I wrote this a few days ago. I am posting it “as is”
I have been listening to an interview with Dane Wigington on the latest weather bomb to be unleashed on the United States along with his observations of what has been happening in his backyard.
Having lots of time to think I have been going through and reflecting on the evolution of my thinking on climate change and, more recently geoengineering.
‘I first learned of what was then called the greenhouse effect in Bangkok in 1998. This strikes me as the most accurate description; each further renaming seems a retreat from the reality.
For several years I was influenced by Al Gore’s 1992 book “Earth in the Balance”. I remember the hope of having the author as vice president and later the disappointment at his betrayal at the Kyoto conference.
Fast forward a bit and my very first item on my blog featured Bill McKibben of 350.org. His position is linked with a seminar I attended with a local fan of his whose teaching including putting on a white board people’s views on the “advantages” and “disadvantages” of climate change. It was all I could do to not walk out then and there.
Later, when I learned about the dangers of Arctic methane as a positive feedback I used to go back to McKibben to see what he had to say about the matter. Crickets, of course,along with the other authorities.
I have not heard anything of McKibben in recent years until I came across the following article.
Ten years on I would not trust a single word of his.
It was, therefore a breath of fresh air when I stumbled across climate change maverick, Guy McPherson who at the time was recording positive feedbacks and showing how the climate was changing far more rapidly than anyone was willing to admit back in 2012. His credibility was bolstered, not only by the logic by the reaction he got from the climate change “consensus”, which could only be compared with the liberal cancel culture we see today.
I was involved in two visits of his to New Zealand when he hosted him in our house so we were on good, if not intimate personal terms. If I were to be honest I could be described at the time as one of his greatest defenders. In deed, at that time he (or rather his ideas) needed defending against his detractors.
Things started to fall apart with his sudden and unannounced shift to Belize after his marriage with his wife, Sheila. Soon came the stexting scandal involving a young woman from Australia which cost Guy most of his erstwhile support. Still I supported him but again Guy and Pauline moved back to the States and after a short period of time reappeared in a makeover which involved a new wardrobe ( gone was the old, threadbare brown jacket that went everywhere with him along with new furniture that seemed totally out-of-keeping with the Mud Hut.
Absolutely insane ideas such as that the civil war in Syria had nothing to do with politics and geopolitics, but was caused by drought did not go unnoticed but it was when I started doing my own, independent research on changes in Arctic ice with my new friend, Margo, that I started to see changes in his relationship with me.
Then I picked up a comment from him that I had “betrayed” him. Stung by the suggestion I could not work out why. It was only with the passage of time that it became clear why.
Guy McPherson was becoming more paranoid until it reached the stage in 2018 when I last saw him where anybody and everyone he had had anything to do with in the abrupt climate change, from Paul Beckwith to the gentle Peter Wadhams was an “asshole” and had “betrayed” him.
About this time I could not escape the strange skies down here in New Zealand that I had never seen in the previous 60 years. I started posting photographs on Facebook asking questions about what this could be. I only got two types of answers – those that said this was real geoengineering and those who flicked it all off with the customary answers, that what I was looking at and what anyone with eyes to see simply didn’t exist.
Questions came not by seeing hundreds of pictures of chemtrails but what I was seeing with my own eyes in my own backyard.
It seems that by simply asking questions I was committing a cardinal sin. So, I did what I usually do and researched further and eventually came to what was the only possible conclusion that an open mind could.
Confirmation came with Dane Wigington’s superb documentary the Dimming which I strongly recommend to anyone who hasn’t yet seen it.
Weekends are a time that I like to give to just thinking and assessing. That is something that I have to do frequently as the world becomes a more and more insane place and all my assumptions of yesterday have to be assessed and,min some cases thrown out.
I just want to give a few examples.
Just a few weeks ago the Guardian printed an article about the results of an expedition to the Russian Arctic which revealed the extent of methane emissions in the Laptev Sea.
This elicited the Facebook fact checkers who decided the article was inaccurate and needed some context. The context was that, basically there is nothing to worry about.
Then yesterday I came across an article from the wonderful Siberian Times.
We have researchers from several countries confirming what I have known to be the case for some years. This is something I have been watching for several years.
