Arctic News: Andrew Glikson

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Monday, September 4, 2023

Too late? The climate and nuclear juggernaut

The Bulletin's Doomsday Clock

by Andrew Glikson

At 90 seconds to a midnight

and a few decades to +4°C

will ’sapiens’ end up on the beach?

When elephants fight the grass dies (an African proverb)

Under the guise of lies and cover-ups, the global powers to be have set the stage for the unthinkable, a world-wide hair-trigger human suicide system taking much of nature with it. With the exception of abstract ideas or experimental attempts, no actual steps are being taken to slow down, or even reverse, the inexorable rise of atmospheric greenhouse gases, now rising into Miocene-like levels of >400 parts per million CO₂ within the century, the fastest rise rate identified in the geological record.

Nor are steps undertaken to try and dismantle the global doomsday fleet of more than 12,700 nuclear warheads, where space and the oceans have become nuclear playgrounds, enough to render large parts of the Earth uninhabitable.

The criminal insanity of political, military, strategic, economic and scientific leaders, matched only by the naive blindness of billions of people, is consistent with what has been referred to as the ‘Fermi Paradox’ ─ the apparent absence of signals from technological civilizations in the Milky Way, interpreted in terms of a self-destruction of such civilizations.

Even at this stage, the litany of denial and betrayal never stops. Political leaders who have vowed to adhere to the science, shift to promote the mining and export of fossil fuels, as if greenhouse gases do not disperse in the atmosphere world-wide, or they adopt nuclear weaponry, as soon as they reach power. A suicidal element in human nature?

While the multitudes are fixated on domestic issues and regional troubles, including genocidal conflicts and in corners of the world (Ukraine, Chechnya, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Mein-Mar, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, and other), the price of maintaining an Orwellian ‘peace and stability ’, including ethnic cleansing, drowning refugees, economic hardships, misanthropic violence, football games, the tour de France, tennis rackets, relatively few are concerned with the deadly games of empire. Even symbolic gestures toward original people, like the “Voice” are being objected to.

Arnold Böcklin, Self-portrait with Death playing the fiddle (1872)

As in the history of Athens and Sparta, the stronger force is more inclined to start a war. Like schoolboys seeking association with bully alpha males, so do weaker nations look for the protection of an empire, which ends up using them as cannon fodder.

It is more difficult to understand why, given the scientific and empirical evidence of global heating, intelligent people are prepared to sacrifice the future of their off-springs generations to the $multi-trillion fossil fuel industry and their advocates in governments.

It would appear that, once representatives acquire real or apparent power, they leave conscience behind, adopting the Faustian bargain (Deal with the devil, image right).

Where does responsibility lie? Where humans are caught up in the anthropogenic genome, not enough “good” angels exist. Where competition for food, shelter and reproduction are inherent, ethics, compassion and empathy may not be easy to find. Humanity may be more readily detected among small tribes than in large civilizations. A young child born in a bubble has few or no impressions impinging on its brain to respond to. By contrast children exposed to obscene violence and lies paraded on fluorescent screens are more likely to grow into distorted brain-washed multitudes.

Greta Thunberg

But perhaps the most lethal human branch has become the media, which with few exceptions turned into a global propaganda machine skilful in distorting facts, promoting conflicts, manufacturing untruths, concealing avenues to peace and promoting wars in the tradition of Goebbels.

Surprisingly, the only significant resistance to the genocidal behaviour of alpha male-dominated groups has arisen from the not-yet spoiled minds of children, led by the young Greta Thunberg.

A/Prof. Andrew Y Glikson
Earth and Paleo-climate scientist

Andrew Glikson

Books:
The Asteroid Impact Connection of Planetary Evolution
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400763272
The Archaean: Geological and Geochemical Windows into the Early Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319079073
The Plutocene: Blueprints for a Post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319572369
The Event Horizon: Homo Prometheus and the Climate Catastrophe
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030547332
Climate, Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep Time Dimensions of the Anthropocene
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319225111
Evolution of the Atmosphere, Fire and the Anthropocene Climate Event Horizon
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400773318
From Stars to Brains: Milestones in the Planetary Evolution of Life and Intelligence
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783030106027
Asteroids Impacts, Crustal Evolution and Related Mineral Systems with Special Reference to Australia
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319745442
The Fatal Species: From Warlike Primates to Planetary Mass Extinction
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030754679
The Trials of Gaia. Milestones in the evolution of Earth with reference to the Antropocene
https://www.amazon.com.au/Trials-Gaia-Milestones-Evolution-Anthropocene/dp/3031237080

Sunday, August 6, 2023

Betrayal: The threat to life on Earth

by Andrew Glikson

It has been overlooked during Garma festival that, under current policies, global warming would render aboriginal lands in central and northern Australia unliveable and the top-end a nuclear target…

In his classic book The Fate of the Earth speaking for humanity Jonathan Schell describes the horror of a full-scale nuclear holocaust where human beings and animals would die if twenty thousand megatons of bombs, more than a million times the Hiroshima bomb, explode.

