Earth breaks 12th straight monthly heat record – it’s time to acknowledge we have a run away climate event here

1. I fear the horse has bolted, and it is near impossible now to reverse things in time and avoid a catastrophe. I really wish it was different, but humans are so dependent on fossil fuels, they keep ignoring the issue and continue to drive in their cars as if nothing has happened.

   Some even welcome the warming, in countries such as ours, as they rather have a warm winter than a cold one.

   We are mentally wired like Neanderthal Man was, and hence we are stuck in some state of retardedness, I fear, most will only act when it is far too late and when the water starts lapping at their front door.

   • +1

   • Dead right MiA – we simply aren’t wired for this type of problem/situation.
     As people have said, if CO2 was brown and smelly there might be a chance. To overcome our own base wiring is extremely tough, even though we’re smart enough to realise it isn’t up to snuff.
     I’m not even sure if some will act when the water starts lapping, they’ll have dug themselves into such a denier hole that they’d rather not lose face and admit it.
     Daniel Ariely, psychologist, (Google him, he makes great videos) has described global warming as the perfectly designed problem for humans.
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFlXgSkvslI

2. No one is listening Martyn.

   I live in a small provincial tourist town and the local council has been building a multi million Council Chambers, and it is at sea level in the middle of the town.
   In my view, the whole town will be in trouble sooner or later and this scenario will be repeated all over NZ where the towns and cities are near the coast.

   Surely this should be a Government issue as well as Local bodies.
   It seems they are asleep at the wheel on Global Warming.

   Dingbats, the lot of them.

   • You are absolutely right. City, district and regional councils are staffed by maniacs, and all they want to do is add projects to their CVs and waste public money as quickly as possible. They are prepared to breach NZ statutes -the Local Government Acts of 2002 and 2012- and lie continuously to the general populace in order to do so. And other than a few individuals, nobody gives a damn.

     We know for certain that multi-metre sea level rise will occur over coming years -we just don’t know how much or how fast because most of the factors and processes involved are self-reinforcing and have exponential tendencies.

3. Tired 🙁 Yes, we are with the rest of the plants, animals and sea life in deep Poo. We can only wait and observe as the climate does its own thing. Never mind we destroyed the balance now we must tolerate the new equi point nature is heading for.

   • CO2 levels – “we’ve crossed the tipping point….we’re fucked”

     This is from Roger Caldwell an American scientist in the Philippines concerned with climate change. It’s not good news.

     “Last year, 2015, saw the largest rise in global CO2 concentration since records began. The rise was 2.99ppm. This year, that record will again get smashed, as are already 3.58ppm higher than 2015.

     This is happening even though mankind’s emissions have stayed flat for the last 3 years (according to the IEA) due largely to phenomenal growth of RE (wind and solar).

     This is really bad news because it means that nature, not man, is now in control of the extinction event that we started.

     The record El Niño can be credited for part of the rise, for example, the combined years of ’97/’98 saw an increase of 4.78ppm. But it doesn’t compare to the 6.57ppm were seeing thus far in ’15/’16.

     We’ve crossed the tipping point. CO2 is now rising faster due to climate feedback than it is to man’s emissions. In other words, we’re fucked.”

     • Brutal Heatwave Hits 122 F in India

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGK9Vl_PbH0

       • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXq5OH5CHLQ

4. Problem is we do mostly know what happens in hothouse events. Permian and PETM mass extinction. We have knocked on something that will be worse than the Permian Mass extinction, according to some we could have started a total Venus planet event. Unliveable Earth for any life at all. Earth is only just inside the hot side of the goldilocks zone. Read Under a Green Sky, and The Sixth Extinction.
   Please see http://www.robertscribbler.com your mouth will drop when you see how huge the fire that hit that Tar Sands town has become. They call it the Beast.
   It is really depressing and sad as hell that our civilization just doesn’t give a tin of shit and never has for nature. Please read anything at all by Derrick Jensen (especially A language Older Than Words) and you can see how disturbed and screwed up our civilization truely is. If you are a nature lover like me his writing will help you understand this horror show in so many ways.
   It is going to end horrifically. Humans can’t plan themselves out of wet paper bag, we are stuffed, once we lose hope we can fight, until then everyone is sitting on a fence waiting for Hope who ever that is?
   It needs to all come down, that sounds crazy but what is happening to the planet’s weather and what this civilization has always been and still is an abomination of nature, it needs to die fast!

