Melting Arctic Reminds Me of Pompeii in 79 AD

"Pompeii Garden of the Fugitives" by Lancevortex, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Reading climate.nasa.gov's 2022 "Key Takeaway: Summer Arctic sea ice extent is shrinking by 12.2% per decade due to warmer temperatures," and recalling President Niinistö of Finland in Joint Press Conference with President Trump, August 28, 2017, “If we lose the Arctic, we lose the globe,” I wrote a new poem below. To clarify the problem, visit Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S)'s Climate Pulse (click "Sea temperature"), and see Dave Borlace's Just Have a Think April 7, 2019 video Blue Ocean Event : Game Over? (325,412 views).

Day Before Mt. Vesuvius Erupted

 

“Pliny the Younger, author of the only surviving written testimony,

described the morning before the eruption as normal.” -- wikipedia.org

 

Schoolkid challenged teacher,

“What makes you think

you know anything

about anything?”

 

Teacher fired back,

“What makes you think

you know something

about something?”

 

“I know everyone here

will die tomorrow,”

he whispered

to derisive laughter.

 

“You do?” asked teacher.

“Who told you?”

“A bird,” he said.

“What kind?”

 

“Dream bird.”

There was more laughter,

except louder

as teacher joined in.

 

By next night

all laughing were dead.

Blog readers curious about dangers of speed of melting Arctic may want to see my February 7, 2019 post "Arctic Methane Debate Rages On" in which Dahr Jamail noted in a video I included, "[Dr. Ira Leifer, Chemical Engineering Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, noted] the normal background rate for methane seeps from a seabed in that area is approximately 3000 methane seeps over a thousand square kilometer area. He had, using satellites to measure the methane, [ . . .] found in another thousand square kilometer area, [. . .] there were already 60 million methane seeps [ . . .]" [par break] "Leifer was 'chief mission coordinating scientist for the NASA effort for airborne remote sensing of the Gulf oil spill.'"

Okay, here is where things get weird. I went to write the above paragraph, and this part was deleted by someone: "found in another thousand square kilometer area, [. . .] there were already 60 million methane seeps." I am not joking, and I am not "seeing things," as I asked another writer to verify the deleted part. I took screen shots to verify. One would think Google, owner of Blogger, would care about its reputation enough to protect blog content, but it seems Google did not in this case. It's possible there is another explanation, like AI deleting duplicate content since I also mentioned "60 million methane seeps" in my October 11, 2019 post "The Moscow Times Reports East Siberian Sea Methane Emissions 'Up to Nine Times the Global Average.'" However, if that's the case, why did Google reinsert my "60 million methane seeps" text into the original post after I opened what I wrote on Blogger? I don't know, and this is the first surprise-deletion I noticed in over 10 years of writing this Trees, Fish, and Dreams Climateblog.

Maybe this blog, and others like it, will be deleted by Google if content -- even accurate content -- doesn't meet official propaganda requirements -- or AI or company coding -- as the climate emergency worsens. 

I'm grateful for 35,000 pageviews in the past 12 months, mostly from the U. S., Singapore, and Hong Kong. I'm grateful for over 150,000 pageviews since about August 2013. I am grateful maybe someone in power considers my blog content dangerous enough to delete part of it that could possibly scare people into collective nonviolent action. I am grateful in 1987 Robert Bly came to visit Tom Ferte's literature class when I was a student at Western Oregon State College (now Western Oregon University), and Bly said, "The trees will carry what we don't say."  so if my blog is deleted you can go to forests to listen.

Bad News for Emperor Penguins, Fish, Seals, and Whales in Antarctica; Good News for Climate Activists at U. S. Supreme Court

Bad News for Emperor Penguins, Fish, Seals, and Whales in Antarctica

Yesterday The Guardian Science Editor Robin McKie reported, "‘Simply mind-boggling’: world record temperature jump in Antarctic raises fears of catastrophe -- An unprecedented leap of 38.5C in the coldest place on Earth is a harbinger of a disaster for humans and the local ecosystem."  McKie quoted Prof. Michael Meredith, science leader at the British Antarctic Survey, “In sub-zero temperatures such a massive leap is tolerable but if we had a 40C rise in the UK now that would take temperatures for a spring day to over 50C [122° Fahrenheit]– and that would be deadly for the population.” 

Glaciologist Prof. Martin Siegert, of the University of Exeter, was also quoted, "No one in our community thought that anything like this could ever happen [ . . . . ]" I have been reading that several times in the past three years. For example, my October 26, 2021 post "Rethinking Weather Forecasts" noted, "Recently, a professor of statistics at my college said the probability of 115 F (46 C) in Seattle before June 2021 was zero, but it happened. He added at the time there were better odds buying one lottery ticket, and winning."

A photo caption in McKie's article noted, "Thousands of emperor penguin chicks drowned last year when the sea-ice broke up before they could fully fledge." The article quoted Prof. Kate Hendry, a chemical oceanographer based at the British Antarctic Survey, "If krill starts to disappear in the wake of algae, then all sorts of disruption to the food chain will occur." McKie noted, "A critical example is provided by the algae which grow under and around sea ice in west Antarctica. This is starting to disappear, with very serious implications, added Hendry. Algae is eaten by krill, the tiny marine crustaceans that are one of the most abundant animals on Earth and which provide food for predators that include fish, penguins, seals and whales."

