Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Walter Hinteler wrote:

The federal government owns roughly 60% percent of California's 33 million acres of forestlands, you certainly know.

Actually I don't know. But I'll take your word for it.

The best way forward is to have small controlled burns...

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But there is a problem: if we continue growing our economies at current rates, it will require a level of minerals and materials that the Earth will not be able to provide. This is the case even if heavy materials are replaced with light alternatives.

For instance, the automobile industry is replacing steel components of the electric motor, battery and vehicle body with wrought aluminum, magnesium and titanium, or other composite materials such as carbon fibre reinforced plastic. Yet “these materials tend to require more energy and have a higher global warming potential in the production stage than the heavier materials they replace.”

The EV transition is, in short, a massive industrial project. Electrification of roads and rail will require upgraded smart grids, complex routes connected to high power lines, and regular battery-swap stations. The paper explores several scenarios to explore how such a transition would take place.

In a continuing GDP growth scenario, the authors note that the economy begins to stagnate “due to peak oil limits at around 2025-2040,” but GDP is able to continue growing thanks to the EV transition. This shows that the reduction in liquid fuels in transportation can play a powerful role in avoiding “energy shortages in the economy as a whole.”

But then the economy hits the limits of mineral and material production to sustain this electric transition—in just three decades. And this is even with high levels of minerals recycling.

By 2050, in this scenario, the EV transition will “require higher amounts of copper, lithium and manganese than current reserves. For the cases of copper and manganese the depletion is mainly due to the demand from the rest of the economy,” but most lithium demand “is for EV batteries,” and this alone “depletes its estimated global reserves.”

Mineral depletion takes place even with “a very high increase in recycling rates” in a continuing GDP growth scenario.

In one such scenario, the authors apply what they consider to be realistic upper level recycling rates of 57 percent, 30 percent and 74 percent to copper, lithium and manganese respectively. These are based on extremely optimistic projections of recycling capabilities relative to their costs.

But still they find that even these high recycling rates wouldn’t prevent depletion of all current estimated reserves by 2050. The conclusion corroborates findings of other studies, estimating an expected bottleneck for lithium by 2042-2045 and for manganese by 2038-2050.

Actual bottlenecks could come even earlier because existing studies—including the MEDEAS model—don’t account for material requirements needed for internal wiring, the EV motor, EV chargers, building and maintaining the grid to connect and charge EV batteries, the catenaries to electrify the railways, as well as inherent difficulties in recycling metals.

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Can you explain how using up mineral reserves ruins the earth?

How would it be Capitalism's fault we ran out of limited reserves?

Doesn't that mean capitalism works by forcing us to switch to renewable energy sources?

Australia’s top climate scientist says “we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse” of civilisation, which may now be inevitable because 9 of the 15 known global climate tipping points that regulate the state of the planet have been activated.

Australian National University emeritus professor Will Steffen (pictured) told Voice of Action that there was already a chance we have triggered a “global tipping cascade” that would take us to a less habitable “Hothouse Earth” climate, regardless of whether we reduced emissions.

Steffen says it would take 30 years at best (more likely 40-60 years) to transition to net zero emissions, but when it comes to tipping points such as Arctic sea ice we could have already run out of time.

Evidence shows we will also lose control of the tipping points for the Amazon rainforest, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and the Greenland ice sheet in much less time than it’s going to take us to get to net zero emissions, Steffen says.

“Given the momentum in both the Earth and human systems, and the growing difference between the ‘reaction time’ needed to steer humanity towards a more sustainable future, and the ‘intervention time’ left to avert a range of catastrophes in both the physical climate system (e.g., melting of Arctic sea ice) and the biosphere (e.g., loss of the Great Barrier Reef), we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse,” said Steffen.

“That is, the intervention time we have left has, in many cases, shrunk to levels that are shorter than the time it would take to transition to a more sustainable system.

“The fact that many of the features of the Earth System that are being damaged or lost constitute ‘tipping points’ that could well link to form a ‘tipping cascade’ raises the ultimate question: Have we already lost control of the system? Is collapse now inevitable?”

This is not a unique view – leading Stanford University biologists, who were first to reveal that we are already experiencing the sixth mass extinction on Earth, released new research this week showing species extinctions are accelerating in an unprecedented manner, which may be a tipping point for the collapse of human civilisation.