   • Right on Kate
     This shit storm has been 60 million years in the making.
     In the last few extinction events all the coal, oil, and gas we have burnt and added to the CO2 burden was safely sequestered below ground, we have released it a geological speed of light.
     I read somewhere that 1 years fossil fuel use is equel to 400 years of total planetary growth, which means in the past 5 years, humans have burnt the carbon equivalent of every tree, and critter the has grown since Christ.
     Plus ‘we’ have more than doubled the previous 400,000 year max atmospheric level of CH4, from .7 to currently nearly 1.9 ppm
     There is supposedly 2,000 gigatons of abiotic CH4 locked under the fast thawing sub sea ice? With 50 gigatons ready to ‘burp’ any day now, (that prediction is over 2 years old. tick tick tick) from the Siberian arctic shelf area. 50 GT is meant to be equal to past 200 years of our emissions.
     Then there is the very fast melting tundra, with all its trapped CH4 (google pingos), and massive amounts of carbon, and CH4 from the thawed rotting ancient vegetation, and the ‘farting’ microbes.
     CH4 could be as much as 300 to 1 over CO2, which puts the environment @ 1,000 ppm CO2/CO2e + the other gasses.
     We are at the dawn of a massive clusterfuck.
     A blue ocean event could see us chocking on methane.
     We are lucky in New Zealand, at least we have an environmental party and their growth based saving scam.

   • Right on Kate
     This shit storm has been 60 million years in the making.
     In the last few extinction events all the coal, oil, and gas we have burnt and added to the CO2 burden was safely sequestered below ground, we have released it a geological speed of light.
     I read somewhere that 1 years fossil fuel use is equel to 400 years of total planetary growth, which means in the past 5 years, humans have burnt the carbon equivalent of every tree, and critter the has grown since Christ.
     Plus ‘we’ have more than doubled the previous 400,000 year max atmospheric level of CH4, from .7 to currently nearly 1.9 ppm
     There is supposedly 2,000 gigatons of abiotic CH4 locked under the fast thawing sub sea ice? With 50 gigatons ready to ‘burp’ any day now, (that prediction is over 2 years old. tick tick tick) from the Siberian arctic shelf area. 50 GT is meant to be equal to past 200 years of our emissions.
     Then there is the very fast melting tundra, with all its trapped CH4 (google pingos), and massive amounts of carbon, and CH4 from the thawed rotting ancient vegetation, and the ‘farting’ microbes.
     CH4 could be as much as 300 to 1 over CO2, which puts the environment @ 1,000 ppm CO2/CO2e + the other gasses.
     We are at the dawn of a massive clusterfuck.
     A blue ocean event could see us chocking on methane.
     We are lucky in New Zealand, at least we have an environmental party and their growth based saving scam.

   • I agree with most of what you say.

     The Earth has basically two states, cool and hot, and flips between them but it is unlikely that temperatures will ‘go Venus’ because the radioactivity that generates heat in the core of the Earth is now at a lower level than in past geological eras.

     That said, unless humans change their ways drastically they will definitely overheat the planet sufficiently to exterminate most vertebrate species (including humans) around the middle of this century. Perhaps a bit before.

     It is perfectly evident that the humans who need to change their ways the most -politicians and corporate leaders- are incapable of changing their ways and just keep banging away with the same ridiculous narratives that are at the core of the predicament -population growth and consumerism- generating a dismal inevitability to collapse.

     Energy starvation and Abrupt Climate Change will eventually bring the system to a standstill but far too late.

