View previous stories
	Scientists issue urgent 'warning to humanity' over global impact of tree extinctions by IUCN, World Resources Institute, agencies   June 2023   Destruction of world’s pristine rainforests soared in 2022 despite Cop26 pledge. (Guardian News, agencies)   An area the size of Switzerland was cleared from Earth’s most pristine rainforests in 2022, despite promises by world leaders to halt their destruction, new figures show.   From the Bolivian Amazon to Ghana, the equivalent of 11 football pitches of primary rainforest were destroyed every minute last year as the planet’s most carbon-dense and biodiverse ecosystems were cleared for cattle ranching, agriculture and mining, with Indigenous forest communities forced from their land by extractive industries in some countries.   The tropics lost 4.1m hectares of primary rainforest in 2022, an increase of around 10% from 2021, according to figures compiled by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland. The report’s authors warn that humans are destroying one of the most effective tools for mitigating global heating and halting biodiversity loss.   Land use change is the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions behind the burning of fossil fuels and is a major driver of biodiversity loss. Limiting global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels is unlikely without stopping the destruction of rainforests, according to scientists.   At Cop26 in 2021, more than 100 world leaders, including Joe Biden, Xi Jinping and Jair Bolsonaro, signed up to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 in a commitment that covered more than 90% of the world’s forests. The new data suggests that leaders are failing to deliver on their promise.   Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Bolivia headed the table for tropical primary forest loss in 2022. Indonesia and Malaysia managed to keep rates of loss near record low levels after significant corporate and government action in recent years. Bolivia was one of the few big forested countries that did not sign the Cop26 commitment on stopping the loss.   Ghana, a major producer of cacao for chocolate, has suffered the biggest relative increase in forest loss of any country in recent years, although the absolute figures are small.   Away from the tropics, the loss of Russia’s boreal forests slowed after a record year for destruction in 2021, but researchers said this was not an indication of a positive trend.   In response to the new figures, Inger Andersen, the UN’s environment chief, has called for a higher price for forest carbon to eliminate the short-term economic incentive to clear rainforests. Through carbon markets, countries with forests that are critical to the climate – such as Gabon, Brazil and Peru – could receive payments to keep them standing, although there are doubts about their conservation success and ability to scale to the required size. In April, a report calculated that at least $130bn (£100bn) a year was needed to protect the most at-risk areas.   “Forests are critical for our wellbeing and the wellbeing of planet Earth. Ending deforestation and halting forest cover loss are essential ingredients to fast-tracking climate action, to building resilience and to reducing loss and damage. We need to put a higher price on forest carbon, one that reflects the true value of forests, that reflects the actual cost of emissions and that is sufficient to incentivise the sellers to protect standing forests,” Andersen said.   “Forest protection and forest restoration is about so much more than a carbon price. It is about protecting biodiversity; protecting the livelihoods of Indigenous people and local communities, and sustaining the hydrological cycle to stabilise weather patterns and protect ourselves against landslides, soil erosion and flooding. We simply cannot afford to lose more forest cover,” she added.   The 2022 figures cover the final year of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency in Brazil, during which huge areas of the Amazon were cleared. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, his successor, has promised to end deforestation and is holding a pan-Amazon summit later this year where the issue will be discussed.   Brazil, Indonesia and the DRC, which are home to around half of the world’s remaining rainforests, are increasingly working together at UN environmental talks to demand money for protecting forests in a coalition called the “Opec of rainforests”.   The figures describe tree-cover loss, which is not necessarily deforestation. Deforestation is always done by humans while tree cover can be lost through wildfires and other events.   http://www.unsdsn.org/news/the-andean-parliament-declares-state-of-emergency-in-the-amazon-basin/ http://research.wri.org/gfr/latest-analysis-deforestation-trends http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/27/destruction-of-worlds-pristine-rainforests-soared-in-2022-despite-cop26-pledge http://www.theguardian.com/environment/deforestation http://www.ran.org/press-releases/report-major-bank-and-investor-policies-accelerating-forest-destruction-biodiversity-loss-climate-chaos-and-rights-violations/ http://www.ran.org/press-releases/report-major-global-brands-receive-failing-grades-in-efforts-to-stop-deforestation-and-human-rights-violations-breaking-public-policy-promises/   http://forestdeclaration.org/press-release-global-forest-assessment-2023/ http://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/forests/ http://news.mongabay.com/2023/06/new-data-show-10-increase-in-primary-tropical-forest-loss-in-2022/ http://www.dw.com/en/global-forest-watch-report-tropical-forest-loss/a-66034028 http://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cpjj7gz81xrt   Sep. 2022   More Amazon fires so far this year than all of 2021, Brazil report shows. (AFP, agencies)   The number of forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon so far this year has already surpassed that for all of 2021, according to official figures released Monday that triggered new alarm for the world's biggest rainforest.   