Friends,
The issue at hand is we have some ten years to save Mother
Earth, and this cannot happen unless Congress accepts that climate chaos
can only be tamed by taking on the Pentagon. This would mean severely cutting
military spending, abolishing the nuclear arsenal [or at least end spending tax
dollars on refurbishing weapons of mass destruction], closing foreign bases and
enacting the Green New Deal. Of course, Congress must recognize that this
is an emergency.
I suggest that We the People at some selected date in
2020 gather on the Capitol steps stating that Congress must declare a climate
emergency. We will not be there to get arrested, but we will risk arrest
while delivering the emergency message. Some of us who will get arrested
will not pay out and will take our message to a D.C. courtroom. Anyone
interested in such an action should indicate his/her interest.
If there is interest in such an action, we would have
a conference call to strategize and possibly co-ordinate dual or more actions
on this very important issue. Please voice your opinion, share comments
and give thought to saving Mother Earth from a disaster unseen maybe since the
Ice Age.
Kagiso,
Max
https://truthout.org/articles/climate-tipping-points-could-hit-harder-and-sooner-than-we-think/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=97a529f1-cd54-4f7e-a6f0-589c5374b7b7 NEWS
Climate Tipping Points Could
Hit Harder — and Sooner — Than We Think
A resident watches as the
"Cave Fire" burns a hillside near homes in Santa Barbara, California,
early on November 26, 2019.KYLE GRILLOT / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
November
28, 2019
Citing an “existential threat
to civilization,” a group of top climate scientists have put out a new paper
warning that the latest evidence related to climate tipping points—when natural
systems reach their breaking point and cascading feedback loops accelerate
collapse—could mean such dynamics are “more likely than was thought” and could
come sooner as well.
In the paper, published as a commentary in the
journal Nature on Wednesday, the group of researchers
summarize the latest findings related to the threat of tipping points as part
of effort to “identify knowledge gaps” and suggest ways to fill them. “We
explore the effects of such large-scale changes,” the scientists explain, “how
quickly they might unfold and whether we still have any control over them.”
While the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) introduced the idea of tipping points two
decades ago, the paper notes, it was long believed that what climatologists
refer to as “large-scale discontinuities” in the planet’s natural system were
“considered likely only if global warming exceeded 5°C above pre-industrial
levels.” According to the researchers, however, more recent information and
data—including the most recent IPCC summaries—suggest these frightening
“tipping points could be exceeded even between 1 and 2 °C of warming”—that means this
century, possibly within just decades.
“I don’t think people realize
how little time we have left,” Owen Gaffney, a global sustainability analyst at
the Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University and a co-author of the
paper, told National Geographic. “We’ll
reach 1.5°C in one or two decades, and with three decades to decarbonize it’s
clearly an emergency situation.”
Gaffney added, “Without
emergency action our children are likely to inherit a dangerously destabilized
planet.”
According to the paper:
If current national
pledges to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions are implemented—and that’s a big
‘if’—they are likely to result in at least 3°C of global warming. This is
despite the goal of the 2015 Paris agreement to limit warming to well below
2°C. Some economists, assuming that climate tipping points are of very low
probability (even if they would be catastrophic), have suggested that 3°C
warming is optimal from a cost–benefit perspective. However, if tipping points
are looking more likely, then the ‘optimal policy’ recommendation of simple
cost–benefit climate-economy models4 aligns with those of the recent IPCC
report2. In other words, warming must be limited to
1.5 °C. This requires an emergency response.
Among the key evidence that
tipping points are underway, the paper highlights a litany of global hot spots
where runaway warming could unleash—or is already unleashing—dangerous feedback
loops. They include: frequent droughts in the Amazon rainforest; Arctic sea ice
reductions; slowdown in Atlantic Ocean currents; fires and pests in the
northern Boreal forest; large scale coral reef die-offs; ice sheet loss in
Greenland; permafrost thawing in Eastern Russia; and accelerating melting in
both the West and East Antarctic.
In an interview with the Guardian,
Professor Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter, the lead author of the
article, said: “As a scientist, I just want to tell it how it is. It is not
trying to be alarmist, but trying to treat the whole climate change problem as
a risk management problem. It is what I consider the common sense way.”
Citing campaigners around the
world, including young people this year who kicked off global climate strikes,
Lenton acknowledge that these people understand what world leaders seem
unwilling to accept or act upon. “We might already have crossed the threshold
for a cascade of interrelated tipping points,” Lenton said. “The simple version
is the schoolkids are right: we are seeing potentially irreversible changes in
the climate system under way, or very close.”
In their paper, the scientists
write that “the consideration of tipping points helps to define that we are in
a climate emergency and strengthens this year’s chorus of calls for urgent
climate action—from schoolchildren to scientists, cities and countries.”
Despite the frightening
warnings and the scale of the threat, the researchers are not trying to be
doom-and-gloomers who say that nothing can be done.
In his comments to the Guardian,
Lenton said, “This article is not meant to be a counsel of despair. If we want
to avoid the worst of these bad climate tipping points, we need to activate
some positive social and economic tipping points [such as renewable energy]
towards what should ultimately be a happier, flourishing, sustainable future
for the generations to come.”
But the paper makes clear that
the climate emergency is here in very profound ways.
“In our view, the evidence from
tipping points alone suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency:
both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute,” the paper states.
The group of scientists also
acknowledge that some in the scientific community believe their warnings exceed
what the available evidence shows when it comes to the threat of tipping points
or the timeline:
Some scientists counter
that the possibility of global tipping remains highly speculative. It is our
position that, given its huge impact and irreversible nature, any serious risk
assessment must consider the evidence, however limited our understanding might
still be. To err on the side of danger is not a responsible option.
If damaging tipping
cascades can occur and a global tipping point cannot be ruled out, then this is
an existential threat to civilization. No amount of economic cost–benefit
analysis is going to help us. We need to change our approach to the climate
problem.
The Guardian spoke to Professor Martin Siegert at Imperial College
London, about the researchers’ paper and whether or not its warning comes in
too heavy. “The new work is valuable,” Siegert said. “They are being a little
speculative, but maybe you need to be.”
In the end, the new paper’s
conclusion was twofold: more needs to be known about these crucial tipping
points and that only urgent action can stave off the urgent threat an
increasingly hotter world.
“We argue that the intervention
time left to prevent tipping could already have shrunk towards zero, whereas
the reaction time to achieve net zero emissions is 30 years at best,” the paper
states. “Hence we might already have lost control of whether tipping happens. A
saving grace is that the rate at which damage accumulates from tipping—and
hence the risk posed—could still be under our control to some extent. “
“The stability and resilience
of our planet is in peril,” it concludes. “International action—not just
words—must reflect this.”
This piece was reprinted by Truthout
with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without
permission or license from the source.
Jon Queally is senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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