Climate Crisis, Biosphere & Societal Collapse

The equivalent of 12% of all bird species that exist today have disappeared. New research reveals the true scale of both the magnitude of these human-driven extinction waves (due to deforestation, mass hunting and the introduction of invasive species) and their implications for biodiversity.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/7212221

Keeping $1k in a bank for 1 year is equal to the CO₂ emissions of flying New York to Seattle. Because banks invest in fossil fuels.

Social media influencers were paid to boost the UAE’s climate credentials in and around COP28 in what appears to be a coordinated PR effort by the oil-dependent host nation.

Instagram videos of glamorous couples lounging on sun-filled beaches or giving quirky outfit tutorials were used to spread positive messaging about the COP process and the UAE’s position on climate, as the critical UN talks progressed in Dubai.

While 17 of the 20 countries featured in the report have pledged to achieve net-zero emissions – and many have launched initiatives to cut emissions from fossil fuel production activities – none have committed to reduce coal, oil, and gas production in line with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The research conducted by Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Climate Analytics, E3G, International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) urges countries to aim for a near total phase-out of coal production and use by 2040.

US and UK militaries have jointly emitted at least 430 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent since 2015, which is more than the total greenhouse gas emissions produced in the UK in 2022, according to a new investigation by Common Wealth. The British research organization says that the military-focused industrial strategies of both the US and UK have benefitted from state intervention while green sectors have suffered from a lack of support.

"Only a reparative approach can begin to account for their role in environmental breakdown," the study claims, adding that US and UK should contribute alongside other leading emitters to independently-governed funds to "compensate Global South countries facing both climate crisis and a dearth of climate finance contributions from the North."

Across Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park, nature has rebounded with lush exuberance over tbe last two decades. Perhaps surprisingly, this has been achieved not only with measures to protect animals, but also through a commitment to improving the lives of the 200,000 people living in the buffer zone around the park.

By investing in education, healthcare, job creation and livelihoods, the key to this rare conservation vision has been to nurture human potential — with girls’ education and the empowerment of women at its heart.

Air pollution is the most dangerous environmental threat to health, but only 2% of climate finance commitments made by international development funders in developing and emerging countries is explicitly aimed at tackling this issue, the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says.

Citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the WMO warns that there is “high confidence” that Central and South America, southern Europe, southern and Southeast Asia and Africa will be the most affected by climate change in terms of heat-related mortality by 2100, based on 1.5°C, 2°C and 3°C increases in the global temperature.

A group of international scientists warn that the effects of global warming are "progressively more severe, and possibilities such as a worldwide societal breakdown are feasible and dangerously underexplored."

By the end of the 21st century, 3 to 6 billion individuals -a third to half of the global population- might find themselves confined beyond the earth's livable region, encountering severe heat, limited food availability, and elevated mortality rates because of the effects of climate change.

"We warn of potential collapse of natural and socioeconomic systems in such a world where we will face unbearable heat, frequent extreme weather events, food and fresh water shortages, rising seas, more emerging diseases, and increased social unrest and geopolitical conflict," they say.

To counter future breakdowns, the scientists emphasize climate justice and fair distribution of the costs and benefits of climate action, particularly for vulnerable communities, and a transformation of the global economy to prioritize human well-being and to provide for a more equitable distribution of resources.

"We also call to stabilize and gradually decrease the human population with gender justice through voluntary family planning and by supporting women's and girls’ education and rights, which reduces fertility rates and raises the standard of living," their report says.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/7255438

Bergstrom likens scientists to soothsayers, carrying the burden of being able to see the future, a vision that is now hurtling much faster towards us.

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“A team of just under 40 world-leading ecologists had put this story together of collapse right across the [Australian] continent and to Antarctica.”

Bergstrom was one of two lead authors and it was her work that led to the paper, but, despite being at the heart of the research, she was unable to be the leading voice in the media.

At six o’clock the night before the paper came out, the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) told her not to speak anymore and to let the researchers outside the division take over.

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The tight control over scientists within the public service is something former CSIRO climate scientist David Karoly has also experienced.

Since his retirement from the CSIRO last year, he’s spoken publicly about the restrictive culture there and the consequences of self-censorship.

“It’s clear that there is a very large cohort of government-employed climate scientists, both in CSIRO as well as in the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), who are not allowed to talk about issues like climate change,” Karoly says.

“Their views, based on their own expertise and their assessments of other science datasets, is being suppressed and is not being allowed to be communicated openly to the media, or to the public, or often is being suppressed in government reports as well.

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In 2020, Ritchie co-authored a study that found ecologists and conservation experts in government, industry and universities were routinely constrained from communicating scientific evidence on threats to the environment.

It documented cases of senior managers or ministers’ offices preventing researchers from speaking, as well as cases of self-censorship by scientists, who feared damaging their careers or losing funding.

The research paper dubbed the information blackout “science suppression” and said it “can hide environmentally damaging practices and policies from public scrutiny”.

In the paper, dozens of scientists from government, industry and universities described harrowing experiences of being silenced due to financial or political interests of the organisations they worked for. All of them wrote anonymously.

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tl.dr. scientists in Australia speak out about the regime of suppression of research and communication concerning the climate crisis and biodiversity crisis. Whistleblowers tend to be the ones who just retired and, thus, can't be fired or blackballed. The scientists are also getting fed up with being ignored in the traditional "advisor role", so there's going to be more direct public outreach (and a lot of direct blowback to that, such as personal threats).

"Substantial ocean warming and ice-shelf melting is projected in all future climate scenarios, including those considered to be unrealistically ambitious", the study led by the British Antarctic Survey concludes.

"When internal climate variability is considered, there is no significant difference between mid-range emissions scenarios and the most ambitious targets of the Paris Agreement. These results suggest that mitigation of greenhouse gases now has limited power to prevent ocean warming that could lead to the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet."

Currently, about 430 million tons of plastic is produced yearly, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)—significantly more than the weight of all human beings combined. One-third of this total takes the form of single-use plastics, which humans interact with for seconds or minutes before discarding.

A total of 95% of the plastic used in packaging is disposed of after one use, a loss to the economy of up to $120 billion annually, concludes a report by McKinsey. (Just over a quarter of all plastics are used for packaging.) One-third of this packaging is not collected, becoming pollution that generates “significant economic costs by reducing the productivity of vital natural systems such as the ocean.” This causes at least $40 billion in damages, the report states, which exceeds the “profit pool” of the packaging industry.

These numbers are understandably hard to make concrete sense of, even at the scale of specific companies, such as Coca-Cola, which produced 3 million tons of plastic packaging in 2017. That’s the equivalent of making 200,000 bottles per minute.

Notably, what doesn’t get reused or recycled does not chemically degrade but rather becomes a fixture of our world; it breaks apart to form microplastics, pieces smaller than five millimeters in diameter. In the past few years, scientists have found significant quantities of microplastics in the further reaches of the ocean; in snow and rainfall in seemingly pristine places worldwide; in the air we breathe; and in human blood, colons, lungs, veins, breast milk, placentas, and fetuses.