My October 26, 2021 post included: "121.2 Fahrenheit (49.6°C) air temperature in Lytton, BC June 29, 2021 shattering records. Dr. Jason Box was quoted, 'That's basically unlivable, at least for nature. [ . . . .] We have to prepare [for] extreme disruptions to our lives.'"  The post also mentioned "More than one billion marine intertidal animals [ . . . ] may have perished along the shores of the Salish Sea during the record temperatures at the end of June, [2021] said University of British Columbia researcher Chris Harley," and "a heat wave that "killed or harmed three billion animals" in Australia according to a July 28, 2020 bbc.com news article," and a "California family found dead on hike killed by extreme heat, sheriff says." [. . . .] "What next?"

Good News for Climate Activists at U. S. Supreme Court

Surprisingly, news reports in the past year noted U. S. cities and states have consistently won battles with Big Oil to keep climate-impact lawsuits out of federal courts, where they are more likely to lose, and in state courts where they are more likely to win. April 26, 2023, Kate Yoder wrote at Grist.org, "The Supreme Court just unleashed a flood of lawsuits against Big Oil." Yoder noted, "Nearly two dozen lawsuits filed by cities and states aim to put fossil fuel companies on trial for deceiving the public about climate change." [ . . . . ] "On Monday [April 24, 2023], the justices rejected petitions from Chevron, Shell, BP, and other oil companies to move these cases from the state courts where they were filed to federal courts, an arena considered more friendly to the industry. The Supreme Court’s rejection brings an end to a long jurisdictional battle, meaning that cases in Colorado, Maryland, California, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and more can finally proceed — potentially toward jury trials." 

Yoder quoted Richard Wiles, president of The Center for Climate Integrity, "It’s the industry’s worst nightmare to have to explain their lies in front of a jury." 

Ella Nilsen reported at cnn.com January 8, 2024, "Supreme Court declines to weigh in on Minnesota’s climate lawsuit against big oil companies." Nilsen wrote regarding these legal battles, "Two of these cases, one from Massachusetts and one from Honolulu city and county, could go to trial as soon as 2025."

C.J. Polychroniou's April 19, 2023 truthout.org interview with economist Gregor Semieniuk noted more challenges for Big Oil and its investors in the article "What Would It Take to Defeat Big Oil? A Progressive Economist Weighs In." Polychroniou wrote, "On March 29, [2023] Semieniuk testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget during a hearing on '[ . . .] The Cost of Oil Dependence in a Low-Carbon World.' In his testimony, he discussed his 2022 research that found that current oil and gas assets may be overvalued by more than $1 trillion, a figure that exceeds the subprime housing mispricing that triggered the 2007 financial crisis."

Semieniuk was quoted, "We calculate that some $400 billion in potentially stranded assets could be sitting on U.S. financial business balance sheets. That’s 30 percent of the global total, and $100 billion more than the stranded assets at production sites in the U.S., because both U.S. oil companies and their financial investors invest in oil and gas production and oil and gas companies abroad. And they invest on behalf of ultimate owners: holders of retirement plans, often invested via pension funds, and the affluent at the top of the distribution, that have a lot of financial wealth to invest. [ . . . .]"

Avalon Zoppo's December 20, 2023 law.com article "Circuit Consensus: Climate Claim Suits Against Big Oil Belong in State Courts" may explain why federal courts decided against Big Oil in the venue matter, and are likely to do so in the future. Zoppo wrote, "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has become the latest federal appellate court to deliver a procedural loss for major energy companies in lawsuits accusing them of deceiving consumers about their products’ effects on climate change. [par break] A three-judge panel Tuesday sent the District of Columbia’s lawsuit against Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron back to state court, holding that the complaint relies solely on D.C.’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act and is not preempted—as the companies argued—by federal common law of interstate air pollution."

Zoppo quoted Judge Neomi Rao for a three-judge panel including Gregory Katsas and Florence Pan, "In the Clean Air Act, Congress displaced federal common law through comprehensive regulation, but it did not completely preempt state law, nor did it provide an independent basis for removal, as it has done in many other statutes.”

Zoppo wrote, "Rao added in a footnote that almost every other federal appeals court has come to the same conclusion in litigation other state governments have brought against oil and gas companies alleging the concealment of fossil fuel products’ harm to the environment. [par break] She cited cases in the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth circuits. The Second Circuit, for instance, sent a similar case back to state court in September that Connecticut brought against Exxon under the state’s Unfair Trade Practices Act."

Therefore, it seems Big Oil is headed the way of Big Tobacco, but this may not be soon enough for many coastal cities and island nations facing sea rise, and many humans and nonhumans facing deadly heat, droughts, and floods. 

Reversal in Big Oil's political power reminds me of actor Russell Crowe's Mississippi deposition scene as the character Jeffrey Wigand in the 1999 film The Insider, and the 60 Minutes 1996 Mike Wallace interview with actual Jeffrey Wigand that led to the film. 

My March 4, 2024 post "Same Planet, Different Worlds" notes, "The [March 4, 2024 article by Dharna Noor and Oliver Milman at The Guardian "Fury after Exxon chief says public to blame for climate failures"] also quoted Naomi Oreskes, [Harvard University] Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science, and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 'For decades, they told us that the science was too uncertain to justify action, that it was premature to act, and that we could and should wait and see how things developed. Now the CEO says: oh dear, we've waited too long. If this isn't gaslighting, I don't know what it is.' She added, 'The playbook is this: sell consumers a product that you know is dangerous, while publicly denying or downplaying those dangers. Then, when the dangers are no longer deniable, deny responsibility and blame the consumer.'"

