Andrew Glikson

Since its inception the Paris climate accord has been in question due, among other factors, to (1) its broad definition, intended to keep mean global temperature rise this century to below +2^oC above the pre-industrial level and efforts to limit the temperature increase to below +1.5^oC above the pre-industrial level; (2) its non-binding nature, and (3) accounting tricks by vested interests. The goal assumes pre-determined upper limits can be placed on greenhouse gas levels and surface temperatures.

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The effects of encroaching deserts and of fire storms on terrestrial forests, originally developed under moderate conditions distinct from those emerging under rapid global warming and extreme weather events, may have been underestimated. Average global temperatures do not tell the story — it is the increasingly frequent weather anomalies which do. Powerful psychological factors prevent many scientists from expressing their worst fears, a phenomenon dubbed as “scientific reticence”. 

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History testifies to powerful rulers’ aspirations for the position of gods, including the Pharaohs and Roman Emperors such as Caligula or Nero, nowadays mimicked by false messianic prophecies of “intergalactic civilization” made by billionaires and their followers in public and the media, including some scientists. This includes predictions of making life interplanetary by giant proprietors of space hardware, such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, including plans for space tourism, asteroid mining and permanent human settlements on the Moon and Mars.  This would by some estimates be expected to cost about  $1 trillion by 2040. These ideas are closely linked to the rise of climate disruption and potential nuclear calamities and with the upsurge of fascism.  Space playgrounds of billionaires can only come at the expense of the multitude of humanity left behind where, coupled with plans for militarization and even weaponization of space, humanity may be left with a few barren rocks in space to temporarily support a few survivors.

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The pace of global warming has been grossly underestimated. As the world keeps increasing its carbon emissions, rising in 2018 to a record 33.1 billion ton CO₂ per year, the atmospheric greenhouse gas level has now exceeded 560 ppm (parts per million) CO₂–equivalent, namely when methane and nitric oxide are included. This level surpasses the stability threshold of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The term “climate change“ is thus no longer appropriate, since what is happening in the atmosphere-ocean system, accelerating over the last 70 years or so, is an abrupt calamity on a geological dimension threatening nature and civilization. Ignoring what the science says, the powers-that-be are presiding over the sixth mass extinction of species, including humanity. (more…)

While a price placed on the Earth, estimated at $5000 trillion (New Formula Values Earth), belongs to the unthinkable, the haggle by conservatives over the price of mitigation of climate change underpins the reality of the Faustian Bargain.   (more…)

According to the UNHCR, since 2008 an estimated 22.5 million people have been displaced by climate or weather-related events. According to researchers from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the University of Wisconsin global warming is already responsible for some 150,000 deaths each year around the world. In 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that climate change would lead to about 250,000 additional deaths each year between 2030 and 2050, from factors such as malnutrition, heat stress and malaria.

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According to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chief climate advisor to the European Union, “We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet”. As fascism and the horror of murderous hate crimes are spreading around the world, governments are presiding over runaway climate change which is leading toward a mass extinction of species, costing the lives of billions and the demise of much of nature, while children are protesting the betrayal of their future.

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“Earth is now substantially out of energy balance. The amount of solar energy that Earth absorbs exceeds the energy radiated back to space. The principal manifestations of this energy imbalance are continued global warming on decadal time scales and continued increase in ocean heat content” (James Hansen 2018).

“The people have no voice since they have no information” …“No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent” (Gore Vidal)

With the exception of the few who comprehend the nature of a Faustian Bargain, some billionaires, captains of industry and their political and media mouthpieces are driving humanity toward self-destruction through the two biggest enterprises on Earth, the fossil fuel industry, which is devastating the Earth atmosphere, and the industrial-military machine leading toward nuclear war. The rest of the world is dragged subconsciously, induced by bread and circuses. (more…)

“Dear Caesar 
Keep Burning, raping, killing 
But please, please 
Spare us your obscene poetry 
And ugly music ” 

(From Seneca’s last letter to Nero) 
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It takes only a spark, from a lightning or human ignition, to start a fire, but it involves high temperatures, a period of drought, a build-up of dry vegetation and strong winds to start a bush fire, such as is devastating Queensland and recently California. When all these factors combine firestorms ensue, enhanced by strong winds from the hot interior of the continent, overwhelming the desiccated bush and human habitats. This is the face of global warming, which on the continents has reached an average of 1.5oC (http://berkeleyearth.org/summary-of-findings/) 
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In so far as it may have been assumed that the growing manifestations of global warming through extreme weather events will cause people to realize the reality and the implications of carbon emissions, this is only partly happening, due to ongoing attempts by large part of the mainstream media to attribute these events to natural causes., masking the existential threat posed by global climate disruption. (more…)

