Is the world being destroyed?

International study projects up to 80% of emperor penguin colonies will be ‘quasi-extinct’ by 2100

Two-thirds of Antarctica’s native species, including emperor penguins, are under threat of extinction or major population declines by 2100 under current trajectories of global heating, according to new research that outlines priorities for protecting the continent’s biodiversity.

The study, an international collaboration between scientists, conservationists and policymakers from 28 institutions in 12 countries, identified emperor penguins as the Antarctic species at greatest risk of extinction, followed by other seabirds and dry soil nematodes.

“Up to 80% of emperor penguin colonies are projected to be quasi-extinct by 2100 [population declines of more than 90%] with business-as-usual increases in greenhouse gas emissions,” it found.

Published in the journal Plos Biology, the research also found that implementing 10 key threat management strategies in parallel – which would cost an estimated US$23m annually – could benefit up to 84% of Antarctic organisms.

Influencing global policy to effectively limit global heating was identified as the conservation strategy with the most benefit.

“There are multiple threats impacting Antarctic species despite the fact that we think of it as this remote and pristine wilderness,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Jasmine Lee, of the British Antarctic Survey. “The greatest threat is not coming from within.”

Lee, who undertook the research as part of a PhD at the University of Queensland, added that the study’s co-authors recognised global action on climate was less locally feasible than actions such as managing non-native species on the continent.

With increasing human activity on Antarctica – both research and tourism – the risk of introducing exotic species was growing, Lee said.

Dr Aleks Terauds, of the Australian Antarctic Division and a co-author of the study said the research highlighted that “biodiversity is under considerable pressure in Antarctica”.

“Antarctica is very well protected through the Antarctic treaty and through the protocol [on environmental protection],” Terauds said. “But the uniqueness of the continent, its wilderness values and the incredible biodiversity means that we’re still looking for things that we can do to try and ensure that things are impacted as little as possible.”

Minimising the effects of human activities on Antarctica was identified as the most cost-effective management strategy.

“We can educate our tourist companies better about areas that they should avoid with regard to some of these species that are under threat; we can educate the tourists themselves,” Terauds said.

Other avenues include reducing the environmental footprint of transport vessels and aircraft, as well as infrastructure projects and protecting vegetation from trampling and other physical damage.

Even if global heating cannot be mitigated, all regional strategies combined would still benefit about 54% of Antarctic species, the paper found.

It also highlighted the affect of the climate crisis on iconic seabirds such as emperor and Adélie penguins. “The emperor penguin relies on ice for breeding,” Lee said. “If it loses its suitable breeding habitat … that can lead to [population] collapses over time.”

Lesser-known species such as Scottnema lindsayae, a type of roundworm, are already in decline. “It’s an Antarctic specialist and it survives in quite salty and dry soils. As ice starts to melt and it gets warmer … the soils become more moist and less saline,” Lee said.

Terauds added: “Things like nematodes – as uninteresting as they sound – they are pretty amazing. They are living in some of the most inhospitable parts of the planet.”

On New Year's Day, several Stanford scientists joined CBS' Scott Pelley on the program "60 Minutes" to discuss the global mass extinction crisis. Spoiler: no one had any good news.

Tony Barnosky, a Stanford biologist whose work involves using fossil records to map changes in ecosystems over time, told CBS that his work suggests that extinction rates today are moving at roughly 100 times the rate typically seen in Earth's four-billion-year known history of supporting life.

According to Barnosky, such rapid population loss means that Earth is currently experiencing the worst mass extinction episode since the dinosaurs. And while Earth itself has repeatedly recovered from mass extinction events, the vast majority of the life existing on our planet at the time has not.

Unfortunately, that may well include us humans — or, at least, the trappings of our technological civilization.

"I and the vast majority of my colleagues think we've had it," Barnosky's Stanford colleague Paul Ehrlich, who also appeared on the show, told Pelley, "that the next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we're used to."

That grim reality, according to the researchers, means that even if humans manage to survive in some capacity, the wide-reaching impacts of mass extinction — which include habitat destruction, breakdowns in the natural food chain, soil infertility, and more — would cause modern human society to crumble.

