pollution, as well as increased CO2 levels.240 These disasters accelerate warming, which precipitates further natural disasters, spiraling exponentially in a positive feedback loop.
3. Heat Records
July, 2019, was the hottest month ,241 and 2019 the second-warmest year in recorded history. 242
According to NASA, 2016 was Earth’s warmest year on record, while 2017 had been the second-warmest prior to 2019.243 2016 surpassed 2015’s heat record, which broke the 2014 record. This was the first time in recorded history the average global temperature broke records three years in a row.244 2018 has been declared the fourth hottest, “which means that the past five years have been the five warmest years in the modern record.” 245 It also means that of the nineteen hottest years on record, eighteen will have occurred since 2001.246 And there is now about a 75 percent chance 2020 will be the warmest year on record.247 Moreover, these heat extremes are concentrating in the Arctic—where we need ice, not meltwater—with temperatures some twenty to thirty degrees, and as high as forty and fifty degrees Fahrenheit above average in 2016 and 2018.248
4. Oceans
The Earth’s oceans absorb most of the carbon dioxide from our emissions. If it weren’t for the oceans, our planet would be a broiling mess. Oceans have absorbed 93 percent of warming caused by our emissions, so only a small percentage of this increased heat shows up in the atmosphere and at the Earth’s surface. How much heat is this? Fathom for yourself: “Research indicates that since 1970, the world’s oceans have absorbed 251 zettajoules of energy. But zettajoules are a pretty esoteric way of talking about heat. In more relatable terms, just one zettajoule would be enough to power twenty-five billion average American homes for a year.” Twenty-five billion homes. This amount of energy is equivalent to forty-three times the amount of energy consumed in the United States in 2012.249
Oceans are warmed by all the heat they absorb, and acidified by their absorption of CO2. While the oceans are protecting us from the worst effects of our excesses, rising ocean temperatures and increased acidification also mean incrementally less CO2 can dissolve in the oceans.250 The oceans will therefore progressively provide less and less of this buffering in the future. We won’t be able to rely on the oceans’ grace for much longer.
Hotter and more CO2-laden oceans are causing the demise of coral reefs and other marine life. An exception is jellyfish, which are proliferating dangerously and choking life out of the seas.251 These developments are in addition to the massive pollution problem of plastics that are further suffocating the oceans, with plastic microparticles finding their way into all forms of life there 252 and spreading into every nook and cranny of the globe.
All the world’s coral reefs are in danger of disappearing by 2050 due to heat stress, acidification, and resultant bleaching.253 The largest living structure on Earth, the majestic and once incredibly biodiverse Great Barrier Reef near Australia, is in steep decline.254 255
Similar to Earth’s surface temperatures, ocean temperatures have broken records for several straight years, while 2018 was the warmest year yet.256 The oceans are not only warming more quickly but are also warmer than we thought.257 In fact, oceans are heating up 40 percent faster on average than a United Nations panel estimated five years ago.258 Climate change is proceeding faster than previously expected and its effects are greater than those the IPCC factored into their climate models. The result is the IPCC modeling predictions are unrealistically favorable, despite already being dire; more on this just ahead.
