https://www.theguardian.com/environ...inction-scientists-global-heating-catastrophe Climate endgame: risk of human extinction ‘dangerously underexplored’ Scientists say there are ample reasons to suspect global heating could lead to catastrophe Firefighters tackle a wildfire in Oroville, California. Paths to disaster are not limited to the direct impacts of high temperatures, research suggests. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Damian Carrington Environment editor Mon 1 Aug 2022 20.00 BST Last modified on Tue 2 Aug 2022 05.09 BST "The risk of global societal collapse or human extinction has been “dangerously underexplored”, climate scientists have warned in an analysis. They call such a catastrophe the “climate endgame”. Though it had a small chance of occurring, given the uncertainties in future emissions and the climate system, cataclysmic scenarios could not be ruled out, they said. “Facing a future of accelerating climate change while blind to worst-case scenarios is naive risk management at best and fatally foolish at worst,” the scientists said, adding that there were “ample reasons” to suspect global heating could result in an apocalyptic disaster. The international team of experts argue the world needs to start preparing for the possibility of the climate endgame. “Analysing the mechanisms for these extreme consequences could help galvanise action, improve resilience, and inform policy,” they said. Explorations in the 1980s of the nuclear winter that would follow a nuclear war spurred public concern and disarmament efforts, the researchers said. The analysis proposes a research agenda, including what they call the “four horsemen” of the climate endgame: famine, extreme weather, war and disease. They also called for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to produce a special report on the issue. The IPCC report on the impacts of just 1.5C of heating drove a “groundswell of public concern”, they said. “There are plenty of reasons to believe climate change could become catastrophic, even at modest levels of warming,” said Dr Luke Kemp at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, who led the analysis. “Climate change has played a role in every mass extinction event. It has helped fell empires and shaped history. “Paths to disaster are not limited to the direct impacts of high temperatures, such as extreme weather events. Knock-on effects such as financial crises, conflict and new disease outbreaks could trigger other calamities.” The analysis is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was reviewed by a dozen scientists. It argues that the consequences of global heating beyond 3C have been underexamined, with few quantitative estimates of the total impacts. “We know least about the scenarios that matter most,” Kemp said. A thorough risk assessment would consider how risks spread, interacted and amplified, but had not been attempted, the scientists said. “Yet this is how risk unfolds in the real world,” they said. “For example, a cyclone destroys electrical infrastructure, leaving a population vulnerable to an ensuing deadly heatwave.” The Covid pandemic underlined the need to examine rare but high-impact global risks, they added. Particularly concerning are tipping points, where a small rise in global temperature results in a big change in the climate, such as huge carbon emissions from an Amazon rainforest suffering major droughts and fires. Tipping points could trigger others in a cascade and some remained little studied, they said, such as the abrupt loss of stratocumulus cloud decks that could cause an additional 8C of global warming. The researchers warn that climate breakdown could exacerbate or trigger other catastrophic risks, such as international wars or infectious disease pandemics, and worsen existing vulnerabilities such as poverty, crop failures and lack of water. The analysis suggests superpowers may one day fight over geoengineering plans to reflect sunlight or the right to emit carbon. “There is a striking overlap between currently vulnerable states and future areas of extreme warming,” the scientists said. “If current political fragility does not improve significantly in the coming decades, then a belt of instability with potentially serious ramifications could occur.” There were further good reasons to be concerned about the potential of a global climate catastrophe, the scientists said: “There are warnings from history. Climate change has played a role in the collapse or transformation of numerous previous societies and in each of the five mass extinction events in Earth’s history.” Domino-effect of climate events could move Earth into a ‘hothouse’ state Read more New modelling in the analysis shows that extreme heat – defined as an annual average temperature of more than 29C – could affect 2 billion people by 2070 if carbon emissions continue. “Such temperatures currently affect around 30 million people in the Sahara and Gulf Coast,” said Chi Xu, at Nanjing University in China, who was part of the team. “By 2070, these temperatures and the social and political consequences will directly affect two nuclear powers, and seven maximum containment laboratories housing the most dangerous pathogens. There is serious potential for disastrous knock-on effects.” The current trend of greenhouse gas emissions would cause a rise of 2.1-3.9C by 2100. But if existing pledges of action are fully implemented, the range would be 1.9-3C. Achieving all long-term targets set to date would mean 1.7-2.6C of warming. “Even these optimistic assumptions lead to dangerous Earth system trajectories,” the scientists said. Temperatures more than 2C above pre-industrial levels had not been sustained on Earth for more than 2.6m years, they said, far before the rise of human civilisation, which had risen in a “narrow climatic envelope” over the past 10,000 years. “The more we learn about how our planet functions, the greater the reason for concern,” said Prof Johan Rockström, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “We increasingly understand that our planet is a more sophisticated and fragile organism. We must do the maths of disaster in order to avoid it.”