The consequences of a global nuclear exchange belong to the unthinkable. Nuclear weapons are the most destructive, inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever created. Both on the scale of the devastation they cause and uniquely persistent genetically damaging radioactive fallout, they are unlike any other weapons. A single nuclear bomb detonated over a large city could kill millions of people. The use of tens or hundreds of nuclear bombs would disrupt the atmosphere world-wide, causing widespread famine.

[ Figure 1. Extreme geophysical, meteorological, hydrological and climatological events during 1980 -2012 ]

From the 1970s the full implications of climate change were only beginning to be realized, through a growing string of cyclones, fires, droughts and floods increasing in frequency and intensity above the recent historical record (Figure 1). At that time few could forecast the climate trajectory like NASA’s chief climate scientist (Hansen et al., 2012), who stated:

“Burning all the fossil fuels would create a different planet than the one that humanity knows. The paleoclimate record and ongoing climate change make it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond tipping points, setting in motion irreversible changes, including ice sheet disintegration with a continually adjusting shoreline, extermination of a substantial fraction of species on the planet, and increasingly devastating regional climate extremes” and “warming according to the IPCC Business As Usual’ (BAU) scenario would lead to a disastrous multi-meter sea level rise on the century timescale” and “We’ve reached a point where we have a crisis, an emergency, but people don’t know that” ...

[ Figure 2. credit: NOAA, click on images to enlarge ]

According to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Germany’s chief climate scientist “Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences” …

[ Figure 3. The five mass extinctions in the Earth’s history. ]

Within a century or less the Earth’s mean temperature has risen from the mean levels of the Holocene (the last 11,700 years) and the Pleistocene (11,700 years ago to 2.58 million years ago), to levels of the Pliocene (2.58 million years ago to 5.333 million years ago) to the Miocene (5.33 to 23.03 million years ago), 3 - 4°C warmer than the Holocene, at warming rates. This is faster than any identified in the Cenozoic (66 million years until the present) geological record (Glikson, 2022-23). It is difficult to find in the geological record an event increasing the global greenhouse level at a rate as extreme as the current global heating (Figure 4).

[ Figure 4. Past mean temperatures (200 AD to 2000 AD), current warming and future temperature projections (Steffen, 2012) ]

A nuclear war would represent the ultimate outcome of tribalism, nationalism, racism and war, the human propensity for mutual and self-destruction. There was a time when kings and generals would fall on their sword when they were defeated, or when their faith in their gods collapsed. Nowadays oblivious or non-caring world powers continue to proliferate nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert, mine coal and pump oil and gas, starting a greenhouse chain reaction. Leaders, so-called, opportunistically betray the defence of their own people and the future of their children. The voices of anti-nuclear and climate scientists have become subdued, ignored or betrayed. There may not be too many historians to document the 20-21ˢᵗ centuries crimes against humanity and against nature.

An explanation of the collapse of human society, dragging multiple species down with it, arises from Fermi’s Paradox, where the combination of technological achievements and an inherent killer instinct of some leads to collapse.

Andrew Glikson

A/Prof. Andrew Y Glikson
Earth and Paleo-climate scientist

Thursday, July 20, 2023

Planetary Inferno: Nero fiddles while Rome burns

by Andrew Glikson

The fast rise in global warming manifested by current extreme weather events betrays a dangerous underestimation of the Earth’s liveable climate, while governments ignore climate science, claim to set limits on domestic emissions, but allow major export of fossil fuels and emissions worldwide on a scale threatening life on Earth. With current policies, there appear to exist few limits on global carbon emissions, as reported by Rogner (1997): “The global fossil resource base is abundant and is estimated at approximately 5000 Gt (billion tons). Compared to current global primary energy use of some 10 Gt per year, this amount is certainly sufficient to fuel the world economy through the twenty-first century”. According to these estimates, future production of coal, oil and gas render a mass extinction of advanced species more than likely.