5. Ice
In the Arctic, Greenland’s enormous ice sheet is melting at an accelerated rate. “The only thing we can do is adapt and mitigate further global warming—it’s too late for there to be no effect. We are watching the ice sheet hit a tipping point,” says Ohio State University geophysicist Michael Bevis, the lead author of this new study.259 A separate study by Eric Rignot, et al., shows Antarctica is also melting faster than previously anticipated and contributing more than expected to sea level rise.260 In 2017, a one hundred square-mile chunk of ice broke off from Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier.261 In 2018 an iceberg five times the size of Manhattan (115 square miles) calved from the same glacier and quickly broke apart.262 Pine Island Glacier also seems to be calving more frequently in recent years.263 In 2017, Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf lost a massive iceberg roughly the size of Delaware.264 Dr. Michael Mann says that melting in Antarctica and Greenland in the last few years has “literally doubled our projections of the sea level rise at the end of this century.” 265
A more recent development in Antarctica is the Florida-sized Thwaites Glacier, dubbed “the most dangerous glacier in the world.” Scientists have discovered a giant cavity under the glacier roughly two-thirds the size of Manhattan and the height of a 100-story building (1000 feet tall).266 Unfortunately, a figurative filling or root canal won’t work to fix this erosion. Incredibly, most of the missing fourteen billion tons of ice has melted over the last three years, suggesting the exponential damage caused by recent record-setting temperature increases. If Thwaites melts, it’s estimated to raise sea levels by two feet. This is what New York University geoscientist David Holland refers to as “almost the entire story” for sea level rise.267 The most concerning aspect of Thwaites, however, is its function as the linchpin to keep neighboring glaciers in place. This is why it’s called “the most dangerous glacier in the world.” 268 “When Thwaites collapses it will take most of West Antarctica with it,” contributing an additional ten to thirteen feet of sea level rise.269
6. The Gulf Stream and Thermohaline Weakening
Scientists are concerned that climate change could continue to weaken or even shut down the Gulf Stream, an ocean current that regulates temperature from the tropics to the Arctic. “A collapse could result in widespread cooling throughout the North Atlantic and Europe, increased sea ice in the North Atlantic, changes in tropical precipitation patterns, stronger North Atlantic storms, reduced precipitation and river flow, as well as reduced crop productivity in Europe. These effects would impact many regions around the globe.” 270 While scientists believe a shutdown is unlikely, the risk is real and presents a major potential tipping point.
7. Bitcoin and Big Pharma
You might be surprised to learn that the mining of Bitcoin, if it stays on its current growth trajectory, can alone prevent us from meeting critical climate targets. This is due to the tremendous amount of electricity required to mine it and the resultant creation of greenhouse gases. “A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change finds that if Bitcoin is implemented at similar rates at which other technologies have been incorporated, it alone could produce enough emissions to raise global temperatures by 2°C as soon as 2033.” 271
Big Pharma isn’t much better. The pharmaceutical industry emits more CO2 emissions than the automotive sector. “The total global emissions of the pharma sector amounts to about fifty-two megatonnes of CO2 in 2015, more than the 46.4 megatonnes of CO2 generated by the automotive sector in the same year.” 272 Put them feathers in your hat.
8. Tipping Points
A topic frequently discussed in climate conversations is if we have passed the tipping point of no return. To this point, you’ve already learned about several “faster than expected” climate changes. An article from The Guardian titled, “Risks of ‘Domino Effect’ of Tipping Points Greater than Thought, Study Says” states: “Policymakers have severely underestimated the risks of ecological tipping points, according to a study that shows 45 percent of all potential environmental collapses are interrelated and could amplify one another … Until recently, the study of tipping points was controversial, but it is increasingly accepted as an explanation for climate changes that are happening with more speed and ferocity than earlier computer models predicted. The loss of coral reefs and Arctic sea ice may already be past the point of no return. There are signs the Antarctic is heading the same way faster than thought.” 273
When changes continue faster than expected, they begin to grow exponentially due to positive feedback loops (which is what is meant by “environmental collapses are interrelated and could amplify one another”). Coauthor of the abovementioned study, Gary Peterson, says, “We’re surprised at the rate of change in the Earth system. So much is happening at the same time and at a faster speed than we would have thought twenty years ago. That’s a real concern. We’re heading ever faster toward the edge of a cliff.” 274 What’s more, the IPCC has inadequately accounted for these tipping points in its calculations, mentioning tipping points only a few times in its report. Founder of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, Durwood Zaelke says, “The IPCC report fails to focus on the weakest link in the climate chain: the self-reinforcing feedbacks which, if allowed to continue, will accelerate warming and risk cascading climate tipping points and runaway warming.” 275
9. Wildfires and Floods