"I would say it is too much to say that we're killing the planet, because the planet's gonna be fine," said Barnosky. "What we're doing is we're killing our way of life."

In other words? If humans don't drastically course-correct, the havoc we're wreaking on the planet will very unpleasantly do so for us. It's a grim warning, but one that other experts are echoing.

Ehrlich, it's worth noting, is somewhat of an overpopulation and mass extinction icon. He published "The Population Bomb," one of the first modern books on the dangers of excess human development and population growth, back in 1968, and was considered an alarmist for the controversial predictions he made at the time. Although not all of his contentious forecasts came true, two big ones — that greenhouse gases would melt polar ice, and that humanity would overwhelm the wild — have undoubtedly since materialized. And sadly, his reasoning for their realization feels depressingly familiar.

According to Ehrlich, the problem is "too many people, too much consumption and growth mania" — a reality that few would likely argue is showing any meaningful sign of slowing down.

"Humanity is not sustainable. To maintain our lifestyle (yours and mine, basically) for the entire planet, you'd need five more Earths," Ehrlich told his interviewer. "Not clear where they're gonna come from."

"Resources that would be required, the systems that support our lives, which of course are the biodiversity that we're wiping out," the 90-year-old researcher added. "Humanity is very busily sitting on a limb that we're sawing off."

it is possible that advances in artificial intelligence could lead to significant changes in the job market and the economy. If AI were to replace a large number of jobs, it could potentially lead to widespread unemployment and economic disruption. In such a scenario, it is possible that some form of universal basic income (UBI) may be implemented as a way to provide financial support to people who are unable to find employment.

There are a number of different ways that UBI could be funded. One possibility is that it could be funded by taxes on businesses or high earners. Another possibility is that it could be funded by the profits generated by AI and automation, if these technologies are widely adopted and become a significant source of income.

Sam Altman, Open AI's CEO Universal Basic Income Prediction

“We need to design a system that embraces this technological future and taxes the assets that will make up most of the value in that world–companies and land–in order to fairly distribute some of the coming wealth.” Altman said in his 2,933 word post on Moores Law For Everything. “Doing so can make the society of the future much less divisive and enable everyone to participate in its gains.”

The post came just months before the public launch of OpenAI’s newest project, ChatGPT that has since taken the internet, and the world by storm. It’s astonished millions, sceptics and all, with it’s advanced, human like capabilities.

The AI tool offers a glimpse into the future of possibilities, one that experts have predicted and feared for many years. 

Jobs at risk from ChatGPT

Though it’s not yet perfect, and does have significant limitations, ChatGPT has cemented the possibility that AI really could threaten the job market. And it’s only just the beginning. Universal Basic Income could be the only solution. 

Below is just a few of the jobs AI language models are at risk of outperforming:

• Code writers / translators
• Language translators
• Copywriters
• Content writers
• SEO strategists
• Data analysts

If properly used, AI will significantly increase the productivity in all of the above roles, thus reducing the demand for labour. One worker, equipped with the right prompts, could bear the same workload as 7, in half the time.

Will Universal Basic Income be Needed?

The idea of a Universal Basic Income has been around for centuries. In fact the idea dates back as far as 1516! There have always been times throughout history, where technological advances force humans out of work. The industrial revolution saw millions of jobs displaced by machinery. 

Altman is predicting however than OpenAI’s technology has the potential to do impact the 21st century workforce much more brutally. AI generative technology is in it’s infancy. Imagine where the technology will be in 10 years time. It’s a fascinating concept, and one that has the very real potential of putting a significant percentage of the population out of work! 

In 2022, a third La Niña year brought much rain to Australia and Southeast Asia and dry conditions to the other side of the Pacific. These patterns were expected, but behind these variations there are troubling signs the entire global water cycle is changing.

Our research team watches the global water cycle closely. We analyze observations from more than 40 satellites that continuously monitor the atmosphere and Earth's surface. We merge those with data from thousands of weather and water monitoring stations on the ground.