A significant fraction of carbon gases released from combustion of fossil fuels on timescales of a few centuries remains in the atmosphere as well as leads to acidification of the oceans at a rate faster than its removal by weathering processes and deposition of carbonates. Common measures of the atmospheric lifetime of CO₂ disregard the long time tail of its dissipation, which underestimates the longevity of anthropogenic global warming. Models agree 20–35% of the CO₂ remains in the atmosphere after equilibration with the ocean (over 2–20 centuries). Neutralization by CaCO₃ draws the airborne fraction down further on timescales of 3 to 7 kyr.

With atmospheric CO₂ levels reaching 423 parts per million, according to James Hansen and colleagues humanity is facing a new Frontier, marked by intense heatwaves, more than vindicating warnings by climate scientists over the last 40 years or so. Within less than a century, the levels of CO₂ and temperatures have risen to levels of the Miocene (23.03–5.33 million years ago), with implications for sea level rise (Spratt, 2023). Hominids, living during glacial to inter-glacial periods, rarely had to endure mean temperatures higher than 50°C, which are increasingly common at present. Governments, busy subsidizing new coal mines and oil and gas wells and arming to the teeth for nuclear war, appear to be oblivious to the lessons of the last great world wars.

Figure 1. Global temperature anomalies relative to 1880-1920. Accelerated warming rate are 0.36°C and 0.27°C per decade. Super-El-Niño, projected for 2023, occurs at +0.8 to +1.2 temperature. (Hansen et al., 2023, The climate dice).

No longer does climate change represent a future scenario debated by scientists or deniers, but it constitutes an accelerating reality (Figures 1 and 2) related to the latitudinal shift of climate zones, including expansion of the tropics into temperate regions, Europe and north America. The weakening of the circum-polar jet stream allows heat cells to penetrate polar latitudes and cold fronts to enter high latitude zones. The consequences are represented by accumulation of ice melt water off Greenland and parts of the circum-Antarctic ocean (Figure 2). Increased evaporation over land masses results in draughts, while evaporation from warming oceans gives rise to major floods over large continental regions.

Figure 2. June 2023 global surface temperature anomaly (°C) relative to 1951-1980 June mean. Note the major high latitude temperature anomalies reaching 3 – 4°C above the 1951-1980 June mean. (Hansen et al., 2023, The climate dice).

According to Sharpless et al. (2023): “Heatwaves have been going through some extraordinary changes in recent history. Since midway through the 20th century, their intensity, frequency and duration have increased across the globe and these changes are happening faster and faster. Research indicates that this is simply not possible without human influence on the climate. A child born today could see an extra 30 to 50 heatwave days every year by the time they are 80, up from roughly four to 10 days today. Southern states of Australia, such as Victoria and South Australia, which already experience the country’s hottest heatwaves, could see hot days become hotter by up to 4 degrees Celsius. There may be more heatwaves in the near future with the Bureau of Meteorology forecasting drier and warmer conditions across much of Australia for July to September this year. These conditions, which often occur during an El Niño, can lead to reduced rainfall, higher temperatures and a greater risk of bushfires. Across Europe, heatwaves may become hotter by up to 10 degrees Celsius and some heatwaves will last up to two months by the end of this century. In just the next 20 years, the USA will experience three to five more heatwaves every decade compared to the second half of the 20th century. Heatwaves are closely linked to droughts. Generally, a large amount of energy from the Sun goes into drying out moisture in the landscape. But as the amount of moisture available for evaporation declines during a drought, more energy is available for heating the air and the temperature rises. This can become a vicious cycle of increasing evaporation and desiccation of the land surface”.

There was a time when kings and generals would fall on their sword when they were defeated, or when their faith in their gods collapsed. Nowadays so-called leaders, assuming opportunistic positions, betray the defence of their own people and of nature, protecting or advancing their own careers. The voices of climate scientists have become subdued, ignored or non-existent. There may not be too many historians to document the 20-21ˢᵗ centuries crimes against humanity and against nature.

Andrew Glikson

A/Prof. Andrew Y Glikson
Earth and Paleo-climate scientist

Wednesday, June 7, 2023

A Climate of Betrayal

by Andrew Glikson

“All grimly true, but they can be sure that they won't be recorded for their crimes in history –

because there won't be any history” (Noam Chomsky)

No words can express the betrayal of humanity and nature as represented by the ease in which originally progressive parties and ‘leaders’ can reverse their original environmental credentials by supporting coal and gas production and export once they are in power. While claims are made of reducing domestic emissions, the export of coal, gas and oil from many parts of the world and the dissemination of greenhouse gases remains high or is rising.

