Demockracy
“For poor is the mind that always uses the ideas of others and invents none of its own.”
Hieronymus Bosch
When demockracy is no longer democracy but has become a mere veneer for corporatocracy then peaceful civil disobedience has its place. However, for true legitimacy, it must have the backing of the general public or else the cause is lost.
The jury is out on whether the Extinction Rebellion movement will achieve or thwart that most vital of requirements.
Aside from annoying commuters, one of the major potential factors in scuttling Greta Thunberg’s ship is the near insane adhesion to unachievable demands.
These demands are that the world’s governments should:
Declare a climate and ecological “emergency”.
Decarbonise the economy and halt biodiversity loss by 2025
Establish citizens’ assemblies to work with scientists to inform environmental policy-making.
ALARM!
https://bakerstreetrising.home.blog/2019/10/23/shells-game-distraction-rebellion/
Let us address the first demand:
Are we in an emergency?
Back in 2009, scientists from the World Health Organisation claimed that global warming was responsible for 150,000 deaths each year around the world due to enhancing the spread of infectious diseases, drought, famine, malnutrition, flood, displacement of populations and resulting conflict. They predicted this rate would double by the year 2030. Is that an emergency? It certainly is to those affected, the poor of these developing countries closer to the equator and it should be to those with any humanity. But is it an “extinction level event?” Not quite yet it isn’t.
The planet’s average surface temperature has warmed by around 0.8°C since 1750. CO2 concentrations are expected to have doubled before the end of the 21st century and temperatures are projected to have risen in the range of 1.5 to 4.5°C.
The two extremes of those projections 1.5°C on the conservative end and 4.5°C on the alarmist end are, or should be, at the centre of the debate on the validity of the Extinction Rebellion movement.
From the conservative view, we are already halfway towards 1.5°C by the end of the 21st century and so we should be able to ride it out with some regions becoming drier and less productive but others becoming warmer, wetter and more productive.
From the alarmist view, where Extinction Rebellion stands, a rise of 4.5°C would indeed be a dramatic change and represent a global catastrophe.
This range of uncertainty is ascribed to the lack of understanding (or agreement upon) the role of aerosols, clouds and positive feedback cycles such as arctic amplification – the loss of arctic ice in accelerating global warming.
A champion of the alarmist view is Cambridge professor, Peter Wadhams, world expert on Arctic ice, President of the International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Ocean (IAPSO) and member of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG).
A farewell to ice | Peter Wadhams | TEDxUHasselt
Wadhams believes the loss of ice in the Arctic is now the main driver for climate change and where the focus should be. Arctic warming has been 3-4 times as fast as the rest of the world, including the Antarctic. Some have even claimed that is has been 8 times as fast. These drastic changes took modellers by surprise. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s suite of computer models have proven totally inaccurate in regard to the loss of arctic ice. Worryingly, these same models are also used to predict the rest of the world’s climate.
What was missing from these models was ice thickness. Incorporating volume and not merely area, gives a much faster retreat of ice. When the sea ice retreats, white substance – snow, is replaced with dark substance – water. The albedo, the amount of solar radiation reflected back into space is thus reduced. The same is also occurring with the snowline, white snow is being replaced by dark land across Siberia and Alaska. This causes more warming which melts more ice and snow and so on – a feedback loop which Wadhams calls “the Arctic death spiral”.
Wadhams notes that the change in albedo due to loss of sea ice and snowline retreat across the Arctic has already added 50% to the global warming that CO2 has caused. He predicts that the summer sea ice will have disappeared by the early 2020s.
In 2018 average daily temperatures in the Arctic were up to 20°C higher than average. That translates as an extra 0.6°C of warming across the whole planet.
Let us assume that this upper range of an extra 3°C on top of the 1.5°C due to the doubling of carbon dioxide levels will occur sometime before the end of the century. If we assume this then we may also assume that the warming today of around 0.8°C since 1750 will have the same relationship between the warming due to carbon dioxide levels and that due to feedback loops and other factors. This will give us a value of 0.27°C due to greenhouse gases (excluding water vapour) or around 33% of the actual warming. We can go one step further than this and make use of the study on the Arctic Region Ice Albedo Change from 1979-2011 referred to by Wadhams at around 12:40 in the video. They found that over this 30-year period, the ice darkened sufficiently to cause an increase in solar energy of 6.4 ± 0.9 W/m2 , equivalent to an increase of 0.21 ± 0.03 W/m2 averaged over the globe.
