Middle class positive climate change journalism the new climate crisis danger

ByMartyn Bradbury

Climate deniers are on their way out.

As more and more extreme weather events erupt at an ever increasing pace, pretending that the climate isn’t changing rapidly in front of our eyes is no longer a game anyone wanting to be taken seriously can afford to play any longer.

This Australian clown has put an end to denialism as his nation burns.

 

Those Australians who voted right wing and put Morrison in are now the same Australians burning. There’s a delicious irony in the sudden change in their views on global warming.

Those eery orange skies above Auckland put the shits up even the most determined climate denier didn’t they?

That’s why middle class positive climate journalism is the next cultural problem to overcome.

No one believes that the climate isn’t rapidly changing. The science clearly states human generated pollution is causing it and the big oil companies knew back in the 1990s and they lied about it, so rather than support climate denial propaganda…

…they should start sponsoring bullshit positivity climate change journalism.

The Middle Classes will be as difficult to overcome as older white boomers when it comes to climate change. Older white boomers are climate deniers because they culturally feel alienated from debate and hate admitting environmentalists are right. The Middle Classes benefit immensely from the form of capitalism that is making climate change such a crisis and rather than outright denial, because that isn’t culturally acceptable amongst middle class dinner parties, the denial here is all wrapped up in positive bullshit.

Car pooling, electric cars, solar panels, frenetic recycling and plastic minimisation are all held up as some sort of means for change when the reality is none of that will do a damned thing to prepare us for the radical adaption required.

The Middle Classes in NZ have been the biggest hurdle to affordable housing once they all become property investors, their new positive ‘if everyone just does their bit’ climate bullshit will be equally disastrous for meaningful climate change policy.

Let me break it down for you.

Increasing methane (which is more than 20 times more heat holding than C02 but only stays in the atmosphere for a decade) released from the thawing permafrost and warming oceans creates an enormous heat spike and trips a run away heat event that melts all of Greenland and Antarctica. This sudden release of huge amounts of fresh water into the ultra sensitive ocean pumps in the Labrador Sea shuts down the entire Ocean conveyor current that takes heat from the tropics and makes most of Western Europe habitable, this in turn plunges the planet into freezing temperatures as the heat never transfers north and we inadvertently generate an ice age once the methane passes…

The palaeo-record shows global tipping, such as the entry into ice-age cycles 2.6 million years ago and their switch in amplitude and frequency around one million years ago, which models are only just capable of simulating. Regional tipping occurred repeatedly within and at the end of the last ice age, between 80,000 and 10,000 years ago (the Dansgaard–Oeschger and Heinrich events). Although this is not directly applicable to the present interglacial period, it highlights that the Earth system has been unstable across multiple timescales before, under relatively weak forcing caused by changes in Earth’s orbit. Now we are strongly forcing the system, with atmospheric CO2 concentration and global temperature increasing at rates that are an order of magnitude higher than those during the most recent deglaciation.

So within the space of decades we go from 10 degrees+ heat waves to freezing cold, the inability of species to be able to adapt within the space of 30 years to such extremes causes vast extinctions and leaves most of the planet uninhabitable for complex civilisations.

Among the surprises that have emerged from analyses of oxygen isotopes in ice cores (long cylinders of ice collected by drilling through glaciers and ice sheets) has been the recognition of very sudden, short-lived climate changes. Ice core records in samples extracted from Greenland, Antarctica, Canada’s Arctic Archipelago, and high mountain glaciers in South America show that these climate changes have been large, very rapid, and globally synchronous. Over a period of a few years to a few decades, average temperatures have shifted by up to half of the temperature differences seen between the Pleistocene ice ages and their interglacial periods—that is, as much as 5–15 °C (9–27 °F).

This is not getting better, the temperatures are only going up and once the heat becomes a run away event radical solutions for adaptation will become the only solutions.

No amount of positive media coverage is going to fix this.

 

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21 Comments

  3. Do NOT upset the passengers in the deck chairs on the Titanic, they are enjoying their cocktails.

    1. Trump is following NACT’s dearest wish, along with removal of the RMA.
      Irresponsible pricks who just don’t care about environment or society.

      Greed and corruption

    1. Look to how humans survived before fossil fuel. Smaller number and less energy dependent culture based on local food and resources.

        1. A crash will happen because no effective change has been implemented for the 48 years that we have known a crash was ahead on the path were and are traveling.
          Those with the wealth and power who have driven us towards the crash, will rely on the crash to drastically reduce human numbers. They will have resources to protect their position, or so they hope.

          Greed is blinding.

  6. I am all for developing measures that benefit the environment, but I have to admit I would be a bit upset if I couldn’t drive the Avenger anymore

    1. The day is gong to come when you can’t drive your Avenger anymore or ever again. These things happen all the time. We get used to them after a brief period of grief.
      But eating to stay alive is a bit harder to leave behind.
      Choices and priorities are best explored early before being forced into situation you have had no input in planning.

  7. I’m keenly looking forward to future positive stories regarding climate change…

    “Australia Now A Barren, Ash-Choked Wasteland Almost Entirely Devoid Of Life”
    “Russian Village Devoured By Starving Polar Bears Due To The Complete Destruction Of Their Habitat”
    “Luxury Cruise Ship Sunk After Collision With Plasticberg The Size Of Greenland”
    “Donald J. Trump Reelected For Sixth Term As America Falls Victim To Virulent Brain-Eating Pathogen”

  8. Humans need to stop harvesting energy and live much simpler lives in small self sufficient communities which concentrate on growing food and restoring the environment.
    Human numbers have to fall and will as we starve through lack of preparation for the changes ahead that are now unavoidable.
    The two questions are
    How can we stop making it worse than what we have made it to date.
    What do we have to do to shift to small eco conscious communities.

    Yes deaths on a scale not seen before are unavoidable. We must look beyond that horror and plan long term.
    The power of community to direct and conserve resources does not include corporate for profit thinking.

  9. Martyn, the scenario you have presented -‘this in turn plunges the planet into freezing temperatures’-is incorrect. Ice ages occurred because in recent geological times there was much less CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans than now, i.e. 800,000-year record:

    https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/co2_800k.png

    Desequestering carbon (in the form of coal) and desequestering hydrocarbons (in the form of oil and gas) and burning them has altered the geochemistry of the Earth to such an extent previous macroclimate events no longer apply.

    In other words, as long as industrial humans keep burning fossil fuels the Earth will continue to overheat. Indeed, there may well already be sufficient disturbance to the geochemistry that even if humanity ceased burning fossil fuels tomorrow the Earth would continue to overheat for many decades. Continuing on the present path guarantees catastrophic overheating, and the commensurate meltdown of ice.

    It would take a long time for Antarctic ice to substantially melt, but the ice on Greenland is very vulnerable to melting, and will generate about 7 metres of sea level rise when it does go -arguably towards the end of this century.

    The effect of overheating on methane clathrates on the bottom of arctic seas is still unknown. Eruption of that would certainly exacerbate the overheating we are currently enduring.

    Just as scary is the accumulation of lesser known gases such as nitrous oxide and the recently reported catastrophe-in-the-making:

    ‘Study finds shock rise in levels of potent greenhouse gas’

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/21/study-finds-shock-rise-in-levels-of-potent-greenhouse-gas-hfc-23

    ‘Scientists say one tonne of HFC-23 emissions is equivalent to the release of more than 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.’

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