No science fiction has been written exposing an elite of multi-billionaires, corporate executives, arms merchants, media moguls, megalomaniac lunatics and their political mouthpieces pushing humanity and species to extinction. The current promotion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) ensures neither human intelligence nor human sentiments would be able to stem cybernetic insanity.

The inexorable rise of mean global temperatures to above 1.5°C higher than in 1750, at a rate exceeding those of the great mass extinctions of species and, according to the IPCC toward 4°C late in the century, renders extreme consequences for many life forms as a consequence of abrupt weather events and changes in the chemistry of the oceans, including acidification and dissolution of carbonate shells.

As the electronic media diverts attention of people to trivial games, canned laughter, sport carnivals and petty crimes, real criminals squander $trillions on looming wars and billionaire playboys spend the world’s dwindling resources on space rackets, out of the mouth of hungry children. The critical issues of war and peace, the fate of future generations and survival of species are rarely overlooked in ‘democratic’ elections.

A majority of the post-WWII generation and their offspring, trapped opposite fluorescent screens that scream canned laughter, and propagate commercial and political lies, are only dimly aware of the magnitude of even a ‘limited’ nuclear war, where radioactive emanations from a single large city cloud crops and induce famine for many weeks or months.

Consequences of global warming and a nuclear exchange include:

Inundation of coastal cities.
Increasing risks for food production leading to malnutrition.
Many dry regions becoming dryer and wet regions wetter.
Unprecedented heat waves.
Water scarcity in many regions.
Tropical cyclones.
Loss of biodiversity, including coral reefs.

The closest analogy to the environmental disruption during the late Anthropocene (the period during which human had a significant environmental impact on the Earth) include the Palaeocene-Eocene boundary (PETM).

The history of Anthropocene civilizations records regular bloodsheds between tribes and nations out of control, called ‘war’. Intermittent waves of hostility leading to violence and incessant fighting occurred repeatedly since the Neolithic, more recently, continuing since the 16th centuries, culminating with the threat of a nuclear war.

Wars erupt as an expression of manipulated mass unrest, even where little or no ideological gaps exist between rival states. Irrational hate and fear, mostly instilled by vested interests end up in the sacrifice of the lives of millions.

According to the clock of the atomic scientists it is 90 seconds to midnight.

Andrew Glikson

A/Prof. Andrew Y Glikson
Earth and Paleo-climate scientist

Tuesday, May 9, 2023

Nuremberg trials for imperiling all and bringing on mass extinction of species

by Andrew Glikson

But while “leaders” fail to protect the people from global warming and nuclear war, they have succeeded splendidly in hiding the truth through the denial of climate change, accounting tricks and claims of reduction in domestic emissions, while in fact opening new coal mines, oil wells and fracked coal seams, exporting hydrocarbons through the entire global atmosphere.

As mean global temperatures, storms and sea level rise keep rising toward uninhabitable conditions in many parts of the world and thousands of nuclear missiles are aimed to be triggered by accident or design is it too early or already too late for Nuremberg-type trials for those responsible for the ongoing greenhouse gas saturation of the atmosphere and the creation of a doomsday machine?

The Nuremberg principles created by the International Law Commission of the United Nations in connection with the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi leaders following World War II, apply critically once again for those planning a nuclear war on the rapidly warming Earth.

Principle I. Persons who commit a crime under international law are liable to punishment.
Principle II. Internal law do not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.
Principle III. A person who commits a crime under international law, as a Head of State or responsible government official, is not relieved from responsibility under international law.
Principle IV. An act under the order of Government or of a superior does not relieve a person from responsibility under international law. It is not an acceptable excuse to say 'I was just following my superior's orders'.
Principle V. Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.
Principle VI. The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law: Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.
Principle VII. Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.

Since World war II every one of these principles has been and continues to be violated by the superpowers of the world, in particular principle VI, where “Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan”.

None of these infringements falls within the category of ordinary human offences, rather their consequences for the Earth’s life support system are orders of magnitude larger than even their perpetrators could imagine, namely a major mass extinction of species analogous to the end-Ordovician (86% species extinguished), Permian-Triassic (96 Species extinguished) and Cretaceous-Tertiary (76% species extinguished) (Figure 1A) consequent on carbon emission rates some 9–10 times higher than those during onset of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Figure 1. A. The five great mass extinctions in the history of Earth;
B. IPCC climate projections to 2100 (after Will Steffen).