More ferocious, devastating wildfires fueled by climate change-driven drought, higher winds, and the deadwood of massive numbers of drought-stressed trees killed by insects have ravaged vast areas in California, Oregon, Washington, Canada, and Australia. Fires have burned across the Siberian taiga276 and almost a dozen wildfires have reached above the Arctic Circle.277 During the summer of 2019, more than 2.4 million acres burned in Canada and thirteen million acres burned in Siberia.278 The most ferocious and extensive wildfires occurred across Australia in late 2019 into 2020, where thousands were forced onto the beaches and into the water for shelter against the encroaching blaze.279 The tragic spectacle of millions of acres of burning Amazon rainforest flooded world headlines in late 2019. Scientists say that if approximately 20 percent of the Amazon burns it could reach a tipping point of no return, and as a result, that more than half the Amazon would become a savannah.280
In addition to fires ( a Yang force), their Yin counterpart, flooding, is also wreaking havoc. “Floods in inland areas are the most common type of natural disaster in the United States.” 281 As sea levels rise, flooding will become more of a problem, especially for the approximately 200 million people who live along coastlines fewer than fifteen feet (approximately three meters) above sea level.282 Both fires and floods are slated to worsen in California and around the globe, bringing the “worst of both worlds.” 283
10. Methane and Permafrost
Because of warming temperatures, the melting of the Earth’s permafrost in the Arctic is releasing more methane (CH4 ), a greenhouse gas some eighty-four times more potent than CO2 in the short term (approximately two decades).284 While methane accounts for only 9 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, it is a significant source of climate change exacerbation because of its powerful warming capacity.285 More, while the peak heating effect of a CO2 molecule occurs in about ten years, the peak effect of methane is reached in only months. Because methane warms much more quickly, it is currently responsible for about 25 percent of global warming.286 One way to think about the relationship between CO2 and CH4 on global heating is: carbon dioxide controls how hot the planet ultimately gets, and methane controls how fast we get there.287
Dr. Natalia Shakhova at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks International Arctic Research Center 288 stated in 2008 that that a fifty-gigaton “burp” of methane (that’s fifty billion tons) from the Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf is “highly possible for abrupt release at any time,” 289 which could lead to catastrophic consequences for all life on the planet. More recently, in 2019, she reported this amount could potentially be more than 800 gigatons, which amount could have collected underground during one glacial period of approximately 100,000 years.290
A Yale Climate Connections column reports, “… It is likely a decent guess to speculate that the permafrost, and indeed the Arctic as a whole, is already at or very near a tipping point. The basis for such a claim is the simultaneous shift toward tipping points in a number of interconnected systems, many of which are positive reinforcing feedback mechanisms … By acting now, and on a frantic global scale, we just might be able to delay the tipping and the climatic domino effect from taking hold.” 291 But after tens of millions of acres of Siberian forest burned in 2018 and 2019, including massive burning of the Amazon, Africa, Indonesia, and Australia—our chances appear to be slimmer.
11. Species Extinction
We are currently losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with 150 to 200 going extinct every day due to our many forms of exhaling.292 In 2019, approximately 200 million animals burned in Bolivia’s forest fires,293 over one billion animals in the Australian bushfires,294 and untold numbers of animals in the Amazon jungle. Koalas in Australia are near extinction, and orangutans are on the brink in Borneo and Sumatra due to habitat loss from human development.295 Our current mass extinction event is the worst species die-off since the dinosaurs became extinct sixty-five million years ago.296 Wildlife populations have diminished by an average of 60 percent over the last few decades.297 Note, this is not 60 percent of individual animals but 60 percent of average population sizes. Unlike previous extinction events, however, humans are almost entirely responsible for the current mass die-off.
The most alarming extinctions, however, relate to insects. Entomologists know that insect loss is devastating to the biosphere, to which we also belong (surprise!). New Zealand bug expert Ruud Kleinpaste says of insects, “You go and take them out and all these things are falling over like a house of cards.” 298 In a much-publicized study, the biomass of flying insects in a protected area in Germany—where we’d expect to find higher than average numbers—were down between 76 and 82 percent,299 and according to a 2019 study, over 40 percent of insects worldwide are threatened with extinction.300 The main cause is habitat lost to intensive, industrial-style agriculture. Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, the introduction of invasive species, and climate change are additional causes. Climate change has especially affected tropical regions. The study’s author Dr. Sanchez-Bayo concludes: “A rethinking of current agricultural practices, in particular a serious reduction in pesticide usage and its substitution with more sustainable, ecologically-based practices, is urgently needed to slow or reverse current trends, allow the recovery of declining insect populations and safeguard the vital ecosystem services they provide.”301 Thus, the problem with GMO crops, mentioned in Chapter 9.
