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CLIMATE WATCH - Dr. Peter Carter, an Expert Reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has new information about the status of climate change that meets the IPCC 6th Assessment worst-case scenario. Carter makes the case that the climate system is several years ahead of expectations, and in fact, knocking on the door of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment worst-case scenario decades early.
Experts on climate change are at a loss for words and at a loss for understanding how and why the climate change issue, which is negatively impacting planetary ecosystems, is largely ignored. The proof of this is found at the celebrated UN climate conferences, where talk is cheap, like COP29 held in oil-rich Azerbaijan. These are annual events with a long history of poor results. This frustrating stagnation has been ongoing for over 30 years.
Meanwhile, climate denialists, including the entire Republican Party, have brainwashed the public that climate change is not all that it’s cracked out to be, “no worries, it’s a hoax, ignore the radical leftists, ignore science, and oh, yes, they are communists.”
However, the climate system is not listening to fairy tales. It’s on a tear that’s broadcast nightly via headline news re super hurricanes: Disastrous Hurricane Season Cost Soar Past $100 Billion in US, Estimates Say, USA Today, November 1, 2024. And severe drought that threatens the existence of the Amazon rainforest, The Shriveling Mighty Amazon River Drying Out, October 11, 2024, as Antarctic glaciers slip slide away: Scientists in Chile Question Whether Antarctica Has Hit a Point of No Return, Reuters, August 8, 2024.
The world has changed like never before.
Meanwhile, insurance premiums for home ownership skyrocket, especially Florida and California. Climate change is challenging homeownership as some insurers in regions where radical climate change hit hardest drop coverage altogether: Cimate Change Should Make You Rethink Homeownership, The New York Times, October 29, 2024.
And: Climate Change, Disaster Risk, and Homeowner’s Insurance, Congressional Budget Office, August 2024. How do deniers explain this?
When studying climate change, there are climate scientists and advocates of all sorts, but few understand and relate the true impact as well as Dr. Peter Carter, who’s studied the science since 1988 and an Expert Reviewer of IPCC reports. His analyses go to the core of the climate change issue. He’s openly critical of the failures of national economies to act quickly enough, and he’s on a warpath to crush climate deniers that preach falsehoods.
Tough Climate Times Ahead
Dr. Peter Carter (retired physician and founder of Climate Emergency Institute, est. 2008) posted a climate update, November 2024: Tough Climate Times Ahead. A synopsis of his report, in part, follows herein:
Ever since the IPCC 2018 1.5C warning of a climate emergency that required immediate mitigation efforts by major economies of the world to hold temps to 1.5C pre-industrial, everybody that can make a difference has sort of disappeared while the emergency gets worse, and worse. Where are they?
With the ranks of active advocates shrinking, Carter has appealed for help in taking the case to the major nations of the world, reaching out to climate scientists to get involved publicly by telling it like it is, making the case for immediate mitigation measures to stem “a dire climate emergency.”
And he’s looking for help to counter massive denial campaigns, especially in the U.S.: “There’s still dangerous climate change denial.” Social media is full of ridiculous denials, which originate from fossil fuel corporations and from the Republican Party. It’s not just Trump who denies it; it’s the whole Republican Party. Charlatans preach denialism from the rafters at MAGA conferences.
However, there’s plenty of news to dispel the lies.
The US has suffered back-to-back powerful hurricanes, not totally unusual, but the intensity is very unusual and off-the-charts bred by abrupt climate change. Hurricanes have caused $100B damage.
These things don’t happen by themselves in isolation. Human influence has changed the climate and not for the better. It’s important to connect the dots of what is happening right before our eyes, meaning fossil fuel companies, big banks, and big economy governments all threaded to climate change: “They must be held accountable… They are getting away with mass murder on a scale we have never seen before.” (Carter)
It’s a scientific fact that as the lower atmosphere warms via greenhouse gases, the more moisture it holds. Moreover, with tropical storms, water vapor increases five-to-seven times per degree of Centigrade, resulting in torrential rains, atmospheric rivers, and floods, some of the most damaging aspects of climate change.
For example, because the UK is experiencing much heavier rains than ever before, agricultural fields become waterlogged, resulting in a decline of agricultural production. This new era of extreme climate behavior impacts food supply, as the UK suffers from “weather whiplash”: Climate Change is a Growing Threat to UK Farming, Yale Climate Connections, October 25, 2024.
The IPCC 6th Assessment calls for immediate action on global emissions, but that call to action is nowhere to be found; it’s not happening. Therefore, we must force governments to stop subsidizing fossil fuels, a dead-end industry. For decades we’ve known fossil fuels can be completely replaced by renewables as Fossil Fuel Subsidies Surge to Record $7 Trillion, IMF, Aug. 24, 2023. Imagine splurging $7 Trillion per year on renewables, a 10-fold increase over current spending.
Shocking New News for 2024
“It’s very clear climate change is no longer decades in the future. It’s very obvious it’s happening now, so we need to adapt.” (Jim Skea, chairman IPCC)
“The whole of Europe is vulnerable and especially the Mediterranean. We are already seeing desertification taking place, not only in North Africa, but some of the southern margins of Europe, like Greece, Portugal and Turkey,” (Jim Skea)
The Telegraph interviewed IPCC Chair Jim Skea: It’s too Late to save Britain from Overheating, Says UN Climate Chief, October 5, 2024. According to the interview, humanity has lost the opportunity to hold global temperature to 1.5C. And it will take a heroic effort to limit it to 2C.