Spikes in extinction rates marked as the five major extinction events and sharp temperature rises include:

End Ordovician (444 million years ago)
Late Devonian (360 my)
End Permian (250 my)
End Triassic (200 my)
End Cretaceous (65 my) – the event that killed off the dinosaurs.
Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum
The current rise in atmospheric greenhouse gas levels at a rate faster than any of the previous mass extinction (Figure 1B) of species, including the K-T event and the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Peak (PETM), the latter roughly 55 million years ago lasting approximately 100,000 years.
The termination of the last glacial maximum (17.5–10 kyr ago) when the CO₂ rise rate was ~0.010 ppm CO₂/year and temperature ~0.00046°C/year as compared to the extreme modern rates during 1750-2020 of 0.0074°C/year and 0.04 ppm CO₂/year.

The coating of the Earth biosphere with the toxic residues of buried hydrocarbon and their processed plastic products in the form of carbon particles, oil spills, methane and carbon gases, microplastics and related rise in temperatures are threatening the fate of species, including human civilization.

Taking no heed of this warning, the species Homo “sapiens” has perfected a virtual doomsday machine under which it is living on borrowed time. Believing it is a ‘chosen species’ sapiens has rarely asked itself what has it been chosen for?

Leaders, so-called, forcing the atmosphere into a >4 degrees Celsius-high radioactive hell, including corporate chiefs, top executives, billionaires and their conscious-free political mouthpieces, members of parliaments, ministers and presidents, will be recorded in history as first in line to hell, driving the innocent hapless masses into oblivion.

But if “leaders” failed to protect the people from global warming and nuclear war, they succeeded splendidly in hiding the truth, starting with climate change denial, proceeding with accounting tricks and with claims of domestic emission reduction, while at the same time opening new coal mines, oil wells and coal seam gas fracking, exporting the hydrocarbons throughout the atmosphere.

These people know who they are, even if they do not fully understand the monstrous consequences of what they are doing or avoiding doing!

But if Nuremberg Trials are not conducted now, then when?

Andrew Glikson

A/Prof. Andrew Y Glikson
Earth and Paleo-climate scientist

Books:
The Asteroid Impact Connection of Planetary Evolution
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400763272
The Archaean: Geological and Geochemical Windows into the Early Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319079073
Climate, Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep Time Dimensions of the Anthropocene
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319225111
The Plutocene: Blueprints for a Post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319572369
Evolution of the Atmosphere, Fire and the Anthropocene Climate Event Horizon
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400773318
From Stars to Brains: Milestones in the Planetary Evolution of Life and Intelligence
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783030106027
Asteroids Impacts, Crustal Evolution and Related Mineral Systems with Special Reference to Australia
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319745442
The Event Horizon: Homo Prometheus and the Climate Catastrophe
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030547332
The Fatal Species: From Warlike Primates to Planetary Mass Extinction
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030754679

The Trials of Gaia. Milestones in the evolution of Earth with reference to the Antropocene
https://www.amazon.com.au/Trials-Gaia-Milestones-Evolution-Anthropocene/dp/3031237080

Saturday, February 11, 2023

Will Steffen: The dilemma of pioneer climate scientists

by Andrew Y Glikson

Will Lee Steffen: 25 June 1947 – 29 January 2023

The name of Will Lee Steffen will stand tall as a pioneer Earth systems and climate change scientist at our critical time when the life support systems of our planet are increasingly threatened. Along with other pioneer climate scientists over the last ~40 years or so, such as Wallace Broecker, James Hansen, Ralph Keeling, Paul Crutzen, Richard Alley, Stefan Rahmstorf, John Schellenberg, William Ruddiman, John Kutzbach, Guy Calendar, Michael Mann, Kevin Anderson, Andrew Weaver, Eric Rignot, Gavin Schmidt, Katrin Meissner, Kevin Trenberth and other, trying to communicate the scientific message of the greatest peril the planet is facing since at least 55 million years ago.

There cannot be a more painful position for scientists than to find themselves compelled to issue severe warnings of the demise of the natural world, civilization, society, family and future generations due to the sharp rise in greenhouse gas concentrations and temperatures originating from emissions from human industry. Yet this is precisely what climate scientists have been called to do, Cassandra-like, based on the physical and observed evidence for the rapid elevation in atmospheric, land and marine temperatures since the end of the 18th century at a rate exceeding geological mass extinction events.

