Is the world being destroyed?

living things and the natural networks that sustain them are jeopardized by destruction

No continent, country or community is immune from the health impacts of climate change. Right now, people around the world face increasing extremes of heat, food and water insecurity, and changing patterns of infectious diseases. Unless urgent action is taken, the health impacts of climate change will bring further disruption, threaten lives and livelihoods and compromise the hospitals and clinics we depend on.

2. NO! The world is not ending.

There is no credible scientific organization saying that human civilization is going to collapse.

The animals aren't all going to disappear.

Humans are not getting sicker, or dying of starvation, or killing each other, or being reanimated as zombies.

The phrase "jeopardized by destruction" is scary, but it isn't defined. Does this mean that some living things will cease to exist? Does this mean that "ALL living things will cease to exist"?

I would like to know exactly what you are predicting?

I am on this thread to push back on the ideological narrative you are pushing, which I believe is counter-productive and rather extreme.

Um, human beings are subject to bacterial and viral diseases which they never encountered before. Ever hear of Ebola? Marburg virus? AIDS? Covid-19? In addition, rising temperatures have allowed vectors of plant and animal diseases to spread into temperate regions where they didn't thrive before.

Many humans suffer from malnutrition, and starvation is not unheard of. As crop-growing areas go offline due to increased temperature and climate-induced shifts in rainfall patterns, food will become more expensive. A billion people face food insecurity now and that number may increase.

People will continue to kill each other, as they've been doing since Cain and Abel. Are you really claiming that people aren't killing each other?

You are ignoring the incredible progress we (as a human race) have made in extending life, ending starvation, reducing poverty and stopping war.

You are throwing around more emotional "trigger" terms like "fragility" and "increasingly uncertain".

Let's start with "increasingly uncertain". You are implying (correct me if I am wrong) that things are more uncertain in this century than they were in past centuries.

And then of course... a gamma ray burst (or any high energy even from space) could wipe us out at any time. And there is the yellowstone caldera (which would wipe out a third of the US but may spare the human race) or any other thing. The human race can literally end at any moment, but this has always been the case.

I believe that the fact Human Beings is less uncertain now that we have the ability to see and react to global climate change (...)

(...) and to develop vaccines and public health initiates to push back global pandemics.

A fact-based call for urgent action on climate change is exactly what we need.

What would it take for you to admit that this is a success?

Nearly one in three tree species are at risk of extinction, largely due to agriculture, logging and livestock farming, a report warns.

The Menai whitebeam, which has just 30 trees growing in its north Wales home, is one of hundreds of tree species which are on the brink of vanishing altogether, the first “state of the world’s trees” report warns.

The assessment of how the world’s nearly 60,000 tree species are faring has found 30 per cent, or 17,500, of them are at risk of extinction, with well-known species such as magnolia among the most threatened.

Oaks, maple and ebonies are also at risk, according to the report published by Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI).

The study compiles work from the Global Tree Assessment over the last five years, which has seen more than 60 institutions and about 500 experts examine the extinction risk for the world’s 58,497 tree species.

One in five tree species is directly used by humans for food, fuel, timber, medicines, horticulture and other uses.

But despite trees’ value to people, at least 142 species are recorded as extinct and many more face extinction because of over-exploitation and mismanagement.

The top threats are clearances for agricultural crops, logging for timber, and clearing forest for livestock, the assessment warns.

Climate change is also a rising threat, with many trees at risk of losing areas of suitable habitat as temperatures increase and weather changes, with cloud forest species in Central America being at particular risk.

There are also at least 180 tree species directly threatened by sea level rise and severe weather, including magnolias in the Caribbean, while increasing risks of fire are a major threat to trees in Madagascar, and a risk to US oak species.

The report warns that more than 440 tree species are on the brink of extinction, as they have fewer than 50 individuals remaining in the wild, including the Menai whitebeam and the Mulanje cedar in Malawi, with just a few remaining individuals on Mulanje Mountain.

Islands have the highest proportion of threatened trees, with 69 per cent of trees on the UK Overseas Territory of St Helena at risk of extinction, and 59 pre cent of those found in Madagascar.