Satellite monitoring has detected 75,592 fires from January 1 to September 18, already higher than the 75,090 detected for all of last year, according to the Brazilian space agency, INPE.   The latest grim news from the rainforest will likely add to pressure on far right President Jair Bolsonaro, who is fighting to win reelection next month and faces international criticism over a surge in destruction in the Amazon on his watch.   Since the agribusiness ally took office in January 2019, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased by 75 percent compared to the previous decade, destroying the forest cover of an area nearly the size of Puerto Rico last year.   Experts say Amazon fires are caused mainly by illegal farmers, ranchers and speculators clearing land and torching the trees.   Despite the advancing destruction, the Bolsonaro administration has slashed budgets for environmental enforcement operations and pushed to open protected Amazon lands to mining.   Greenpeace Brazil spokesman Andre Freitas called the latest figures a "tragedy foretold."   "After four years of a clear and objective anti-environmental policy by the federal government, we are seeing that as we approach the end of this government's term -- one of the darkest periods ever for the Brazilian environment -- land-grabbers and other illegal actors see it as the perfect opportunity to advance on the forest," he said in a statement.   This has been a worrying year for the Amazon, a key buffer against global warming. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon last month was nearly double the figure from August 2021, at 1,661 square kilometers (641 square miles).   And since the burning season began in earnest in August with the arrival of drier weather, the number of fires has soared.   According to INPE figures, there have been multiple days that surpassed the so-called "Day of Fire" on August 10, 2019, when farmers launched a coordinated plan to burn huge amounts of felled rainforest in the northern state of Para.   Then, fires sent thick gray smoke all the way to Sao Paulo, some 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) away, and triggered a global outcry over images of one of Earth's most vital resources burning.   The front-runner vying to unseat him in next month's presidential elections, ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has vowed to do a better job protecting the Amazon.   Deforestation in Brazil's 60-percent share of the Amazon basin fell sharply under Lula, from nearly 28,000 square kilometers in 2004 to 7,000 in 2010.   http://www.france24.com/en/americas/20220919-more-amazon-fires-so-far-this-year-than-all-of-2021-brazil-report-shows   Aug. 2022   Scientists have issued an urgent “warning to humanity” about the global impact of tree extinctions. A new paper predicts severe consequences for people, wildlife and the planet’s ecosystems if the widespread loss of trees continues.   “Last year, we published the State of the World’s Trees report, where we showed at least 17,500 tree species, about a third of the world’s 60,000 tree species, are at risk of extinction,” said Malin Rivers, lead author of the paper and head of conservation prioritisation at Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI). “Now we want to highlight why it matters that so many tree species are going extinct.   “Without acting now, it will impact humanity, our economies and livelihoods. Ecologically, it will have a catastrophic impact on the planet.”   The joint warning from BGCI and the Global Tree Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s species survival commission (IUCN SSC) is backed by 45 scientists from more than 20 countries, with calls for action signed by more than 30 organisations, including botanic gardens, arboretums and universities.   The large-scale extinction of tree species would lead to major biodiversity losses. Half of the world’s animal and plant species rely on trees as their habitat, with forests containing about 75% of bird species, 68% of mammal species and as many as 10 million species of invertebrates. Forest-dependent species have already declined by about 53% since 1970. “When we look at extinction risks for mammals or birds, underlying that is habitat loss, and habitat loss is often tree loss,” said Rivers. “If we don’t look after trees, there’s no way we can look after all the other life there.”   The extinction of a single tree species can significantly alter an ecosystem, causing a domino effect in its ability to function. When eucalyptus and dipterocarp trees are destroyed, for example, forests are more at risk from fire, pests and disease.   Forests provide 50% of the world’s carbon storage, so further tree extinctions would reduce our ability to fight climate breakdown.   “The new thing in this paper is that it’s the diversity of trees that is so important,” said Rivers. “We’re showing that diverse forests store more carbon than monocultures. That’s true for many of the ecological functions, not just carbon capture, but providing habitat to animals, soil stabilisation, resilience to pests and diseases, resilience to storms and adverse weather. By losing tree diversity, we’ll also lose diversity in all organisms: birds, animals, fungi, micro-organisims, insects.”   