Are they simply putting us off?
Well!, They – the World leaders – seem to agree to act so that the rising temperature should be kept below 2 degrees Celsius, or preferably at 1,5 degrees. Not all of them though: the USA are not participating. The biggest authority on climatology, Donald Trump, agrees that temperatures are increasing, but his expert calculations prove beyond doubt that human kind har been wrongly accused and convicted of malpractice.
He has not been able to come up with an alternative explanation, even though he is also the authority supreme, on alternative truths.
But the rest of the world leaders seem to be pretending, not actually acting.
World leaders have a simple, but efficient way to circle around the main issues. They promise that now they will find ways to implement the promises from the COP23 in Paris – the one promising 2 or even 1,5 degrees. Every country are allowed to find their own methods – no cooperation in finding the best global solutions to this borderless problem.
Each country are allowed their political dance circling around the problem, so that it seems that they are acting. But as one of the Swedish speakers (Greta Thunberg) at COP24, stated: You have ignored us in the past, and you will ignore us in the future.
The world leaders started their circling dance in 1995, and have had 24 meetings to find solutions and to begin acting. But they are still just circling around. The COP-meetings have in essence just been a sideshow to entertain and satisfy the public.
There were not many concrete information on what they would do from the last COP meeting, when the many world leaders, with the polish president in the front, clapped at themselves for yet another time of no action, but successful manipulation.
Let us have the answer to the most important questions:
How much should the emissions of CO2 (or CO2 equivalents) decrease in order to reach the goal of 2 degrees?
AND
What are the primary CO2 emitters, like the USA, China and the EU, going to do to fulfill this decreased emission?
The answer to the first question is well known. But the second answer is still blowing in the wind, with increasing hurricane frequency.
The COP sideshow had its premiere performance in 1995. If the leaders had acted at that time, and implemented solutions to decrease CO2 emissions, the economic impact of this implementation would have been far less important to the powerful elite, and the chance of obtaining the goal of 2 degrees would have been far easier to accomplish.
Now we have wasted 25 years on politicians in power, but powerless to act.
There are many interesting sources on the net to help provide the first answer. One of them is this.
This report from 2010 is a summary of numerous scientific reports, compiled by the independent organization climatecommunication.org. A short summary of the summary:
- To keep the temperature increase at 2 degrees or below, the global CO2 concentration should be kept at 400 to 450 ppm (0,04 to 0,045%) and be kept at this level for an extended period of time. In 2010 the concentration was 382 ppm (other sources say 389 ppm), with an increase of about 2 ppm-points per year. It is still increasing, and in January 2019 it reached 410 ppm.
- To keep the concentration at this level CO2 emission will have to be decreased by 60% at 2050.
- The global economic impact of such a reduction would a decrease in the global GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of 3%, i.e. economic growth reduced by 0,12% each year.
I think even the most growth dependent companies would have survived. In the USA economic growth in GDP were about 3,2% in 2010. I doubt very much that a reduced growth of 3,08% a year would have had any significant impact on US economy.
But alas.; Trump is a president, that is sucking up to the poorer part of the society, while continuing a growth strategy, that ought to have become fossilized many years ago.
It is far more uncertain if we will survive the climate changes. The longer we wait, the more expensive it becomes and the greater the impact will be. The potential socio-economic problems caused by implementing the necessary changes will become greater the longer we wait.
It is like waiting months to have an infected tooth removed, because you are afraid of the pain involved.
Oops! I forgot the impacts on the ecology and biodiversity. But remember: the planet will get over it. It has been hit by biodiversity-crises many times before, several of them far worse that what we humans will be able to provoke. The planet has survived loosing more than 90% of its biodiversity, and have been able to bounce back. It will be able to do that again. We should focus on our ability to survive as a species. We can protect the planet AND human kind by making sure that the poorest part of the population will be favored over the rich part, who are the ones culpable in creating the problems, with their overconsumption of imported products, air travel, beef etc.
