Climate Change Black Death Surrounds Each of Us Only you can prevent the end of your species

The only 21st Century challenge is to address our currently enjoyed "achievements" one-by-one as rapidly as possible to eliminate the Earth-damaging impacts sufficiently to prevent the extinction of our species, along with thousands of others.

And you must do it, every one of you, as only you can prevent the end of your species. Only you, not someone else.

Let me explain.

"Here’s a reckless prediction: a decade or so from now, when the climate revolution is fully underway and Miami Beach real estate prices are in free-fall due to constant flooding, and internal combustion engines are as dead as CDs, people will look back on the fall of 2019 as the turning point in the climate crisis. At the very least it will be remembered as the moment that it became clear that people were not going to give up their future on a habitable planet without a damn good fight.

"It’s not easy to feel hopeful at this dark hour. The Amazon rainforest is burning, heat waves this summer have killed thousands of people around the world, the Midwest is still reeling from massive flooding, and the human suffering from Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas is just beginning to be revealed. Meanwhile, President Trump doodles on hurricane maps and big oil is still investing millions in fossil-fuel infrastructure that will only further load the atmosphere with carbon and accelerate the devastating climate impacts. Climate scientists tell us that nations of the world need to cut carbon pollution in half by 2030 to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Yet in 2018, carbon emissions grew faster than any year since 2011."

- The Climate Crisis and the Case for Hope, by Jeff Goodell, RollingStone

For the sake of my grandchildren I would like to agree with Goodell about "a damn good fight". But the fight isn't just about "their future on a habitable planet" as planetary habitability is simply the measure of a planet's potential to develop and maintain environments hospitable to life.

The only planet we're considering is the Earth, and the life refers to only humans. And it appears that much of the Earth could become uninhabitable to humans.

That isn't the only option, at least for some. There are billionaires readying spaceships to move some folks to Mars even though it is not habitable for humans.

And, of course, we instantly would assure habitability if we were to immediately return to a 5th Century lifestyle....

But we aren't seeking mere habitability. We are seeking a continued expansion of a 21st Century Western Nation lifestyle somehow made to fit comfortably in the biosphere.

Wikipedia tells us that the term "biosphere" was coined by geologist Eduard Suess in 1875, which he defined as the place on Earth's surface where life dwells.

The "biosphere" is the zone of life on Earth, a closed system and largely self-regulating. Well, perhaps not completely closed as solar radiation and heat from the interior of the Earth have an ongoing influence.

As used here, the biosphere is the Earth's ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships including their interaction with the elements of the 

1. lithosphere including the crust and the uppermost mantle which constitute the outer layer of the Earth subdivided into tectonic plates including the mineral elements that make it up;
2. hydrosphere including the combined mass of water found on, under, and above the surface; and 
3. atmosphere including the layer of gases, commonly known as air, that surrounds the planet Earth and is retained by Earth's gravity.

Though it may be self-regulating, the biosphere is a constantly evolving system of interactions among organisms and their environment.

Many factors challenge the self-regulating mechanisms causing minor-to-disruptive changes that establish new balances within the biosphere sometimes resulting in species extinction.

Occasionally asteroids and volcanoes significantly disrupt the biosphere resulting in significant species extinction and radical species evolution. These kind of events represent a subject that we can ignore while the scientists argue of the meaning of their data. For you and I, which event - asteroid strike or volcano eruption - will cause the change is irrelevant. If we are the animals standing where 30 seconds from now either an asteroid is going to hit or a volcano is going to explode, who cares which it is? Just ask a dinosaur ... oh, that's right, you can't because of what is known as an extinction event.

The concern at the beginning of the 21st Century is simple. The biosphere's self-regulating mechanisms have undergone disruptive changes far more significant than, and occurring far more rapidly than, typical. The disruption we are mostly concerned about is in the atmosphere though the impacts extend to the hydrosphere and the lithosphere. The dramatic results look like this:

The 21st Century Climate Change Black Death is happening now.

Why choose to use the term "Black Death" you may ask? It was chosen because in what we know historically as "The Black Death" the behavior of humans, the expansion of human activity across the globe, combined with a significant lack of knowledge, resulted in that partial collapse of the species.

The Black Death (aka Bubonic plague). In the 14th Century it killed 20%-25% of the world's population of 450 million.