As we know the global forcing of CO2 over the same period was 0.791 W/m2 , we can then see that the albedo forcing was 25% that of CO2. Back to Wadhams’ TED talk, he goes onto explain that the study had underestimated the forcing due to the fact that the snowline retreat over Siberia and Alaska covering 6 million km2 had not been taken into account. This effectively doubled the albedo forcing to 0.42 ± 0.06 W/m2 when averaged over the globe, 50% that of CO2.
Now bringing the increase in surface temperatures of 0.69 °C during 1979–2011 into the picture allows us to estimate the relative weighting of the factors, CO2 forcing and arctic amplification. If CO2 forcing is, as we have assumed, around 23% then that would give a temperature increase of 0.16°C due to CO2. This would mean that arctic amplification would have caused around 0.09°C or 13% of the total warming. Adding in 0.336 W/m2 for the other greenhouse gases (excluding water vapour) gives another 0.07°C or 10% of the total. Altogether, all greenhouse gases and arctic amplification give us 0.32°C, or 46% leaving 0.37°C or 54% for cloud/water vapour feedback or forcing.
Remember these figures are related to the change in forcing over 30 years from 1979-2011. Imagine now that by the end of the century we reach +3 °C relative to the dawn of the industrial age. That would mean 0.69 °C would have been due to CO2, 0.3 °C to the other greenhouse gases (excluding water), 0.39 °C to arctic amplification and 1.62 °C for cloud/water feedback. This is leaving out the potential methane feedback
Oxford Professor Tim Palmer, a physicist who has worked on the IPCC reports, suggests that the two extremes “lukewarmists” on one end and “catastrophists” on the other, are making the same mistake. However, he did state in an interview with the Independent that the danger depends on clouds:
“The relevance of such apocalyptic scenarios for the present climate-change debate depends on cloud feedbacks being significantly and substantially positive,”
“Without them we will probably not warm enough for these releases of methane to occur – another reason to do our utmost to try to understand such cloud feedbacks.”
I have previously addressed the role that forcing rather than feedback due to artificial clouds formed by aircraft may play in the arctic death spiral.
Cloud Wake – Catastrophic Forcing
https://bakerstreetrising.home.blog/2019/10/04/cloud-wake/
Sniffing in the face of danger
It does seem apparent that there is a strong political pressure to minimise the scale of the threat and it does not help that the IPCC has two Exxon scientists who, as leading authors, attend all the meetings. Because the IPCC has a unanimity rule they have substantial influence over the narrative.
This narrative nearly always seems to exclude the feedback spiral aspect and the potential final feedback resulting form the earlier ones as the ice retreats. This would be the release of methane from the permafrost and the arctic seabed leading to huge plumes escaping into the atmosphere which may trigger a truly catastrophic climate regime.
Now, even if the chances of this runaway methane risk are low, should this not be taken very seriously? Should we not be researching options instead of turning our noses up and declaring that the danger, though potentially real, is a long way off?
Late is the hour.
But is it too late?
Decarbonise?
Let us now turn our attention to the second demand of the Extinction Rebellion movement: Decarbonise the economy and halt biodiversity loss by 2025.
Net zero carbon emissions by 2050, as some governments have planned to commit to, is itself an extremely difficult target, let alone by 2025.
What would need to happen? Shifting to electricity alone won’t cut it, as the supply of electricity itself depends upon mostly burning, yes, fossil fuels, with a small contribution from nuclear power. Our civilisation is still basically powered by the steam engine.
No, to achieve true net-zero, fossil fuels would need to be almost completely replaced with such technology as wind turbines, hydro-electric dams, solar panels, geothermal energy, and biofuels. Carbon capture would have to take off to the moon. Some of these are suspect, some more than others. Implementing them on such a scale in such a short timescale would be akin to a global wartime situation and create upheaval of a sort never before experienced by any civilisation in history.
What should also be of major concern is the all too obvious manner in which this movement has emerged in such a well-funded and orchestrated fashion. The notion that it has its roots in grass is absurd. History’s underbelly has shown repeatedly that such social movements have been redirected, or even directed from the start, by powerful corporate and government interests. This movement stinks of such societal subterfuge.
Its leadership and proponents advocate carbon taxation and carbon credits.
Who’s behind them?
The usual players.
For example, 100 companies and lobby groups proclaim in a letter to the UK government:
“We see the threat that climate change poses to our businesses and to our investments, as well as the significant economic opportunities that come with being an early mover in the development of new low-carbon goods and services.”
Prominent among this group is Royal Dutch Shell, one of the tentacles of the Oil Majors. Shell, of constant emissions, countless oil spills, toxic leaks and murder of protestors, is greenwashing its sins. All these companies are fans of free trade and privatization, worker exploitation and despoiling the environment.