We didn’t get started in 1995, we were still circling in 2010, and we still haven’t started anything but talk in 2018/19.
If we had started in 1995 in reaching the goal of a 60% decrease in CO2 emission by 2050, a yearly decrease of about 1% would have been enough. But now a yearly decrease of 3,3% is necessary. This will be substantiated at the end of this blog entry.
When debating the necessary actions to accomplish the goal, the focus is on what mister and missis ordinary should do: eat less meat, and fly less, etc. The focus is on ordinary people. They are the guilty ones, those that fail to act.
But is this real?
Of course it would have an impact if all Americans, Chinese and Europeans cut down on their beef and air travel. But we need to remember that most of the energy consumed in producing all this beef, is an effect of the fact that the beef is produced by growing fodder or even importing it, and fertilizers, from far away. The cows are produced in enormous industrial facilities, consuming fossil fuels at an enormous rate. If we gradually cut down on this behavior, and produced beef by simply letting the cows eat grass, the energy consumption from this production would decrease significantly – some say about 70%. The production would of course decrease as well, so we would have to eat less beef, probably by about two thirds or more – source.
The same way of thinking could be transferred to other parts of the economy. Our national economies have become extremely dependent on world trade, and this means that products or materials necessary for production are being transported over vast distances, consuming fossil fuel at an enormous rate. Globalized trade could very well be one of the main culprits in the climate blame game.
Mister and missis ordinary would still have to act, consuming less imported products. Companies would have to act, by decreasing their reliance on global trade. But politicians also need to act to create the political and macro-economic framework needed to boost this reorganization of the economy. It would be a good idea if countries worked together.
Remember: all we need is a 3-4 % decrease in CO2 emmission each year. It will be tough, but it can be done if we all participate constructively, without impacting the macro-economy severely.
In essence we need to de-globalize national economies, gradually by some 3-4 percent each year.
Some numbers and statistics.
CO2 concentrations – source.
- In 1995 the CO2 concentration was about 360 ppm.
- In 2010 is was 382 ppm, perhaps 389 ppm.
- In 2019 it had increased to 410 ppm. It must increase much more if the goal is to be reached. The growth in emissions does not seem to be decreasing. In 2018 there was a new world record – source.
CO2 emissions – source
- 1995: 22 billion tons (Gtons).
- 2010: 31 billion tons.
- 2018: 37 billion tons – source.
From these numbers combined with the goal of 60% drop in emissions by 2050 it is quite easy to calculate the following numbers:
- Starting in 1995: 1,03% drop in CO2 emissions each year was necessary.
- Starting in 2010: 2,25% drop in CO2 emissions each year.
- Starting in 2019: 3,34% drop in CO2 emissions each year.
These numbers can be combined into this graph:
If we had started in 1995 with a yearly decrease in emissions of about 1% we would be close to having an emission of 17 billion tons CO2. Had we started in 2010 with a yearly decrease of 2,25% we would be close to 26 billion tons a year. We didn’t: instead we have reached 37 billion tons CO2 a year and a concentration of a little more than 410 ppm.
The 14 Most General Negations to Global-Warming, Zoological Loss, Disease and Pollution
Unfortunately no leader in an authoritarian and effective position gives sufficiently enforceable, instructions, directions and orders for stopping the disastrous effects of various factors that are ruining our existence and will do so even more of our descendants. These factors combine in the over-consumption of animals and their products, the misuse of fossil fuels, herbicides and insecticides, the wastage of opportunity from useful sites of land, the burning of natural vegetative growth, the use of self-abusive addictive drugs, the spreading of diseases (from ignorance), and the misplacement of single-use plastic containers. These effects cause pollution, disruption and destruction of our planet’s natural bounty and of our fellow men and women. Our situation on earth is becoming so unreasonably and intolerably bad that unless a drastic change is made, future generations will find themselves gasping for the available oxygen, fighting for food, medicines and clean water, even for living-space, and hopefully having to continue the struggle for many, many years–to try to restore the existing bio-sphere or surface of our planet to its past stable natural, sensible and proper living conditions again.
