The planet is dying faster than we thought

"We see the problem and it is us". Any of the so far proposed fixes, remedies, solutions to the above "nasty three" involve constructing a "Big Excrement Sandwich" requiring all but a small minority to have to chomp down and digest. Such ain't gonna fly. Humans are, in my opinion, genetically driven to exploit their environment rapaciously. It shocks me to contemplate that might mean even to the edge of extinction.
 
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Jan 15, 2021
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The first and foremost problem is #3 of the "nasty 3". Unfortunately, no one has the political and moral courage to effectively address it. What would be an optimal human global population? 1 billion? 3 billion? How many have to go? Who's going to choose? It will almost certainly be left up to nature through the other two nasties to "cull" the population. I just hope the "cull" isn't 100%.
 
Once leaders accept "the gravity of the situation," then the large-scale changes needed to conserve our planet can begin. Those changes must be sweeping, including "the abolition of perpetual economic growth … [and] a rapid exit from fossil-fuel use,"

Question for 17 scientists. How can there be a rapid exit from carbon fuels when the pandemic has shown clearly what happens to economies and people when world-wide transportation slows down quickly? CO2 emissions dropped but the total in the atmosphere continued to climb. Alternative energies (so-called renewables) don't transport people or the goods and services needed very far for very long. The Earth's mean temperature cannot be lowered unless CO2 is captured and withdrawn from the atmosphere in massive amounts and stored permanently. That is being attempted by industrial CCS technology but it is impossible to take enough CO2 from the atmosphere to make a difference to the climate. Net-zero is an unreachable goal when CCS cannot even store one part-per-million of oxidized carbon and bioenergy is not permanent. The only realistic and doable path forward is to shift financial resources to support infrastructure research for local and regional adaptation. CO2 mitigation is hopeless cosmetic window dressing.
 
Just a reference: "Under a Green Sky" by Peter Ward. IMO, 2022ce is a foreshadowing of the effects of increasing CO2 warming on the Earth. Basically, we damned if we do and damned if we don't.
 
Just a reference: "Under a Green Sky" by Peter Ward. IMO, 2022ce is a foreshadowing of the effects of increasing CO2 warming on the Earth. Basically, we damned if we do and damned if we don't.
Peter Ward knows that CO2 in the geological past has been double what it is today and the biosphere thrived. We need to use all of our resources to improve infrastructures to survive and adapt to whatever extreme weather is in the future. Mitigations are hopeless, expensive and can do little about climates that change.
 
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As of May, 2022, the CO2 ppm is 420. That approx. equates to a 0.8c increase in global temperature since 2006. I have no idea what a doubling of current CO2 ppm would translate into global climate changes. It seems akin to one of those "slow motion" train wrecks seen in movies.
 
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As of May, 2022, the CO2 ppm is 420. That approx. equates to a 0.8c increase in global temperature since 2006. I have no idea what a doubling of current CO2 ppm would translate into global climate changes. It seems akin to one of those "slow motion" train wrecks seem in movies.
Yes, and the global average temperature has responded by being lower in 2021 than it was in 2016....according to NOAA.
 
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We had no named storms in July and August. Interesting.

They keep saying the rise in CO2 will increase the temp. But they refuse to recognize that has not happened. None of their predictions have happened. The corral reefs are not dying. They just cycle like all other things cycle.

And the most hypocritical thing..........they refuse to recognize that emissions from China and India will soak us in CO2 like never before.

These are cartoon solutions.
 
The reason why we didn't start converting to clean energy is because we do not understand the effects of the "exponential" function.

Prof. Albert Bartlett warned about this 15 years ago.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4
But, we cannot convert to "clean" energy without using fossil fuel energy to get there. Conventional vehicles that run on fossil fuels are used to transport the people, the food and all of the materials needed to install renewables like solar and wind farms, There is no realistic alternative.
 
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But, we cannot convert to "clean" energy without using fossil fuel energy to get there. Conventional vehicles that run on fossil fuels are used to transport the people, the food and all of the materials needed to install renewables like solar and wind farms, There is no realistic alternative.
15 years ago it was 1 minute before 12.
If we had started to convert then , we would not have the situation now,

We already knew then that oil would run out in + 50 years. That has now shrunk to 40 years. But we were going to drill baby drill until the last drop of oil is recovered.

ENERGY
61,994,200 Energy used today (MWh), of which:
52,772,964- from non-renewable sources (MWh)
9,335,786- from renewable sources (MWh)
388,458,739,986 Solar energy striking Earth today (MWh)
12,714,997 Oil pumped today (barrels)
1,428,145,362,733 Oil left (barrels)
14,894 Days to the end of oil (~41 years)
1,079,941,824,253 Natural Gas left (boe)
56,839 Days to the end of natural gas
4,292,202,058,860 Coal left (boe)
148,007 Days to the end of coal

 
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15 years ago it was 1 minute before 12.
If we had started to convert then , we would not have the situation now,

We already knew then that oil would run out in + 50 years. That has now shrunk to 40 years. But we were going to drill baby drill until the last drop of oil is recovered.