The very people dissing this research are the very people who have been pouring cold water on serious field research because it flies in the face of their computer models that told us that what we are actually seeing now would happen in the year 2100. When that position became untenable they told us 2050.
We are literally being told by these experts - and I am thinking of the dreadful Dr. Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt who took over the reins at NASA Goddard Center from James Hansen- that we should ignore our lying eyes.
What is 30 years of field research in the Arctic by Peter Wadhams and the Russian researchers like Igor Semiletov when you can have pooped like Mann and Schmidt tweaking their computer models?
We have people across the board telling us that everything is not as bad as we would like to think, that these are just “seasonal variations”, showing us the graphs to demonstrate that this year was the SECOND lowest ice extent on record, pretending that thin ice and slush can be equated with sea ice extent in 2012, when the ice was still relatively intact.
Once again, we are being asked to ignore what we can see with our own eyes, to ignore the evidence of the Polar Stern who celebrated being able to sail unimpeaded through thin ice right through to the North Pole.
Never happened , you know. The graphs and the computer modelling tell us something different.
I often think why is this happening. Is it psychological, denial of something happening before our eyes? Is it professional jealousy? Is it just corruption - saying what is needed to keep the money flowing in.
Is it because the official narrative is one of supposed solutions to something that is occurring much more frequently than most would have suspected?
You can’t have a globalist agenda like 2030 if the ice is melting before our very eyes.
Much better to ignore the rapidly melting ice or the methane releases in the Laptev and concentrate on things like that have a longer time frame attached to them like the melting of the Greenland ice cap.
Sea level rise is happening, yes, but at a slower rate at is happening in the Arctic. That is all quite commensurate with “solutions” like the Great Reset which is being done in the name of sustainability and saving the planet - when it is really more about control of the many of the few and reinventing the economy in the interests of the tiny minority of technocrats who would rule over us.
I am positive that we have unleashed God knows how many positive feedbacks and crossed several trigger points such that it does not matter so much any more what we do.
We close the world economy down and emissions keep going up because they are coming from sources other than madmade industrial emissions such as huge wildfires across the globe.
So, it does not mean much to argue whether the melting icecaps are from CO2 emissions, geoengineering or terraforming by aliens.
It is happening.
The egregious lies from scientists, governments and media lead me to think that if I was starting from scratch and didn’t know what I know about the real situation I would be more sympathetic to some of the arguments of the denialists.
And I mean the real denialists because people like myself or Guy McPherson have always been tainted with the slur “climate change denier” by the very people who were only out in their projections BY ABOUT 80 YEARS.
We have been shown to more right than they but WE are the climate change deniers.
Go back to about 2008 when positive feedbacks were a theoretical affair and there was a lot more honesty.
Now we are swimming in a sea of lies.
I remember going to a lecture by a local glaciologist who showed a film made 19 years earlier that was quite accurate but went on to deny his own film and say everything was OK if only we would plant more trees. He became quite visibly angry when it was suggested that things were worse he was trying to display.
That was the public face. In private, shortly afterwards he expressed his fear of a world without glaciers.
GEOENGINEERING
That brings me to the question of geoengineering.
Some time back my partner, Pam and I started noticing skies like this;
I started investigating and asking people for explanations to this. In all my 60 years on this planet, living in both the North Island and the South island of NZ (and some other places as well), I have never seen anything like this.
Then I started to see things like this.
But even to ask the questions leads to instant ridicule. You dicover quickly what you can and cannot talk about. It can cost relationships.
Well, I have never been one to give in to the mob. Rather this nonsense spurs me on to question further even if that takes me to some lines of inquiry that I would never have followed otherwise.
It all comes down to following the evidence and seeing where it takes you.
For me it usually raises more questions rather than giving definitive answers which is what the overwhelming people crave.
People want to identify a source that they can follow to the end.
TOWARDS CIVIL WAR IN THE UNITED STATES?
And now we come to the situation in the United States. That is a truly partisan affair. I do not wish to smash my way into someone’s civil war. I may ended up being cancelled.
But I wish to provide a little of my own perspective from the outside.
I wish to show what the evidence, of at least what the evidence I see shows me.
In this I pay scant attention to what the mainstream is telling us to believe.
For example right through the US summer I have been following unruly mobs burn down their own city. The evidence is overwhelming.