21st Century Man

In reversal of Abraham Lincoln's famous words, here is my quote for 21st Century Man:

“Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a flower and planted a thistle where I thought a thistle would grow.”

I thought of this when I read how COP28 President, Dr. Sultan Al Jaber's "UAE Consensus [which included] an unprecedented reference to transitioning away from all fossil fuels in energy systems [ . . . ] to reach net zero emissions by 2050, in keeping with the science" was challenged by Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser, as quoted by Spencer Kimball in a March 19, 2024 cnbcafrica.com article, "We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas and instead invest in them adequately reflecting realistic demand assumptions.” According to the article, he said this March 18, 2024, at "CERAWeek by S&P Global energy conference in Houston, Texas." I found the issue in Bill McKibben's Substack The Crucial Years March 26, 2024, post "2100, and before," and saw it in Dan Gearino's March 28, 2024 Inside Climate News report, "An Oil Company Executive Said the Energy Transition Has Failed. What’s Really Happening?"

Obviously, Nasser doesn't agree with Dr. Sultan Al Jaber's quote at the close of COP28, "The world needed to find a new way. By following our North Star, we have found that path.” Gearino was less kind than me, noting, "[Nasser's] reasoning verges on nihilism, declaring defeat on behalf of the governments, businesses and other organizations that are working to reduce the damage that the oil industry has helped to cause. It’s also bad for business and the economy, like telling Henry Ford in about 1910 that cars had failed to transform the market, so focus on improving horses and carriages." Gearino added, "I thought of the years I worked for newspapers and the way corporate executives talked about the industry’s bright future. This involved highlighting the good numbers and downplaying the bad ones, and focusing on how the product was indispensable. [par break] The executives’ optimism made me feel a little better in the moment, but they were, of course, wrong."

Gratefully, abrupt climate policy reversals can go the other way too like when Rockefeller Brothers Fund in 2014 announced divestment from "coal, oil, and gas." Bill McKibben's article "Climate fight won't wait for Paris: vive la résistance" March 9, 2015, in The Guardian, noted "As the head of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund put it, 'We are quite convinced that if John D Rockefeller were alive today, as an astute businessman looking out to the future, he would be moving out of fossil fuels and investing in clean, renewable energy.' This is the rough equivalent of the Pope appearing at his Vatican window in saffron robes to tell the crowd below he’s now a Hare Krishna, or Richard Dawkins showing up at Lourdes in a bathing suit."

Similarly, Melissa Godin reported January 15, 2020, in a time.com article, "James Murdoch Criticizes His Father’s Media Empire Over Climate Crisis Denial," "James Murdoch has spoken out against his father Rupert’s media outlets for their 'ongoing denial' of the climate crisis as bushfires continue to ravage Australia. [par break] In a joint statement with his wife Kathryn, the couple expressed frustration with News Corp and Fox News’ coverage of the fires. 'They are particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given the obvious evidence to the contrary,' a spokesperson for the couple told The Daily Beast."

In my December 18, 2017 post "Just Fight It (Climate Breakdown)" I wrote, "ask parents, uncles, aunts, mayors, governors, senators, representatives, priests, pastors, other religious leaders, and elders what they have done to reduce carbon." Imagine Jesus overturning tables of moneychangers in Matthew 21:12-13, or Roger Daltrey singing in 1978, and ask 'When it comes to the war between Big Oil and Life on Earth, 'Who Are You [?]'" None of us are here long so it should be clear exactly who we are.

My favorite recent item is Climate Pulse, "a new interactive web application developed and maintained by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) to make climate monitoring more accessible to a broad audience. This page provides daily charts and maps of global surface air temperature and sea surface temperature updated close to real-time, as well as an archive of past daily, monthly and annual maps."

I'm grateful my recent climate poems have been accepted by Clackamas Literary Review, Salmon Creek Journal at Washington State University Vancouver, and Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature in Cambridge, and London, UK.

Can AI Reduce the Climate Emergency? Maybe.

Readers of this blog know the main obstacle to reducing the climate emergency is lack of political will in developed nations. However, recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) show AI could help decision-makers at all levels, in all places, reduce greenhouse gases/climate impacts as long as climate tipping points are not crossed before we get the chance. I expect you to be skeptical like I was so let me explain. Imagine a space alien with a billion times more intelligence than any human who ever lived arriving to advise humanity. According to some of the world's best computer experts, this is exactly where AI is taking us. "By 2049 AI will be a billion times more intelligent than humans" wrote Mo Gawdat, author of the 2021 book Scary Smart, and former chief business officer for Google X, the group responsible for self-driving cars. 

After listening to AI-themed videos, and reading various sources, I think seven main challenges using AI to solve climate issues may be: 1) intended or unintended negative effects (in the case of bad actors pirating the technology for profit or terrorism); 2) unintended negative effects by those trying to help; 3) convenient excuse for developed nations to ignore human rights and equity considerations because they can say "blame the AI;" 4) convenient excuse to avoid cuts to global carbon and methane emissions, already reaching dangerously high levels, because of too much government and/or corporate faith in AI; 5) inaccurate reporting of AI results to the public due to political or corporate filtering; 6) "The Obscene Energy Demands of A. I." as noted in Elizabeth Kolbert's March 9, 2024 essay in The New Yorker; and 7) AI may be used to protect ultrarich from billions of desperate humans as tipping points are crossed, and climate emergency increases. 