ENERGY
In the meantime we have to go forward and fossil fuels will be needed for transportation until the lengthy transition to renewables and full-blown electric transportation is achieved, if it ever is. That means more CO2 will be added. If we run out of oil before that we will be stuck. We were told that we would run out before but that was before fracking made more oil available.
 
It seems that the Earth has variable cycles of warming and freezing which are driven by natural forces like plate tectonics, volcanic activity and the ebb and flow of biology, chemistry and physics all irrespective of us and our influence. We are just fortunate to be able to determine what is transpiring due to nature and our activities. Despite our contentious efforts to mitigate the deleterious effects, for us, of climate change we may just now be at a Tipping Point. Given the increased atmospheric CO2, reef destruction, global drought, heat waves and severe monsoons during this year, the Earth may be in the process of instituting an "Eocene Epoch" like climate as a natural cycle in part induced by our activity. ...... I hope not.
 
It seems that the Earth has variable cycles of warming and freezing which are driven by natural forces like plate tectonics, volcanic activity and the ebb and flow of biology, chemistry and physics all irrespective of us and our influence. We are just fortunate to be able to determine what is transpiring due to nature and our activities. Despite our contentious efforts to mitigate the deleterious effects, for us, of climate change we may just now be at a Tipping Point. Given the increased atmospheric CO2, reef destruction, global drought, heat waves and severe monsoons during this year, the Earth may be in the process of instituting an "Eocene Epoch" like climate as a natural cycle in part induced by our activity. ...... I hope not.
We have reached so-called tipping points before but they never materialized. The 50% increase in CO2 was the result of using fossil fuel energy to improve our lives and standards of living. The climate has responded by increasing the global average temperature anomaly by just plus 0.84°C (NOAA, 2021). The monsoons are under the control of the ENSO as is much of other weather. Humans can try to mitigate the climate but the ENSO as well as other parts of Earth's natural variability (volcanic eruptions, the jet streams) cannot be "adjusted" by lowering CO2 emissions or like temperatures can.
 
Given the increased atmospheric CO2, reef destruction, global drought, heat waves and severe monsoons during this year, the Earth may be in the process of instituting an "Eocene Epoch" like climate as a natural cycle in part induced by our activity. ...... I hope not.
It already has a name. We are in the middele of the Anthropocene or 6th extinction event.

What is the sixth mass extinction and what can we do about it?
A mass extinction is a short period of geological time in which a high percentage of biodiversity, or distinct speciesbacteria, fungi, plants, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebratesdies out. In this definition, it’s important to note that, in geological time, a ‘short’ period can span thousands or even millions of years. The planet has experienced five previous mass extinction events, the last one occurring 65.5 million years ago which wiped out the dinosaurs from existence. Experts now believe we’re in the midst of a sixth mass extinction.
What’s causing the sixth mass extinction?
Unlike previous extinction events caused by natural phenomena, the sixth mass extinction is driven by human activity, primarily (though not limited to) the unsustainable use of land, water and energy use, and climate change. According to the Living Planet Report, 30% of all land that sustains biodiversity has been converted for food production.
 
Can these experts on extinction name a few of these species that are actually extinct and not just all those placed on a list of either "threatened" or "endangered" species? New species are being discovered every year. Humans have never experienced a better standard of living or lifestyles. That is hardly the midst of a mass extinction.
 
Can these experts on extinction name a few of these species that are actually extinct and not just all those placed on a list of either "threatened" or "endangered" species? New species are being discovered every year. Humans have never experienced a better standard of living or lifestyles. That is hardly the midst of a mass extinction.
I don't think that anyone expects all species to die at the same time. Give it another century?

I believe the term "endangered" means "on the verge of extinction?"

I believe the "new" species being discovered are mostly from the insect family.
As Hellstrom predicted;
"Two species are on the increase. Man, because he can alter his environment, The insect because it can adapt to every change man causes to the environment." (Hellstrom Chronicle)
View: https://vimeo.com/212824039


The insect is the most successful organism on earth. It's been around for about 480 million years. It's one of the oldest non-extinct species that has survived all prior global extinction events. Other than bacteria, very few species can make that claim.

Are insects the most successful species?
Insects are the most successful type of animal. 66% of all known animal species are insects. Beetles are the most successful type of insect. There are almost 300,000 different species of beetle on Earth.Sep 26, 2017
https://www.educationquizzes.com/ed...sects-are-the-most-successful-type-of-animal/
 
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I don't think that anyone expects all species to die at the same time. Give it another century?

I believe the term "endangered" means "on the verge of extinction?"
So, the planet is not really dying faster. All species are on the verge of extinction. Threatened. That has been the case for eons. It's called evolution.

And NO, many new species are found among many phyla. Insects are not even a phylum, nor are we.

“The IISE… International Institute for Species Exploration, which is dedicated to finding 10 million new species of life on Earth during the next half century, says about 18,000 new species were discovered in 2012. Scientists estimate that they've only identified about 2 million of an estimated 12 million living species, with millions more species existing in the microbial world.”

So, name a few species that have gone extinct in the last 100 years to justify calling it a mass extinction.
 