For the first time, we've drawn on those many terabytes of data to paint a full picture of the water cycle over a year for the entire globe, as well as for individual countries. The findings are contained in a report released today.

The key conclusion? Earth's water cycle is clearly changing. Globally, the air is getting hotter and drier, which means droughts and risky fire conditions are developing faster and more frequently.

The year in a nutshell

In 2022, a third consecutive La Niña influenced weather around the world. Three La Niña years in a row is unusual but not unprecedented.

A La Niña is an oceanic event in which sea surface temperatures are cooler than normal in the central and eastern tropical Pacific and warmer than normal in the western Pacific. The phenomenon strengthens easterly trade winds that bring rain to southeast Asia and Australia.

In 2022, La Niña combined with warm waters in the northern Indian Ocean to bring widespread flooding in a band stretching from Iran to New Zealand, and almost everywhere in between.

The most devastating floods occurred in Pakistan, where about 8 million people were driven out of their homes by massive flooding along the Indus River. Australia also experienced several severe flood events throughout the year—mostly in the east, but also in Western Australia's Kimberly region at the very end of the year and into 2023.

As is typical for La Niña, the rain was much less plentiful on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. A multi-year drought in the western United States and central South America saw lakes fall to historic lows.

Another year of drought also decimated crops and led to a rapidly worsening humanitarian situation in the Horn of Africa.

A change in the rains

Although our data do not suggest a change in average global rainfall, there are troubling trends in several regions.

The monsoon regions from India to Northern Australia are getting wetter. Parts of the Americas and Africa are getting drier, including the western United States, which experienced its 23rd year of drought in 2022.

Monthly rainfall total records appear intact. But rainfall over shorter periods is becoming increasingly intense in many regions.

As our report highlights, intense rainfall events struck communities across the globe in 2022—from Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa to Afghanistan, India and Pakistan.

The downpours caused flash floods and landslides, killing thousands and leaving many thousands more without a home. Growing population pressures are pushing ever more people into floodplains and onto unstable slopes, making heavy rain and flood events even more damaging than in the past.

A hotter, drier world

Average global air temperatures are rising. While La Niña years are historically relatively cool, that effect is largely lost in the upward march of global temperatures.

Heatwaves are increasing in severity and duration and this was noticeable in 2022. Apart from being natural disasters in their own right, heatwaves and unseasonally high temperatures also affect the water cycle.

In 2022, intense heatwaves in Europe and China led to so-called "flash droughts." These occur when warm, dry air causes the rapid evaporation of water from soils and inland water systems.

In 2022, many rivers in Europe ran dry, exposing artifacts hidden for centuries.

Air is not only getting warmer but also drier, nearly everywhere. That means people, crops and ecosystems need more water to stay healthy, further increasing pressure on water resources.

Dry air also means forests dry out faster, increasing the severity of bushfires. In 2022, the western U.S. experienced major fires in January, in the middle of Northern Hemisphere winter.

Warmer temperatures also melt snow and ice faster. The Pakistan floods were made worse by a preceding intense heatwave that increased glacier melt in the Himalayas. This raised river flows even before the rains hit.

Climate change is not the only way humanity is changing the water cycle. There has been a steady increase in the volume of lakes worldwide. This is mostly due to individuals and governments constructing and enlarging dams to secure their access water, which changes river flows downstream.

Welcome to the future

La Niña's influence appears to be waning, and a switch to an El Niño halfway through this year is possible.

Hopefully, that will mean fewer flood disasters in Asia and Oceania and more rain for drought-affected regions in the Americas and East Africa.

Australia, however, may see a return to heatwaves and bushfires. In the longer term, 2023 may mark the start of another multi-year drought.

The seesawing between El Niño and La Niña is a natural phenomenon. But it remains to be seen whether the triple La Niña was a statistical fluke or a sign of disruption from climate change.

If La Niña or El Niño stays around longer in future, we're likely to experience deeper droughts and worse floods than seen to date.

Humanity's success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions will determine the planet's future several decades from now. Until then, global temperatures will continue to increase. New records will continue to be broken: for heatwaves, cloudbursts, flash droughts, bushfires and ice melt.