For those new to understanding AI, Cleo Abram gave an excellent summary of "What We Get Wrong About AI (feat. former Google CEO [Eric Schmidt])." This 12 minute, 40 second YouTube, with 749,666 views since Aug 3, 2023. begins with Sundar Pichai, Google CEO and CEO of its parent company, Alphabet, noting AI for humanity is "more profound than fire or electricity." Abram's YouTube includes a March 19, 2023 cnet.com article by Daniel Van Boom with a headline,"ChatGPT Can Pass the Bar Exam. Does That Actually Matter?" The article notes, "In mid-March, artificial intelligence company OpenAI announced that, thanks to a new update, its ChatGPT chatbot is now smart enough to not only pass the bar exam, but score in the top 10%." 

AI's more detailed explanation is the nearly 3 hour YouTube on Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory, "MEGATHREAT: Why AI Is So Dangerous & How It Could Destroy Humanity | Mo Gawdat." Posted June 20, 2023, it has 1,145,110 views. I watched the entire YouTube for climate implications. 

At 36:07 on the timeline Gawdat says, "That exponential growth is just mind boggling because the growth on the next chip in your phone is going to be a million times more than the computer that put people on the moon. [ . . . . ] I remember in my google years when we were working on Sycamore, google's quantum computer, Sycamore performed an algorithm that would have taken the world's biggest supercomputer 10,000 years to solve, and it took Sycamore [ . . . ] 200 seconds." 

These technology breakthroughs remind me of my October 28, 2017 post noting, "Last night I watched The Imitation Game about British codebreaker Alan Turing deciphering the Nazi's Enigma machine code.  The code was considered 'unbreakable' because of huge obstacles including, as the linked Enigma video notes, 'If you had 100,000 people with 100,000 Enigma machines, all testing different settings [ . . .], test a different setting once a second 24 by 7, it would take twice the age of the universe to break the code.'  In other words, as multiple sources noted, it would take finding 'one of these 15 billion billion settings.' [par break] However, Turing's team broke it [ . . . . ]."

I also wrote, "The beautiful 'flaw' (feature, not a bug) is conscience.  The Internet offers speed. Reducing carbon use is the goal." Could AI generate technical/political/social answers regarding the climate emergency? I don't know. Humans are stubborn, but listening to an intelligence a billion times smarter will be worth a try.

I wrote in my April 12, 2023 post, "instead of the millions of lives Turing saved [in World War II by inventing the theory for the first computer], the number would now be in the billions." 

At 1:07:08 on the timeline Gawdat continues, "If you look at us today you would think [ . . . ] the biggest idiots on the planet [ . . . ] are destroying the planet not even understanding that they are. Right? You become little more intelligent and you say, 'I'm destroying the planet but it's not my problem, but I undertstand that I'm destroying it.' Okay? You get a little more intelligent and you go like 'No, no, no. Hold on. I'm destroying the planet. I should stop doing what I'm doing.' You get even more intelligent then you say, 'I'm destroying the planet. I should do something to reverse it.' [ . . . . ] The eco-challenge that we go through is not needed. [ . . . . ] Getting together just requires a little more intelligence, a little more communication, [ . . . ] a better presentation of the numbers so that every leader around the world suddenly realizes 'Yeah, it doesn't look good for my country in 50 years time.' The reality of the matter is that as AI goes through that trajectory of more and more and more intelligence, zooms through human stupidity, to [ . . . ] best IQ, beyond humans' intelligence, [ AI machines] will by definition have our best interests in mind, have the best interest of the ecosystem in mind. Just like the most intelligent of us don't want us to kill the giraffes, and [ . . . ] the other species that we're killing every day, a more intelligent AI than us will behave like the intelligence of life itself [ . . . . ]"

The entire video is worth seeing for many reasons. While I disagree with Gawdat's idea that just planting more trees will solve our climate issues, I deeply respect most of his other points, spiritual beliefs in Sufism, and vision to use AI to find complex answers currently beyond the capacity of human minds. 

Even at a billion times the intelligence of humans by 2049, it is unreasonable to expect AI to have the compassion and justice of the Creator of everything seen and unseen in all directions forever whose will can not be undone. AI will be able to perform what seems like miracles, but God is accessible in the present moment to everyone willing to listen, sans expensive technology and supercomputers cooled to just above absolute zero (-459 degrees Fahrenheit). His data can not be corrupted, and no virus can destroy it. It survives the death of galaxies. 

Sufi poet Rumi was quoted, "Ecstatic love is an ocean, and the Milky Way is a flake of foam floating on it." I first saw that quote in The Kabir Book by Robert Bly. Rumi's poem "An Empty Garlic," used with permission of  translator Coleman Barks, is one of the most-visted posts on this blog.

Gawdat said at 2:45:53 on the timeline, "But I will always ask myself this question: 'if what I'm using is ethical, healthy, and human?' And this is a question that I ask every single individual listening to us. Please do not use unethical AI. Please do not develop unethical AI. Please don't fall in a trap where your AI is going to hurt someone. One of the things I ask of governments is if something is generated by AI, it needs to be marked as AI [ . . . ]"

I respected that in the video Gawdat said he turned away from having a garage with 16 cars to giving away most of what he earns. This reminded me of the 2010 documentary I Am, I mentioned before, where the Dalai Lama said the most important meditation of our time is "critical thinking followed by action."