The carbon credits trading scheme would allow industrial oligarchs to pay to have their emissions captured elsewhere, into the carbon offsets listed above, while still emitting the same output.
The scam is that the very same oligarchs are themselves behind these supposed carbon offset and renewable technology schemes. They would be transferring money from one hand to the other. If these green-washers are allowed to brainwash the masses, they will pull off the greatest money laundering scheme of all time whilst, like the gangsters they are, going fully “legit.”
And it looks as though their governmental cronies will help them. Extinction Rebellion claims that certain political forces are delighted to see the streets filled with protestors, disrupting daily life and fighting for the planet and demockracy.
The movement believes it is creating a space for the politicians to join the march, fiercely commit to their “tough decisions” on drastic emissions cuts and usher in their long-desired planetary police state.
Countries that do not comply will face huge penalties post-2020. As catastrophe and carbon taxation looms large, it’s important to recognize that as always, the costs of taxes levied on corporations are passed onto the poor. Wealth is de-distributed up the pyramid. Likewise, the funds for the proposed technologies, not yet invented, for Carbon Sequestration, will be sequestered from the carbon-based life forms, whether cheerleading or not. It seems that pretending to cut emissions or stow them away will allow the single, psychopathic syndicate to have their cake, everybody else’s cake, and stuff their faces with cake. Nothing new there.
0.8°C since 1750
Of that 0.8°C, the wealthiest 15% are responsible for 75% - 0.6°C
Of that 0.8°C, the remaining 85%, have added 25% - 0.2°C
Of that 0.8°C, the world`s poorest, 3 billion people, have contributed next to nothing.
And who will pay the price?
When people claim that “we are the primary cause”, remember “if everyone is guilty, then no one is guilty”, as the Italians say.
And who are the very wealthiest who like to claim that we are all in this together? They are the financial and industrial oligarchs that bend to their ends the governments that are supposed to represent the many, yet only represent the few.
Climate Triage
The acceleration of global warming due to arctic amplification and cloud feedback leads Professor Wadhams to the conclusion that even reducing carbon emissions in line with the Paris agreement targets will not save us in time from the hole that we are in and that we must not pretend otherwise. Another way is needed according to Wadhams. He is an advocate of such geoengineering schemes as carbon capture, enhancing lower cloud cover, which has a cooling effect, by means of spraying sea water into the atmosphere from specially designed ships and countering the albedo loss of sea, lakes, snow and ice by covering it with white granules or sheets in a curious reversal of the effects of soot on the arctic ice.
This leads us onto another way to buy time rather than drastic forms of geoengineering or decarbonising tyranny:
In 2003, James Hansen linked the darkening of snow and ice with soot particles to the rapid increase in arctic temperatures:
“The effect of soot on snow is unambiguous, it causes a strong warming effect.”
This accelerates the breakdown of the ice to such a degree that Hansen stated:
“There is no way to account for the rapid retreat of ice globally based only on global warming,”
Soot worse for global warming than thought
Before becoming one of the first scientists to study the role of soot, it is remarkable that his earlier contributions to the field of climate science led some to call him “the grandfather of global warming”. As director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, he pioneered the use of radiative forcing to compare the impact of different warming agents, including factors other than carbon dioxide such as methane and soot (black carbon). He was also among the first to suggest that modest rises in the earth’s average temperature as little as 1 °C above more recent levels, could cause great harm. He became increasingly vocal about the urgent need to reduce emissions, intensifying his activism after the Bush administration attempted to censor him in 2005. He has been arrested on several occasions during protests. He would make Greta Thunberg proud.
A NASA simulation carried out in the same year as Hansen’s pronouncements on soot: 2003, claimed it had caused 25% of the past century’s global warming. Fellow climate scientist at NASA GISS, Drew Shindell, claimed that black carbon (soot) had caused from one-half to one and a half degrees Celsius of warming in the Arctic since 1890 where total warming was nearly two degrees.
In 2009, the Arctic Council, meeting in Norway and made up of the United States, Russia, Canada and other Arctic nations, established a task force to examine ways to decrease the global production of soot, believed to be responsible for 18% of the planet’s warming. The meeting took place after a study found that black carbon was the cause of half of the warming in the Arctic in the last 120 years.
One key to solving the problem was tighter standards for diesel engines of marine ships entering the Arctic circle. Diesel engines account for 50% of black carbon emissions. This can be easily addressed with diesel particle traps that capture the soot from the engines.