Yet we have been told throughout that the riots are “mainly peaceful”.
And this, taken from a CNN broadcast shows the preposterousness of this.
And yet,once again we are being asked to believe what we are being TOLD by CNN, BBC, MSNBC etc., now joined by Fox News to ignore what our eyes tell us.
We are constantly told that the main threat comes from the far-Right and from the Proud Boys. It does make sense that there would be trouble from right-wing militias and I would expect this.
However, this is not what I am seeing. I followTwitter every day and have yet to see photographic evidence of the same violence,pillaging and looting that we see night after night from Antifa and BLM.
For me seeing is believing.
I am sure that if the Proud Boys we’re responsible for this type of violence we would see the evidence emblazoned across the pages of the press and yet we don’t see any more than individual cases. Instead we are being TOLD what to believe.
I always thought that the novel 1984 was supposed to be a warning and not a manual.
My interest in Trump was piqued when I saw he wanted to bring home at least some of the troops back from wars that have been ongoing for up to 20 years and by his attention to “drain the swamp” in Washington DC.
Instead 4 years later we see a president who has been neutralised and emasculated by the same Deep State to the extent that he has been reduced to tweeting and having his tweets censored by social media giants who are subject to no one.
I’m sorry. I just don’t see the dictator. I see the authoritarian instincts in Trump, yes, but not a dictator. Rather someone who has been rendered powerless.
Up to now, perhaps - but I will come to that in a few minutes.
When I look at how things might turn out I see nothing nothing but trouble.
If Biden, someone all the evidence indicates is as corrupt as hell and compromised by the Chinese Communist Party, then I can see and end to the Republic.
No one will ever believe the results of an election, ever again.
If the present situation is turned around and Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell are successful in the Supreme Court (I have heard that the Trump team are allowing the state courts to make their decisions but will present all the evidence they have been accumulating to the Supreme Court - certainly not to Tucker Carlson or any other media wonk - I expect the Democrats will burn the place down in their rage.
Then the real violence will begin.
I have been watching the decline of America and it’s empire for some time and it has little to do with Trump , Biden or any of the other players in all this.
When I was thinking of this a nursery rhyme came to mind
"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men Couldn't put Humpty together again."
I would like to share two pieces of news (not conjecture) that I have picked up that give some idea of where things COULD be headed.
I picked both items up from watching TruNews. I grasped the significance immediately but no one else seems to have.
The first thing is that, subsequent to the sacking of Secretary of Defense,Mark Esper all the special forces (navy deals) have been consolidated under civilian leadership.
This is not a diktat of Donald Trump but something voted for by Congress 3 years ago but never acted on by the Pentagon.
I don’t think that the Trump administration has done this just to hand more power to Joe Biden. Instead, it allows them to deploy special forces to maintain order and bring down the insurrection as Trump wanted to do’previously in summer when mobs tried to burn St Johns church and to possibly storm the White House.
If it is as I think it is it would render Obama’s threat to put in the navy seals to drag Trump out of the WH, look pretty empty.
The second bit of news, from Friday is that their has been a reallocation of Supreme Court judges to circuits that encompass those states where the results of the election are open to question, to put it mildly.
I am telling you this because I think it is important and lays the media narrative that it is all done and dusted, and Joe Biden is on his way to the WH open to question.
God knows where this is all headed but from where I am sitting it does not look good at all.
Returning to climate change for a moment it may seem strange that I would not join the chorus of denunciation of Donald Trump. After all he has been absolutely distastrous for anything environmental.
Everyone I watch is pinning their hopes on Biden. He’s going to “save the world”.
But once again we have rhetoric and reality just as we had with Barack Obama who spoke beautiful words about climate change and the environment but turned around and DID THE OPPOSITE.
So now Biden has appointed his climate change spokesperson who, it turns out is straight out of the oil industry.
But Joe’s going to save the world. Yeah, right!
I dislike hypocrisy and double standards above all and in Trump we know what we have.
But between you, me and the lamp post I don’t think either of them is going to do diddly squat for the planet or the environment and it is nothing but the most extreme form of delusion to think one of them will.
In the worst year September was the worst month so far Thousands of people killed by plagues, famine and flooding
Millions, maybe billions of dead animals: September 2020 saw multiple hurricanes and tropical storms, destructive fires and was the hottest Sept ever recorded.