Also in the past week research emerged showing the world’s major food baskets will experience more extreme droughts than previously forecast, with southern Australia among the worst hit globally.

Steffen used the metaphor of the Titanic in one of his recent talks to describe how we may cross tipping points faster than the time it would take us to react to get our impact on the climate under control.

“If the Titanic realises that it’s in trouble and it has about 5km that it needs to slow and steer the ship, but it’s only 3km away from the iceberg, it’s already doomed,” he said.

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The world’s most eminent climate scientists and biologists believe we’re headed for the collapse of civilisation, and it may already be too late to change course.

Atmospheric greenhouse gas evolution
Greenhouse gases, in particular carbon dioxide and methane, played a significant role during the Eocene in controlling the surface temperature. . . For example, diverse geochemical and paleontological proxies indicate that at the maximum of global warmth the atmospheric carbon dioxide values were at 700–900 ppm while other proxies such as pedogenic (soil building) carbonate and marine boron isotopes indicate large changes of carbon dioxide of over 2,000 ppm over periods of time of less than 1 million years. Sources for this large influx of carbon dioxide could be attributed to volcanic out-gassing due to North Atlantic rifting or oxidation of methane stored in large reservoirs deposited from the PETM event in the sea floor or wetland environments. For contrast, today the carbon dioxide levels are at 400 ppm or 0.04%.

At about the beginning of the Eocene Epoch (55.8–33.9 million years ago) the amount of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere more or less doubled.

During the early Eocene, methane was another greenhouse gas that had a drastic effect on the climate. In comparison to carbon dioxide, methane has much greater effect on temperature as methane is around 34 times more effective per molecule than carbon dioxide on a 100-year scale (it has a higher global warming potential). Most of the methane released to the atmosphere during this period of time would have been from wetlands, swamps, and forests. The atmospheric methane concentration today is 0.000179% or 1.79 ppmv. As a result of the warmer climate and the sea level rise associated with the early Eocene, more wetlands, more forests, and more coal deposits would have been available for methane release. If we compare the early Eocene production of methane to current levels of atmospheric methane, the early Eocene would have produced triple the amount of methane. The warm temperatures during the early Eocene could have increased methane production rates, and methane that is released into the atmosphere would in turn warm the troposphere, cool the stratosphere, and produce water vapor and carbon dioxide through oxidation. Biogenic production of methane produces carbon dioxide and water vapor along with the methane, as well as yielding infrared radiation. The breakdown of methane in an atmosphere containing oxygen produces carbon monoxide, water vapor and infrared radiation. The carbon monoxide is not stable, so it eventually becomes carbon dioxide and in doing so releases yet more infrared radiation. Water vapor traps more infrared than does carbon dioxide.

The middle to late Eocene marks not only the switch from warming to cooling, but also the change in carbon dioxide from increasing to decreasing. At the end of the Eocene Optimum, carbon dioxide began decreasing due to increased siliceous plankton productivity and marine carbon burial. At the beginning of the middle Eocene an event that may have triggered or helped with the draw down of carbon dioxide was the Azolla event at around 49 million years ago. With the equable climate during the early Eocene, warm temperatures in the arctic allowed for the growth of azolla, which is a floating aquatic fern, on the Arctic Ocean. Compared to current carbon dioxide levels, these azolla grew rapidly in the enhanced carbon dioxide levels found in the early Eocene. As these azolla sank into the Arctic Ocean, they became buried and sequestered their carbon into the seabed. This event could have led to a draw down of atmospheric carbon dioxide of up to 470 ppm. Assuming the carbon dioxide concentrations were at 900 ppmv prior to the Azolla Event they would have dropped to 430 ppmv, or 30 ppmv more than they are today, after the Azolla Event. Another event during the middle Eocene that was a sudden and temporary reversal of the cooling conditions was the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum. At around 41.5 million years ago, stable isotopic analysis of samples from Southern Ocean drilling sites indicated a warming event for 600,000 years. A sharp increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide was observed with a maximum of 4,000 ppm: the highest amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide detected during the Eocene. . . .

At the end of the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum, cooling and the carbon dioxide drawdown continued through the late Eocene and into the Eocene–Oligocene transition around 34 million years ago. Multiple proxies, such as oxygen isotopes and alkenones, indicate that at the Eocene–Oligocene transition, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration had decreased to around 750–800 ppm, approximately twice that of present levels.