Not all scientists have risen-up to the challenge. A small number have become climate change denial advocates, often supported by oil and gas corporations. Many in companies, government, institutions and in some instances even in universities had to subdue or moderate their warnings. Personal attitudes and politics became evident where, in some instances, scientists regarded as “optimists” were favoured by the authorities while other, labelled as “alarmists”, were penalized for their views. Nowadays the so-called “alarmists” are vindicated as extreme weather events are taking over large parts of the world.

Will Steffen avoided these pitfalls, sticking to the authentic scientific evidence and the manifest consequences of global warming around the world, yet disappointed by the refusal of many in authority to understand the implications of climate science for future generations, as reported in his communications (The Guardian 6/10/2018):

“I think the dominant linear, deterministic framework for assessing climate change is flawed, especially at higher levels of temperature rise. So, yes, model projections using models that don’t include these processes indeed become less useful at higher temperature levels. Or, as my co-author John Schellnhuber says, we are making a big mistake when we think we can “park” the Earth System at any given temperature rise – say 2C – and expect it to stay there … Even at the current level of warming of about 1C above pre-industrial, we may have already crossed a tipping point for one of the feedback processes (Arctic summer sea ice), and we see instabilities in others – permafrost melting, Amazon forest dieback, boreal forest dieback and weakening of land and ocean physiological carbon sinks. And we emphasise that these processes are not linear and often have built-in feedback processes that generate tipping point behaviour. For example, for melting permafrost, the chemical process that decomposes the peat generates heat itself, which leads to further melting and so on.”

Will Steffen wrote to me in our correspondence (27/03/2022):

“For all practical purposes i.e., timescales that humans can relate to, the levels of climate change we are driving towards now will be with us for thousands of years at least. The PETM (Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum) might be an appropriate analogue - a rapid spike in CO₂ concentration and temperature followed by the drawdown of CO₂ over 100,000 to 200,000 years. For all practical purposes, that time for recovery is so long (in human time scales) that it could be considered irreversible. Of course, extinctions are irreversible. So when the twin pressures of climate change and direct human degradation are applied to the biosphere, the resulting mass extinction event, that we have already entered, is of course irreversible.”

Will was one of a kind. While he would not let his presentations, expressed in scientifically objective and accurate terms, to be too coloured by optimism or pessimism, the congenial nature of his personality and gentle delivery could not hide the severe implications of his message. Rising above the fray, even his detractors found it difficult to refer to him in terms they commonly use toward other climate scientists. Nowadays in many forums climate scientists are replaced by economists, vested interests, marketing agents, sociologists and politicians, with only a vague idea of the basic laws of physics and the atmosphere.

Young generations, represented by Greta Thunberg, will see Will as one of last defenders of their future.

A/Professor Andrew Y Glikson
Earth and climate scientist
The University of New South Wales.
11 February 2023

Sunday, January 29, 2023

The global climate change suicide pact

by Andrew Glikson

Despite of deceptively-claimed mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in parts of the world, ongoing burning of domestic and exported fossil fuels world-wide continues to change the composition of the atmosphere, enriching it in greenhouse gases by yet another ~2 ppm CO₂ (2022: 418.95 ppm; CH₄: 1915 ppb; N₂0: 337 ppb), reaching levels commensurate with those of the Miocene (23.03 to 5.333 Ma) at rise rates exceeding any in the geological record of the last 66 million years (Glikson, 2020) (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Global 1880-2021 annual average temperatures (adapted by UCAR from ClimateCentral).

Since 1880 mean global temperatures rose at a rate of 0.08°C per decade, from 1981 by 0.18°C per decade and more when emitted aerosols are accounted for (Hansen et al., in Berwyn, 2022). According to Will Steffen, Australia’s leading climate scientist “there was already a chance we have triggered a global tipping cascade that would take us to a less habitable Hothouse Earth climate, regardless of whether we reduced emissions” (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Global mean temperature profile since 200 AD projected to beyond 2000 AD (Will Steffen)

Over a brief span of less than two centuries (Figure 1) anthropogenic reversal of the carbon cycle induced the emission of some 1.5 10¹² tonnes of CO₂ and an increased release of 150% more CH₄ from the crust, accumulated in sediments for hundreds of million years through photosynthesis and calcification, as well as from permafrost and oceans. Permeation of the atmosphere and the hydrosphere with the toxic residues of ancient plants and organisms, poisoning the biosphere, is leading to the Sixth mass extinction of species in the history of nature.