There is no way to avoid that. What we can do is heed the warning signs and prepare for a challenging future.

The 2022 report and the underlying data are publicly available via www.globalwater.online. [/quote]<br /> [i=https://phys.org/news/2023-01-alarming-entire-global.html]phys.org[/i]

RALEIGH – What if I told you that there are fringe groups in the United States whose goal is to cause the breakdown of the nation’s power grid? They want electricity to fail across wide swaths of the country so that chaos ensues and there is a collapse of American society.

What if I told you that these groups believe that a widespread power grid failure would cause so much chaos that millions of people would die and that rioting and looting could destabilize the nation, to the point where society and order break down completely.

What if I told you that there were multiple grid attacks in 2022, cutting power for tens of thousands of people at a time? What if I told you that these fringe groups are hoping that a coordinated effort could very well cause a much larger grid collapse?

As we enter 2023, this is the reality we face: that a small group of fanatical people in the United States hope to cause societal collapse by destroying the nation’s power grids. Let’s start by looking at the successful grid attack that occurred in Moore county, NC in December of 2022.

The Moore County, NC grid attack on December 4, 2022

On December 3, 2022 at approximately 7PM, people started shooting high-powered rifles at two of the county’s major electrical substations. In this case, the substations delivered power to about 35,000 people in Moore County. This video can help you understand what happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebE665o144 

The target of an attack like this is usually the transformers. In some cases, the large transformers are filled with oil to help with cooling. A shot from a high-power rifle punctures a transformer’s casing, so the oil leaks out. The transformer overheats and fails. If the bullet is powerful enough, it can cut into the coils of wire inside the transformer and destroy the transformer by shorting it out.

The problem is that these transformers take time to replace. Therefore, many of the people in Moore County experienced four or even five days without power. As you can imagine, being without power in cold winter weather can become a major problem. The lack of heat can be deadly if temperatures are low enough. In addition, water pipes can freeze and burst, causing extensive and expensive damage in homes.

The problem is that the Moore County attack was just one example of a growing phenomenon:

Physical attacks on power grid surge to new peak:

“The U.S. power grid is suffering a decade-high surge in attacks as extremists, vandals and cyber criminals increasingly take aim at the nation’s critical infrastructure. Physical and computerized assaults on the equipment that delivers electricity are at their highest level since at least 2012, including 101 reported this year through the end of August… white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other domestic extremists seeking to sow unrest have taken responsibility for other high-profile attempts to take down swaths of the grid — prompting security experts to grow increasingly concerned about the U.S. electricity system’s vulnerability.”

The Problem with a big power failure

The attack in Moore County was a big deal for the area. Roughly half of the county’s residents were affected and had zero electricity for multiple days.

However, this incident did not cause societal collapse or anything close to it. There have been lots of power failures over the years, some of them affecting many millions of people, but they did not cause societal collapse either. The Northeaster blackout of 2003, for example, affected 55 million people.

In order to cause a societal collapse, two things must happen simultaneously. First, millions of people need to have the power cut off. Second, the power needs to be out long enough for things like food shortages to start causing death and mayhem.

Imagine if the Northeast blackout of 2003 had lasted two months rather than two days. 55 million people would be without power, along with everything they depend on to live a normal life:

• Most grocery stores, pharmacies and other stores do not have backup generators. Without electricity, all the refrigerators and freezers fail, the lights are out, HVAC is out, and credit card processing systems are out. The stores are all closed, so it is impossible to buy food.
• Most gas stations do not have backup generators, so it becomes difficult or impossible to purchase fuel. And electric cars are completely useless in a power failure once their batteries drain. Deliveries of food and medicine into the area become much more difficult.
• Even if people can drive their cars or trucks on the fuel in the tanks, all of the traffic lights are out.
• There is no way to recharge phones, power laptops, or stay connected to the Internet.
• Emergency services and hospitals probably do have backup generators, but: a) the generators need fuel to keep running and fuel supplies may dry up after two or three weeks, and b) all of these services get overwhelmed as people get more and more desperate.
• The water supply also has backup power, but may also be affected by fuel shortages, causing a failure in the municipal water systems.
• No one can get to work, so the whole economy of the area starts shutting down. Any factories cease production.
• And so on…

The biggest problem is that the grocery stores all close, people eat all the food they have in their homes, and then people begin to starve.

