Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
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Global Warming but get use to the icy cold
https://apnews.com/77d640ee81fa4890b689d39c6bea545d
A polar vortex is thanks to warm air in the Arctic. It’s called “sudden stratospheric warming.”
Even more bad news…does it never end
“This is the climate crisis you haven’t heard of,”
“…At least a third of the huge ice fields in Asia’s towering mountain chain are doomed to melt due to climate change, according to a landmark new report, with serious consequences for almost 2 billion people.
Even if carbon emissions are dramatically and rapidly cut and succeed in limiting global warming to 1.5C, 36% of the glaciers along in the Hindu Kush and Himalaya range will have gone by 2100. If emissions are not cut, the loss soars to two-thirds, the report found. The glaciers are a critical water store for the 250 million people who live in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) region, and 1.65 billion people rely on the great rivers that flow from the peaks into India, Pakistan, China and other nations…”I thought I’d beat Alan to draw attention to this particularly absurd extinction story:
Insects could vanish within a century at current rate of decline, says global review
No doubt there is a problem but this illustrates the fallacy of extrapolating current trends to their “logical” conclusion. Here the assumption is that insect species extinction will continue at its current rate of 2.5% a year:
The 2.5% rate of annual loss over the last 25-30 years is “shocking”, Sánchez-Bayo told the Guardian: “It is very rapid. In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none.”
Note that he is not even cautious enough to say “would” rather than “will”.
Of course insects won’t become extinct. I’d have thought they’d be the last life-form to go, as some could even survive a nuclear war.
I suggest that the prevalence of such “scientific” scare stories reflects not so much the facts as that capitalism has no hope of a better future to offer. It’s reached an ideological dead end and can’t justify even to itself its continued existence.
I placed the item on the food thread rather than climate crisis since it appears that climate change is not the main cause of the fall but intensive agriculture and extensive pesticide use.
I am no entomologist but I think there has been some genuine concern in recent years over the drastic reduction of pollen-spreading insects such as bees which can have a serious impact on crop production. 70 percent of crops that are used today require pollination. Plus they are at the bottom of the food chain and vital for many other species.
Tell me a scientist who does give definitive outcomes. They always use guarded qualifiers. “Could” is a well used term within scientific community for projections and predictions.
Data is particularly hard to acquire for creepy-crawlies so there can only be speculation – or as some would say – educated guess-work. This article refers to actual scientific ignorance
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html
“…Most academic funding is short-term, but when what you’re interested in is invisible, generational change, says Dave Goulson, an entomologist at the University of Sussex, “a three-year monitoring program is no good to anybody.” This is especially true of insect populations, which are naturally variable, with wide, trend-obscuring fluctuations from one year to the next…
…When entomologists began noticing and investigating insect declines, they lamented the absence of solid information from the past in which to ground their experiences of the present. “We see a hundred of something, and we think we’re fine,” Wagner says, “but what if there were 100,000 two generations ago?” Rob Dunn, an ecologist at North Carolina State University who helped design the net experiment in Denmark, recently searched for studies showing the effect of pesticide spraying on the quantity of insects living in nearby forests. He was surprised to find that no such studies existed….”
When research is done as in the case of Germany where a 75% drop in flying beasties in 27 years is recorded it is conducted in a protected nature reserve where there is little farming activity. Imagine if the fields and orchards had been the location of the study – no reference points at all? Imagine climate change research if we had no met records to compare
The researcher is much more definite when he discusses the effect on humanity IF the trend continues as it appears in research papers
“If insect species losses cannot be halted, this will have catastrophic consequences for both the planet’s ecosystems and for the survival of mankind,” Dr Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, at the University of Sydney, Australia, said.
“Unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades,” the report said. “The repercussions this will have for the planet’s ecosystems are catastrophic to say the least.”
I do not believe this report is absurd, nor is it scare-mongering. And indeed its extrapolation from existing knowledge is indeed a valid conclusion UNLESS it can be demonstrated that active and effective counter-measures are taking place to minimize the trend by treating the causes of the decline. I can only add my pessimistic opinion is that apart from some commercial reforms of the honey-bee situation, not much is being done about the drop in insect populations.
I do recall a book from the 60s or 70s that foresaw only grass and cockroaches surviving an all-out nuclear war.
Apologies. I don’t read that thread any more. Hoping it dies a death. Perhaps because he’s not a native English-speaker that he can’t tell the difference between “would” and “will” especially after “if” but then Spanish does have a subjunctive to express conditionality.