12. IPCC Conservatism
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), a body of the United Nations (UN), is the world’s authority on tracking climate change. It regularly interprets and disseminates a summary of climate change science, which governments use to help set policy, including that for greenhouse gas emissions.
It’s noteworthy that the report-issuing branch of the IPCC is an assembly of government personnel, not scientists. Its reports are considered conservative for numerous reasons. One reason is that IPCC calculations, on the whole, do not account for tipping points, positive feedback loops, or methane releases. Carbon Capture and Sequestration/Storage—despite being included as a major mitigation method in many IPCC pathway projections to reduce emissions to stay below a 1.5°C rise—has not been widely implemented in the real world, and it in fact may be magical thinking to believe it can be.302 Another reason is “there is no mention of the military sector’s emissions in the fifth and latest IPCC assessment report.” 303 Yet, the US Department of Defense “is the largest industrial consumer of fossil fuels in the world.” 304 These statistics alone indicate significant underestimations by the IPCC.
Another cause for IPCC conservatism is that its contributing scientists need to be on board with any conclusion, so the information approved for publication is the least-common-denominator result. In other words, the IPCC makes a minimum set of recommendations that all scientists can agree on. This is both good and bad. It’s good because we get more reliability. It’s bad because largely conservative—and, apparently, underestimated—results make it through the review process. Another reason for conservatism is the IPCC editorial cutoff date, which precedes the publication of its reports by roughly two years. This means any new science released after the cutoff date is omitted because there isn’t time for it to be properly reviewed and incorporated. The result is reports that are two years behind the cutting edge on the date they’re issued. With the rapidly changing climate scene, IPCC data are essentially obsolete before official reports are released.305
Top climate scientists’ conclusions also tend to be conservative.306 Sir Robert Watson, a former NASA and British climate scientist who chaired the IPCC from 1997 to 2002, says, “Nonexperts who reject mainstream science often call scientists ‘alarmists,’ yet most researchers said they tend to shy away from worst-case scenarios. By nature, scientists said they are overly conservative. In nearly every case, when scientists were off the mark on something, it was by underestimating a problem, not overestimating.” 307
All this means we likely have much less time than the IPCC indicates.
13. Reforestation, Afforestation, and Deforestation
One of the more promising climate mitigation strategies is based on a study led by Dr. Thomas Crowther, who claims that planting 1.2 trillion new trees could absorb 200 gigatons of CO2,308 equivalent to about a decade of anthropogenic warming.309 His method relies on the CO2-sequestering power of trees. Considering a fleet of ten drones could plant up to 400,000 trees per day, planting a trillion new trees suddenly seems achievable.310
Spearheading efforts to plant a trillion trees is the “Trillion Trees” organization 311 led by Felix Finkbeiner, a twenty-one-year-old activist and PhD student in Crowther’s lab who—with the help of 100,000 other youth between nine and twelve years old—planted his millionth tree when he was just twelve years old. “Forests are not only the livelihood of billions, but for us children forests are our future,” he says.312
The journal Science, however, has published four highly critical comments of Crowther’s work by other climate scientists. They claim that Crowther overestimated the amount of carbon trees could hold by a factor of five. They also highlighted other mistakes, such as that much of the land where these trees would be planted have other plants (already sequestering carbon) living there. Better than trees, therefore, might be to restore grasslands in drought- and wildfire-ravaged regions.313
Trees, grasses, and other plants are arguably our best means to sequester carbon in the atmosphere.314 While they offer a partial and potential short-term solution, reforestation and afforestation, along with other emission-reducing strategies, could buy us some time to become more truly sustainable.