In the case of a short power failure, none of these problems with the food supply affect people because people can easily last a day or two if the grocery stores are closed.

In the case of a small power failure affecting only tens of thousands of people, it is easy to drive 20 miles and find food, water, fuel, and medicine.

It is the case of a long power failure affecting millions of people where societal collapse can set in due to starvation and other deprivations. Starving people become desperate. Evil people are able to start looting and destroying things with abandon. Once things tip far enough, it can be difficult to recover.

Texas shows us how to have a months-long grid failure

In February, 2021, the state of Texas (population 30 million people) came minutes away from a complete grid failure. This video can help you understand what happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcrsgdl_hP0

Had this complete grid failure occurred, it is estimated that several months would be required to restore the power:

Texas was “seconds and minutes” away from catastrophic monthslong blackouts, officials say

“The worst case scenario: Demand for power outstrips the supply of power generation available on the grid, causing equipment to catch fire, substations to blow and power lines to go down. If the grid had gone totally offline, the physical damage to power infrastructure from overwhelming the grid could have taken months to repair, said Bernadette Johnson”

It is easy to understand the ramifications if this months-long blackout had occurred. Imagine major cities like Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington (population nearly 8 million people) and Houston (about the same, and also home to important national refineries) without food, fuel, medicine, and water for two or three months. A person in Dallas might try to evacuate 150+ miles to another state that has power, but if millions of people are trying to all do it at the same time, things could get dangerous. And then the looting and destruction explodes after so many people leave.

There were two factors that worked together to bring Texas to the brink of a months-long grid collapse:

1. The cold weather caused a surge in demand for electricity.
2. The cold weather caused many power plants to fail.

Domestic terrorists who want to cause a grid collapse would try to duplicate the scenario by waiting for a time when the power grid is experiencing high load, either because of extreme hot weather or cold weather in the area. Then they would try to sabotage multiple power plants or the transmission lines that connect to them.

How can we as a society prevent this catastrophe?

There are three different kinds of action that America could take to prevent a grid failure and societal collapse that would result from a months-long blackout.

The first kind of action would be to harden the grid. Right now, many power plants, most transmission lines, and just about all substations are vulnerable to sabotage. Much of this equipment is sitting out in the open, sometimes in remote rural areas, so it is easy to attack. Substations need to be protected with buildings and security systems. Transmission lines need extensive use of cameras and security systems. Yes, this will cost money and power bills will rise a bit, but it would go a long way toward preventing the easy terrorist attacks and vandalism that are currently occurring.

The second kind of action would be for law enforcement agencies to meticulously follow the people and groups who are fomenting the sabotage. Detect when attacks are planned and arrest people during the planning stages. This approach has worked in a number of cases, for example in the case of the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. Before she could be kidnapped, the FBI arrested 13 people during the planning stages.

The third kind of action would be to add excess capacity to the power grid and beef up supplies for repair. In other words, have extra power plants, extra transmission lines, and extra spare parts to handle the losses in cases of sabotage. If there is excess capacity, then the loss of some resources to sabotage can be easily backfilled using the excess capacity.

With these three things in place, it will be much more difficult to attack the power grid successfully, and everyone in the United States will be safer.

Increasingly tempestuous winds have been sweeping dust from Earth's deserts into our air at an increasing rate since the mid-1800s. New data suggests that this uptick has masked up to 8 percent of current global warming.

Using satellite data and ground measurements, researchers detected a steady increase in these microscopic airborne particles since 1850. Soil dust in ice cores, ocean sediments, and peat bogs shows the level of mineral dust in the atmosphere grew by around 55 percent over that time.

By scattering sunlight back into space and disrupting high-altitude clouds that can act like a blanket trapping warmer air below, these dust particles have an overall cooling effect, essentially masking the true extent of the current extra heat energy vibrating around our atmosphere.