In Europe, 58 per cent of native European trees are threatened with extinction in the wild, with whitebeams and rowan the most at risk, while Brazil has the highest number of threatened tree species.

Dipterocarpaceae species are at risk from palm oil plantations in Borneo, while timber extraction threatens ebony in Madagascar, and mahogany and rosewoods across the Caribbean and Brazil.

Magnolia and camellia species are threatened from unsustainable plant collection for commercial uses, pests and diseases are causing severe decline to ash populations in the UK and North America, and oaks are threatened by deforestation, particularly in South and Central America, the report said.

But it also highlights hope for conserving trees, revealing that two-thirds (64 per cent) of all tree species can be found in at least one protected area, and about 30 per cent can be found in botanic gardens, seed banks or other collections.

BGCI is calling for governments and experts to extend protected area coverage for threatened tree species, ensure all at-risk trees where possible are conserved in botanic gardens and seed banks, and increase public and corporate funding for the issue.

In the report, the organisation also urges the expansion of tree planting schemes — with targeted planting of threatened and native species — and increased global collaboration to tackle tree extinction.

GCI secretary-general Paul Smith said: “This report is a wake-up call to everyone around the world that trees need help.

“Every tree species matters — to the millions of other species that depend on trees, and to people all over the world.”

“For the first time, thanks to the information provided by the state of the world’s trees report, we can pinpoint exactly which tree species need our help, so policymakers and conservation experts can deploy the resources and expertise needed to prevent future extinctions.”

Jon Paul Rodriguez, chairman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s species survival commission, said: “For the first time, the state of the world’s trees (report) provides a comprehensive breakdown of our world’s trees.

“Knowing where they are and why they are threatened is the first step towards acting for their conservation.

“Despite the worrying data, I look forward to future state of the world’s trees reports, where I hope to learn of the increase in the number of known species and the decline in the proportion facing high extinction risk, due to the success of premeditated, coordinated global conservation action.”

Current industrialization has a foundation in the continuous supply of natural resources. The methods and processes associated with this foundation have significant momentum. This paradigm will not be undone easily. Human nature and human history make it so. Currently, our industrial systems are absolutely dependent on non-renewable natural resources for energy sources. For the last 15 years, it has been apparent that the industrial business environment has been more challenging and volatile. This report will present the thesis that this persistent volatility is the forerunner temporal markers that show the industrial ecosystem is in the process of radically changing. Current thinking is that European industrial businesses, will replace a complex industrial ecosystem that took more than a century to build. This system was built with the support of the highest calorifically dense source of energy the world has ever known (oil), in cheap abundant quantities, with easily available credit, and unlimited mineral resources. This task is hoped to be done at a time when there is comparatively very expensive energy, a fragile finance system saturated in debt, not enough minerals, and an unprecedented number of human populations, embedded in a deteriorating environment. It is apparent that the goal of industrial scale transition away from fossil fuels into non-fossil fuel systems is a much larger task than current thinking allows for. To achieve this objective, among other things, an unprecedented demand for minerals will be required. Most minerals required for the renewable energy transition have not been mined in bulk quantities before. Many of the technology metals already have primary resource mining supply risks At its foundation, the current industrial ecosystem was and still is based around the consumption of natural resources, which were considered to be infinite. The very idea that there might be system based limits to the global extraction of resources is considered foolish by the current economic market. The volume of manufacture was influenced by the consumption demand of products. Growth and expansion with no considered limits of any kind was the underlying paradigm. The majority of infrastructure and technology units needed to phase out fossil fuels has yet to be manufactured. Recycling cannot be done on products that have yet to be manufactured. In the current system, demand for metals of all kinds have been increasing, just as the grade of ores processed has been decreasing. Global reserves are not large enough to supply enough metals to build the renewable non-fossil fuels industrial system or satisfy long term demand in the current system. Mineral deposit discovery has been declining for many metals. The grade of processed ore for many of the industrial metals has been decreasing over time, resulting in declining mineral processing yield. This has the implication of the increase in mining energy consumption per unit of metal. Mining of minerals is intimately dependent on fossil fuel based energy supply. Like all other industrial activities, without energy, mining does not happen. A case can be made that the window of viability for the fossil fuel energy supply ecosystem has been closing for 5 to 10 years.