A study carried out in 2010 also claimed the quickest way to slow the melting of the Arctic ice and snow was to reduce soot emissions. Mark Jacobson, a Stanford researcher suggested that if soot were reduced or eliminated, the Earth would immediately begin to cool down.
Reducing Soot Might Be Shortcut to Reverse Climate Change, New Study Says
Such measures would have a swift impact upon the climate compared to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere for a hundred years or more whereas black carbon stays no more than a few weeks. Most importantly it would forestall the death spiral of feedback loops in the Arctic.
Using the analogy of triage, the degree of urgency of the wound and the ability to treat it indicates that reducing black carbon in the Arctic is priority one.
The source of black carbon is said to be from the steady rise of industrial processes and fuel combustion. As one would expect, industrial activity is concentrated in the northern hemisphere. Hansen claimed that, since the enactment of clean air regulations passed in the 1970’s in the west, Asia has been mostly responsible for industrial black carbon emissions, contributing one-third. Fire around the world also contributes one-third, and the remaining third comes from the United States, Russia, and Europe.
However, we are presented with a conundrum…
Although Hansen claimed that industrial emissions have blanketed the Arctic ice, a closer look reveal that levels of black carbon in the atmosphere measured at key stations, north of 70° have actually recorded reduced carbon black levels of around 50% since 1990.
This NOAA study found that levels of black carbon in the atmosphere have declined since 1990 at measurement sites Alert in Canada (55%), and Barrow in Alaska (45%). Ny-Alesund in Svalbard only has measurements from the year 2002 but shows similar levels. This is despite increases in the source regions.
Degraded Satellite Sensors?
We also see that levels of black carbon deposited on the surface of Greenland north of 71° have remained the same for 60 years in contradiction to satellite information. The fault according to these scientists was that the MODIS satellite sensors were degraded.
However, south of that latitude, an albedo decline from 2000 – 2014 indicates that deposited black carbon levels there have indeed increased.
Flying Over Dark Greenland Ice
Now from Sharma et al, we learn that:
“The burden of atmospheric black carbon north of 70°N in the Arctic is the result of long-range transport from the former Soviet Union, Europe, North America and east Asia (Sharma et al. 2013)”
From Sherlock Holmes we learn that:
“By the method of exclusion, I had arrived at this result, for no other hypothesis would meet the facts.”
Sherlock Holmes - A Study in Scarlet
Having established that black carbon north of 70°N in the Arctic has declined since 1990, we can apply the method of exclusion and rule out long-range transport of black carbon from the former Soviet Union, Europe, North America and East Asia as the primary factor in the unprecedented warming.
We can also infer that the burden of black carbon south of 70°N is the result of emissions from within the Arctic circle itself.
We have seen that diesel emissions from marine ships entering the Arctic circle are a major contributor. What other contributors can we establish that have sources originating within?
Studies have shown that local gas flaring, where methane gas is combusted in the atmosphere, is the largest source of black carbon within the Arctic, far more than previously thought.
Gas flaring is the deliberate combustion of gas generated from both oil and gas production sites such as wells and offshore rigs, processing plants and petroleum refineries. It may be combusted as a means of reducing pressure or most frequently because pipelines and other infrastructure is lacking and the gas is burned off as unprofitable waste.
This process is responsible for around 3% of global black carbon emissions. However, north of the Arctic circle, flaring is responsible for 66% of emissions and contributes to over 40% of the black carbon deposited on the surface.
Because emissions have a greater chance of finding their way onto the ice and snow, black carbon from within the Arctic has an almost five times larger Arctic surface temperature response (per unit of emitted mass) compared to emissions at mid-latitudes.
Although all the Arctic nations are involved to varying degrees, the major culprit is Russia where gas and oil operations emit ten times the amount produced by other Arctic regions. The significance of this will be addressed later.
Today, plumes from flare stacks contribute to black carbon levels in the Arctic to a degree around twenty times greater than anywhere else in the world in a region that is five times more sensitive. This will increase as Arctic offshore oil and gas rigs grow in number and encroach further north.
The burden of black carbon that is contributing to Arctic ice melt is provided by Big Oil.
“So, it’s not just a warming climate that’s beating back the ice floes; it’s the soot generated from myriad industrial operations in the region. Of course, as the ice melts, more and more of those industries will set up shop in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, etc, and spew more and more soot onto the embattled ice.”