Fire devastates California's vineyards. Image credit Wine Spectator
September saw the madness increase on the streets of the United States of America with no sign of sanity returning as the November election looms. However, besides the riots and civil unrest around the world, September 2020 will be remembered as being the worst month in the worst year and records have been broken for all the wrong reasons, below is a look at just a few.
September 2020 has just been named the hottest September on record by the European Copernicus Climate Change Service. They also claimed that the average Arctic sea ice extent for September was the second-lowest recorded, after September 2012.
In a separate report NOAA, claimed, the U.S. was hit by 16 billion-dollar worth of disasters this year, so far September 2020 saw multiple hurricanes and tropical storms, destructive fires and record heat.
Wildfires wreaked havoc across California: Since mid-August, more than 4 million acres have burned across California, breaking the statewide burn record set in 2018 by more than 2 million acres. How much damage the fires have done to wildlife and the ecosystem is anyone's guess but if its anything like what happened in Australia earlier this year then we are looking at millions of wildlife deaths.
The usual trinity of extreme heat, drought and blustery winds are of course the main antagonists here, however, it is hard to deny climate change/global warming especially when one considers the exact same unfolding disaster happened in Australia late last year and early this year which resulted in 3 billion animals dead or injured and nearly 25% of Australian temperate forestry destroyed, like Donald Trump, the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morison denied climate change/global warming was the cause of the unprecedented disaster.
But is there another reason for these fantastic wildfires which are becoming more and more explosive with every year passing? There is something happening in California which is never mentioned on our evening news, not over there as far as I am aware and definitely not over here in Europe.
Millions of dead trees
There are in California more than 150 million dead trees with around a further 20 million a year dying, the numbers are quite frankly staggering, especially when you consider back in 2014 only 3.3 million dead trees were officially recorded. Full story
Millions of dead birds
As the wildfires roared from California to Colorado killing all wildlife in its path and a historic cold snap rushed through the Rocky Mountain region earlier in September, a strange thing started happening: Huge numbers of migratory birds began dropping dead. Normally, birds don't just die in plain sight. But the winged creatures were being found on bike paths and roads, hiking trails and driveways as if they plopped down from the sky. So what's going on?
Researchers are scrambling to explain why hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of birds, are suddenly being found dead across wide swaths of New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, Arizona and Texas in recent weeks - an event that could be one of the region's largest bird die-offs in recent memory. "Bird die-offs happen, but one doesn't often see this sort of scale in space and time at all," said Andrew Farnsworth, a senior research associate at the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology. "It seems unprecedented to me."
As hurricane Delta prepares to batter the Gulf Coast this weekend, the tropics have been very active: The Atlantic hurricane season continued at a record pace last month. In September alone,10 named storms formed — Nana, Omar, Paulette, Rene, Sally, Teddy, Vicky, Wilfred, Alpha and Beta. For the first time since 1971, five named storms churned in the Atlantic Basin at the same time.
Drought got worse: According to the U.S. Drought Monitor report, 42.6% of the contiguous U.S. was in drought, up about 3 percentage points from the beginning of September.
September witnessed Covid-19 deaths fly past an official, one million deaths, (will we ever know the true number?) Nearly 40 million have been infected and our governments are in panic making us wear masks and endure endless lockdowns.
Europe is experiencing a second wave. The European countries are suffering a surge much worse than the first wave. Spain in late September was hit with a staggering 32,000 cases in just one day after the country appeared to have beaten the virus in June. In France, it's the same story with a further 25,000 new cases recorded on one day.
More dead birds
September saw a strange scenario unfold in a secretive nuclear city in Russia when hundreds of dead birds suddenly plummeted from the sky and lay scattered on streets. The mysterious mass die-off of crows above a secretive nuclear Russian city has sent the internet into meltdown. A social media frenzy ensued after footage emerged of dead birds suddenly falling from the sky onto the roads below in the city of Balakovo.