Outgoing U. S. Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry Refers to Global Public Apathy as "a kind of de facto signature on a suicide pact"

In David Wallace-Wells March 6, 2024 New York Times interview "John Kerry: ‘I Feel Deeply Frustrated’," Kerry was quoted about global public climate apathy, "I’ve likened it to a kind of de facto signature on a suicide pact."

Well, yeah.

In my 2018 book Carbonfish Blues the end of my poem "Welcome to the Future" noted:

"as Arizona’s wild horses die of drought, and
sooner or later we must individually decide

if we will take suicide pill of apathy with others.
The brown eye of a raven up close

is enough to convince us otherwise."

Kerry's frustration also reminds me of Eisenhower's farewell address cited in my 2015 book Industrial Oz in my poem, "Why All US-Made Nuclear Waste Must Be Stored at the White House":

Eisenhower, in his farewell address,
spoke the truth
about dangers
of the military-industrial complex,
but to whom? Sparrows?

His words were recorded
by reporters
and microfiched in libraries.

I saw a film praising
the two-time president and 5-star general
for his courage to speak
and thought it ridiculous.

Give the guy credit for D-Day,
but his farewell address was like
if Jesus had said at Gethsemane,
“Father, instead of being crucified,
I just say Satan is bad, okay?”

Eisenhower’s conscience, like Oppenheimer’s
and ours, is a dreaded glowing
that can never be buried deep enough
to avoid leaching into groundwater.

I would have respected John Kerry more if instead of calling UAE appointment of oil chief Sultan al-Jaber to oversee COP28 UN climate talks "a terrific choice," Kerry said, like former President of Ireland Mary Robinson tweeted about COP26, "[ . . . . ] While millions around the world are already in crisis, not enough leaders were in crisis mode. People will see this as a historically shameful dereliction of duty."  

Kerry's self-described "Deeply Frustrated" voice could have said, "COP28 is mostly over even before it has begun" then, as I wrote in my December 14, 2023 post, "[but] given billions of human and nonhuman lives at stake, one possible solution would be for the global community to incentivize 'Saudi Arabia and allies' with huge economic and social benefits to get a fossil fuel phase-out approved at COP29 November 11-24, 2024 '[tentative]' in Baku, Azerbaijan, or COP30, 2025, in Belém do Pará, Brazil near the Amazon forest. Otherwise, small-scale geoengineering seems likely with significant risk of wars due to intended or unintended effects on different countries. Large-scale geoengineering, if even possible over 1°C [above year 1850 baseline], would bring a financial burden for many, or all, future human generations, and serious risk of the dreaded "termination effect" if financing were cut for any reason. Tim Krueger, a James Martin Fellow at University of Oxford Geoengineering Programme, made a great Youtube about 3 minutes long explaining "The Termination Effect on GeoEngineering."

This level of honesty is needed for families in island nations, Somalia, Syria, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Yemen, Chad, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Pakistan, and many other places as carbon emissions keep rising according to "The Global Carbon Budget Office [ . . . ] led by Professor Pierre Friedlingstein from the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute with the support of more than 100 people from 70 organisations in 18 countries." 

I told a group discussing the climate issue, "In politics belief is reality. In physics belief is irrelevant. The global climate only responds to actions." 

My favorite recent climate item is Bill McGuire's March 7, 2024 cnn.com, "Opinion: I’m a climate scientist. If you knew what I know, you’d be terrified too." Recently, I told different groups "The reason to keep trying is that some climate scientists noted every tenth of a degree matters to humans and nonhumans."

Same Planet, Different Worlds

World 1: Koala scorched in Australia due to massive fires according to a 2019 YouTube by The Sun with over 47 million views. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) noted, "Nearly 6,382 koalas are estimated to have perished during the 2019/2020 bushfires, nearly 15% of the population." My June 5, 2023 post linked a July 28, 2020 bbc.com article, "Australia's fires 'killed or harmed three billion animals.'" I also noted the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome in which over "one billion marine intertidal animals may have perished along the shores of the Salish Sea" according University of British Columbia researcher Chris Harley; and estimated nearly eleven billion snow crab that likely died from one or more heat-related reasons off Alaska from 2018 to 2021 according to Molly Olmstead's October 21, 2022 article at slate.com. The climate madness continues with over 160 dead elephants in Zimbabwe reported in January 2024, due to drought according to The Zimbabwe Parks & Wildlife Management Authority (Zimparks) cited by Tawanda Karombo in a January 17, 2024 article in The Guardian.

World 2: Exxon CEO Darren Woods, cited in a February 27, 2024 Fortune article by Jane Thier and reported in a March 4, 2024 article in The Guardian by Dharna Noor and Oliver Milman, said, “The people who are generating those emissions need to be aware of and pay the price for generating those emissions. That is ultimately how you solve the problem.”  In other words, koalas, marine intertidal animals, snow crab, elephants, and billions of humans at this rate be damned, Exxon's obscene profits are simply not negotiable!"

