Probability of our civilisation to survive without facing a catastrophic collapse estimated at less than 10% in most optimistic scenario

Replying to my previous post, to make it easy to access these two quite contrasting reports of people’s behavior during two contemporary crises.

Got A COVID Problem? These 7 Women Changemakers Have A Solution

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The Town That Went Feral article is almost a case study of ignorance delusion denial and induced disaster, affecting a region wider than that town, and highlighting some uncomfortable realities about habitat destruction, and different mitigation options for the affluent vs the poor.
The COVID Women Changemakers article is something else; snapshots of indivduals’ diverse efforts to help suffering people, in various geographies and cultures.

Civilization adaption imo involves change in the nitty-gritty day-to-day manifestations of greed, hate, delusions, ignorance… and their remedies.

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As a whole, yes. The US government currently is more like a Jekyll and Hyde entity. The White House doesn’t believe climate change is real. The bureaucrats who wrote the report (which is quite well done, I skimmed it), on the other hand are educated intelligent people who probably do. And existing law requires that actual science be the basis for policymaking. So, the report has a large and very well researched chapter on the reality of climate change based on the IPCC (starts on page 162). But the White House is forcing them to rescind the fuel efficiency requirements regardless that were put in place during the previous administration. So, they write the report as required by law and set the new policy anyway. That’s the kind of absurdity we’ve had taking place for the past three years.

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Scientists are concerned the delayed freeze could amplify feedbacks that accelerate the decline of the ice cap. It is already well known that a smaller ice sheet means less of a white area to reflect the sun’s heat back into space. But this is not the only reason the Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the global average.

The Laptev Sea is known as the birthplace of ice, which forms along the coast there in early winter, then drifts westward carrying nutrients across the Arctic, before breaking up in the spring in the Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard. If ice forms late in the Laptev, it will be thinner and thus more likely to melt before it reaches the Fram Strait. This could mean fewer nutrients for Arctic plankton, which will then have a reduced capacity to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

More open sea also means more turbulence in the upper layer of the Arctic ocean, which draws up more warm water from the depths.

Dr Stefan Hendricks, a sea ice physics specialist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, said the sea ice trends are grim but not surprising. “It is more frustrating than shocking. This has been forecast for a long time, but there has been little substantial response by decision-makers.”

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“A report released this week from Human Rights Watch says that Canada’s changing climate is making it harder for Indigenous people to support themselves on the land. Unpredictable weather and changing conditions are disrupting wildlife habitats, causing available food resources to decline and making it more dangerous for Indigenous people to harvest food.“
“ The experiences of First Nations described in this report are illustrative of broader climate change impacts across Canada, however, each First Nation is unique, and none of their experiences can be generalized, making it imperative to tailor measures to address climate impacts and community needs in each of their traditional territories,"

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almost there! :sweat_smile:

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Oh well… it will be over soon enough, give or take a few million years! And then we can do it all over again… :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

There comes a time when, after a very long period has passed, this cosmos contracts. As the cosmos contracts, sentient beings are mostly headed for the realm of streaming radiance. There they are mind-made, feeding on rapture, self-luminous, moving through the sky, steadily glorious, and they remain like that for a very long time.
DN1

Bhikkhus, this saṃsara is without discoverable beginning. A first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering on hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving.

There comes a time, bhikkhus, when the great earth burns up and perishes and no longer exists, but still, I say, there is no making an end of suffering for those beings roaming and wandering on hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving.
SN22.99

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This has been a hanging threat for a long time; given the incredible heat in the Arctic recently it comes as no surprise. If I’m not mistaken, due to the level of uncertainty, these feedback effects were not factored in to the former IPCC models, and thus constitute extra forcing on top of them. The next report is due next year, we’ll see how it handles them then.

Meanwhile, we can keep an eye on the global methane trends. Unlike CO2 we don’t see a steady pattern of acceleration; the increase has been a bit up and down. It slowed from roughly 1992 to 2006, but the last few years seem to show an acceleration.

Nevertheless CO2 remains the main driver of radiative forcing.

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:man_facepalming:

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Taking a cue from the drug companies I guess ( superficially treat the sickness, not address the cause).

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When the white surface is replaced by a dark open ocean, more heat is absorbed and less light is reflected. According to a new study in Nature Communications , this feedback loop could add 0.19 degrees Celsius to the global temperature by mid-century, nearly wiping out the temperature effect of China going carbon neutral.

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A complete loss of the Arctic Sea Ice, according to Paul Beckwith, “would correspond to 1 Trillion tons of CO2 emissions (25 years of present day emissions) or 56.7 ppm.”