More than 100 tree species are already extinct in the wild, but despite their importance, billions of trees are still being lost each year to pests, disease, invasive species, drought, climate breakdown and industrial-scale deforestation for wood, cattle-farming, palm oil and other agriculture, from tropical islands to species-rich areas, such as the Amazon and Borneo.   Globally, more than 1.6 billion people live within 5km (3 miles) of a forest and rely on them for jobs and money. In developing countries, forests provide up to 25% of household income.   “Some people live in the forest and use it for subsistence, for food, shelter and medicine,” Rivers said. “Many more people use forests for their income, to sell things they collect or make from the forest. All those people will be directly impacted by tree losses. A lot of trees also have special spiritual or cultural meaning. When those tree species are lost, that cultural heritage is also lost, like the dragon’s blood trees in Yemen, or baobabs in Madagascar.”   Ahead of the UN’s Cop15 biodiversity conference in Montreal this December, the scientists behind the paper are calling for more protection for the world’s trees, including strengthening the role of trees in environmental and climate policy at state level.   “We want to see action,” said Rivers. “We can all take responsibility for the beef we’re eating and where it’s coming from, and making sure tree products are sustainably sourced. But we also want to see governments take responsibility, so there’s joined up thinking on biodiversity, climate change and other issues.”   http://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ppp3.10314   Apr. 2022   ‘Relentless’ destruction of rainforest continuing despite Cop26 pledge - World Resources Institute   The Tropics lost 11.1m hectares of tree cover in 2021, including forest critical to limiting global heating and biodiversity loss, finds World Resources Institute.   Pristine rainforests were once again destroyed at a relentless rate in 2021, according to new figures, prompting concerns governments will not meet a Cop26 deal to halt and reverse deforestation by the end of the decade.   From the Brazilian Amazon to the Congo basin, the tropics lost 11.1m hectares of tree cover last year, including 3.75m ha of primary forest critical to limiting global heating and biodiversity loss.   Boreal forests, mainly in Russia, experienced a record loss in 2021 driven by the worst wildfire season in Siberia since records began, according to new data from the University of Maryland released via Global Forest Watch.   Experts called the continued forest loss a disaster for action on global heating and said the 143 governments that pledged to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030 at Cop26 held in Glasgow, had to urgently make good on their commitment.   Of the primary rainforest that was lost in 2021 – releasing the equivalent of India’s annual fossil fuel emissions – 40% disappeared in Brazil, with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bolivia, Indonesia and Peru making up the rest of the top five.   Despite the persistent loss of forests, experts pointed to glimmers of hope in the new figures. Indonesia reduced primary forest loss for a fifth straight year following government action on palm oil, fire management and an updated national climate plan which committed the country to becoming a carbon sink by 2030. Malaysia has also reduced primary forest lost in recent years, and experts pointed to the examples of Gabon and the Guyanas, that have had very low rates of forest loss over the last two decades.   Rod Taylor, the global director of the forests programme at the World Resources Institute (WRI), which compiled the report, said while the global rates of forest loss appeared to be flatlining, they needed to dramatically decrease for the world to meet climate targets.   “When you look at unchanging year-on-year statistics, you could conclude that they don’t really offer a newsworthy headline. But when it comes to the loss of primary tropical forests, stubbornly persistent rates relate to the climate, the extinction crisis and the fate of many first peoples. High rates of loss continue despite pledges from countries and companies,” Taylor said.   Wildfires, rising temperatures and land clearances are affecting the resilience of forests around the world. Warnings point to parts of the Amazon being in danger of converting from rainforest to savannah. According to the figures there was a particularly worrying spike in deforestation in the western Brazilian Amazon, linked to large-scale clearing for cattle pastures along existing roads.   The expansion of small-scale agriculture and harvesting of trees to meet energy demands drove forest loss in the DRC last year, while Bolivia experienced record primary forest loss due to agriculture and fires, including in protected areas.   Frances Seymour, a senior fellow at the WRI, said the 2021 figures had to be taken as a baseline for assessing the Cop26 pledges, but underscored that dramatic action was needed, warning that countries that were taking action were not receiving enough financial support.   Seymour said: “We’ve got 20 years of data showing the persistent annual loss of millions of hectares of primary tropical forests alone. But we don’t run out of fingers counting the number of years we have left to bring that number down to zero. We already knew that such losses are a disaster for the climate. They’re a disaster for biodiversity. They’re a disaster for Indigenous peoples and local communities..   “We have to dramatically reduce emissions from all sources. No one should even think any more about planting trees instead of reducing emissions from fossil fuels. It’s got to be both and it’s got to be now before it’s too late".   http://research.wri.org/gfr/latest-analysis-deforestation-trends http://forestdeclaration.org/resources/forest-declaration-assessment-2022/ http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/28/destruction-of-pristine-rainforest-globe-relentless-rate-aoe http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/02/tree-extinctions-species-wildlife-ecosystems-scientists-aoe Visit the related web page