The bizarre incident is currently under official investigation, with some experts tying the mass death to avian flu. However, others have suggested it could be linked to the city's best-known feature - its large nuclear power plant Full story
Still in Russia
The bitterly cold Arctic winter typically snuffs out the seasonal wildfires that erupt in this region. But every once in a while, a wildfire comes along that refuses to die. These blazes, known as “zombie fires” or “holdover fires,” can burrow into the rich organic material beneath the surface, such as the vast peatlands that ring the Arctic, and smoulder under the snowpack throughout the frigid winter.
With the Siberian Arctic seeing record warm conditions in recent weeks and months, scientists monitoring Arctic wildfire trends are becoming more convinced that some of the blazes erupting in the Arctic so far this summer are actually leftover from last summer. Last year brought a record surge in Arctic fires to a region that is warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the world. Full story
A staggering whale stranding
The whale stranding on the Tasmanian coast is the largest recorded in the state's history, authorities say almost 500 pilot whales stranded on the 23rd of Sept. I must say in my 12 years of reporting mass whale strandings I have never reported any total anywhere near this number, it is an absolute astonishing stranding!
With time running out to save them, attention will soon be turned to removal and disposal. About 500 whales were discovered in Macquarie Harbour. Most of the whales died. TBW
More dead stuff'
351 loggerhead sea turtles have been found dead on the same stretch of coastline where 137 sea lions were found deceased earlier this month. TBW The loggerhead sea turtles and sea lions were found on the Baja California coast, in northwestern Mexico. TBW
Toxic drinking water
At least 500 hundred drinking water wells that serve up to 9 million Californians have potentially dangerous levels of a highly toxic family of chemicals and some of the worst are in the Bay Area. Surrounded by lush green fields, Pleasanton often makes the top ten list of desirable places to live. But a new list just out is nothing to boast about. "I was just floored," said Pleasanton resident Jill Buck when she found out her town made the top ten for dangerous drinking water. TBW
A brain-eating amoeba detected in a southeast Texas water supply kills a young boy
A catastrophe has been declared in a Texan city after a brain-eating amoeba was discovered of their native water provide – examined after a six-year-old boy died. Josiah McIntyre died on September 8 after enjoying within the water in Lake Jackson. Credit News Chant
Residents of eight cities have been alerted that a brain-eating amoeba was found in a southeast Texas water supply, leading one of the towns to issue a disaster declaration. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality issued a water advisory to residents served by the Brazosport Water Authority warning customers not to use any water due to the presence of Naegleria fowleri, a brain-eating amoeba, found in the water supply on Friday evening. TBW
A big chunk of Greenland's ice cap, estimated to be some 110 square kilometres (42.3 square miles), has broken off in the far northeast Arctic which scientists say is evidence of rapid climate change. The glacier section broke off the fjord called Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden, which is roughly 80 kilometres (50 miles) long and 20 kilometres (12 miles) wide, the National Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland said Monday the 13th of Sept. TBW
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in September updated data of human and financial losses caused by the rains and floods during the recent monsoon season, raising the death toll to more than 300, including over 100 children in Pakistan.
The NDMA said the countrywide death toll stood at 310 – 135 men, 107 children and 70 women. The report said that Sindh was worst affected province with 136 fatalities, followed by 116 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 16 in Punjab, 21 in Balochistan, 12 in Azad Kashmir and 11 in Gilgit-Baltistan. TBW
Brazil on fire!
A vast swath of vital wetlands is burning in Brazil, sweeping across several national parks and obscuring the sun behind dense smoke. Preliminary figures from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, based on satellite images, indicate that nearly 5,800 square miles (1.5 million hectares) have burned in the Pantanal region since the start of August - an expanse comparable to the area consumed by the historic blazes now afflicting California. It's also well beyond the previous fire season record from 2005. TBW
More flood deaths
The floods in Sudan have killed 102 people, injured 46 more and affected over 550,000 people in 17 of the country's 18 states, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reported. "More than half a million people are affected by the floods in Sudan - the highest number of flood-affected people reported in the country in more than two decades," OCHA indicated. It added: "Some 102 people have died and 46 others have been injured, according to the latest figures from the government of Sudan. TBW
New locust swarms
Authorities in Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe are scrambling to control titanic swarms of migratory locusts, which have put 7 million people in the southern region at risk of famine. The four countries have launched pesticide spraying efforts to combat the invasion, as the United Nations warns that up to 7 million people risk experiencing food insecurity.