Atmospheric physicist Jasper Kok from the University of California, Los Angeles, explains that this amount of dust would have decreased warming by about 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit. Without the dust, our current warming to date would be 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius).

"We show desert dust has increased, and most likely slightly counteracted greenhouse warming, which is missing from current climate models," says Kok. "The increased dust hasn't caused a whole lot of cooling – the climate models are still close – but our findings imply that greenhouse gases alone could cause even more climate warming than models currently predict."

Higher wind speeds, drier soils, and changes in human land use all influence the amount of dust swept into our atmosphere. Some of this then falls into our oceans, feeding important nutrients like iron to photosynthesizing plankton that draw down carbon as they grow and reproduce.

This complicated desert dust cycle has yet to be factored into our climate models, and whether or not the amount of desert air particles will increase or decrease in the future is still unclear.

"By adding the increase in desert dust, which accounts for over half of the atmosphere's mass of particulate matter, we can increase the accuracy of climate model predictions," says Kok. "This is of tremendous importance because better predictions can inform better decisions of how to mitigate or adapt to climate change."

Given the secrecy typically accorded to the military and the inclination of government officials to skew data to satisfy the preferences of those in power, intelligence failures are anything but unusual in this country’s security affairs. In 2003, for instance, President George W. Bush invaded Iraq based on claims — later found to be baseless — that its leader, Saddam Hussein, was developing or already possessed weapons of mass destruction. Similarly, the instant collapse of the Afghan government in August 2021, when the U.S. completed the withdrawal of its forces from that country, came as a shock only because of wildly optimistic intelligence estimates of that government’s strength. Now, the Department of Defense has delivered another massive intelligence failure, this time on China’s future threat to American security.

The Pentagon is required by law to provide Congress and the public with an annual report on “military and security developments involving the People’s Republic of China,” or PRC, over the next 20 years. The 2022 version, 196 pages of detailed information published last November 29th, focused on its current and future military threat to the United States. In two decades, so we’re assured, China’s military — the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA — will be superbly equipped to counter Washington should a conflict arise over Taiwan or navigation rights in the South China Sea. But here’s the shocking thing: in those nearly 200 pages of analysis, there wasn’t a single word — not one — devoted to China’s role in what will pose the most pressing threat to our security in the years to come: runaway climate change.

At a time when California has just been battered in a singular fashion by punishing winds and massive rainstorms delivered by a moisture-laden “atmospheric river” flowing over large parts of the state while much of the rest of the country has suffered from severe, often lethal floods, tornadoes, or snowstorms, it should be self-evident that climate change constitutes a vital threat to our security. But those storms, along with the rapacious wildfires and relentless heatwaves experienced in recent summers — not to speak of a 1,200-year record megadrought in the Southwest — represent a mere prelude to what we can expect in the decades to come. By 2042, the nightly news — already saturated with storm-related disasters — could be devoted almost exclusively to such events.

All true, you might say, but what does China have to do with any of this? Why should climate change be included in a Department of Defense report on security developments in relation to the People’s Republic?

There are three reasons why it should not only have been included but given extensive coverage. First, China is now and will remain the world’s leading emitter of climate-altering carbon emissions, with the United States — though historically the greatest emitter — staying in second place. So, any effort to slow the pace of global warming and truly enhance this country’s “security” must involve a strong drive by Beijing to reduce its emissions as well as cooperation in energy decarbonization between the two greatest emitters on this planet. Second, China itself will be subjected to extreme climate-change harm in the years to come, which will severely limit the PRC’s ability to carry out ambitious military plans of the sort described in the 2022 Pentagon report. Finally, by 2042, count on one thing: the American and Chinese armed forces will be devoting most of their resources and attention to disaster relief and recovery, diminishing both their motives and their capacity to go to war with one another.

China’s Outsized Role in the Climate-Change Equation

Global warming, scientists tell us, is caused by the accumulation of “anthropogenic” (human-produced) greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere that trap the reflected light from the sun’s radiation. Most of those GHGs are carbon and methane emitted during the production and combustion of fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas); additional GHGs are released through agricultural and industrial processes, especially steel and cement production. To prevent global warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era — the largest increase scientists believe the planet can absorb without catastrophic outcomes — such emissions will have to be sharply reduced.