     Hopefully there will be ‘treason trials’ in the near future.

5. Yes, runaway warming, Abrupt Climate Change, Planetary Meltdown.

   Having spent the past 30 years [since this issue was identified as being absolutely crucial] making it worse faster, a good starting point for action would be to stop making it worse faster.

   Unfortunately that would require a level intelligence and integrity which is clearly almost totally absent from the current political arena.

   Here’s an update on Lake Mead, now that ‘the drought is over’:

   http://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp

   And Canada is still ablaze:

   ‘By mid-afternoon Thursday, reports were coming in that the Fort McMurray Fire had again grown larger. Jumping to 1.2 million acres in size, or about 2,000 square miles, the blaze leapt the border into Saskachewan even as it ran through forested lands surrounding crippled tar sand facilities. It’s a fire now approaching twice the size of Rhode Island. A single inferno that, by itself, has now consumed more land than every fire that burned throughout the whole of Alberta during 2015.’

   https://robertscribbler.com/

   It’s going to be a very ‘interesting’ northern summer as the idiots, liars and criminals we have as leaders bring about a literal re-enactment of the classic 1961 film ‘The Day the Earth Caught Fire’ and the corporate media tell everyone who will listen to consume more and increase their CO2 emissions.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUFtgep9sj4

6. Adaption is a pointless argument because unless we actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions the planet will get hotter and hotter and eventually become unliveable. If we don’t reduce them ourselves, the planet will do that for us by billions of lives being lost, most likely in a global nuclear war driven by the extreme pressure on resources and hundreds of millions of climate refugees.

   Apart from that sad argument, the reality is that in New Zealand we have dumbed down the population so far thanks to monetarism etc that we don’t have the human capital to adapt very well. You need intelligent thinking but judging by the present government and its huge support, we simply don’t have that sort of intelligence available any more. New Zealand will play a vital role in the event of any global catastrophe as a Noah’s Ark of knowledge, species etc but at this rate it will become an isolated island of buffoons driving about in giant utes. To think that civilisation will have to refind its way after a catastrophe from what presently exists in New Zealand society suggests that the new human society will be as bad as the civilisation that has just been wiped out with nothing learned from the experience. Perhaps it will become an island cult with giant statues of a god that strangely looks like John Key.

   • +100… to all the comments and the Post re global warming…yes scary alright!…almost too big to contemplate!

     for my tuppence worth:

     1.) Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything – Capitalism vs. the Climate ‘ is well worth having and reading

     2)imo the whole issue is primarily one of overpopulation of the human race…this is where we should start…

     (patriarchal monotheistic religion eg Old Testament … gives man and in particular males the right to dominate the planet , animals and females…and exploit it…man is in God’s image)

     1.) …countries, cultures and religions( which call for over- population eg male dominated Catholic Church) …which overpopulate must be called to account ( we all know which countries are overpopulated )

     ( Western countries have not increased their populations for some time and in fact many are decreasing in population…well- educated women with equal opportunities for education and jobs do not over-breed…overpopulation is a feminist issue)

     2.) …world economics and capitalist values must be changed…we need a different idea of what constitutes quality of life and morality …it isnt consumerist wealth and it isnt growth at all costs

     3.) the values of the planet and sustainability of the planet Earth /Gaia/ Papatuanuku must be paramount

     ( we must eat and live frugally…rampant consumerism should be frowned upon…animal rights like human rights, indigenous peoples’ rights , and women’s rights to control their lives and reproduction must be paramount)

7. You keep making the same assumptions from the evidence but have you ever thought the evidence could be interpreted another way? Forget 60 million years & try 6000 years & a global flood, you will find many warnings about the Earth to be destroyed by fire, a time of trouble such as never was, mankind destroying the Earth but also a way of escape. The almost daily worldwide events tell us that life as normal is not the future.