Smallholder farmers in Botswana lost their entire harvest at the start of the southern outbreak in May, with the growing region of Pandamatenga and its key sorghum crops at risk. Namibia's initial outbreak in the Zambezi plain has spread to key farming regions, while locusts in Zambia are spreading rapidly and affecting both crop and grazing lands. The outlook is no better in Zimbabwe. TBW
The hottest temperature ever recorded in Phoenix in Sept
Phoenix on Saturday, the 5th of Sept set a high-temperature record of 115 degrees F, 46 deg C, for the date as emergency crews, rescued several hikers at a popular recreation area in the city. The baking heat broke the previous record of 113 degrees set in 1945, the National Weather Service said. Saturday was the 14th day this year where Phoenix had a high of 115 degrees or more, topping the previous record of seven, the weather service said.
Tucson reached 107F, 42 deg C tying a 1945 record. The southern Arizona city was expected to break the record later Saturday with a high of 108, forecasters said. Both cities and numerous other desert areas in Arizona and southern Nevada are under excessive heat warnings in effect through Monday night. Forecasters advised limiting outdoor activity, staying inside in air-conditioned places, drinking plenty of water and checking family members and neighbours. TBW
More than a 1,000 killed by floods
More than a thousand people have died and millions have been displaced and the torrential rain just keeps on coming. 160 killed by flash floods in Afghanistan with a further 41 in Nepal and another 12 dead in India: 19 dead in Pakistan as the unprecedented rainfall continued into September. TBW
We may be about to see if the Guy McPherson paradox is true in the coming months. Bernie Sanders will NOT be your saviour!
2°C
crossed
Arctic News, 13 March, 2020 It's time to stop denying how precarious the situation is. Remember the Paris Agreement? In 2015, politicians pledged to hold the global temperature rise to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pledged they would try and limit the temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Well, an analysis by Sam Carana shows that it was already more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial when the Paris Agreement was reached. In Sam Carana's analysis, the year 1750 is used as the baseline for pre-industrial. The analysis shows that we meanwhile have also crossed the 2°C threshold (in February 2020) and that the temperature rise looks set to rapidly drive humans and eventually most if not all species on Earth into extinction. Yet, our politicians refuse to act! Accelerating temperature rise Indeed, there are indications that the recent rise is part of a trend that points at even higher temperatures in the near future, as also discussed at this analysis page. Polynomial trends can highlight such acceleration better than linear trends. The 1970-2030 polynomial trend in the image below is calculated over the period from 1880 through to February 2020. The trend points at 3°C getting crossed in 2026.
In above image, the January 2020 and February 2020 anomalies are above the trend. This indicates that the situation might be even worse. A polynomial trend calculated over a shorter period can highlight short-term variation such as associated with El Niño events and can highlight feedbacks that might otherwise be overlooked. The 2010-2022 trend in the image below is calculated with 2009-Feb.2020 data. The trend indicates that 2°C was crossed in February 2020, and looks set to keep rising and cross 3°C in 2021, more specifically in January next year, which is less than a year away.
Such a steep rise is in line with unfolding developments that are causing the aerosol masking effect to fall away, such as a decrease in industrial activity due to COVID-19 fears. The image below shows a potential rise of 18°C or 32.4°F from 1750 by the year 2026.
On February 20, 2020, 09Z, surface temperature anomalies reached both ends of the scale over North America, while the Arctic was 3.7°C or 6.7°F warmer than in 1979-2000. On that day, the average 2 m temperature anomaly for the Arctic was 3.5°C or 6.3°F.
These high temperature anomalies at 2 meters in the left panel go hand in hand with the wind patterns at 250 hPa (jet stream) as shown in the center panel and the wind patterns at 10 meters shown in the right panel. Closer to sea level, circular winds around low pressure areas bring warm air into the Arctic, from Russia and from the Pacific Ocean.
Above image shows winds at 250 hPa (jet stream) with speeds as high as 317 km/h or 197 mph (green circle) in the left panel, while the right panel shows circular winds at 850 hPa reaching speeds as high as 176 km/h or 109 mph (green circle). These wind patterns have caused much warm air to enter the Arctic, while relatively little cold air has moved out of the Arctic. Furthermore, stronger winds cool the sea surface. As a result, Arctic sea ice extent on February 24, 2020, was 14.1 million km², slightly more than the 2010s average of 14 million km².