Historically speaking, the United States and the European Union (EU) countries have been the largest GHG emitters, responsible for 25% and 22% of cumulative CO2 emissions, respectively. But those countries, and other advanced industrial nations like Canada and Japan, have been taking significant steps to reduce their emissions, including phasing out the use of coal in electricity generation and providing incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles. As a result, their net CO2 emissions have diminished in recent years and are expected to decline further in the decades to come (though they will need to do yet more to keep us below that 1.5-degree warming limit).

China, a relative latecomer to the industrial era, is historically responsible for “only” 13% of cumulative global CO2 emissions. However, in its drive to accelerate its economic growth in recent decades, it has vastly increased its reliance on coal to generate electricity, resulting in ever-greater CO2 emissions. China now accounts for an astonishing 56% of total world coal consumption, which, in turn, largely explains its current dominance among the major carbon emitters. According to the 2022 edition of the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook, the PRC was responsible for 33% of global CO2 emissions in 2021, compared with 15% for the U.S. and 11% for the EU.

Like most other countries, China has pledged to abide by the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 and undertake the decarbonization of its economy as part of a worldwide drive to keep global warming within some bounds. As part of that agreement, however, China identified itself as a “developing” country with the option of increasing its fossil-fuel use for 15 years or so before achieving a peak in CO2 emissions in 2030. Barring some surprising set of developments then, the PRC will undoubtedly remain the world’s leading source of CO2 emissions for years to come, suffusing the atmosphere with colossal amounts of carbon dioxide and undergirding a continuing rise in global temperatures.

Yes, the United States, Japan, and the EU countries should indeed do more to reduce their emissions, but they’re already on a downward trajectory and an even more rapid decline will not be enough to offset China’s colossal CO2 output. Put differently, those Chinese emissions — estimated by the IEA at 12 billion metric tons annually — represent at least as great a threat to U.S. security as the multitude of tanks, planes, ships, and missiles enumerated in the Pentagon’s 2022 report on security developments in the PRC. That means they will require the close attention of American policymakers if we are to escape the most severe impacts of climate change.

China’s Vulnerability to Climate Change

Along with detailed information on China’s outsized contribution to the greenhouse effect, any thorough report on security developments involving the PRC should have included an assessment of that country’s vulnerability to climate change. It should have laid out just how global warming might, in the future, affect its ability to marshal resources for a demanding, high-cost military competition with the United States.

In the coming decades, like the U.S. and other continental-scale countries, China will suffer severely from the multiple impacts of rising world temperatures, including extreme storm damage, prolonged droughts and heatwaves, catastrophic flooding, and rising seas. Worse yet, the PRC has several distinctive features that will leave it especially vulnerable to global warming, including a heavily-populated eastern seaboard exposed to rising sea levels and increasingly powerful typhoons; a vast interior, parts of which, already significantly dry, will be prone to full-scale desertification; and a vital river system that relies on unpredictable rainfall and increasingly imperiled glacial runoff. As warming advances and China experiences an ever-increasing climate assault, its social, economic, and political institutions, including the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), will be severely tested.

According to a recent study from the Center for Climate and Security, “China’s Climate Security Vulnerabilities,” the threats to its vital institutions will take two major forms: hits to its critical infrastructure like port facilities, military bases, transportation hubs, and low-lying urban centers along China’s heavily populated coastline; and the danger of growing internal instability arising from ever-increasing economic dislocation, food scarcity, and governmental incapacitation.

China’s coastline already suffers heavy flooding during severe storms and significant parts of it could be entirely underwater by the second half of this century, requiring the possible relocation of hundreds of millions of people and the reconstruction of billions of dollars’ worth of vital facilities. Such tasks will surely require the full attention of Chinese authorities as well as the extensive homebound commitment of military resources, leaving little capacity for foreign adventures. Why, you might wonder, is there not a single sentence about this in the Pentagon’s assessment of future Chinese capabilities?