Marx gives a good example of the fallacy of extrapolating existing trends to their “logical” conclusion in Chapter 24 of Volume 3 of Capital when discussing “the fabulous fancies of Dr. Price, which outdo by far the fantasies of the alchemists”:
“Money bearing compound interest increases at first slowly. But, the rate of increase being continually accelerated, it becomes in some time so rapid, as to mock all the powers of the imagination. One penny, put out at our Saviour’s birth to 5 per cent compound interest, would, before this time, have increased to a greater sum, than would be contained in a hundred and fifty millions of earths, all solid gold. (…)
His fancy flies still higher in his Observations on Reversionary Payments, etc., London, 1772. There we read:
“A shilling put out to 6% compound interest at our Saviour’s birth” (presumably in the Temple of Jerusalem) “would … have increased to a greater sum than the whole solar system could hold, supposing it a sphere equal in diameter to the diameter of Saturn’s orbit.”The claim that all insect life “will” be extinct in a hundred years falls into the same category of fanciful (“would be if the existing rate of extinction were to be maintained” would be more acceptable, but then that wouldn’t attract the same headlines).
I do recall a book from the 60s or 70s that foresaw only grass and cockroaches surviving an all-out nuclear war.
And many butterflies during the beginning of the industrial revolution in England did not die either, and moths have changed from black to white due to pollution. Like an actor in the movie Jurassic Park said: Nature finds its way
Perhaps we should also consider Marx extrapolating from history of the possibility of a future “…where a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes…”
Maybe, it is a time for the Marxist optimists to start to accept the conclusion that IF there is NOT going to be any social change, then our society faces ruination, that indeed we are no closer to socialism and are now on the brink of barbarism. [this is a debate we also should be engaged in]
The accuracy of this scientific report will either be confirmed or qualified or dismissed by further investigation. But to ignore such an early warning is itself absurd and reckless. We are not responding to the wild ranting of a politician or a journalist but to the supported findings of those trained in the area of research.
When you suggest phrasing should have been thus:
“…(“would be if the existing rate of extinction were to be maintained” would be more acceptable, but then that wouldn’t attract the same headlines)…”
Just how different is that from what I already quoted the lead author of saying?
““IF insect species losses cannot be halted, this will have catastrophic consequences for both the planet’s ecosystems and for the survival of mankind,” Dr Francisco Sánchez-Bayo said.
“UNLESS we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades,” the report said.
Yes Marcos, I do accept that Nature is very adaptable to conditions but it is not always able to. We have known about the impact of poisons used by farming since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring on DDT in the early 60s.
I’m sure the Scottish tourist board will delight in the disappearance of midgies and myself and the medical world will look forward to the extinction of mosquitos. What the unintended consequences will be, though, I have no idea.
The BBC reporting of the study does suggest that some species of insect will thrive in future and does offer more qualification on the consequences of the research – NB remember this was not new research simply a review of over 70 existing studies by others brought together to reach some sort of consensus of opinion.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47198576
“…the review also finds that a small number of species are likely to be able to adapt to changing conditions and do well.”
An expert not involved in the study is then quoted
“Fast-breeding pest insects will probably thrive because of the warmer conditions, because many of their natural enemies, which breed more slowly, will disappear, ” said Prof Dave Goulson from the University of Sussex. “It’s quite plausible that we might end up with plagues of small numbers of pest insects, but we will lose all the wonderful ones that we want, like bees and hoverflies and butterflies and dung beetles that do a great job of disposing of animal waste.” Prof Goulson said that some tough, adaptable, generalist species – like houseflies and cockroaches – seem to be able to live comfortably in a human-made environment and have evolved resistance to pesticides.”
It goes on to say, “…Ultimately, if huge numbers of insects disappear, they will be replaced but it will take a long, long time…”
And again this neutral expert is cited for his view.
“If you look at what happened in the major extinctions of the past, they spawned massive adaptive radiations where the few species that made it through adapted and occupied all the available niches and evolved into new species,” Prof Goulson told BBC News. “So give it a million years and I’ve no doubt there will be a whole diversity of new creatures that will have popped up to replace the ones wiped out in the 20th and 21st centuries.”
There you are ALB and Marcos, he agrees with you both. It is confirmed that the report is indeed scare-mongering and insects will still be around. You’ll just have to be around in a million years to see them.
I referred to the issue of lack of knowledge that may well change any conclusion and the BBC also does the same.
“99% of the evidence for insect decline comes from Europe and North America with almost nothing from Africa or South America.”