We also must not forget that a cooperative effect from many innovations in combination—from renewables, tree planting, and soil regeneration, for example—could create exponential results to reduce climate crisis. It’s important to think about the cumulative contribution of many different approaches, rather than only individual solutions. And while optimistic, these ambitious scenarios are still hypothetical. We have not planted anything close to 1.2 trillion trees, and every year we are losing an area of forest equal to the size of the United Kingdom, not including those lost to wildfires.315 We do not know if such massive new tree plantings are feasible, and Dr. Crowther’s assertions of their net effects on slowing climate change have been questioned. We also don’t know how many trees would survive under worsening conditions such as inadequate rainfall, more prevalent and more powerful hurricanes, and flooding.316
Nonetheless, tree-planting efforts abound. Pakistan’s prime minister announced plans to plant ten billion trees.317 Scotland added more than twenty-two million trees to its forest in 2018.318 Madagascar is planting sixty million trees.319 Australia plans to plant one billion trees by 2050 to meet its Paris Climate Agreement pledge (may the bulk be planted before 2030!).320 During the summer of 2019, Ethiopia broke a world record by alleging to have planted 350 million seedlings in twelve hours, with 2.6 billion planted throughout the country, and a final goal of four billion seedlings.321 After decades of deforestation, Costa Rica has doubled its tree cover in the last thirty years.322 Then, there is the radically sane “Forest Man of India,” Jadav Payeng, who has single-handedly transformed a desiccated island into a thriving forest environment by planting tens of thousands of trees over forty years.323 Imagine if even a fraction of us worked together to match one-tenth the efforts of this man who was at first considered crazy by locals.
14. Bullying & Censorship
Adding insult to climate injury, cutting-edge climate scientists conducting essential research are receiving threats to shut down their work. According to Esquire magazine, climate scientists “have been the targets of an unrelenting and well-organized attack that includes death threats, summonses from a hostile Congress, attempts to get them fired, legal harassment, and intrusive discovery demands so severe they had to start their own legal-defense fund, all amplified by a relentless propaganda campaign nakedly financed by the fossil-fuel companies.” 324 Please do read the cited article!
Dishonest, aggressive tactics also have been deployed on other fronts. To protect corporate profits, scientists in the United Kingdom, Britain, United States, and other countries, were offered $10,000 a pop by fossil fuel lobbyist group American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to dishonestly weaken and debunk crucial climate science reports.325 Defunding of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and climate change research by our science-denying government has made matters even worse.
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In summary, we are locked into committed warming for at least the next 10.1 years due to the lag time of warming from emissions we’ve already released into the atmosphere, unless we find a way to rapidly and efficiently reduce that amount by some massive means of carbon drawdown (CO2 sequestration). Warming limits and cautions made by the IPCC appear to be significantly underestimated for many reasons. Accelerating positive feedback loops are driving climate change exponentially, at which point existing predictions become even more unreliable and conservative. As conditions worsen, key environmental tipping points become more probable, which can then drive exponential deterioration. All support systems are currently in massive decline and we are in deep trouble.
Reducing our emissions will no longer suffice to sustain a habitable planet. We must also remove massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere and safely store it, via Carbon Capture and Sequestration/Storage (CCS).326 Since 1970, global carbon emissions from fossil fuels have steadily increased, save for a few years of temporary decline.327 Even if we were to steadily and significantly reduce global emission levels each year for many consecutive years, there is still no immediate plan or collective solution for removing the astronomical amounts of excess atmospheric carbon. In fact, “We don’t do anything on this planet on that scale,” according to Dr. Hugh Hunt in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge.328 Factors such as increasing methane seeps, massive insect declines, loss of wildlife, climate refugee migrations, food and potable water shortages, wars, natural resource shortages, overpopulation, sea level rise, disease outbreaks, and our hastening unknown thresholds for precarious tipping points and the exponential changes that accompany them, leave us in a quandary.
Road signs on this apocalyptic journey include (1) the last time atmospheric CO2 levels are known to have equaled the present levels was sixty-six million years ago when the dinosaurs went extinct 329, (2) similar major climate events to our present crisis occurred in the past when we lost this much Arctic ice, and (3) both heat and cold temperature records being shattered year after recent year are important, self-evident signals screaming “Stop!”