Our hunter-gatherer future: Climate change, agriculture and uncivilization JohnGowdy Professor of Economics Emeritus, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA Received 28 February 2019, Revised 1 August 2019, Accepted 15 November 2019, Available online 3 December 2019, Version of Record 16 December 2019. Abstract For most of human history, about 300,000 years, we lived as hunter gatherers in sustainable, egalitarian communities of a few dozen people. Human life on Earth, and our place within the planet’s biophysical systems, changed dramatically with the Holocene, a geological epoch that began about 12,000 years ago. An unprecedented combination of climate stability and warm temperatures made possible a greater dependence on wild grains in several parts of the world. Over the next several thousand years, this dependence led to agriculture and large-scale state societies. These societies show a common pattern of expansion and collapse. Industrial civilization began a few hundred years ago when fossil fuel propelled the human economy to a new level of size and complexity. This change brought many benefits, but it also gave us the existential crisis of global climate change. Climate models indicate that the Earth could warm by 3°C-4 °C by the year 2100 and eventually by as much as 8 °C or more. This would return the planet to the unstable climate conditions of the Pleistocene when agriculture was impossible. Policies could be enacted to make the transition away from industrial civilization less devastating and improve the prospects of our hunter-gatherer descendants. These include aggressive policies to reduce the long-run extremes of climate change, aggressive population reduction policies, rewilding, and protecting the world’s remaining indigenous cultures. More...
To Reduce Harmful Algal Blooms and Dead Zones, the U.S. Needs a National Strategy for Regulating Farm Pollution By: The Conversation Updated: July 25, 202 Satellite photo of an algal bloom in western Lake Erie, July 28, 2015. NASA Earth Observatory By Donald Boesch and Donald Scavia Midsummer is the time for forecasts of the size of this year’s “dead zones” and algal blooms in major lakes and bays. Will the Gulf of Mexico dead zone be the size of New Jersey, or only as big as Connecticut? Will Lake Erie’s bloom blossom to a human health crisis, or just devastate the coastal economy? We are scientists who each have spent almost 50 years figuring out what causes dead zones and what it will take to resuscitate them and reduce risks of toxic blooms of algae. Researchers can forecast these phenomena quite well and have calculated the nitrogen and phosphorus pollution cuts needed to reduce them. These targets are now written into formal government commitments to clean up Lake Erie, the Gulf and the Chesapeake Bay. Farmers and land owners nationwide received US$30 billion to support conservation, including practices designed to reduce water pollution, from 2005 to 2015, and are scheduled to receive $60 billion more between 2019 and 2028. But these efforts have fallen short, mainly because controls on nutrient pollution from agriculture are weak and ineffective. In our view, there is no shortage of solutions to this problem. What’s needed is technological innovation and stronger political will. The Gulf of Mexico hypoxic (dead) zone in 2021, which measured 6,334 square miles (16,400 square kilometers). Lower values represent less dissolved oxygen in the water. Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, CC BY-ND Problems Return to Lake Erie State and federal agencies have known since the 1970s that overloading lakes and bays with nutrients generates huge blooms of algae. When the algae die and decompose, they deplete oxygen in the water, creating dead zones that can’t support aquatic life. But in each of these “big three” water bodies, efforts to curb nutrient pollution have been slow and halting. The U.S., Canada and cities around Lake Erie started working to reduce phosphorus pollution in the lake from domestic and industrial wastes in 1972. Water quality quickly improved, dead zones shrank and harmful algal blooms became less frequent. But the scourges of low-oxygen waters and sometimes-toxic algae reappeared in the mid-1990s. This time, the source was mostly runoff from farm soils saturated with phosphorus from repeated applications of fertilizer and manure. Climate change made matters worse: Warmer waters hold less oxygen and cause faster growth of algae. Phosphorus loads to Lake Erie, 1967-2001. Nonpoint sources are wide areas without a distinct discharge point, such as farm fields. Scavia et al., 2014, CC BY-ND Slow Progress in the Chesapeake Bay Nitrogen and phosphorus reach the Chesapeake Bay from sources including wastewater treatment plants; air pollution emitters, such as factories and cars; and runoff from urban, suburban and agricultural lands. In 1987 the