The good news is that this problem can be addressed in a sane manner. Where time is of the essence, such measures as putting in the infrastructure for capturing the waste gases from gas flaring so they can even be used for fuel. Such infrastructure is in place in regions further south where the oil industry has a firmer foothold. Getting them to fit the bill for this climate saving act would be a first step. Scrubbers can also be fitted to the smoke stacks of fossil fuel power stations. We have already mentioned particulate filters for diesel engines in the Arctic region. Pressure would need to be applied to the both the western Oil majors and their counterparts in Russia and China, particularly Russia.
By all means introduce solar cooking fires where possible to reduce the soot emission from wood fires, also a contributor but this would take longer as they are individually harder to reach.
Not only would these steps buy time for the climate but they would also ease the burden on the health of the inhabitants of the Arctic circle. In addition to damaging lungs, pollution has been found to cause brain damage in polar bears.
Worldfires
In addition to gas flaring, another source of black carbon deposited on the Arctic ice are tundra wildfires. Wildfires are uncontrolled fires, fuelled by natural vegetation, that release carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, black carbon and combustion ash into the atmosphere.
Northern regions such as Alaska are experiencing record warmth and precipitation. Because of this, there is a consequent increase in vegetation and thunderstorms, and so, wildfires in the Arctic region are larger, more numerous, and their season is longer every year.
Globally, wildfires have actually declined since the 1950’s, most probably due to better detection, regulation, and control methods.
However, in the Western USA, they have increased dramatically. Further North in Alaska, the increase has been even more dramatic.
Arctic Fires Fill the Skies with Soot
The Arctic region over Norway is no exception to this increase, nor is Siberia where it has been established that wildfires are significantly under-reported.
Russia in particular seems to be going out of its way to ensure the Arctic ice is blanketed with black carbon.
“Large wildfires have been happening here every 10 to 30 years and in the last decades every 5-10 years because of increased anthropological pressure and global climate change.”
Russia in particular seems to be going out of its way to ensure the Arctic ice is blanketed with black carbon.
“In June and July 2019, more than 100 long-lived and intense wildfires blazed within the Arctic Circle. Most of them burned in Alaska and Siberia, though a few raged even in Greenland. As these fires lofted thick plumes of smoke into the skies, they also launched megatons of tiny, harmful particles into the air.”
Arctic Fires Fill the Skies with Soot
Now a singular fact has the utmost bearing upon this issue.
Wildfires are almost always the result of human behaviour.
Humans are the cause of 85% of wildfires.
Do these humans include the industrial magnates and representatives of global powers that would see the opening up of the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route and the modification of the climate to one more favourable to these northern latitudes?
All it would require would be willful incendiarism and equally willful lack of regulation thereof…
Why is it that wildfires have declined globally elsewhere but not in the Arctic circle?
Intentional Ignorance or Ignorance of Intent?
So, we have had nearly two decades of acute awareness in the scientific community of the role that black carbon may be playing in accelerating global warming to dangerous levels.
What has been done?
Very little it would seem.
Perhaps there is a reason for this…
“Big Oil not only believes in global warming, it’s factoring it into the business plan. Consider Exxon’s enormous, already $3.2 billion partnership with Russia’s Rosneft in the warming Arctic, where up to a quarter of the planet’s undiscovered petroleum is thought to be hiding — and where melting sea ice means easier access for drill ships and oil tankers. In 2014, the partners plan to begin drilling in the Kara Sea, north of Siberia, where last summer Russian security forces boarded a Greenpeace icebreaker in a preamble to impounding it and arresting its activists.”
A Royal Dutch Shell vice-president once told a crowd of conference-goers:
“I will be one of those persons most cheering for an endless summer in Alaska.”
Big Oil not only believes in global warming, they’ll profit from it
It is quite clear that Big Oil are quite happy about a globally warmed planet and melted Arctic ice. This is not my theory. This is what they think. I don't have to justify that thinking in any way, I simply demonstrate that that is indeed how they think.
Merchants of Megadeath
https://bakerstreetrising.home.blog/2019/08/28/a-study-in-infra-red-part-32-merchants-of-megadeath/
Of course, they would publicly protest to the skies that they are now converts and fully aboard Greta’s ship.
But perhaps the greenwash is a cynical ruse to divert the attention of the masses down the wrong avenue, transposing the blame on to everyone for the production of CO2 and egging them on toward impossible reduction targets.
Behind this greenwash, the story is an old one and deserves to be told:
A Study in Infra-Red part 1: Phil-anthropogenic Global Warming
https://bakerstreetrising.home.blog/2019/03/18/a-study-in-infra-red/
Hugh Boone is the author of bakerstreetrising.home.blog. He aspires to apply Holmesian principles of deduction to both the issues of our day and the underbelly of history. As the source of inspiration for his writing tells us: “…all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it.”