“Current Climate Path Will Lead to Collapse of Life on Earth”

Narrative Control at the Edge of Extinction.

As we circle the drain of collapse and extinction, the corporate media pretend to cover the poly-crises we face but report on the great unravelling as if it’s a future issue, rather that fully underway today, driven by the six-dozen feedback loops I know of, the ones we’ve yet to discover, and the “Black Swans” that we either haven’t thought of or we simply ignore. This muddying of the waters will only get worse as we circle the drain of collapse.

In this article I’ll give some examples and some tools to drill down into the quagmire, that the corporations are deliberately constructing. This is a continuation of the strategy the Tobacco Industry used to fool us last century. That strategy killed hundreds of millions, this new one will kill over eight billion of us.
Let’s start with the title article that led to this post, published by The Independent and distributed further by MSN. I’ll quote aspects of the corporate disinformation and add my critique, in bold type, from now on.
Current climate path will lead to collapse of life on Earth, say scientists

“Failing to limit the global temperature to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels could trigger tipping points and lead to the collapse of life on Earth, two climate scientists have warned.” Could? there is zero doubt, words like this are injected to create doubt, when there is none.
As I’ve pointed out numerous times on this blog, the corporate media and their subservient paid scientists continually move the baseline to bullshit about how much anthropogenic warming we have triggered. Baseline Temperature dishonesty at the Edge of Extinction. Using 1750 as a baseline we are at or around 2c now. Going back in time to include the Iron Age and Bronze ages we are at least 2.29C, hence all the chaos unfolding now, not at some long off date we’ll never get to see.
The following data and analysis courtesy of @SamCarana from the Arctic News Blog:
What is pre-industrial?
“The Paris Agreement called for a special report by the IPCC on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways. In the report, the IPCC first defines pre-industrial as “the multi-century period prior to the onset of large-scale industrial activity around 1750”. Yet, the IPCC then proceeds to use the period 1850-1900 to “approximate” pre-industrial. This raises the questions, has the IPCC been downplaying the temperature rise and is this continuing? “ Any corporate media, and worse still alternative media uncritically quoting the IPCC are part of the problem.
The above paragraph from my article titled: Using “Pre-Industrial” as a Measure of Anthropogenic Warming was an Omnicidal, Irreversible Mistake.

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that current climate policies will leave the Earth between 2.5C and 2.7C hotter by 2100 compared with pre-industrial levels.”
I have previously documented the collusion between the corporates and the IPCC which was created by the corporations to protect capitalism from activist scientists like my colleague and dear friend Professor Guy McPherson. It’s Time to Acknowledge the Spectacular Success of the IPCC.

Even the ultra-conservative Dr James E Hansen has admitted that 10C is baked in with existing emissions already in the atmosphere, I note he has tried to back pedal on his original post, no doubt after having copped flak from the corporate owned US Congress.

“For example, the present greenhouse gas forcing is 70% of the forcing that made Earth’s temperature in the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum at least +13°C relative to preindustrial temperature. “Global warming in the Pipeline 19 May 2023 James Hansen

Digest that for a second and remember there is a long lag between emissions and when their full effects manifest.
We have been led to believe that there is ‘only’ a 10-to-20-year lag between emissions and their full impacts being felt. That’s true for most emissions but large pulses, like massive forest fires can take centuries to work their way through the climate system. Not only is the CO2 released back into the atmosphere in a classic feedback loop, but the carbon sinks that these forests represented are gone, forever.

“Our results suggest that as CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, the full warming effect of an emission may not be felt for several decades, if not centuries.”

There has been much debate about the time lag between when emissions are dumped into the atmosphere and when we feel the full effects.

Warming from Methane is to all intents and purposes effectively immediate, hence some of the shocking heat in the Northern Hemisphere.

Carbon on the other hand can take up to centuries to manifest due to being released at scale.

As the Northern Hemisphere’s forest’s burn huge quantities of carbon are released in large, short pulses.

The chaos we are seeing now doesn’t include the last 20 years emissions at least.

It also debunks the Liar Michael E Mann who recently said, for a dumbed down US audience, that “If we stop emissions now warming will stop”.

It’s a blatant lie. The time lag between a carbon dioxide emission and maximum warming increases with the size of the emission.

The Guardian plays a clever role in pretending to cover the unfolding extinction event by always injecting some form of “If we just start now”.
I’ve been hearing that nonsense for decades.
No corporate media will tell us the whole truth, we only get the edited highlights.
““We are currently losing species at a faster rate than in any of Earth’s past extinction events. It is probable that we are in the first phase of another, more severe mass extinction,” he said. “We cannot predict the tipping point that will send ecosystems into total collapse, but it is an inevitable outcome if we do not reverse biodiversity loss.” “Ecosystem collapse ‘inevitable’ unless wildlife losses reversed.”

“The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is often attacked for being too strident in its warnings about global warming. But a subset of critics charges just the opposite: that the organization is too conservative in its analysis and predictions.”

“The newest criticism of the IPCC is launched by a team that includes James Hansen, possibly the world’s best-known climate scientist. And while his group could be accused of cherry-picking, it picks the most important cherry by confronting a key conclusion of the IPCC: that the world will be more or less okay if people keep total global temperature from climbing more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, which can be done by limiting humanity’s cumulative CO₂ emissions from the burning of fossil fuels to about 1000 gigatons. That’s the conclusion expressed in the panel’s newest study, the Fifth Assessment Report. (The 3000-page IPCC behemoth won’t be released until next fall, but the preliminary text was leaked nearly a year ago, and the revision process is taking place largely in public.) And the 2-degree temperature goal has been cited in international agreements dating back to the mid-1990s.”

“The reality, though, is worse than the IPCC says, according to a new policy paper by Hansen, the longtime head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and 17 fellow authors. The paper, published today on the website PLOS One, argues that to keep future generations safe from the worst effects of climate change, the world needs to aim for no more than a 1 degree Celsius temperature rise over preindustrial levels. That would require the world to limit total fossil fuel CO₂ emissions to about 500 gitatons—and we’ve already put 384 GtC into the atmosphere, according to the authors.”

What looks like, on the face of it, a good article from Popular Mechanics it implies that even 1C is possible and that we still have a “Carbon Budget”, clearly that is nonsense, and we are broke, ie; we have zero carbon budget. 
Climate Scientists: IPCC Is Wrong—We Need a 1-Degree Limit on Warming

Professor Guy McPherson and I have been crucified for the last decade for pointing out what for us is a clear as day.
The overriding issue is the rate of change the planet is going through.
“As every ecologist knows, and apparently very few other people, the rate of environmental change is among the most important factors controlling the continued survival of individuals, populations, and species. If the environment occupied by an individual or a species changes, then the individual or the species must change. Evolution by natural selection is typically a relatively slow process, requiring at least one generation and usually many generations to ensure adaptation. For species such as Homo sapiens, our ability to procreate comes at a relatively late age, thereby guaranteeing a minimum of a few decades for adaptation to occur.”

The Convergence of the Next El Niño–Southern Oscillation & the Arctic Sea Ice Minimum

To get the most from this article drill down into the embedded links.
When reading corporate media, remember they have share prices to maintain, keeping you and your children in the dark is a cynical economic decision.
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About Kevin Hester

I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.