In a key paper titled “Scientific reticence and sea level rise” (https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha01210n.html) (2007)  James Hansen, the renowned climate scientist, is critical of what he regards as major underestimates of the magnitude and pace of global warming, as further elaborated in the article “How the IPCC Underestimated Climate Change: Here are just eight examples of where the IPCC missed predictions)” (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-ipcc-underestimated-climate-change/) (Glen Scherer, 2012). It is only more recently that the IPCC has upgraded its climate projections, stating “Human activities are estimated to have caused approximately 1.0°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, with a likely range of 0.8°C to 1.2°C. Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate”, and “Warming greater than the global annual average is being experienced in many land regions and seasons, including two to three times higher in the Arctic. Warming is generally higher over land than over the ocean. (more…)

Scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicate that global temperature rise of 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures would constitute a threshold the planet cannot cross without suffering the worst effects of climate change. Yet according to the U.N. report, mean global land-sea temperatures have already risen above 1°C and the planet could pass the 1.5°C threshold as early as 2030 if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current level and no effective CO2 down-draw measures takes place. These projections underestimate what is happening in the atmosphere-ocean-land system since, due to amplifying feedbacks from desiccating land, warming oceans, melting ice, methane release and fires, no temperature limit can be specified for global warming. The Paris agreement, which focuses on limits to emissions, hardly acknowledges the essential need to down-draw atmospheric carbon which has already reached >450 ppm CO2 + Methane equivalent. (more…)

Current temperature trajectories are on par with or exceed the IPCC’s dangerous projections (Figure 1). Acting as the lungs of the biosphere, over tens of millions of years the atmosphere developed an oxygen-rich carbon-low composition, allowing the flourishing of mammals. The anthropogenic release to the atmosphere to date of more than 600 Gigaton of carbon (GtC) is reversing this trend, threatening to return the Earth to conditions which preceded the emergence of modern life forms, including humans. (more…)

The history of Earth is marked by at least seven major mass extinctions,  including asteroid impact effects 580 million years ago, the end Ordovician glaciation, late Devonian asteroid impacts, end-Permian volcanism and ocean anoxia, end-Jurassic volcanism and Cretaceous-Tertiary asteroid impact—mostly associated with an extreme rise in atmospheric CO₂. Currently the seventh mass extinction of species is taking place, mainly as a consequence of CO₂ rise at a rate close to that induced by an asteroid impact (Figure 1). The Seventh mass extinction is triggered by a species which harnessed transfer of carbon from the Earth’s crust to the atmosphere and has split the atom, but is failing to control the consequences. Such is the scale and the rate of the unfolding climate catastrophe that, in the words of Joachim Schellnhuber, the EU’s chief climate scientist, it threatens the life support systems of the planet. (more…)

In a key paper titled “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene“, published in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Science (6.8.2018), a group of 17 climate and environment scientists (Will Steffen, Johan Rockström, Katherine Richardson, Timothy M. Lenton, Carl Folke, Diana Liverman, Colin P. Summerhayes, Anthony D. Barnosky, Sarah E. Cornell, Michel Crucifix, Jonathan F. Donges, Ingo Fetzer, Steven J. Lade, Marten Scheffer, Ricarda Winkelmann, and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber) have issued a stern warning to humanity  with regard to the future of advanced life on Earth (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/07/31/1810141115)  (more…)

There was a time when the contamination of drinking water constituted a punishable crime. Nowadays those who wilfully ignore or promote the destruction of the Earth’s atmosphere and ocean acidification through the rise in emission of carbon gases (2014 ~36.08 billion ton CO2/year ; 2017 ~36.79 billion ton CO₂/year), hold major sway in the world. Consequently the rise rate of atmospheric CO₂ at 2 ppm/year (from 408.84 ppm in June 2014 to 410.79 ppm in June 2018) is the fastest observed in the geological record since 66 million years ago, when an asteroid hit the Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs.  (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.13342). The hapless residents of planet Earth are torn between survival in several parts of the world and sport circuses in other parts, while some of their representatives are playing with chunks of coal in their parliament.  (more…)