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If everything you read in this book prior to reading the climate science did not move you to realize it’s time to get involved, I hope you are now convinced. Amid all the bad news, the good news is there seems to be a small window in which we can still turn our ship around, “provided we muster an unprecedented level of cooperation, extraordinary speed and heroic scale of action,” according to Nobel Prize-winning chemist Mario Molina.330 The bad news is our predicament is even more critical than we know. We also are nowhere near the needed global cooperation and mobilization, evidenced by the disparate and lukewarm, nonbinding resolutions to reduce GHGs as a result of the Paris Agreement and subsequent global climate summits, such as those in Katowice, Poland and Madrid, Spain. Yet, we could still avoid extinction. Realistically, we won’t escape without more serious harm.
Bear in mind, we have no plan for how to realistically respond to the IPCC’s warnings. In fact, the warnings and predictions depend upon Carbon Capture and Sequestration/Storage technology we’ve not yet implemented, which has not been proven to work at scale, making any climate solutions more nebulous and the IPCC warnings even less dire than conditions warrant. My hunch is we will start spraying (geoengineering) the skies with sun-reflecting particles before too long, at least to buy time.
We can therefore simultaneously begin to cope in the short-term and prepare for the longer term by undoing the Faustian bargain of our addiction to the benefits of fossil fuels. This necessarily means living outside the paradigm of business as usual. So, it’s time to get real: to feel deeply, think keenly, and act both radically and wisely. Thus this book.
214. Goodenough, “16-Year-Old Climate Activist Says Trump Obviously Doesn’t ‘Listen to the Science’.”
215. Wallace-Wells, “Time to Panic: The Planet is Getting Warmer in Catastrophic Ways. And Fear May Be the Only Thing That Saves us.”
216. Kendall, “Your Mobile Phone vs. Apollo 11’s Guidance Computer.”
217. Conca, “Why Solar Geoengineering May Be Our Only Hope to Reverse Global Warming.”
218. National Geographic, “Causes and Effects of Climate Change,” video.
219. Gauthier,”The Limits of Renewable Energy and the Case for Degrowth.”
220. Drum, “Why Climate Change Is So Hard.”
221. Conca, “Blood Batteries - Cobalt and the Congo.”
222. Berwyn, “Climate Change Is Happening Faster Than Expected, and It’s More Extreme.”
223. Carey, “Climate Change on Pace to Occur 10 Times Faster than any Change Recorded in Past 65 Million Years, Stanford Scientists Say.”
224. IPCC, “Summary for Policymakers of IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C Approved by Governments.”
225. Ibid.
226. M2020, “The Climate Turning Point.”
227. WMO, “Landmark United in Science Report Informs Climate Action Summit.”
228. Mauritsen and Pincus, “Committed Warming Inferred from Observations.”
229. Ricke and Caldeira, “Maximum Warming Occurs about One Decade After a Carbon Dioxide Emission.”
230. Marshall, “Climate Change: The 40 Year Delay Between Cause and Effect.”
231. Ricke and Caldeira, “Maximum Warming Occurs about One Decade After a Carbon Dioxide Emission.”
232. Archer and Brovkin, “The Millennial Atmospheric Lifetime of Anthropogenic CO2,“
233. Allen, “The Green New Deal: One Climate Scientist’s View, from the Other Side of the Atlantic.”
234. McMahon, “We Have Five Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says.”
235. “Drilling Toward Disaster: Why U.S. Oil and Gas Expansion is Incompatible with Climate Limits.”
236. Galey, “$5-tn Fuel Exploration Plans ‘Incompatible’ with Climate Goals.”
237. Gardiner, “A Surge of New Plastic Is About to Hit the Planet.”
238. Mills, “You Say You Want a Revolution’ in the Physics of Energy: Good Luck Green New Deal.”
239. Neuhauser, “Despite Climate Pledges, Global Energy Emissions on the Rise.”
240. Berwyn, “How Wildfires Can Affect Climate Change (and Vice Versa).”
241. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, “July 2019 Was Hottest Month on Record for the Planet.”
242. Fountain and Popovich, “2019 Was the Second-Hottest Year Ever, Closing Out the Warmest Decade.”
243. Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, “It’s Official: 2017 Was the Second Hottest Year on Record.”
244. Gillis, “Earth Sets a Temperature Record for the Third Straight Year.”
245. Miller, “Earth Just Experienced One of the Warmest Years on Record.”
246. Ibid.
247. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, “Global Climate Report- March 2020.”