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What makes it difficult to say we are going to stop at a given temperature increase (e.g., our goal is to stay within a 2 degree increase) are the positive feedback loops that can kick in. (Positive in the sense that they increase what ever change is happening, not that they are positive for us.)

The melting of Arctic ice triggers two feedback loops (mentioned in comments above): (1) Lowering the Albedo (reflectivity), as dark water absorbs far more solar energy than ice. Ice reflects a larger percentage of the incoming solar energy back into space. (2) Melting ice releases the carbon dioxide and methane trapped in the ice back into the atmosphere. So there is a risk that a given point of melting these feedback loops might take over and cause a significant temperature increase even if we go to zero carbon emissions.

These positive feedback loops (there are others) make the idea that we can stop warming at a specific temperature increase by stopping emissions at a particular time tricky, as it is not a linear equation. Note: I’m not saying experts don’t know it is tricky. They know. A lot of modelling is trying to get a handle on how positive feedback loops will impact warming. It’s about ten years since I took a class in global warming, but I know at the time there was concern that at somewhere around 2 - 3 degrees warming the positive feedback loops might kick in and take us all the way to 5 or 6 degrees global warming.

So, while the experts are aware of all this, the public messaging and government campaigns don’t seem to communicate that our best plan takes us right to the edge of potentially out-of-control feedback loops.

Note: Please correct me if I’ve made mistakes with the numbers or said anything out of date. As I said, it’s been ten years since I took a course on this (an undergrad course at that) and got a chance to play with some climate models. And I have not read the latest round of IPCC reports - sadly the emotional discomfort of reading them outweighed being informed.

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Yes, it is all about the energy imbalance that we are causing. The blue ocean event (BOE) Beckwith is frequently talking about would be a major tipping point. The continuous decline of the arctic sea ice (volume and extent) during the summer indicates that the system is approaching this event within the next few years. This will slow down the jet stream and lead to stable troughs and ridges in the jet stream who controls the larger weather patterns in the atmosphere. For example, if a ridge stays over Europe for a long time, it can lead to severe and persisting weather events such as droughts or monsoon-like conditions that will negatively impact our agriculture. We have seen such events already happening in recent years.

The methane release will be a consequence of the rapid warming of the Arctic. The methane is trapped at them moment in the continental shelves of arctic ocean seabed, and also in the permafrost on land, which is collapsing already.

What is the consequence for our practice? Better hurry up to get enlightened? A bit more chanting every day? Hoping to be reborn in the deva realms?
I think our patience and endurance will be severely tested.
Much metta.

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I know, it takes a toll. Even though it can feel like too much, it’s informed and compassionate people like you who are so essential. :pray:

Even more compassion for the scientists still working, every day, enduring hard conditions and doing difficult work, all in the knowledge that their governments will ignore their findings, again.

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Interesting and informative infographics about a very worrisome reality…



:anjal:
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The image sequence which shows how rainforest turned to farmland in Brazil’s Rondônia state between 1984 and 2016 simply breaks my heart.
And it is just a very small snapshot of a much bigger and terrible picture…

:cry: :anjal:

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So sad! The article talks about the regrowth in Europe and the plantations in China, but nothing will ever replace the ancient forests of Africa and the Amazon.

This article does a good job of capturing the frustration I feel.

We cannot live in this magical realm with its motorised transport, computers, internet, Netflix, electric cars, smartphones, chocolate milkshakes, space ships, hospitals, or large-scale farming, giant cities, and Bitcoin and expect the world not to turn into a resource-depleted hellhole within a century or two. AND all have kids and our own houses and all the food that we can eat. We’re just too efficient, too competitive and too short-sighted, and there’s only that much nature to go around.

And therein lies the rub. In order to not let this Climate Change apocalypse continue to happen, we’d need to completely dismantle and destroy the very foundations of our entire global society. Voluntarily.

Here are the current global CO2 levels.

Week beginning on November 8, 2020: 412.75 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 410.20 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 388.10 ppm

And the following graph illustrates the impact of international action to prevent climate change. If international agreements have made any impact at all, it is hidden in the noise.

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I often get patients with multiple airborne allergy issues. The issue of air pollution inevitably comes up. At which point I pull up this.

Most people are blissfully unaware of just how polluted their environment is… even as they suffer from the ill effects. Almost nobody cares about the causes … and when one mentions that perhaps they themselves might do their bit for the environment by something as simple as adopting public transport… Crickets!
Don’t be unrealistic Doctor… I have to get to work!

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:smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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That’s fantastic, clearly we need more than aspirational targets to make major change.

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