According to Wikipedia, the outbreak was thought to have originated in the dry plains of Central Asia killing an estimated 25 million Chinese and other Asians during the fifteen years before it reached Crimea by 1343. By the end of 1346, reports of plague had reached the seaports of Europe: "India was depopulated, Tartary, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia were covered with dead bodies". Spreading throughout the Mediterranean Basin and Europe, it is estimated to have killed 30–60% of Europe's total population.

Back then people didn't know what caused it. How they responded was a combination of ignorance along with some good judgement. It could have been worse. But because of the severity of impact from the mass mortality rate, society subsequently became unstable, destroying economies around the world, and increasing warfare, crime, popular revolt, waves of religious bigotry, and persecution.

Today, of course, facing Climate Change we are a lot smarter and won't do stupid stuff. Yeah, right....

As reported here last month...

In 2014 in TreeHugger (which claims to be "the leading media outlet dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream") an article appeared with a bragging headline The UK has more offshore wind power than all other countries... combined. The article began: "I don't think the UK gets enough credit for its pioneering work in offshore wind power."

Last month BBC News reported:

    Sulphur hexafluoride, or SF₆, is widely used in the electrical industry to prevent short circuits and accidents.
    But leaks of the little-known gas in the UK and the rest of the EU in 2017 were the equivalent of putting an extra 1.3 million cars on the road.
    Levels are rising as an unintended consequence of the green energy boom.
    Cheap and non-flammable, SF₆ is a colourless, odourless, synthetic gas. It makes a hugely effective insulating material for medium and high-voltage electrical installations.

Gas-insulated, high-voltage switchgear almost always uses SF6

    However, the significant downside to using the gas is that it has the highest global warming potential of any known substance. It is 23,500 times more warming than carbon dioxide (CO2).
    It also persists in the atmosphere for a long time, warming the Earth for at least 1,000 years.
    So why are we using more of this powerful warming gas?
    The way we make electricity around the world is changing rapidly.
    This has resulted in many more connections to the electricity grid, and a rise in the number of electrical switches and circuit breakers that are needed to prevent serious accidents.
    "As renewable projects are getting bigger and bigger, we have had to use it within wind turbines specifically," said Costa Pirgousis, an engineer with Scottish Power Renewables.... 

 

In other words, the alternative energy sources that we pride ourselves on using might be worse for the Earth's future than the coal-fired power plants we shut down. The SF₆ problem should be a critical lesson on the "successful failure" of society in addressing Climate Change. Wikipedia tells us: "More than 10,000 tons of SF₆ are produced per year...."

Regarding the 14th Century Bubonic Plague Black Death, Wikipedia notes:

    Renewed religious fervour and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of the Black Death. Some Europeans targeted "various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims", lepers, and Romani, thinking that they were to blame for the crisis....
    ...The mechanism of infection and transmission of diseases was little understood in the 14th century; many people believed the epidemic was a punishment by God for their sins. This belief led to the idea that the cure to the disease was to win God's forgiveness.

Here in the 21st Century, seven centuries later, we are stumbling when faced with a new threat, Climate Change Black Death. We haven't really even began to consider all the impacts. Umm, yeah, more hurricanes, more flooding, more blizzards, and more wildfires. But according to official U.S. and Chinese documents, the Earth will continue to warm until the planet is hotter than it has ever been since humans first evolved, as explained in previous posts.

And what we do know is the arrival of the rising heat, like the Bubonic Plague, will be an infection all its own. Let's set aside the deaths that already have occurred in other parts of the world that will become too hot for human existence before the year 2100. Parts of the U.S. is facing major problems. Everyone should read Can We Survive Extreme Heat? Humans have never lived on a planet this hot, and we’re totally unprepared for what’s to come. You will learn much about what you don't know about the human body and heat. And you will learn about the cities in the United States that are facing a heat apocalypse and that the cities with their asphalt, concrete and steel actually magnify the impact. And you will learn about some of the ideas and efforts being made to reduce that impact. But you will also learn:

    Without air conditioning, the world as we know it today wouldn’t exist. It’s inconceivable that there would be a city of 4.5 million people living in the middle of the Southwestern desert — much less 20 million people living in Florida — without air conditioning. After World War II, Americans flocked from chilly Northern states to sunny Southern states. It was one of the great demographic shifts of the 20th century, and it precisely mirrored the proliferation of air conditioners. “Air conditioning was essential to the development of the Sun Belt,” historian Gary Mormino has argued. “It was unquestionably the most significant factor.”
    Air conditioning is one of those paradoxical modern technologies that creates just as many problems as it solves. For one thing, it requires a lot of energy, most of which comes from fossil fuels. AC and fans already account for 10 percent of the world’s energy consumption. Globally, the number of air-conditioning units is expected to quadruple by 2050. Even accounting for modest growth in renewable power, the carbon emissions from all this new AC would result in a more than 0.9°F increase in global temperature by the year 2100.
    Cheap air conditioning is like crack cocaine for modern civilization, keeping us addicted and putting off serious thinking about more creative (and less fossil-fuel-intensive) solutions. Air conditioning also creates a kind of extreme heat apartheid. If you’re rich, you have a big house with enough air conditioning to chill a martini. And if you are poor....

We have air conditioning to make our homes livable now. We have air conditioning to make shopping in our stores tolerable. And we have air conditioning at our place of employment to make us productive on the job. And unfortunately, most of those existing buildings will require more air conditioning - sure we can modify those buildings or even replace them, but the capital outlay, the demands on our economy, will be huge.

Just like the folks in South Florida already facing flooding such that leaving, migrating, is a serious consideration, folks in the hotter parts of the country will likely have to move. The economic dislocation that will result will be significant-to-catastrophic.

Finally, we humans must face the reality of what we don't know. For example, consider microplastics.

It was only in the last decade that science became "impact aware" of microplastics in the environment. We should be acutely aware that microplastics really fall into a pollution category of "nanomaterials" which were discussed as recently as 2008 by a publication of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in a study Nanomaterials in the environment: Behavior, fate, bioavailability, and effects which explains in its abstract:

    The recent advances in nanotechnology and the corresponding increase in the use of nanomaterials in products in every sector of society have resulted in uncertainties regarding environmental impacts. The objectives of this review are to introduce the key aspects pertaining to nanomaterials in the environment and to discuss what is known concerning their fate, behavior, disposition, and toxicity, with a particular focus on those that make up manufactured nanomaterials. This review critiques existing nanomaterial research in freshwater, marine, and soil environments. It illustrates the paucity of existing research and demonstrates the need for additional research. Environmental scientists are encouraged to base this research on existing studies on colloidal behavior and toxicology. The need for standard reference and testing materials as well as methodology for suspension preparation and testing is also discussed.

This week, 11 years after that 2008 study was published The Los Angeles Times in The biggest likely source of microplastics in California coastal waters? Our car tires (and other news sources) tell us that our primary mode of transportation - cars and trucks - are the largest contributor of microplastics in coastal waters according to a new study Understanding Microplastic Levels, Pathways, and Transport in the San Francisco Bay Region. The study itself doesn't offer solutions but rather says the objective is to communicate findings to regional stakeholders and the general public through meetings and educational materials and facilitate evaluation of policy options with recommendations on source reduction.

In other words, as quoted in the LA Times article Warner Chabot, executive director of the San Francisco Estuary Institute: "Plastic pollutes the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat. Plastics are a big part of the climate change problem…. Since California is the fifth-biggest economy on Earth, we have the potential to lead the planet with solutions."

And so within the last two months:

• humans in California have started to think something may have to be done about microplastics (and rubber) from motor vehicles (and other sources, but mostly motor vehicles) and 
• humans in Europe discovered that in their thousands of wind turbines, supposedly installed to reduce the impact of carbon dioxide emissions, are actually a source of sulphur hexafluoride, 23,500 times more warming than carbon dioxide with a atmospheric life of 1,000 years.

In other words, we have barely begun to understand the Earth-damaging effects of the 21st Century lifestyle. Which brings us back to the article by Jeff Goodell quoted at the beginning of this post in which he states: "It’s not easy to feel hopeful at this dark hour."

Actually, if the hope is that the number of humans surviving on Earth in the year 2220 within a new socioeconomic construct will be half the number living today in our slowly crumbling current socioeconomic construct, then there is some reason to hope. But there is no reason to hope for more than that. And the experience of living between the years 2020 and 2220 will be unlike anything seen in the 20th Century.

The challenge is to address our currently enjoyed "achievements" one-by-one as rapidly as possible to eliminate the Earth-damaging impacts sufficiently to prevent the extinction of our species, along with thousands of others. And you must do it, every one of you, as only you can prevent the end of your species. Only you, not someone else....