248. Climate Nexus, “Temperatures Skyrocket in Arctic, Prompt Desperate ‘Refreeze’ Plan.”; Samenow, “Red-hot Planet: All-time Heat Records Have Been Set All over the World During the Past Week.”
249. Kahn, “Looking for Global Warming? Check the Ocean.”
250. Riebeck, “The Ocean’s Carbon Balance;” Harnung and Johnson, Chemistry and the Environment, 186.
251. Jiang and Fegan, “Jellyfish are Causing Mayhem As Pollution, Climate Change See Numbers Boom.”
252. Le Guern, “When the Mermaids Cry: The Great Plastic Tide.”
253. Parker and Welch, “Coral Reefs Could Be Gone in 30 Years.”
254. Woody, “Coral Cover on Great Barrier Reef Is in Steep Decline.”
255. Hoegh-Guldberg, “The Decline of the Great Barrier Reef.”
256. Pierre-Louis, “Ocean Warming Is Accelerating Faster than Thought, New Research Finds.”
257. Lijing Cheng et al., “How Fast Are the Oceans Warming?”
258. Ibid.
259. Meixler, “‘A Tipping Point.’ Greenland’s Ice Is Melting Much Faster than Previously Thought, Scientists Say.”
260. Eric Rignot et al., “Four Decades of Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Balance from 1979–2017.”
261. Mooney, “A Key Antarctic Glacier Just Lost a Huge Piece of Ice—the Latest Sign of its Worrying Retreat.”
262. Geggel, “Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier Just Lost Enough Ice to Cover Manhattan 5 Times Over.”
263. Ibid.
264. New Scientist staff and Press Association, “A Massive Iceberg Just Broke off Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf.”
265. Borenstein, “Climate Change Is More Extensive and Worse than Once Thought.”
266. Dockrill, “Scientists Have Detected an Enormous Cavity Growing beneath Antarctica.”
267. Geib, “Boaty McBoatface Is About to Investigate the ‘Most Dangerous Glacier in The World’.”
268. Ibid.
269. Pakalolo, “A Glacier the Size of Florida Is on Track to Change the Course of Human Civilization.”
270. Cho, “Could Climate Change Shut Down the Gulf Stream?”
271. University of Hawaii at Manoa, “Bitcoin Can Push Global Warming above 2 C in a Couple Decades.”
272. Belkhir, “Big Pharma Emits More Greenhouse Gases than the Automotive Industry.”
273. Watts, “Risks of ‘Domino Effect’ of Tipping Points Greater than Thought, Study Says.”
274. Ibid.
275. Harvey, “‘Tipping Points’ Could Exacerbate Climate Crisis, Scientists Fear.”
276. Kahn, “Enormous Wildfires Are Spreading in Siberia.”
277. Jonathon Watts, “Wildfires Rage in Arctic Circle as Sweden calls for help.”
278. Fresco, “Huge Wildfires in the Arctic and Far North Send a Planetary Warning.”
279. Yeung, Yee and McKenzie, “Thousands of Australian Residents Had to Take Refuge on a Beach as Wildfires Raged.”
280. Montaigne, “Will Deforestation and Warming Push the Amazon to a Tipping Point?”
281. Union of Concerned Scientists, “Climate Change, Extreme Precipitation and Flooding: The Latest Science.”
282. World Ocean Review, “Living with the Oceans. A Report on the State of the World’s Oceans.”
283. Cowan, “Why ‘The Worst of Both Worlds’ Is in the Forecast.”
284. Environmental Defense Fund, “Methane: The Other Important Greenhouse Gas.”
285. Nyman, “Methane vs. Carbon Dioxide: A Greenhouse Gas Showdown.”
286. Environmental Defense Fund, “Methane: The Other Important Greenhouse Gas.”
287. Ocko, “UN Special Report Confirms Urgent Need to Reduce Methane Emissions.”
288. “Methane Hydrates – Extended Interview Extracts with Natalia Shakhova.”
289. N. Shakhova et al., “Anomalies of Methane in the Atmosphere Over the East Siberian Shelf: Is There any Sign of Methane Leakage from Shallow Shelf Hydrates?”