It becomes highly relevant then to examine how mining ecosystem interacts with the energy ecosystem.The IMF Metals Index and the Crude Oil Price Index correlates strongly. This suggests that the mining industrial operations to meet metal demand for the future are unlikely to go as planned. The implications are that the basic prediction of the original Limits to Growth systems study (Meadows et al 1972) was conceptually correct. Just so, it should be considered that the industrial ecosystem and the society it supports may soon contract in size. This implies that the current Linear Economy system is seriously unbalanced and is not remotely sustainable. The Limits to Growth conclusions suggest at some point, the global society and the global industrial ecosystem that support it will radically change form. It is clear that society consumes more mineral resources each year. It is also clear that society does not really understand its dependency on minerals to function. Availability of minerals could be an issue in the future, where it becomes too expensive to extract metals due to decreasing grade. This report proposes that the fundamental transformation of the global ecosystem predicted by the original Limits to Growth study, has been in progress since 2005, for the last 16 years. The industrial ecosystem is in the process of transitioning from growth based economics to contraction based economics. This will affect all sectors of the global ecosystem, all at the same time (in a 20 year window). We are there now and should respond accordingly. If the Limits to Growth study is truly a good model for predicting the industrial ecosystem, then the current industrial practice is inappropriate. The continued development of the economic growth paradigm would become increasingly ineffective, and a waste of valuable resources. All such efforts would be pushing in the wrong direction with poor results. The rules of industrialization and the sourcing of raw materials are changing into a new era of business model. Change is happening, whether we are ready for it or not. A possible response to these structural changes is presented after conclusions on page 52, where it was recommended that a new resource management system should be developed after genuinely understanding the net position of long term minerals supply. Also, it was recommended that new mining frontiers be opened, but the minerals extracted should be used differently.

Recent climate extremes have broken long-standing records by large margins. Such extremes unprecedented in the observational period often have substantial impacts due to a tendency to adapt to the highest intensities, and no higher, experienced during a lifetime. Here, we show models project not only more intense extremes but also events that break previous records by much larger margins. These record-shattering extremes, nearly impossible in the absence of warming, are likely to occur in the coming decades. We demonstrate that their probability of occurrence depends on warming rate, rather than global warming level, and is thus pathway-dependent. In high-emission scenarios, week-long heat extremes that break records by three or more standard deviations are two to seven times more probable in 2021–2050 and three to 21 times more probable in 2051–2080, compared to the last three decades. In 2051–2080, such events are estimated to occur about every 6–37 years somewhere in the northern midlatitudes.

I believe that the fact Human Beings is less uncertain now that we have the ability to see and react to global climate change and to develop vaccines and public health initiates to push back global pandemics.

I think you are making the argument that there is more uncertainty than there we in the past.

You're wrong, as usual. I'm not comparing anything to "past centuries". I'm saying that the uncertainty surrounding the effects of climate change is increasing.

If you take a look at human history, I suspect the 2021 version of hightor would have a hard time making his case that things are all that uncertain right now.

POSSIBLE RESPONSE TO THE CHALLENGE
To transition away from fossil fuels, unprecedented volumes of minerals (battery minerals in particular) will be needed. Demand for such minerals will spike all over the world, making them much more valuable. The existing approach to do this, which has served us well over the previous 200 years, is going to become increasingly ineffective. At a fundamental level, without a cheap abundant energy source, extracting mineral resources will become increasingly expensive and as time passes, will become harder to prevent decreased production rates. For the industrial ecosystem to return to how it operated when the Internal Combustion Engine technology supported infrastructure was constructed, a method to develop the production of refined petroleum at a sale price of less than $20 USD a barrel (Michaux 2019). As the quality of oil reserves have been declining for some time, this is highly unlikely to happen. Just so, it is now entirely possible that the predicted challenges presented by the Limits to Growth report (Meadows et al 1972) are now in progress, which will require a fundamentally different approach to the consumption of natural resources of all kinds.