federal government and states around the bay agreed to reduce these flows by 40% by the year 2000 to restore water quality. But this effort relied on voluntary action and failed to make much progress. In 2010 the states and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency entered a legally binding commitment, to reduce pollutant loads below prescribed maximum levels needed to restore water quality. If the states make inadequate progress, the EPA can limit or rescind their permitting authority, and the states may lose federal funding. Nitrogen and phosphorus pollution has been reduced primarily by tightening permit requirements and upgrading wastewater treatment plants. Air pollution controls for power plants and vehicles have also reduced nitrogen reaching the bay. Water quality has improved, and the yearly dead zone has shrunk modestly. But with the commitment’s 2025 deadline nearing, nitrogen loads have been reduced by less then 50% of the targeted amounts, phosphorus by less then 64%. Most of the remaining pollution comes from farm runoff and urban stormwater. Intensifying agriculture in rural areas and sprawl in urban areas are counteracting other cleanup efforts. Failure in the Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico dead zone forms every year during the summer, fueled by nutrients washing down the Mississippi River from Midwest farms. It typically covers at least 6,000 square miles, sometimes expanding up to 9,000 square miles (23,000 square kilometers), and affects an area very rich in fisheries. In 2001, the EPA and 12 Mississippi River basin states agreed to take action to reduce the Gulf dead zone by two-thirds by 2015. Researchers estimated that this would require reducing nitrogen loads reaching the Gulf by about 45%, mostly from the Corn Belt. Now that deadline has been extended to 2035. Nitrogen and phosphorus loadings at the mouth of the Mississippi River haven’t budged in 30 years, so actions taken to date have failed to shrink the Gulf dead zone. Since 2017 the Gulf of Mexico dead zone has covered an average of 5,380 square miles (14,000 square kilometers), which is 2.8 times larger than the 2035 target set by a federal task force. LUMCON/NOAA Overwhelmed by Agriculture In 2020, the EPA and Ohio adopted an agreement similar to that for the Chesapeake to reduce phosphorus pollution below a prescribed maximum load from the Maumee River watershed at the western end of Lake Erie, where algal blooms occur most often. To date, Mississippi River basin states and even the EPA have opposed similarly mandating maximum pollution loads to reduce the Gulf of Mexico dead zone. Despite substantial government subsidies to implement various agricultural management practices, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in streams in Iowa and Illinois has actually increased over the 1980-1996 baseline of the Gulf agreement. Even with increasing crop yields and more efficient use of fertilizer, the expansion and intensification of agriculture in the Midwest has overwhelmed any water quality gains. One driver is ethanol production, which has increased fortyfold since the Gulf action plan was adopted in 2001. Today, over 40% of corn grown in the U.S. is used for ethanol, mostly in the Midwest, while most of the rest is used to feed animals. In all three regions, the growth of large-scale livestock farms – hogs in the Midwest, poultry around the Chesapeake Bay – is also contributing to nutrient pollution. Improper management of animal waste adds to nitrogen and phosphorus loads in soils and local waters. Studies show that agriculture contributes 85% of Lake Erie’s Maumee River phosphorus load, 65% of the Chesapeake Bay’s nitrogen load and 73.2% of the nitrogen load and 56% of the phosphorus load to the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly halfway into a 10-year pledge to combat the #toxic #algae that turns #LakeErie a ghastly shade of green, #Ohio has made little progress. #GreatLakes https://t.co/shSWzafPMf pic.twitter.com/1eb054aZQc — Great Lakes Now (@GreatLakesNow) January 31, 2020 Incentives Aren’t Working We believe the evidence is clear that the largely voluntary approaches taken to date, with technical assistance and substantial public financing, are not working. Economists have called for a fundamental shift in policies controlling agricultural pollution. Instead of offering polluters subsidies to clean up their operations, these experts argue, the strategy should be to pay farmers for performance, based on environmental outcomes that can be measured or predicted at appropriate scales and specific places. Under this approach, government would set limits on the amount of nutrients that can be lost to the environment, and farmers would choose how to meet them, based on what kinds of action work best for their specific soils and climate. For example, restoring wetlands within the watershed could help