From anecdotal and personal experience these are exactly the regions where widespread inappropriate use of pesticides takes place and where monoculture is increasing so I suggest the chances are that the effect on insect numbers will be more severe when the regulatory authorities are more lax and giant corporations like Monsanto can impose the marketing of pesticides banned elsewhere.
I await good news but until then I have to endure and relay the prevailing bad news and it has to be differentiated from fake news.
We can always blame the messenger, those scientists who thrive on headlines to justify their jobs and acquire their funding…oh, where did I hear that claim about science…from climate change deniers…
Climate change – a silver lining for Greenland
Worldwide demand for sand totaled about 9.55 billion tonnes in 2017 with a market value of $99.5 billion and is projected to reach almost $481 billion in 2100, driven by rising demand and likely shortages. That meant a rare opportunity for the island
“At the moment it is an inexpensive resource but it will become more expensive”
Prosperity on tap?
Rising global temperatures are melting the Greenland ice sheet and carrying ever more sand and gravel into coastal fjords.
“You can think of it (the melting ice) as a tap that pours out sediment to the coast”
Once again depressing predictions.
“The gathering storm of human-caused threats to climate, nature and economy pose a danger of systemic collapse comparable to the 2008 financial crisis, according to a new report.
[that the comparison is with only the 2008 recession I guess is actually good news. A pessimist like myself would consider such a similarity as a great under-estimate of effects. But I think it is just comparing the actual process…runaway uncontrollable side-effects]
The combination of global warming, soil infertility, pollinator loss, chemical leaching and ocean acidification is creating a “new domain of risk”, which is hugely underestimated by policymakers even though it may pose the greatest threat in human history.
“A new, highly complex and destabilised ‘domain of risk’ is emerging – which includes the risk of the collapse of key social and economic systems, at local and potentially even global levels,” warns the paper from the Institute for Public Policy Research. “This new risk domain affects virtually all areas of policy and politics, and it is doubtful that societies around the world are adequately prepared to manage this risk.”Most studies of environmental risk tended to examine threats in isolation: climate scientists examined disruption to weather systems, biologists focused on ecosystem loss and economists calculated potential damages from intensifying storms and droughts. But a growing body of research is assessing how the interplay of these factors can create a cascade of tipping points in human society as well as the natural world… the deterioration of natural infrastructure, such as a stable climate and fertile land, have a knock-on effect on health, wealth, inequality and migration, which in turn heightens the possibility of political tension and conflict.
Since 2005, the number of floods has increased by a factor of 15, extreme temperature events by a factor of 20, and wildfires sevenfold; topsoil is now being lost 10 to 40 times faster than it is being replenished by natural processes; the 20 warmest years since records began in 1850 have been in the past 22 years; vertebrate populations have fallen by an average of 60% since the 1970s, and insect numbers – vital for pollination – have declined even faster in some countries. [not to be overlooked in importance] The climate crisis was likely to create 10 times more refugees from that region than the 12 million who left during the Arab spring.
These processes amplify and interact with existing social and economic problems, potentially threatening systemic collapse similar to the 2008-9 financial crisis. Back then, a subprime mortgage crisis in the US exposed excessive risk-taking and triggered a global panic and the deepest recession since the 1930s. The IPPR study envisages a similar breakdown could occur if the US suffers relentlessly worsening damage from hurricane floods and forest fires, which would prompt a rush of insurance claims and threaten the viability of financial institutions.
The paper warns of the vulnerability of food systems that rely on just five animal and 12 plant species to provide 75% of the world’s nutrition. The lack of diversity weakens resilience to the growing risks of climate disruption, soil deterioration, pollution and pollinator loss.
The IPPR repor urges policymakers to grapple with these risks as a priority, to accelerate the restoration of natural systems, and to push harder on the “green new deal” transition towards renewable energy.
It says, “the younger generations will need help in finding the energy and a sense of control that often eludes them as they begin to realise the enormity of inheriting a rapidly destabilising world”.
“People are not frank enough about this. If it is discussed at all, it is the sort of thing mentioned at the end of a conversation, that makes everyone look at the floor, but we don’t have time for that now,” he said. “It’s appearing more in media, but we are not doing enough.”
Won’t any comrade direct me to some positive good news? 😥
I was not arguing against the findings of the research (that insect extinction has been proceeding at a rate of 2.5% per year over the past 25-30 years) or that this does not present a problem. What I was arguing was the way in which it was presented, in particular this:
The 2.5% rate of annual loss over the last 25-30 years is “shocking”, Sánchez-Bayo told the Guardian: “It is very rapid. In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none.”