Even more worrisome, from Beijing’s perspective, is the possible effect of climate change on the country’s internal stability. “Climate change impacts are likely to threaten China’s economic growth, its food and water security, and its efforts at poverty eradication,” the climate center’s study suggests (but the Pentagon report doesn’t mention). Such developments will, in turn, “likely increase the country’s vulnerability to political instability, as climate change undermines the government’s ability to meet its citizens’ demands.”

Of particular concern, the report suggests, is global warming’s dire threat to food security. China, it notes, must feed approximately 20% of the world’s population while occupying only 12% of its arable land, much of which is vulnerable to drought, flooding, extreme heat, and other disastrous climate impacts. As food and water supplies dwindle, Beijing could face popular unrest, even revolt, in food-scarce areas of the country, especially if the government fails to respond adequately. This, no doubt, will compel the CCP to deploy its armed forces nationwide to maintain order, leaving ever fewer of them available for other military purposes — another possibility absent from the Pentagon’s assessment.

Of course, in the years to come, the U.S., too, will feel the ever more severe impacts of climate change and may itself no longer be in a position to fight wars in distant lands — a consideration also completely absent from the Pentagon report.

The Prospects for Climate Cooperation

Along with gauging China’s military capabilities, that annual report is required by law to consider “United States-China engagement and cooperation on security matters… including through United States-China military-to-military contacts.” And indeed, the 2022 version does note that Washington interprets such “engagement” as involving joint efforts to avert accidental or inadvertent conflict by participating in high-level Pentagon-PLA crisis-management arrangements, including what’s known as the Crisis Communications Working Group. “Recurring exchanges [like these],” the report affirms, “serve as regularized mechanisms for dialogue to advance priorities related to crisis prevention and management.”

Any effort aimed at preventing conflict between the two countries is certainly a worthy endeavor. But the report also assumes that such military friction is now inevitable and the most that can be hoped for is to prevent World War III from being ignited. However, given all we’ve already learned about the climate threat to both China and the United States, isn’t it time to move beyond mere conflict avoidance to more collaborative efforts, military and otherwise, aimed at reducing our mutual climate vulnerabilities?

At the moment, sadly enough, such relations sound far-fetched indeed. But it shouldn’t be so. After all, the Department of Defense has already designated climate change a vital threat to national security and has indeed called for cooperative efforts between American forces and those of other countries in overcoming climate-related dangers. “We will elevate climate as a national security priority,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin declared in March 2021, “integrating climate considerations into the Department’s policies, strategies, and partner engagements.”

The Pentagon provided further information on such “partner engagements” in a 2021 report on the military’s vulnerabilities to climate change. “There are many ways for the Department to integrate climate considerations into international partner engagements,” that report affirmed, “including supporting interagency diplomacy and development initiatives in partner nations [and] sharing best practices.” One such effort, it noted, is the Pacific Environmental Security Partnership, a network of climate specialists from that region who meet annually at the Pentagon-sponsored Pacific Environmental Security Forum.

At present, China is not among the nations involved in that or other Pentagon-sponsored climate initiatives. Yet, as both countries experience increasingly severe impacts from rising global temperatures and their militaries are forced to devote ever more time and resources to disaster relief, information-sharing on climate-response “best practices” will make so much more sense than girding for war over Taiwan or small uninhabited islands in the East and South China Seas (some of which will be completely underwater by century’s end). Indeed, the Pentagon and the PLA are more alike in facing the climate challenge than most of the world’s military forces and so it should be in both countries’ mutual interests to promote cooperation in the ultimate critical area for any country in this era of ours.

Consider it a form of twenty-first-century madness, then, that a Pentagon report on the U.S. and China can’t even conceive of such a possibility. Given China’s increasingly significant role in world affairs, Congress should require an annual Pentagon report on all relevant military and security developments involving the PRC. Count on one thing: in the future, one devoted exclusively to analyzing what still passes for “military” developments and lacking any discussion of climate change will seem like an all-too-grim joke. The world deserves better going forward if we are to survive the coming climate onslaught.