In The Guardian article by Noor and Milman, Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School, responded to Woods, "It’s like a drug lord blaming everyone but himself for drug problems." The article also quoted Naomi Oreskes, Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science, and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, "For decades, they told us that the science was too uncertain to justify action, that it was premature to act, and that we could and should wait and see how things developed. Now the CEO says: oh dear, we’ve waited too long. If this isn’t gaslighting, I don’t know what is.” She added, "The playbook is this: sell consumers a product that you know is dangerous, while publicly denying or downplaying those dangers. Then, when the dangers are no longer deniable, deny responsibility and blame the consumer.”

The situation is laughable for its logic, and tragic for global implications. My December 14, 2023 post "130 nations at Cop28 [called] for a fossil fuel phase-out" but Big Oil and Major Oil-Producing Nations Said No included an imagined COP 300 about 272 years from now:

Big Oil Company Press Release at COP300

We understand
there are only
10 million humans left.

We’re not sorry.
This was war,
and we won.

So what if most
everything on Earth
must die?

We underwent
extensive blame
and denial therapy.

Reader,
you and your children
are the problem.

It’s not our fault
oil kills people
and nonhumans.

We’re not responsible
for anything
but making money.

We’re not saints.
We own politicians
and corporations.

Remember your
ancestors elected them,
and bought our products.

I didn't expect many parts of my poem to sadly come true in 2024.

The 2014 documentary film Merchants of Doubt, based on a book by Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, has this scene about one minute long explaining how Exxon and other Big Oil firms sold delayed climate action far beyond what is reasonable. In the scene, Bob Inglis, a former U.S. representative from South Carolina, says about those resisting climate science, "The whole way I've created my life is wrong? You're saying I shouldn't have this house in the suburb. I shouldn't be driving this car where I take my kids to soccer. And you're not going to tell me to live the way that you want me to live. And along comes some people with sowing some doubt, and it's pretty effective because I'm looking for that answer. I want it to be that the science is not real." I greatly respect Christian Republican Bob Inglis for his courage accepting ice core evidence from Antarctica, and coral bleaching rates at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. A February 22, 2017 article from australiainstitute.org cites Adam Morton in a Fairfax interview and Fran Kelly on RN Breakfast showing "How the Gospel helped Republican Bob Inglis to champion climate action."

Legal penalties for Darren Woods, and others at Exxon, could include having to watch "World 1: Koala scorched in Australia" ten times without looking away.  

It's all so simple . . .

It's all so simple alone on a stream or listening in desert silence.

In 2014 I suggested "the term 'climate destruction' from now on -- instead of the much less troubling global warming or climate change." The term never caught on but it's certainly what we are seeing with rapid ice loss in Greenland, Arctic, and Antarctic.

My favorite recent climate video is the February 15, 2024, YouTube "Prof. Kevin Anderson, Climate: Where We Are Headed" for its excellent summary.

"Atlantic Ocean is headed for a tipping point − once melting glaciers shut down the Gulf Stream, we would see extreme climate change within decades, study shows" -- The Conversation

by René van Westen, Utrecht University; Henk A. Dijkstra, Utrecht University, and Michael Kliphuis, Utrecht University

Used with permission.

Superstorms, abrupt climate shifts and New York City frozen in ice. That’s how the blockbuster Hollywood movie “The Day After Tomorrow” depicted an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation and the catastrophic consequences.

While Hollywood’s vision was over the top, the 2004 movie raised a serious question: If global warming shuts down the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is crucial for carrying heat from the tropics to the northern latitudes, how abrupt and severe would the climate changes be?

Twenty years after the movie’s release, we know a lot more about the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation. Instruments deployed in the ocean starting in 2004 show that the Atlantic Ocean circulation has observably slowed over the past two decades, possibly to its weakest state in almost a millennium. Studies also suggest that the circulation has reached a dangerous tipping point in the past that sent it into a precipitous, unstoppable decline, and that it could hit that tipping point again as the planet warms and glaciers and ice sheets melt.

Read the full article on The Conversation. 

El Niño and Warm Ocean Temperatures Increase California Rainstorms/Hurricane/Flooding/Evacuations

This is the second time I recycled a post video due to first-recorded hurricane winds off Big Sur, California, and widely-reported heavy rains, flooding, and warnings or evacuation orders affecting "over 11 million people" in the state.  February 2, 2024 Los Angeles Times reporters Haley Smith and Grace Toohey quoted UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain explaining the rainstorm, "It’s a combination of El Niño and global warming as to why the oceans are so warm over such a broad region. It’s not 100% clear exactly the extent to which each is a relevant player, but they’re both significant. The long-term trend, of course, is mainly because of climate change and the warming of the oceans associated with that.”

Just north of San Francisco, Lagunitas-Forest Knolls had winds 102 mph (about 164 kilometers per hour) according to CNN's Robert Shackelford. ET, February 5, 2024.

On February 4, 2024, Los Angeles Times reporter Rong-Gong Lin II described the California storm as "potentially historic" quoting meteorologist Robbie Munroe with the National Weather Service in Los Angeles.

Nora Mishanec at San Francisco Chronicle reported "California storm upgraded to ‘bomb cyclone.’ Here’s what that means, and why it’s dangerous."

The big storm follows "hundreds [of rescues] from homes and cars" on January 22, 2024, in San Diego according to Andrew Keatts January 23, 2024, in AXIOS San Diego.