290. Shakhova, Semiletov and Chuvilin, “Understanding the Permafrost–Hydrate System and Associated Methane Releases in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf.”
291. Saha, “The Permafrost Bomb is Ticking.”
292. Knight, “Biodiversity Loss: How Accurate Are the Numbers?”
293. Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, “Wildfires in Bolivia Have Killed an Estimated 2 Million Animals So Far This Year.”
294. Johnson, “More Than One Billion Animals Killed in Australia Wildfires Called a ‘Very Conservative’ Estimate.”
295. “Why Are Orangutans in Danger of Becoming Extinct?,” Orangutan Foundation International Australia.
296. “Halting the Extinction Crisis,” Center for Biological Diversity.
297. Marshall, “Animal Populations Have Fallen 60 Percent and That’s Bad Even if They Don’t Go Extinct.”
298. Palmer, “Insectageddon: New Zealanders Have ‘Two Weeks of Life’ after Insect Apocalypse – Expert.”
299. Caspar A. Hallmann et al., “More than 75 Percent Decline over 27 Years in Total Flying Insect Biomass in Protected Areas.”
300. Sanchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys, “Worldwide Decline of the Entomofauna: A Review of its Drivers.”
301. Ibid.
302. Heinberg, “The New IPCC Report Offers Climate Solutions that Depend on Magic.”
303. Lorinez, “Demilitarization for Deep Decarbonization.”
304. Ibid..
305. Farley, “Has the UN Climate Assessment Process Become Obsolete?”
306. Borenstein, “Climate Change Is More Extensive and Worse than Once Thought.”; Holmes, “We Need to Accept We’re Likely Underestimating the Climate Crisis.”
307. Borenstein, “Climate Change Is More Extensive and Worse Than Once Thought.”
308. Irwin, “The Ecologist Who Wants to Map Everything.”
309. Gabbatiss, “Massive Restoration of World’s Forests Would Cancel out a Decade of CO2 Emissions, Analysis Suggests.”
310. Peters, “These Tree-planting Drones Are Firing Seed Missiles to Restore the World’s Forests.”
311. “One Trillion Trees Re-Grown, Saved from Loss and Better Protected Around the World by 2050,” trilliontrees.org.
312. Large, “German 12-Year-old Boy Plants 1Million Trees, Takes Over UN Program to Plant a Trillion More.”
313. Kerlin, “Grasslands More Reliable Carbon Sink Than Trees.”
314. Groot, “The Best Technology for Fighting Climate Change Isn’t a Technology: It’s Forests.”
315. Fiona Harvey, “World Losing Area of Forest the Size of the UK Each Year, Report Finds.”
316. Tutton, “Stronger Hurricanes Could Decimate Forests and Accelerate Climate Change, Warns Study.”
317. Constable, “Pakistan Plans to Plant 10 Billion Trees to Combat Decades of Deforestation.”
318. Good News Network, “Scotland Added 22 Million New Trees Last Year, Carrying the UK Goal on its Green Shoulders.”
319. Mongabay, “Madagascar Is Planting 60 Million Trees in Ambitious Drive Inspired by Its President.”
320. Sanchez and Keck, “Australia Will Plant 1 Billion Trees to Combat Climate Change.”
321. O’Kane, “Ethiopia Plants 350 Million Trees in 12 Hours, Breaking World Record.”
322. Dilonardo, “Costa Rica Has Doubled its Forest Cover in the Last 30 Years.”
323. McCarthy, “A Lifetime of Planting Trees on a Remote River Island: Meet India’s Forest Man.”
324. Richardson, “When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job.”
325. Sample, “Scientists Offered to Dispute Climate Study.”
326. “What is Carbon Capture and Sequestration?,” State of New York Department of Environmental Conservation.
327. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data.”
328. “Wadhams, Rees, Hunt – Climate Change and Carbon Dioxide Removal.”
329. Nield, “Last Time Carbon Emissions Were This High, the Dinosaurs Went Extinct.”
330. Harvey, “‘Tipping Points’ Could Exacerbate Climate Crisis, Scientists Fear.”