Following failed attempts to deny climate science, vested business and political interests are proceeding, with the support of many governments, to mine coal, sink oil wells and frack hydrocarbon gas, regardless of the consequences in term of global heating, sea level rise, inundation of islands and coastal zones, collapse of the permafrost, heat waves, floods, ocean acidification, migration of climate zones and dissemination of plastic particles, rendering the future of much of the biosphere uninhabitable.

Figure 3. Europe: Maximum extreme temperatures, July 17-23, 2002.

The progression of global warming is unlikely to be linear as the flow of cold ice melt water from Greenland and Antarctica glaciers would cool parts of the ocean and in part the continents (Figure 4), leading toward a stadial-type phenomenon, the classic case of which is symbolized by the Younger dryas cool period 12,900 to 11,700 years ago.

Figure 4. Projected transient stadial cooling events (Hansen et al., 2016)

National and international legal systems appear unable to restrict the saturation of the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, as governments preside over the worst calamity in natural history since the demise of the dinosaurs. Facing heatwaves (Figure 3), fires, floods and sea level rise, those responsible may in part remain oblivious to the magnitude of the consequences, waking up when it is too late.

There was a time when leaders fell on their sword when defeated in battle or lose their core beliefs, nowadays most not even resign their privileged positions to resist the existential danger posed to advanced life, including human civilization, preoccupied as nations are with preparations for nuclear wars.

It is long past time to declare a global climate and nuclear emergency.

Andrew Glikson

A/Prof. Andrew Glikson

Earth and Paleo-climate scientist
School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences
The University of New South Wales,
Kensington NSW 2052 Australia

Friday, December 16, 2022

The short lifespan of technological civilizations and the future of Homo sapiens

by Andrew Glikson

In his book ‘Collapse’ (2011) Jared Diamond portrays the fate of societies which Choose to Fail or Succeed. On a larger scale the Fermi’s paradox suggests that advanced technological civilizations may constitute ephemeral entities in the galaxy, destined to collapse over short periods. Such an interpretation of Fermi’s paradox, corroborated by recent terrestrial history, implies that the apparent absence of radio signals from Milky Way planets and beyond may be attributed to an inherently self-destructive nature of civilizations which reached the ability to propagate radio waves, consistent with Carl Sagan’s views. It can be expected therefore that the number of advanced technological societies in the universe will be proportional to their average lifetime, perhaps lasting no more than a few centuries. Inexplicably, the behavior of Homo “sapiens” reveals the reality of Fermi’s paradox, unless humans can wake up in time.

Since the onset of the Neolithic about ~10,000 years ago open-ended combustion of wood, coal, oil, methane and gas for production of steam power and electricity (Figure 1), and of uranium to generate nuclear power, constrain the life expectancy of industrial civilizations through proliferation of greenhouse gases, alteration of the chemistry of the atmosphere and proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, testifying to the relevance of Fermi’s paradox in the 20-21 centuries.

Geological and astronomical studies establish Earth is unique among the terrestrial planets in harboring advanced life forms, including colonial life since as early as ~3.5 billion years ago. Should the fate of Homo sapiens be recorded, history would tell that, while the atmosphere was overheating, oceans acidifying and radioactivity rising, humans never ceased to saturate the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, mine uranium, unleash fatal wars and fire rockets at the planets. All the time indulging in sports games and inundating the airwaves with gratuitous words, false promises, misconstrued assumptions and simple lies ─ betraying their future generations and a multitude of species on the only haven of life known in the solar system.

Fig. 1. A combined night lights image of Earth signifying global civilization. NASA

In a new paper titled ‘Global warming in the pipeline’, Hansen et al. (2022) state: “glacial-to-interglacial global temperature change implies that fast-feedback equilibrium climate sensitivity is at least ~4°C for doubled CO₂ with likely range 3.5-5.5°C. Greenhouse gas (GHG) climate forcing is 4.1 W/m² larger in 2021 than in 1750, equivalent to 2xCO₂ forcing. Global warming in the pipeline is greater than prior estimates. Eventual global warming due to today's GHG forcing alone -- after slow feedbacks operate -- is about 10°C. Human-made aerosols are a major climate forcing, mainly via their effect on clouds ... A hinge-point in global warming occurred in 1970 as increased GHG warming outpaced aerosol cooling, leading to global warming of 0.18°C per decade.”