So let us all join together in negating:
# the polluting and burning and wasting and spoiling of our once beautiful earthly natural resources. The day will quickly come when our world suffers the dire effects of the deprivation and loss of the greatest part of our burgeoning population from starvation, suffocation, uncured easily transmitted disease and drought. Then we will feel the urgent need for mending our wild, wicked and wasteful ways, only to find that it is too late.
# the killing of all the whales and other marine mammals, cutting off the fins of sharks, the harpooning, dredging up, catching and filtering out from the seas all the edible or partly edible fish and crustaceans.
# the wonton use of insecticides and herbicides which not only pollutes the rives during run-off from the soil, but kills millions of useful pollinating insects, particular bees and flies as well as earth-worms.
# the spoiling and polluting the rivers and seas, killing all of the remaining inedible fish and sea/river-dependent mammals, with our waste-produced chemicals, uneaten food and plastic rubbish.
# the burning down all the natural jungles and forests and destroying the other trees too, causing a reduction in the oxygen that they convert from carbon dioxide by photo-synthesis, and the increase in the carbon dioxide that is freely available.
# the resulting reductions of ice in the Polar Regions, to raise the sea temperatures and its levels, and to melt the heat-reflecting ice-fields, until the exposed permafrost and hidden lands give up all of their entrapped and heat-enveloping methane (which has about 7 times the entrapment properties of CO2 when it comes to climate warming).
# the breeding and eating of great quantities of beef, pigs, goats and sheep (using silage grown on huge tracts of past de-forested land), along with the large amounts of water that they need, until the air is full of their carbon dioxide exhalations and associated methane farts and burps.
# the cleansing our bodies using the latest toiletry products from profitable palm-oil, grown on land that previously was jungle and which once supported an amazing variety of wild-life that has already become almost extinct.
# the driving to work along free-ways that multiply the distance between home and workplace, on roads that are asphalted with the remains of the wasted fuel, individually each using life-threatening vehicles that exceed a ton (2,240 lbs.) in weight (for moving our mere 200 lbs,), which move at horrendous speeds and guzzle petroleum fuels at rates that will eventually suck the fuel companies dry, whilst filling our cities with fumes, fogs and dirt.
# the mostly unnecessary need, now that we have the internet means for high-speed communication, of the use of semi-paraffin fuel powered aircraft and diesel fuel driven ships and lorries, that wastefully consume similar kinds petroleum products, for flying and conveying ourselves and our goods long distances at high speeds, only to return (sometimes empty) in a few hours, days or weeks from the starting point.
# the generation of electrical energy using the mined coal and natural gases, that are taken from the earth, instead of generating this energy without burning, from either nuclear-fusion power-plants, solar rays, geothermal heat-sources, the tides and the wind.
# the building of mammoth ferrous-concrete structures, from materials of which consume large quantities of energy in their production and which on site absorb much water and release much C02 during their setting.
# the growing ignorance that denies the protection from immunization offered by altruistically minded health organizations against the more commonly transmitted but deadly diseases.
# the waging of such disastrous political demonstrations, uprisings, revolutions and wars, using so many kinds of highly destructive materials and weapons of hatred, that it won’t be long before Mankind finally manages to achieve collective suicide.
Only then with our help, will our good but proud Heavenly Father (who promised never again to destroy human kind by Himself as He once tried, as described in the Bible), be able to relinquish the idea that He made a bad mistake in creating us with a greedy, selfish and lazy nature (except when we can get something for the least effort–when ambition overcomes sloth), as a collectively long-term suicidal beast. And that, since He has lots of time available, that He should not need to rework the later stages of the evolution process again, for the creation of a different and more sensible type of intelligent creature, which is a little “closer to his image”, or possibly is able to exist on some kinder star? (Perhaps this might be achieved anyway by ourselves, with the introduction of robotic artificial intelligence devices. Is it as if we are already beginning to do this job too, for Him?)
i AGREE WHOLE-HEARTEDLY.