Since the mid 1990s, the ultimate danger has been set at 2C above pre-industrial, which incidentally, according to Dr. Carter, is catastrophe on a global basis. All tipping points will be triggered at that level… then, it’s too late.
The most feared tipping point is permafrost thaw, which is emitting more and more CO2 (carbon dioxide) and CH4 (methane) than ever. It is melting in the Arctic and subarctic regions, emitting three major greenhouse gases, CO2, CH4 and N2O (nitrous oxide). Atmospheric CH4 is going up a lot.
“The observed growth in methane emissions follows the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most pessimistic greenhouse gas scenarios, which predict global temperatures could rise above 3°C by the century's end if such trends continue.” (Source: The 2024 Global Methane Budget Reveals Alarming Trends, The European Space Agency, October 9, 2024)
According to Dr. Carter, scientists are uniformly agreed that the permafrost plight may be irreversible. In the most recent The State of the Cryosphere Report scientists claim permafrost melt is so bad/threatening that people should “be frightened.” This alone should motivate worldwide mitigation measures to halt CO2 emissions.
Alas, permafrost is now officially competing with cars, trains, planes, and industry: “An international team, led by researchers at Stockholm University, discovered that from 2000 to 2020, carbon dioxide uptake by the land was largely offset by emissions from it.” (Source: NASA Helps Find Thawing Permafrost Adds to Near-Term Global Warming, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, October 29, 2024)
Moreover, some of the most shocking news is the State of Climate Change Report in 2023 of huge global surface increases in temperature, part of which was El Nino related, but it was not nearly powerful enough to kick up temperatures so radically. Obviously, something else was at work. Putting the 2023 experience of massive heat into IPCC projections, it hits the “very worst-case scenario category,” because the planet is now tracking above the worst-case scenarios at 8.5 W/m² (watts per square meter) which measures the radiative forcing that heats the planet. This is serious trouble.
[Side Note: According to NOAA data, the Earth's average radiative forcing in 2000 was approximately 2.43 W/m², with most of this forcing coming from increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. “Before the industrial era, incoming and outgoing radiation were in very close balance, and the Earth’s average temperature was more or less stable” - MIT Climate Portal]
A major source behind the issue is straight-forward: We’ve never produced or burned more coal than today. It’s the worst thing we can do. According to the International Energy Agency -IEA- in 2023 global coal usage reached an all-time high, driven by strong demand in China and India, with production also peaking at record levels… for 2024, global coal demand is expected to remain largely flat with production levels of 2023. This crushes Paris ’15.
Earth’s Carbon Sinks Are Failing
Earth’s carbon sinks are losing efficiency. This is horrific news. The Global Carbon Project of the past three years discovered land and ocean carbon sinks starting to lose efficiency. According to Dr. Carter, “this is a terrifying development.” We may be losing our most important natural buffers by up to 50%. The IPCC didn’t expect this to happen until after 2050, if at all, but it’s here now.
A recent study claims the planet’s overall carbon sink absorbed zero carbon or negligible amounts last year. This is the shocker of the year. Well, actually, it’s the shocker of the century. It’s a game-changer, and a devastating climate curse.
The Global Carbon Project 2nd Assessment on the status of methane CH4 and nitrous oxide N2O found each greenhouse gas to be tracking the “IPCC worst-case scenario.” This confirms Dr. Carter’s overriding thesis that we’re pushing the climate system to the edge of a dangerous spiral.
Carter: “Yes, honestly, it is time to panic…. but mysteriously there is no panic in the world.” The 2nd Assessment found all three greenhouse gases going up faster than anybody ever thought possible.
Is there hope?
Dr. Carter says we must communicate with people and tell the truth. We must make sure the world knows we are in a global climate planetary emergency. All kinds of emergency declarations were initiated in 2018 with the alarming IPCC 1.5C warning, but it has faded; it is gone. That warning can be put back into place. And we must harass politicians “to stop fossil fuels, to stop wiping out our future.” And hold corporations accountable. And stop harassing and jailing peaceful climate protestors.
There are possibilities of hope because we have the nuts and bolts of renewables to replace fossil fuels many times over. But fossil fuels are increasing at the same rate, or faster, as renewables. This is a road to nowhere.
In summation, the climate system is tracking above the IPCC’s worst-case scenario, and in Dr. Carter’s words: “It is time to panic: Yes, panic.” But who really knows this? And who really knows but could care less? Something somehow must be done well in advance of the world suddenly waking up one day when it’s too late with the sudden realization: “We are screwed.”
Academy Award Nominee Don’t Look Up (2021) is a perfect analogy for today’s situation.
The storyline: Astronomy grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) discover a comet the size of Mount Everest headed straight for Earth. Warned by Dibiasky and Mindy, the political establishment, brushing off the astronomers while they’re preoccupied with an election campaign, adopt a political slogan: “Don’t Look Up” to win the election.
Sound familiar?
(Robert Hunziker, MA, economic history DePaul University, awarded membership in Pi Gamma Mu International Academic Honor Society in Social Sciences is a freelance writer and environmental journalist who has over 200 published articles appearing in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. )