The inevitable consequence is a shift in the position of the Earth’s climate zones, a decline in the Earth’s albedo (a climatologically significant ~0.5 W/m² decrease over two decades), a rise in greenhouse gases at a geologically unprecedented rate of 2-3 ppm/year), acidification of the oceans (by about 26 percent), receding ice sheets, rising sea levels (~20 cm since 1900), changes in vegetation, forests and soils, a shift in state of the climate and mass extinction, with humans are driving around one million species to extinction.

For longer than 50 years few were aware that a rise in atmospheric CO₂ on the scale of ~100 ppm CO₂ at the annual rate of 2 - 3 ppm per year, could lead to the unhabitability of large parts of Earth (The Uninhabitable Earth, by David Wallace-Wells) (Figure 2A). Now we find ourselves surrounded by the consequences ─ hydrocarbon saturation of air and water, runaway global heating, acidification, dissemination of micro-plastics, habitat destruction, radioactive overload, proliferation of chemical weapons ─ In confirmation of the reality of Fermi’s Paradox.

But just at the time the world was increasingly overwhelmed by extreme weather events, severe fires and floods, climate scientists were increasingly ignored, replaced by politicians, bureaucrats, economists, strategists and vested interests ignorant of the basic laws of physics and of the principles which control the atmosphere-ocean system. Policies and promises guided by the science have been betrayed and meaningful mitigation and adaptation negated by the opening of new coal mines and gas fields. Cold war strategies violating the United Nation charter were depleting the resources required for mitigation of the looming climate catastrophe. Within a blink of geological eye, at a rate unprecedented since the extinction of the dinosaurs, large regions of Earth were becoming increasingly uninhabitable for a multitude of species, surpassing 350 ppm CO₂ and approaching Miocene (5.3 – 23.0 Ma)-like conditions (Figure 2B). All along humans continued busily developing a veritable doomsday machine near 1300 nuclear warheads-strong threatening release within seconds.

Fig. 2. (A) Upper Holocene temperatures. (B). The Middle Miocene long-term continental (brown) and marine (blue) temperature change. Red arrow points to the present (2022) average global temperature of 13.9°C NOAA.

That humans are capable of committing the most horrendous crimes upon each other, on other species and on nature, including mass exterminations, has been demonstrated during the 20th century by the Nazi concentration camps and by genocidal conflicts such as in Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, Rwanda, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Ukraine ─ the list goes on …

Fig. 3. Tsar Bomba, exploded above Novaya Zemlya

The ultimate step toward the Fermi’s paradox has been reached following nuclear experiments in New Mexico, Novaya Zemlya (Figure 3), the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the rising prospects of a nuclear war, with consequent firestorms, radiation from fallout, a nuclear winter, and electromagnetic pulses looming ever greater. According to a paper by Robock and Toon (2012) ‘Self-assured destruction: The climate impacts of nuclear war’, a thermonuclear war could lead to the end of modern civilization, due to a long-lasting nuclear winter and the destruction of crops. In one model the average temperature of Earth during a nuclear winter, where black smoke from cities and industries rise into the upper stratosphere, lowers global temperatures by 7 – 8° Celsius for several years.

As stated by Hansen et al. (2012): “Burning all fossil fuels would create a different planet than the one that humanity knows. The paleoclimate record and ongoing climate change make it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond tipping points, setting in motion irreversible changes, including ice sheet disintegration with a continually adjusting shoreline, extermination of a substantial fraction of species on the planet, and increasingly devastating regional climate extremes”.

A nuclear war in the background of carbon saturated atmosphere can only lead to extreme damage to the life support systems of the planet. The propensity of “sapiens” to genocide and ecocide, are hardly masked by the prevailing Orwellian language of politicians in the absence of meaningful action to avert the demise of the biosphere as we know it. Whereas the ultimate consequences of global heating are likely to occur within a century, including temperature polarities including heat waves and regional cooling of ocean regions by ice melt flow from Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets (Gikson 2019), a nuclear war on the scale of the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) can erupt on a time scale of minutes …

On July 16, 1945, witnessing the atomic test at the Trinity site, New Mexico, Robert Oppenheimer, the chief nuclear scientist (Figure 4), cited the Hindu scripture of Shiva from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. Then, as stated by Albert Einstein: “The splitting of the atom has changed everything, except for man’s way of thinking, and thus we drift into unparalleled catastrophes”.

Fig. 4. Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein in 1947

Andrew Glikson

A/Professor Andrew Glikson

Earth and Paleo-climate scientist
School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences
The University of New South Wales,
Kensington NSW 2052 Australia

16 December 2022