	Pushing the planet into the danger zone for climate tipping points by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts, agencies   Mar. 2023   Risky feedback loops are accelerating climate change, scientists warn. (CNBC, One Earth)   Risky feedback loops that are accelerating global climate change may not be fully accounted for in current climate models, according to a recent study published in the scientific journal One Earth.   A group of international scientists from institutions like Oregon State University, Exeter University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, identified 41 climate feedback loops in what they called “the most extensive list available of climate feedback loops.” Of these, they discovered 27 amplifying feedback loops that are accelerating global warming and only seven that are slowing it.   A feedback loop is a cyclical chain reaction that either speeds up or slows down warming. An amplifying, or positive, feedback loop is the process in which an initial change that prompts temperature rise triggers another change that causes even more temperature rise.   These positive feedback loops, which can be large and difficult to quantify, threaten to cause a permanent shift away from Earth’s current global climate, researchers warned. For instance, warming in the Arctic has led to melting sea ice, which has prompted even more warming because water has a darker surface than ice and therefore absorbs more heat.   Another example involves the impact of wildfires, which are becoming more frequent as the Earth warms and drought conditions intensify. Combustion of the vegetation during wildfires releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which then contributes to the greenhouse effect and triggers even higher temperatures.   “There are many such amplifying feedbacks, including some that are not fully accounted for in climate models,” said Christopher Wolf, a postdoctoral scholar at Oregon State University and a lead author of the study.   “Consequently, the effects of greenhouse gas emissions could be underestimated and strong climate mitigation policies are needed,” Wolf added.   Other dangerous feedback loops include the thawing of permafrost, or the frozen ground that underlies much of the Arctic and contains plant and animal remains. As temperature rise accelerates the thaw of permafrost, the organic matter in the frozen layer breaks down and releases carbon dioxide and methane gas into the atmosphere.   Tim Lenton, an Earth systems scientist at the University of Exeter and one of the study co-authors, said the results suggest that the amplification of climate change could be greater than expected.   “That is yet another reason to accelerate action to limit global warming – because that also limits how much it is going to get amplified by the feedbacks in the climate system,” Lenton said.   Some feedback loops may also be associated with key climate tipping points that could significantly disrupt the global climate system, researchers said. For example, feedback loops that are driving ice melt in the Arctic could ultimately trigger the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet.   “In the worst case, if positive feedbacks are sufficiently strong, this could result in tragic climate change outside the control of humans,” researchers wrote.   “It is too late to fully prevent the pain of climate change as severe impacts are already being felt, but if we can have a much better understanding of feedback loops and make the needed transformative changes soon while prioritizing basic human needs, there might still be time to limit the harm,” they wrote.   http://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(23)00004-0 http://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/justice-key-to-live-within-earth-system-boundaries http://earthcommission.org/news/publications/just-world-safe-planet/ http://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06083-8 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/13/earth-well-outside-safe-operating-space-for-humanity-scientists-find http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458   Sep. 2022   World on brink of five ‘disastrous’ climate tipping points, new study finds.   The climate crisis has driven the world to the brink of multiple “disastrous” tipping points, according to a major study.   It shows five dangerous tipping points may already have been passed due to the 1.1C of global heating caused by humanity to date.   These include the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap, eventually producing a huge sea level rise, the collapse of a key current in the north Atlantic, disrupting rain upon which billions of people depend for food, and an abrupt melting of carbon-rich permafrost.   At 1.5C of heating, the minimum rise now expected, four of the five tipping points move from being possible to likely, the analysis said. Also at 1.5C, an additional five tipping points become possible, including changes to vast northern forests and the loss of almost all mountain glaciers.   In total, the researchers found evidence for 16 tipping points, with the final six requiring global heating of at least 2C to be triggered, according to the scientists’ estimations. The tipping points would take effect on timescales varying from a few years to centuries.   “The Earth may have left a ‘safe’ climate state beyond 1C global warming,” the researchers concluded, with the whole of human civilisation having developed in temperatures below this level. Passing one tipping point is often likely to help trigger others, producing cascades. But this is still being studied and was not included, meaning the analysis may present the minimum danger.   Prof Johan Rockstrom, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who was part of the study team, said: “The world is heading towards 2-3C of global warming.   “This sets Earth on course to cross multiple dangerous tipping points that will be disastrous for people across the world. To maintain liveable conditions on Earth and enable stable societies, we must do everything possible to prevent crossing tipping points.”   Dr David Armstrong McKay at the University of Exeter, a lead author of the study, said: “It’s really worrying. There are grounds for grief, but there are also still grounds for hope.   “The study really underpins why the Paris agreement goal of 1.5C is so important and must be fought for.   “We’re not saying that, because we’re probably going to hit some tipping points, everything is lost and it’s game over. Every fraction of a degree that we stop beyond 1.5C reduces the likelihood of hitting more tipping points.”   Recent research has shown signs of destabilisation in the Amazon rainforest, the loss of which would have “profound” implications for the global climate and biodiversity, as well as the Greenland ice sheet and the Gulf Stream currents that scientists call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc).   A recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the risk of triggering climate tipping points becomes high with 2C of global heating.   The analysis, published in the journal Science, assessed more than 200 previous studies on past tipping points, climate observations and modelling studies. A tipping point is when a temperature threshold is passed, leading to unstoppable change in a climate system, even if global heating ends.   The nine global tipping points identified are: the collapse of the Greenland, west Antarctic and two parts of the east Antarctic ice sheets, the partial and total collapse of Amoc, Amazon dieback, permafrost collapse and winter sea ice loss in the Arctic.   The assessment of the Amazon tipping point did not include the effects of deforestation. “The combination of the warming and the deforestation could bring that a lot sooner,” said Armstrong McKay.   A further seven tipping points would have severe regional effects, including the die-off of tropical coral reefs and changes to the west African monsoon. Other potential tipping points still being studied include the loss of ocean oxygen and major shifts in the Indian summer monsoon.   The scientists define crossing a tipping point as “possible” when its minimum temperature threshold is passed and “likely” beyond the central threshold estimate.   Prof Niklas Boers, at the Technical University of Munich, said: “The review is a timely update on the Earth’s potential tipping elements, and the threat of tipping events under further warming is real.”   He added that much more research was needed to narrow down the critical temperature thresholds, with current estimates remaining highly uncertain.   Prof Thomas Stocker, at the University of Bern, said: “The science on tipping points is far from done – it has barely begun – and much better models are needed to address the question [of] what warming level is critical for which tipping point.”   A special IPCC report on climate tipping points was proposed in May by the Swiss government.   Prof Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter, a co-author of the analysis, said: “Since I first assessed tipping points in 2008, the list has grown and our assessment of the risk they pose has increased dramatically.   “Our new work provides compelling evidence that the world must radically accelerate decarbonising the economy."   http://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/risk-of-passing-multiple-climate-tipping-points-escalates-above-1-5degc-global-warming http://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/topics/planetary-boundaries-tipping-elements-global-commons/news   Aug. 2022   Pushing the planet into the danger zone for climate tipping points   As global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, a group of climate scientists say it’s time to start paying more attention to the most extreme, worst-case outcomes, including the potential for widespread extinctions, mass climate migration and the disintegration of social and political systems.   “Facing a future of accelerating climate change while blind to worst-case scenarios is naive risk management at best and fatally foolish at worst,” an international team of researchers wrote this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.   More than half of all cumulative carbon dioxide emissions have occurred since international climate negotiations started in 1990. Global warming is accelerating and driving a steep increase of extremes like heat waves, wildfires and flooding.   Most recent scientific estimates show that, under current policies, the world is headed for at least 2.4 to 2.7 degrees Celsius warming by late this century.   As a result, the authors set 3 degrees Celsius warming by 2100 as a benchmark of extreme climate change. They chose that level of warming because it exceeds the current established targets of the Paris climate agreement, and because there are “substantially heightened risks of self-amplifying changes between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius warming that would make it impossible to limit warming to 3 degrees Celsius.”   