Early Eocene and the equable climate problem
One of the unique features of the Eocene's climate as mentioned before was the equable and homogeneous climate that existed in the early parts of the Eocene. A multitude of proxies support the presence of a warmer equable climate being present during this period of time. A few of these proxies include the presence of fossils native to warm climates, such as crocodiles, located in the higher latitudes, the presence in the high latitudes of frost-intolerant flora such as palm trees which cannot survive during sustained freezes, and fossils of snakes found in the tropics that would require much higher average temperatures to sustain them. Using isotope proxies to determine ocean temperatures indicates sea surface temperatures in the tropics as high as 35 °C (95 °F) and, relative to present-day values, bottom water temperatures that are 10 °C (18 °F) higher. With these bottom water temperatures, temperatures in areas where deep water forms near the poles are unable to be much cooler than the bottom water temperatures.

An issue arises, however, when trying to model the Eocene and reproduce the results that are found with the proxy data. Using all different ranges of greenhouse gasses that occurred during the early Eocene, models were unable to produce the warming that was found at the poles and the reduced seasonality that occurs with winters at the poles being substantially warmer. The models, while accurately predicting the tropics, tend to produce significantly cooler temperatures of up to 20 °C (36 °F) colder than the actual determined temperature at the poles.

Plan to draw up legal definition of ‘ecocide’ attracts support from European countries and small island nations

International lawyers are drafting plans for a legally enforceable crime of ecocide – criminalising destruction of the world’s ecosystems – that is already attracting support from European countries and island nations at risk from rising sea levels.

The panel coordinating the initiative is chaired by Prof Philippe Sands QC, of University College London, and Florence Mumba, a former judge at the international criminal court (ICC).

The aim is to draw up a legal definition of “ecocide” that would complement other existing international offences such as crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

The project, convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation at the request of Swedish parliamentarians, has been launched this month to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Nuremberg war crimes trials of Nazi leaders in 1945.

Several small island nations, including Vanuatu, in the Pacific and the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean, called for “serious consideration” of a crime of ecocide at the ICC’s annual assembly of states parties in December last year.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has also championed the idea and the Belgian government has pledged support. The shadow justice secretary, David Lammy, has also called for ecocide to be incorporated into law.

The international criminal court, which is based in The Hague, has previously promised to prioritise crimes that result in the “destruction of the environment”, “exploitation of natural resources” and the “illegal dispossession” of land.

An ICC policy paper in 2016 said it was not formally extending its jurisdiction but would assess existing offences, such as crimes against humanity, in a broader context. There have been no formal investigations or charges of this type so far.

Sands said: “The time is right to harness the power of international criminal law to protect our global environment … My hope is that this group will be able to … forge a definition that is practical, effective and sustainable, and that might attract support to allow an amendment to the ICC statute to be made.”

Mumba, a judge at the Khmer Rouge tribunal and former supreme court judge in Zambia, said: “An international crime of ecocide may be important in that individual/state responsibility may be regulated to achieve balance for the survival of both humanity and nature.”

Jojo Mehta, the chair of the Stop Ecocide Foundation, told the Guardian: “In most cases ecocide is likely to be a corporate crime. Criminalising something at the ICC means that nations that have ratified it have to incorporate it into their own national legislation.

“That means there would be lots of options for prosecuting [offending corporations] around the world.”

Mehta said one challenge for the drafting panel would be to define at what point an ecocide offence would come into force. Chopping down a single tree on a village green would not be sufficient, she explained.

“It would have to involve mass, systematic or widespread destruction,” she added. “We are probably talking about Amazon deforestation on a huge scale, deep sea bottom trawling or oil spills. We want to place it at the same level as atrocities investigated by the ICC.”

The 13-strong legal panel of experts from around the world include Tuiloma Neroni Slade of Samoa, who is also a former ICC judge. They are planning to complete their work early next year.

If we want to experience another explosion in land animal diversity shouldn't we hope for a repeat of the climate of that period, as the following Wikipedia article shows?

Am I correct in noting, that there is evidence from the Eocene period, that global warming caused by high CO2 and Methane levels was a very good thing and contributed greatly to promoting biodiversity?

...that global warming caused by high CO2 and Methane levels was a very good thing...

Europe’s breeding bird populations have shifted on average one kilometre north every year for the past three decades, likely driven by the climate crisis, according to one of the world’s largest citizen science projects on biodiversity.