It’s the use of the word “will”, especially as, here, the “if” or the “unless” part is missing. “Could” doesn’t cut it either as anything not logically possible could occur, e.g. socialism could be established tomorrow, or feudalism for that matter, in fact all insects could become extinct tomorrow. “Might” would be better, as that brings in the question of how probable something is. As would “would”.
Also, apparently, the survey does not actually say that all insect species “will” be extinct by 2119. That’s just common sense. You don’t have to be a entomologist to dismiss as absurd the idea that all the species of insect on the planet, including the millions in the untouched jungles of the Amazon, the Congo and Indonesia, “will” go extinct by 2119, not even if nothing is done to try to counter species going extinct.
By coincidence, the difference is neatly illustrated by the front page headline in today’s Times: TORIES WOULD WIN MAJORITY IF ELECTION HELD TODAY. If it had read ‘TORIES WILL WIN MAJORITY IF ELECTION HELD TODAY’ the meaning would be quite different (even if a pessimist might prefer it expressed the second way).
Saying “there is a problem, but it’s being exaggerated” is not the same as saying “there isn’t a problem”. All I am calling for is a bit of critical thinking when faced with sensational or tententious headlines.
I suppose the issue is distinguishing between scare-mongering and a timely warning. Is it the case of the boy who cries wolf or the person who presses the alarm bell when s/he spots smoke but has not yet seen the fire.
Lesley Rankin is a researcher at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). This is a Crisis: Facing up to the age of environmental breakdown,
http://www.ippr.org/research/publications/age-of-environmental-breakdown
She discusses the type of response that should be made to climate change.
“…We must simultaneously resign ourselves to living with what environmental breakdown has already occurred (and which is inevitable in the future because of time lags in natural systems), and fight tooth and nail to prevent the crisis getting rapidly and significantly worse. Instead, we’re largely behaving as if everything is fine, and merrily continue business-as-usual…”
“…Environmental campaigners have historically used urgency and optimism, urging us to ‘act now, while we can still solve the problem’. Those who advocate this approach point to the need to avoid ‘turning people off’ with an ‘apocalyptic’ story, and being accused of ‘doom-mongering’, especially when uncertainties in forecasting appear to ‘disprove’ warnings.
A more honest message, however, both about the situation we’re in, and the emotions it triggers, might be more useful. A catastrophic prognosis and a call to action may feel incompatible (why try to resolve something that is already so disastrous?), but to do so reflects the conflicting emotions which environmental breakdown inspires – despair, followed by grim determination.This framing offers people the opportunity both to face up to and process the bad news, and a sense of agency to address it… ”
“…This is a move from optimism to courage and hope – an understanding of hope not as blind faith, but as a commitment to a cause, without knowing whether it will come to pass. We must be open-eyed that some disaster is inevitable, but that the costs of inaction are also the benefits of action – “wars will break out, the planet will heat up, species will die out, but how many, how hot and what survives depends on whether we act.”…”
FROM
https://www.redpepper.org.uk/the-age-of-environmental-breakdown/
She makes some shrewd observations but her conclusion (“wars will break out, the planet will heat up, species will die out, but how many, how hot and what survives depends on whether we act.” reflects the current reformist approach — that capitalism is the only game in town, all we can do is try to stop things getting worse. If you rule out socialism, this is true but what a miserable perspective and what a change from their previous one of gradually making things better. Neither capitalism nor reformism has anything to offer.
The reason I posted it (as I had already provided the link to the report in another message) was the discussion on how findings and predictions should be communicated to the public.
We have in the past exhibited the different approaches. One of us (I wonder who) is very doom and gloom on the prognosis for the future of humanity and others have been critical of this approach as not being particularly fruitful as too negative with its “end of the world in nigh” undertones.
Although optimism and false hope (as also be highlighted on the thread of the moderate tones of the scientific community despite the occasional scare story) can be ruled out as strategies, so just how is the urgency and seriousness of the vital changes required to even mitigate climate change much less reverse its effects can otherwise be communicated?
Their comments reflected our own interest in how we use language to inspire thoughts but more importantly to stir action for socialism as the remedy and not simply direct protest towards legislative regulations and global treaties – both which will be more observed in their breach.
Apparently, Alan, you’re like the poet who didn’t know and are a collapsologiste without knowing it:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/french-braced-for-the-end-of-the-world-b68zktcqb
More on collapsology here.
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