The scientists call for establishing a research framework to assess the risks associated with extreme climate change and recommend that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change compile a special report to give decision-makers a more accurate and realistic picture of the growing threats. The international community should also consider establishing a climate emergency brake, perhaps with a new treaty that would require an emergency response if research shows imminent, irreversible climate tipping points.   Recent scientific advances increasingly show that dangerous climate impacts are occurring faster than researchers once predicted, said Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “We also have so much evidence that we are coming closer and closer to tipping points and irreversible changes,” he said.   He said that recent research on planetary boundaries and hothouse Earth scenarios, as well as policy discussions around the world and even the outcomes of the ongoing IPCC 6th assessment, do not really address the risks of catastrophic climate change.   The rapid rate of human-caused warming, he added, could be “pushing the on-buttons of irreversible trajectories at lower temperature levels than we had previously had reason to be really concerned about.”   Several elements of the planet’s physical systems are already at or very near tipping points, including tropical coral reefs, he said, which will be wiped out at 1.5 degrees of warming.   “We’re essentially there,” he said. “You could kind of say that’s victim number one and this is happening on our watch, as we speak. The second is Arctic summer ice, which is also in that range where the scientific uncertainty is so narrow that we can say with high precision that we are very close to losing it.”   Similar warning signs in other critical systems like the Amazon rainforest, ocean currents that distribute heat globally and even in the high-altitude jet stream that blows weather systems around the world increase Rockstrom’s worry.   “At 1.2 degrees Celsius of global mean temperature rise, you suddenly have an abrupt, unexpected amplification (of impacts) because of interactions with the tipping elements,” he said, adding that scientists have underestimated the pace of change the past 30 years.   “We’re underestimating the risk. Every time, things are happening faster than we had predicted.”   Catastrophe, he said, will be when human interventions can no longer slow climate change, he said. ”We will just be sliding, you know, gradually just drifting off in the wrong direction in terms of sea level rise and climate niches that cannot support human life.”   Complex Systems Can Shock One Another   “We are facing a risk and consequence issue, but have thus far been very reluctant to understand the collective scale of the consequences,” said University of Manchester climate researcher Kevin Anderson, who was not involved in the paper. “If the consequences are that great, then perhaps policy makers may … develop meaningful mitigation strategies.”   “We know the least about the scenarios that matter the most,” said lead author Luke Kemp, a catastrophic risk scholar at the University of Cambridge. “Current climate change is more rapid than the warming involved in previous mass extinction events. Previous societal crises and transformations were in response to modest, natural regional fluctuations. We now face fast, severe, global, man-made climate change.”   It’s not possible to do good risk assessment without studying low-likelihood events that have high-impact outcomes, said co-author Tim Lenton, a University of Exeter climate scientist who has focused on tipping points research for the past 15 years.   After the death last week of his mentor, friend and inspiration, James Lovelock, Lenton noted that the new research fit with Lovelock’s famed Gaia hypothesis that the entire Earth functions as a self-regulating system.   “It sort of goes back to the way he was asking us to look at the climate crisis when he was writing even 20 years ago,” he said. “I’m pretty sure he would approve of this kind of approach. Not because he was a pessimistic person, he was a real optimist and a happy person. But maybe the way to be a happy person is to look hard at the risks and rule them out, or at least know what you’re playing with.”   The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has shied away from focusing on extreme climate impacts “partly because we’ve been getting it in the neck all the time from oil-funded denialists or skeptics, pushing this message of uncertainty, uncertainty, uncertainty,” said Lenton, whose research has been cited in IPCC reports.   The IPCC consensus process is partly political, as well, he said, which influences how the drafts get edited down and what gets included or taken out.   “As people, as societies we need a good risk assessment of climate change,” he said. “We don’t need to know just the most likely outcome, we need to look at the low likelihood, high-impact things.”   More research needs to look at how environmental tipping points can interact with unexpected troubles like pandemics and war, he said, and researchers studying other social stressors need to consider the impact of climate change.   “We have modeling on these different things, food systems, migration, conflicts, but it seems like nobody has really put together the toolkit to take a proper look at the possibility of cascading risks, including social fragility,” he said.   “There is a collective sense, because of what we’ve just lived through and what we’re living through right now, that the world is a much more unstable and volatile place than we were brought up to think as we marched through the late twentieth century.”   Lenton said the authors considered the fact that their paper could mistakenly be construed as feeding into the narrative that climate collapse is inevitable.   “Already some charitable trusts and foundations have decided that the game is up and that we’re in the realm of catastrophe and breakdown and we need to talk about deep adaptation,” he said. “I hope they’re wrong, but I struggle to avoid the conclusion that a lot of people are going to be harmed, and they’re going to want to move around the planet to get away from intolerable climate conditions.”   “We’re stuck in that nation-state, build-a-wall mentality that isn’t going to serve us well when the world is changing so profoundly around us,” he added. “We’ve been tied to agriculture for thousands of years, but the agriculture itself is going to have to move.”   Global warming will also pose challenges for global food security, said study co-author Kristie Ebi, who was lead author of the health chapter in the Fourth National Climate Assessment for the U.S.   “Under a doubling of carbon dioxide, in some important crop plants, you see a 10 percent reduction in protein, and about a 30 percent reduction in B vitamins,” she said. “There’s also about a 5 percent reduction in micro nutrients.”   Over 800 million people in the world already experience food insecurity, she said. “About 1 billion have micronutrient deficiencies and 1.5 billion women and girls suffer from iron deficiency.   “When you start thinking about the consequences of inadequate nutrition, and what that means for brain development, what that means for education, how that intersects with all of the other risks of a changing climate, you realize that that has significant potential catastrophic consequences,” she said.   Ebi said she’s also worried that the spread of mosquitoes carrying diseases like dengue fever and yellow fever is another climate impact that could quickly spiral out of control.   “Dengue fever is the most common viral disease carried by mosquitoes,” she said. “About 400 million people get it every year. And we know that the mosquito is changing its geographic range. As temperatures go up, mosquitoes are going to more places.”   And the spread of yellow fever could be even more catastrophic, she said. “There’s not that many doses of the vaccine for yellow fever worldwide,” she said. “Just think about the math. How are you going to protect against a disease that could have a very high mortality rate if it shows up? That is a nightmare scenario. And, yes, COVID clearly showed we’re not ready for it.”   New climate models that can accurately show 3 million years of climate history show that, at no point during that time, has Earth come close to warming 2 degrees Celsius, Rockstrom said.   “It tells you a lot about what does 2.4 Celsius imply, which is the trajectory we’re following,” he said, “and it’s happening at a blink of geological time. That, to me, gives a high degree of scientific confidence that we’re facing disaster if we follow that path.”   “We don’t know exactly where these tipping points are and where we risk that the entire planet starts drifting away in the wrong direction. However, I would argue that we have enough evidence to act on the science we have now, immediately,” he said.   Lowering the risk requires drastic actions at the U.N.’s 27th Conference of the Parties climate talks in Egypt later this year, he said.   “You’d have to meet at COP 27 and ratchet up every [individual nation’s] plan, and legally lock into place plans to phase out fossil fuels, to end the use of internal combustion engines, stop all investments in coal,” he said. “We need to move faster on all the paths we know so well, but we’re moving too slowly. We’re not even bending the global curve of emissions.”   That’s left the planet on track to surpass the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, and ideally, to hold it below 1.5 degrees Celsius, which pushes the planet into the danger zone for climate tipping points, he said.   “Go beyond 1.5, you go from moderate to high risk, go beyond 2, we go from high risk to catastrophic risk.”   http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/08/world-on-brink-five-climate-tipping-points-study-finds http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn7950 http://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/considering-catastrophe-high-impact-low-probability-climate-scenarios-2018dangerously-underexplored2019 http://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/climateendgame http://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2108146119 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-021-01544-8 http://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1810141115 http://insideclimatenews.org/news/01082022/scientists-study-catastrophic-climate-outcomes/ http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/01/climate-endgame-risk-human-extinction-scientists-global-heating-catastrophe http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/06/revealed-1000-super-emitting-methane-leaks-risk-triggering-climate-tipping-points   http://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/topics/planetary-boundaries-tipping-elements-global-commons http://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/amazon-heat-drives-tibet-temperatures-climate-tipping-elements-connected-half-around-the-globe http://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/planetary-boundaries-update-freshwater-boundary-exceeds-safe-limits http://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/amazon-rainforest-is-losing-resilience-new-evidence-from-satellite-data-analysis http://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c04158 http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries/the-nine-planetary-boundaries.html http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html Visit the related web page
	View more stories