Infographics about our systems Hyperthreat of climate as a HyperObject. Something beyond our mental, social and political comprehension. Something implied by the term #ClimateBomb
... the hyperthreat of climate change has warlike destructive capabilities that are so diffuse that it is hard to comprehend the enormity of the destruction, nor those responsible for these hostile actions. - Climate Change as a Hyperthreat - Elizabeth G. Boulton
Alan Urban's article linked here, contributes a clear summary of the dire overshoot predicament we are in. Global carrying capacity for our impacts of population multiplied by our consumption wants has been degrading our biosphere for a century, given an approximate upper limits of 0.25 to 2.5 billion people. The lower value of 250 million, is for everyone living closer to the extremes of consumption that developed nations enjoy today. The very important point is that even apparent sustainable population size, can continue to use up its reserves of stocks and sinks of biosphere systems resources that take very long time scales to renew or reach equilibrium. Important examples are soils, forests, aquifers, and chemical buffer capacity of oceans and atmosphere.
Biological carrying capacity starts to degrade long before total reserves are used up and population starvation happens only when resource flows have dropped. Sinks capacity usage is even more insidious, in cases of slow buildup of globalized long-lived pollution. Human civilization has used up the total reserves and is currently experiencing decline in resource flows, and many locally toxic back-flows of the concentrated wastes sunk into our biosphere. We may give it terms like "economic depression" , "inflation", "illegal war" , "inequality", or "pollution spill", but these are political and corporation cover-up terms, to water down our general systems understanding and guilt of our causation and factual agency. Nationalist and corporate propaganda works extremely hard to ignore the true ecological costs of overshoot prior to population collapse and crash. Rulers and rich alike can ignore it all as a reward for getting more than a fair share, as our egoistic brains are designed to optimize our relative personal survival. Only the growing numbers of poor, starving, desperate and ignored human beings can say what is really happening.
Want a better future for coming generations? Still believe the MSM promises of growth fixes? Then read this article by Carter Dillard for the "Fair Start Movement", which describes how our growth policies are taking us to our ruin. All competition between nations, to "grow" national and global economic systems, while the shrinking fossil fuel energy pie lasts, has produced the fastest acceleration ever of destruction of life systems on this planet, degrading biosphere health shares for every living thing, and stolen political power from all citizens of all nations. If we want human beings to behave responsibly, and be empowered, we should better raise them up to be that way.
Recent "Code Red" alarm report. Rapid global extinction alarm!. Record carbon emissions in 2022. The earth will pass 1.5° C of average warming by 2030. Rapid abolition of more than 50% of global GHG emissions are required before 2030. Meanwhile Australian governments plan to allow many new expansions of fossil fuel mining, to serve "economic growth" ideologies and profits of their best mates in the global gas and coal exports business.
The Anthropocene comprises our multiple existential global predicaments caused by our astounding exponential growth of population, affluence and technology.
This linked medium article gives an overview of our new survival problems.
We don’t solve predicaments; instead, we navigate through them. ... Even the United Nations’ US$24 million Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) concluded that our current systems are not up to the task: we need “significant changes in policies, institutions and practices that are not currently under way.”
I might disagree with the possibility of "navigation", as that requires elements of applied foresight and free will, which our developed societies don't have as most people are trapped in complex hierarchies of social classes and economic roles, that are technology and energy dependent.
Global heating continues to advance faster than ever. In response to this climate emergency, the Australia government plans to assist foreign gas and coal mining operations to ship out their product to the world faster than ever. The "SafeGuard Mechanism" has been bluntly pointed out by the likes of Juice Media, to be a "Carbon Offsets" scam, that allows hugely profitable mining operations to pay for a tiny fraction of their total emissions by using dubious offset schemes, like a drop pf water in the bucket to put out the fires of climate hell. It is slimy PR, worthy of all the best bullshitters from the previous coalition government.
The scheme itself was first proposed by Tony Abbot as a mechanism to safeguard the coal and gas mining industry. The rigged inquiry into the scammy nature of such offset purchases, was run by not-so-independent notables the carbon offsets industry. Nturally they decided against all evidence presented by the enquiry that everything will run cool, fine and normal. Which is the normal state of being for our government riddled with a slick PR mining industry. Given that Tony Abbot couldn't design very much by himself, this entire policy is the brainchild of the Minerals Council of Australia. These people are anti-biosphere, anti-life.
And the level of offsets is required to keep Australian domestic emissions down, without actually keeping them down, so Labor can claim it tried to achieve its 43% reductions by 2030, and the mining industry can keep accelerating our global heating emergency with profits growth.
Of course if the complete "no new mines" policy occurred, it might reduce Australian import capacity and purchasing power a little bit. As the industrial world collapses into global resource shortages, and wars, that will be inescapable. Escape from a portion of catastrophic future global heating still depends on our actions to endure a global fossil fuel cut-down.
Earths Oceans continue to absorb the brunt of rapid global heating in 2022. Around 93% of our incoming radiation excess is steadily raising the temperature of our oceans. Ocean temperatures are measured by a distributed fleet of measurement buoys. Another 11 zettajoules of energy was added in 2022. We haven't yet felt the full warming impact on land, due to a prolonged La Nina phase. But another El Nino excess heat climb will return again soon, this year or next.
Over the last decade, our oceans have absorbed something like 100 zettajoules. All of that comes from the current net average of three quarters of a watt per square meter of surface area retained by our atmosphere. Global heating from our greenhouse gases continues to add up.
The uncomfortable truths lie somewhere far outside our Denialist and Technophile mindsets.
It looks like our global fossil fuel civilization will keep burning until it runs out of fuel, and warming will continue past 1.5C in the early 2030's and then 2.0C and some more. Net zero by 2050 is far too late to save anything at all. Governments take global ecocide very seriously. It is now a serious crime in Australia to do anything which impedes the business as usual of burning fossil fuels.