to capture nutrients that unavoidably wash off of farmlands. The ongoing shift to electric vehicles offers an opportunity to grow far less grain for ethanol, which doesn’t even help the climate. And in the long run, developing efficient, plant-based food systems would both reduce nutrient pollution and limit climate change. In June 2022, the Government Accountability Office concluded that federal agencies charged with preventing and controlling harmful algal blooms and dead zones under a 1998 law have failed to establish a national program to address these issues. Fifty years after the federal Clean Water Act was enacted, we believe such a program is long overdue. Donald Boesch is a Professor of Marine Science at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. Donald Scavia is a Professor Emeritus of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. Disclosure statements: Donald Boesch does not work for, consult, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article. He currently receives no external funding, but previously received funding from the National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Walton Family Foundation. Donald Scavia does not work for, consult, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article. He has received research funding from the National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Erb Family Foundation. https://www.ecowatch.com/dead-zones-algal-bloom-national-strategy.html
I'm impressed almost every day by the "pushback" from the environment I read about. It seems to have happened so suddenly, and that's the scary thing about exponential growth. An author I read years ago said that the thing to remember about exponential growth (his example was lily pads doubling on a pond surface) is that at the start of the last time interval, HALF of the resource remains--which looks like a lot, until you consider the rate of growth.
I think its human nature we're fighting. We don't change anything unless it absolutely is the 11th hour. The red tide in Florida has received a lot of press in the past few years. GWB railed against it, pointing to a failure of DeSantis, which is silly. This has been going on for a lot longer than DeSantis. He's just the latest to want to pass it to the next.
Thames Water announces hosepipe ban across south of England Measure will come into force from 24 August, affecting 15m customers in Thames Valley and London The Thames Water hosepipe ban follows the driest July on record and below-average rainfall in 10 of the last 12 months. Photograph: Hugh R Hastings/Getty Images Thames Water has announced a hosepipe ban across the south of England, which will affect 15 million of its customers. The ban will come into force from 24 August, affecting people in London and the Thames Valley area. Using a hosepipe to water gardens or to clean cars will no longer be allowed, except by businesses and farmers. The temporary ban comes after reports that the source of the Thames had dried up during the drought. The measure follows a hosepipe ban announced for the first time in 26 years by South West Water, which covers Cornwall and parts of north Devon, and after extremely dry conditions across the UK, with drought having been declared across eight areas of England by the Environment Agency. Sarah Bentley, the chief executive of Thames Water, said the ban had been a “very difficult decision”, adding: “After months of below-average rainfall and the recent extreme temperatures in July and August, water resources in our region are depleted. “Customer demand is at unprecedented levels and we now have to move into the next phase of our drought plan to conserve water, mitigate further risk and future-proof supplies.” Thames Water’s decision to restrict the use of hosepipes follows other measures by the company to conserve its water supply, having said it would fix more than 1,000 leaks across its 20,000-mile network every week. In a statement on its website, the company said: “After the driest July on record, and below-average rainfall in 10 of the last 12 months, water levels in our rivers and reservoirs are much lower than usual. We have more teams reducing leakage than ever before, working 24/7 to find and fix more than 1,100 leaks every week. The recent heatwaves mean that demand for water is also at record levels. “We’ve been working around the clock to supply everyone, and customers have been brilliant at saving water where they can. But, with low rainfall forecast for the coming months, we now need to take the next step in our drought plan. Everything we do now will help protect supplies next summer and help the environment. “We know these restrictions impact your day-to-day activities around your home and beyond, and we’re grateful for your support.” The hosepipe bans come after the UK recorded its hottest temperature of all time, with the heat soaring above 40C on 19 July.