8. Yes, humans are not God’s chosen to rule the world, they are just a higher order of animal. The main differences is that, unlike most other creatures, they prey on each other and they knowingly foul their nests.
   Why would any aliens want to come here, unless they want to observe how a species can wilfully destroy itself?

   • Well its nice to see you have considered the option. I wonder if you would think differently if you knew the “aliens” had different values to us (Rom 5:8)? I choose to believe we are made in the Image of God & while you have only touched on our failings the evidence is all around us that we have totally different organization & creative skills than animals.

     • QT, it may come as a bit of a shock to you, but not everyone believes in your supernatural deity.

9. Politics has nothing to do with solving problems or making improvements: politics is all about making predicaments WORSE, but pretending that solutions and improvements are being provided whilst at the same time orchestrating the depletion of energy and resources, and degrading the overall environment.

   As long as the idiotic notion of infinite growth on a finite planet is held in esteem (and there is no indication of that idiotic notion being dropped by politicians any time soon) everything will continue be made worse. Indeed, since all our predicaments are of an exponential nature, we can say that everything will be made worse at an ever faster pace…..until the system destroys itself and destroys the habitability of the Earth.

   First Law of Sustainability: “You cannot sustain population growth and / or growth in the rates of consumption of resources. ”

   http://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy.html

10. The question is, for how many years into the future will we continue to have “five years”? And then will it be shaved down to three years for many more years, after which two years, etc. etc….

11. It should be headline news that Naomi Klein has been awarded the 2016 Sydney Peace Prize . She makes the connection between militarism, climate chaos and extreme inequality..all related, all need to be tackled together.

    The situation is urgent!!

12. While this Environmentally dirty Government prop up their passion for more roads and trucks while promoting the use of dummy advisors like “The Callaghan Innovation project” https://www.callaghaninnovation.govt.nz/sites/all/files/callaghan-innovation-soi-june-2016.pdf

    A clear privatisation interest focus seen above this “Callaghan Group” uses their privatisation influence as a Government funded group with no scientific focus on Climate change mitigation process’s at all!!!

    This set up has been designed falsely by Steven Joyce to steer us away from climate change issues!!

    While clearly at the same time this Government are destroying our regional rail which would easily help to help save our planet, water quality and our air quality, & health!

    But not while this lot are still running down our country using pseudo so called environmental sensitive/Innovation focus groups like this;

    https://www.callaghaninnovation.govt.nz/news-and-events/callaghan-innovation-board-appointments

    Science and Innovation Minister Steven Joyce today announced the appointment of Alan (Al) Monro to the Callaghan Innovation Board.

    Callaghan Innovation was established in 2013 to support science and technology-based innovation and its commercialisation by businesses, in order to improve their growth and competitiveness.

    Sorry folks they are just using smoke and mirror’s until we loose the planet.

13. The graph at this link shows the shocking increase in atmospheric CO2 that has occurred recently:

    http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html#global_growth

    CO2 has probably peaked for 2016 at approximately 408 ppm, up 4 ppm on 2015.

    https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/mlo_two_years.png

    Meanwhile, Arctic ice cover continues to decline faster than normally, leading to a widening gap between the ‘red worm’ and the ‘black worm’/

    http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

    4 months to go.

14. On the news last night, more New Zealand seeds are being sent to Svalbard Seed Vault. You know that things are dire, when Key and his fellow 1% ers start hatching an exit plan, for when the world descends into runaway global warming, then global flooding and then worldwide anarchy.

    The outed 1% ers with their sleazy money-laundering trusts have decided that it is about time to send seeds to the vault, pull up the ramps on their supercruisers, or head to their tax-haven islands or cloister themselves behind 50ft high, electrified gated compounds.

    Soon the abject poor, the corporate poor and working poor of the world will join the dots from the 1% ers to global and corporate greed.

    But it will be too late. TS Eliot put it best

    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang, with a whimper

    • It won’t do the 1%ers (or their children) any good of course, though they may manage to eke out perhaps 5 years longer than non-1%ers.