Arctic sea ice, however, is very thin. Stronger winds can also accelerate the speed at which ever warmer water is flowing into the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic Ocean and from the Pacific Ocean, as discussed in a previous post. The overall result is that sea ice volume is at a record low for the time of the year.
This is further illustrated by the sea ice thickness (in meters) comparison below between February 28, 2015 and February 28, 2020, i.e. forecasts for February 28, run on February 27.
Rise in greenhouse gas levels is accelerating Temperatures are rising at ever faster speed as the rise in greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere is accelerating. As illustrated by the image below, the daily average CO₂ level at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, was 416.08 ppm on February 10, 2020, higher than it has been for millions of years. Since the annual peak is typically reached in May, even higher levels can be expected soon.
From the way emissions are rising now, it looks like we could soon reach even higher CO₂e forcing than during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) mass extinction event, some 55.5 million years ago, as discussed in a previous post. Very worrying also is the recent rise in methane levels recorded at Barrow, Alaska, as illustrated by the image below.
The buffer is gone As the sea ice is getting thinner, there is little or no buffer left to consume the influx of ever warmer and salty water from the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean. As illustrated by the image below, there is a tipping point at 1°C above the 20th century average, i.e. there are indications that a rise of 1°C will result in most of the sea ice underneath the surface to disappear.
As long as there is sea ice in the water, this sea ice will keep absorbing heat as it melts, so the temperature will not rise at the sea surface. But there is ever less sea ice volume left to absorb ocean heat, and the amount of energy absorbed by melting ice is as much as it takes to heat an equivalent mass of water from zero to 80°C.
Meanwhile, temperatures keep rising globally and more than 90% of global warming is going into oceans.
As the temperature of the oceans keeps rising, the danger increases that heat will reach the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean and will destabilize hydrates contained in sediments at the seafloor, resulting in huge releases of methane.
Species can be regarded to be ‘functionally extinct’ when their numbers have declined below levels needed for them to reproduce healthy offspring. This can occur due to causes such as loss of habitat and disappearance of other species that they depend on. Species can also be declared to be ‘functionally extinct’ when they are threatened to be wiped out by a catastrophe that appears to be both imminent and inescapable, which would cause their numbers to dwindle below a critical threshold required for survival of the species. Rising temperatures now threaten most, if not all, species to go extinct in a matter of years. In 2020, the global temperature rise could cross the critical guardrail of 2°C above preindustrial that politicians at the Paris Agreement promised would not be crossed. In fact, they pledged to take efforts to avoid a 1.5°C rise. Their failure to do so constitutes a de facto declaration that humans are now functionally extinct and that the looming temperature rise will drive most, if not all species on Earth into extinction.
Dire Situation The situation is dire, in many respects. Current laws punish people for the most trivial things, while leaving the largest crime one can imagine unpunished: planetary omnicide! In the video below, Guy McPherson warns that a rapid decline in industrial activity could result in an abrupt rise in temperature of 1°C, as much of the aerosol masking effect falls away.
The dire situation calls for immediate, comprehensive and effective action, as described in the Climate Plan.
P.S. Don't forget to vote!
One of the most important things one can do to change things is to vote, e.g. in the U.S., vote for Bernie Sanders and the Green New Deal!
Fossil fuel and control over its supply is behind much of the conflict, violence and pollution that has infested the world for more than a century.
Instead of using fossil fuel, the world must rapidly transition to the use of wind turbines, geothermal power, solar power, wave power, and similar clean and renewable ways to generate energy.
The transition to clean, renewable energy removes much cause for conflict, since it is available locally around the world and its use in one place doesn't exclude use of clean, renewable energy elsewhere.
The transition to clean, renewable energy will provide greater energy security and reliability, besides its numerous further benefits, e.g. it will make more land and water available for growing food and it will give us more jobs, better health, and a cleaner environment. And, because it's more economic, the transition to clean, renewable energy will pay for itself as we go.
Bernie Sanders calls for a rapid transition to clean, renewable energy as part of the Green New Deal.
Please share this message, vote for Bernie Sanders and support the GND!
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