So, name a few species that have gone extinct in the last 100 years to justify calling it a mass extinction
Humans have had such a profound impact on the planet’s ecosystems and climate that Earth might be defined by a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene (where “anthro” means “human”). Some think this new epoch should start at the Industrial Revolution, some at the advent of agriculture 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. This feeds into the popular notion that environmental destruction is a recent phenomenon.
The lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors are instead romanticized. Many think they lived in balance with nature, unlike modern society where we fight against it. But when we look at the evidence of human impacts over millennia, it’s difficult to see how this was true.
Our ancient ancestors drove more than 178 of the world’s largest mammals (‘megafauna’) to extinction. This is known as the ‘Quaternary Megafauna Extinction’ (QME).
The extent of these extinctions across continents is shown in the chart. Between 52,000 and 9,000 BC, more than 178 species of the world’s largest mammals (those heavier than 44 kilograms – ranging from mammals the size of sheep to elephants) were killed off. There is strong evidence to suggest that these were primarily driven by humans – we look at this in more detail later
https://ourworldindata.org/extinctions

To understand the biodiversity problem we need to know how many species are under pressure; where they are; and what the threats are. To do this, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species evaluates species across the world for their level of extinction risk. It does this evaluation every year, and continues to expand its coverage.

more....

Note that I view extinction events in terms of tens of thousands of years
 
Our ancient ancestors drove more than 178 of the world’s largest mammals (‘megafauna’) to extinction.
To understand the biodiversity problem we need to know how many species are under pressure; where they are; and what the threats are. To do this, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species evaluates species across the world for their level of extinction risk.
So the planet is not dying faster than we thought. And it's humans who have caused the extinctions in past. Now, we need to know how many species are threatened by these humans..so we list them all? Even new species that have yet to be given taxonomic names are also threatened? No wonder it's called a mass extinction....if this keeps up. But, in the meantime humans are said to being threatened and are endangered by using fossil fuel energy to make their lives and those of endangered species better. Eliminating those fuels to zero emissions will create a mass extinction of both. It's humans that are the problem? They have been killing off species.

William E. Rees, in a footnote on extinction…2012

"Even preagricultural humans significantly altered energy and material flows through ecosystems by virtue of large per capita energy demands and group living. This necessarily affected biodiversity. As Diamond (1992) writes: “For every area of the world that paleontologists have studied and that humans first reached within the last fifty thousand years, human arrival approximately coincided with massive prehistoric extinctions.” Pimm et al. (1995) estimate “that with only Stone Age technology, the Polynesians exterminated >2,000 bird species, some ~15% of the world total.”

Remember the Dodo? The passenger pigeon? But not the threatened Polar Bear. Recreational hunting was stopped and their numbers are now up to 25,000 from a low of 5000. Human added CO2 was never the problem. And it is not now either. We need those fuels to protect other species and ourselves.
 
Where humans come in is when we started releasing 4 billion years of sequestered CO2 "back" into the atmosphere in just 350 years.

That is the threshold trigger of the domino effect.
One of the factors is that oil will run out in 40 - 50 years and then we will begin to commit suicide as a race. This trend is already becoming apparent in our political environment.

Competition for world domination has already begun and when it's over the insect will rule everything.

As to your optimistic outlook on the availability of oil future oil, it indicates a lack of understanding of the exponential function. At current use, we will use more oil in the next 50 years than we have used in all of the previous 350 years. The clock shows 1 minute before 12 until we run out of oil.

Do you think that there is still an equal amount of oil left than we have used in the past 350 years? This is pure mathematics.
 
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Where humans come in is when we started releasing 4 billion years of sequestered CO2 "back" into the atmosphere in just 350 years.

That is the threshold trigger of the domino effect.
One of the factors is that oil will run out in 40 - 50 years and then we will begin to commit suicide as a race. This trend is already becoming apparent in our political environment.

Competition for world domination has already begun and when it's over the insect will rule everything.

As to your optimistic outlook on the availability of oil future oil, it indicates a lack of understanding of the exponential function. At current use, we will use more oil in the next 50 years than we have used in all of the previous 350 years. The clock shows 1 minute before 12 until we run out of oil.

Do you think that there is still an equal amount of oil left than we have used in the past 350 years? This is pure mathematics.
Yes, humans have used many tons of photosynthetic carbon to improve their lives. More people than ever before are enjoying a high standard of living. The waste product has been the CO2 and water vapor that plants use to restore the vegetation that we and all other animals need. Atmospheric CO2 has increased by 50%. The climate has responded with an increase in the global average temperature of less than one degree C. (NOAA, 2021: plus 0.84°C). And, yes fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource that will eventually run out. That's exactly why we need oil today to continue the transition to renewables and electric transportation. It cannot be done without conventional transportation that runs on gasoline, diesel and renewable biofuels. Those who think that using fossil fuels for energy will create a catastrophic future and we need to stop using them ASAP are seriously misguided. The geological and geochemical evidence falsifies that conclusion. CO2 in the past has been more than double what it now is and the biosphere thrived...even as the pH of the oceans was about one unit less alkaline. The carbonate plankton diversified. Temperatures were warmer but not "catastrophic". No "acidification" took place.