Hurricanes in San Diego?  Maybe Says SCRIPPS Researcher Art Miller in August 18, 2018 CBS Mornings YouTube.

Climate Sensitivity, and Human Insensitivity to Precautionary Principle

German theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder's Youtube "I wasn't worried about climate change. Now I am," with over a million views in the past six days, shows results if James Hansen's warnings of climate sensitivity are correct. She said at 13:14 on the timeline, "It just blows my mind how mind-fucking stupid it is that the lives of all people on this planet depend on an obscure discussion about the properties of supercooled water droplets in a type of cloud whose name I can't even rememeber [ . . . . ] At 12:44 she noted, "If the climate sensitivity is [ . . . as high as James Hansen's recent paper suggests with a climate sensitivity of 4.8 C plus or minus 1.2 C for doubled CO2' . . . ] then we have maybe 20 years or so until our economies collapse." [ . . . . ] At 15:08 she adds, "People in the developed world will somehow cope with the hotter conditions by fertilizing and irrigating the hell out of any agricultural areas they have. But in many countries around the equator, crop yield will substantially drop. This will most affect countries that are already prone to famine, and at the same time, some of the poorest countries in the world will be hit very hard by heat waves and drought. [ . . . . ] We're talking about some hundred millions of people who have nothing left to lose, suddenly beginning to migrate. [ . . . . ] That's going to cause a lot of tensions at the Southern borders of Europe, Russia, and Mexico, for just to mention a few. Someone somewhere will make a lot of money by selling weapons. Drones will be deployed. Some of them will shoot. Innocent people will die." She also added concerns about pandemics, and for those in the developed world, movement inland to avoid rising seas, huge economic problems, and "every-day products will become more and more expensive, until most of us simply can't afford them. And then they'll disappear. Need a new iPhone? That'll be 50 thousand dollars. Internet connection at home? 8 thousand a month [ . . . . ]"

I wrote June 5, 2023, Michael Mann was quoted by Bob Berwyn's May 26, 2023 Inside Climate News article, "James Hansen Warns of a Short-Term Climate Shock Bringing 2 Degrees of Warming by 2050," "Hansen has 'ignored a decade of new science,' and that the incorrect claims about climate sensitivity 'won’t survive peer review.'" However, I added, "Even though Mann is well-known for his 1998 'Hockey Stick' graph, I agree with Zeke Hausfather and Andrew Dessler's point in Berwyn's article. Considering that Jim Hansen’s predictions have often proven correct, it’s important that we pay close attention to what he’s saying.”

With what's at stake, I thought it would be good to dig deeper into the cloud issue as it relates to climate sensitivity. I found concerning news about this in a Nov 2, 2022 YouTube "Deep Dive: Climate Modeling with Nick Lutsko" published by Scripps Oceanography. Assistant Professor of Oceans and Climate Nick Lutsko said at 6:19 on the timeline, "So climate sensitivity is just a measure of how much our surface temperature will warm up in response to increases in CO2 concentrations, and normally we define it per doubling of CO2 so let's say we went from like roughly 400 parts per million today to 800 parts per million. How much would the climate system warm up? [ . . . . ] The  reason I think it's important is because so many of the impacts of climate change  scale with global mean surface temperature. You know we already see this in COP or we know it's much worse to have 2 degrees of warming versus 1.5 degrees of warming and so we think that earth's climate sensitivity is somewhere between let's say two and four and a half degrees Celsius. [ . . . . ] 

At 9:21 on the timeline, Lutsko continued, "Joel Norris and I at Scripps [ . . . ] call these [low clouds] 'hot spots' because if you look at maps [ . . . ] of cloud cover they kind of pop up as being important [ . . . . ] At 13:01 Lutsko noted, "Just having more CO2 in the atmosphere, even if you keep the [sea and land] temperatures the same, has an impact on clouds [ . . . . ]  At 13:52 he added, "Basically the CO2 sits above the clouds and it absorbs radiation that the clouds emit, and so you can think of it as there's this little bit of warming right above the clouds or extra warming where the CO2 is absorbing radiation."

Interviewer Margaret Leinen, Scripps Director, said at 14:11 "So it's a little blanket on top of the cloud," and Lutsko said "Exactly." 

At 18:06 Lutsko said regarding the also concerning role of aerosols, "We think that [the forcing is] actually on the high end of, for example, the range that the IPCC gives. We think that historically aerosols have provided more cooling than was previously thought and the implication of course is that the climate system is more sensitive than maybe  people thought." 

As I noted above, Hossenfelder said, "If the climate sensitivity is [ . . . as high as James Hansen's recent paper suggests with a climate sensitivity of 4.8 C plus or minus 1.2 C for doubled CO2' . . . ] then we have maybe 20 years or so until our economies collapse." 

At 18:30 Leinen said, "So if we clean up more pollution in the atmosphere and remove that cooling that we would see a much more sensitive climate response," and Lutsko said, "Yeah, this is a big irony. Of course we want to clean up all this air pollution but that's also going to lead to more warming." 