      The rate of change of atmospheric and ocean chemistry now far exceeds that of all previous mass extinction events…..implying extinction of the human species well before the end of this century.

      We must now think of neoliberal capitalism as a mass-murder-suicide cult.

15. UN Assessment: Global Destruction of Mother Earth on Fast Track

    Without a change in current trends, ‘the state of the world’s environment will continue to decline’

    http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/20/un-assessment-global-destruction-mother-earth-fast-track

    webwalk comments:

    From the article, commenting on the UNEP report:
    “It is essential that we understand the pace of environmental change that is upon us,” stated UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

    And then:
    “If current trends continue and the world fails to enact solutions that improve current patterns of production and consumption, if we fail to use natural resources sustainably, then the state of the world’s environment will continue to decline,” Steiner said, emphasizing the urgency “to work with nature instead of against it to tackle the array of environmental threats that face us.”

    i absolutely agree with both Steiner’s cited statements, but i cringe at his soft-pedal phrase “the world’s environment will continue to decline.”

    On geologic time scales, the world’s environment is in a process of sudden ecological collapse. We humans generally have not been able to grasp the climatic and ecological changes underway until very recently, since we live our brief lives on human time scales. But the fact now that those of us who have been here a few decades can, absolutely unmistakably, recognize experientially that the climate and the ecology are changing, means that these changes are incredibly, amazingly rapid in an ecological frame of reference.

    In fact, scientists who study the geological record of life on Earth, say that the pace of today’s ecological disruption is faster than took place during Earth’s previous 5 “great extinction events.”

    Again, we can’t really grasp this comparison experientially, but the fact that we can all notice clear climate and ecological changes just over the past decade, means the rate of environmental change on the geologic time scale graph has just shot straight upward in a sudden hyperbolic curve.

    A process of “decline” sounds like some slow, steady reduction, but the reality is a sharp, sudden, and accelerating dis-integration of the complex ecological web that we are part of.

    Red alert, emergency measures, “all hands on deck,” and fundamental transformation of the economy – “to work with nature instead of against it,” ignoring and overriding the entrenched interests that claim to “own” and “profit from” the economy – are what is called for.

16. Ryan in New England / May 21, 2016

    Does everybody remember how crazy 2015 was in regards to the rapidly changing environment? Last year already seems like the good ol’ days compared to the total insanity we are experiencing this year. It’s difficult to even to keep up with all of the news, and each report or study seems to be dealing with a record setting/unprecedented event. The worst fears of climate scientists from the 80s are all becoming a reality. The Arctic ice cap is currently melting away. The far North is experiencing outrageous fires that didn’t exist decades ago. The forests of the West are being decimated by pine beetles that used to be kept in check by cold temperatures. The glaciers and snowpack are disappearing from mountain regions, a valuable source of freshwater that is vital for agriculture and necessary for communities that have traditionally depended on meltwater from glaciers/snowpack. The world’s corals are dying from extreme bleaching events. Wet bulb temperatures are now approaching 35C. Droughts are becoming severe enough to have profound ramifications for the social fabric of various countries around the world. The oceans are becoming too acidic for the sea life that builds calcium carbonate shells. The Greenland ice sheet is rapidly melting, creating a cool pool in the North Atlantic, with implications for the Gulf Stream and storm creation. Antarctica melt is accelerating and contributing to sea level rise. The sea levels are rising far faster than anybody expected. The strongest storms the world can create have become even stronger. Heatwaves have become more intense. Precipitation has become more intense resulting in unprecedented floods. Mosquito and tick born diseases are spreading to new latitudes.

    Everything that was predicted to happen back in the 1980s has become a reality, along with many unexpected changes. It makes my head want to explode when deniers claim AGW isn’t real. It is, and it’s happening all around us, just open your eyes!

    https://robertscribbler.com/2016/05/20/wet-bulb-near-35-c-heatwave-mass-casualties-strike-india-amidst-never-before-seen-high-temperatures/

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