It's worth noting ClimateAdam, aka climate scientist Adam Levy with a PhD from Oxford in atmospheric physics, had a much different response to the climate sensitivity issue than Sabine Hossenfelder's Youtube. He said, "The real story here is that 'Climate models that have shown themselves to be bad at simulating climate change get weird results when asked to simulate future climate change, and climate scientists aren't taking those results so seriously.'" While I agree with most of what ClimateAdam says in his videos, I disagree with him about the IPCC writing "really authoritative reports." My reasons are: 1) Keah Schuenemann's excellent May 19, 2015 YouTube showing "the role of the IPCC and their tendency to underestimate climate impacts"; and 2)  Dahr Jamail, author and winner of a Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, said in May 15, 2019 YouTube "Climate Change & The End of Ice - Presentation at GERC2019," at 36:19 on the timeline, "[Regarding the IPCC] there was a peer-reviewed study that was published on this [that showed the IPCC] is extremely over-conservative. I have talked to several IPCC authors [ . . . ], some of them in this book [The End of Ice], that have said the IPCC's projections are watered down. It's a heavily politicized organization, and in short it's not science. So another person from within the IPCC, it was passed on to me, said you can basically take the IPCC's worst case predictions and double them." In an August 20, 2018 truthout.org article, "Sixth Mass Extinction Ushers In Record-Breaking Wildfires and Heat," Jamail wrote, "I’ve spoken to prestigious scientists both on and off the record who believe that sooner rather than later, global population will be reduced to around 1 billion humans." 

It therefore seems wise to use the precautionary principle at this time. 

Didier Bourguignon, Head of Citizens’ Enquiries Unit (AskEP) who serves as an adviser at European Parliament, wrote "The precautionary principle enables decision-makers to adopt precautionary measures when scientific evidence about an environmental or human health hazard is uncertain and the stakes are high. It first emerged during the 1970s and has since been enshrined in a number of international treaties on the environment, in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and the national legislation of certain Member States. The precautionary principle divides opinions. To some, it is unscientific and an obstacle to progress. To others, it is an approach that protects human health and the environment. Different stakeholders, experts and jurisdictions apply different definitions of the principle, mainly depending on the degree of scientific uncertainty required for the authorities to take action. Although most experts agree that the precautionary principle does not call for specific measures (such as a ban or reversal of the burden of proof), opinions are divided on the method for determining when to apply precautionary measures. The application of the precautionary principle presents many opportunities as well as challenges. The precautionary principle is closely linked to governance. This has three aspects: risk governance (risk assessment, management and communication), science-policy interfaces and the link between precaution and innovation." 

I'm grateful my August 24, 2013 post "Metabolism of Stars" had recent interest. 

Jargon of Possible Human Extinction at 3°C Above Year 1850 Baseline

 A friend said something like, "Most people don't understand the jargon of 2 C, 3 C, 4 C, 5 C, IPCC, and COP."

Let me put it this way: Reliable sources like James Hansen noted November 2, 2023 in a Time article by Alejandro de la Garza, "The 2°C warming limit is dead, unless we take purposeful actions to alter the earth’s energy imbalance [by solar geoengineering]," and former Harvard Fellow Ye Tao noted in a 2020 YouTube about 7 minutes long posted by Wenyan Liao, "At three degrees C [above year 1850 baseline] we're talking about planetary scale biological annihilation of any multicellular species [ . . . due to crossing various tipping points.]"

Young people are right that world leaders have done a worse than terrible job responding, so, as Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh said, "What we most need to do is to hear within ourselves the sounds of the Earth crying."

I am sad over 160 elephants recently died in Zimbabwe due to drought according to Tawanda Karombo in Harare for The Guardian January 17, 2024, and koalas have been scorched in Australia due to massive fires according to a 2019 YouTube by The Sun with over 47 million views. 

I am grateful people in 110 countries care enough to read this blog. I am also grateful for my huge following in Singapore. 

2023 Widely Noted as Hottest in About 125,000 Years

A friend led boatbuilding crews overseas. He told me when someone said, "Don't worry" it only meant one thing: "Worry." This post's headline, in a rational world, would be enough to topple Big Oil. Think about it.

The "125,000" year claim, or close versions, appeared in cbsnews.com citing "U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change, the world's leading climate scientists," and by Rebecca Hersher of NPR's climate desk citing "official European Union temperature data," European Union scientists noted by Kate Abnett and Gloria Dickie at reuters.com, and Syed Munir Khasru in South China Morning Post.

My September 13, 2020 post noted, "in the film I Am, the Dalai Lama said the most important meditation of our time is critical thinking followed by action."

My December 14, 2023 post noted, "At least '130 nations' [out of 198 parties at COP28 calling for phase-out of fossil fuels] is [a better number] than the reported '80 countries' from [COP27] last year, but out of respect for island nations and most vulnerable countries and nonhumans, progress must be faster and more." I also wrote, "If 197 parties say yes, and one says no, that means no deal."

This climate situation reminds me of when I was a salmon troller/charter captain on the Starfisher out of Depoe Bay, Oregon. The challenge of fishing in thick fog was when huge schools of salmon were biting in tanker and cargo lanes. Even if a tanker or cargo captain saw you visually or with radar, you were still dead because turning speed and radius of a big ship, like COP process, was too slow to avoid impact. No matter how good fishing was in tanker or cargo lanes, old-timers knew it wasn't worth the risk in thick fog. It was better to accept smaller profits, as with renewable energy, to live to fish another day.

My favorite recent climate article is by Carly Dober in the January 12, 2024, issue of The Guardian, "As a psychologist I have witnessed a surge in climate grief. This is what I tell my clients."

"This is the Starfisher KDX 3175 clear channel 80, and back to 16. Over and out."