The same week as Pope Francis’s historic encyclical warning of the dire dangers posed to humanity over climate change , scientists have issue new warnings that we are likely past the point of no-return to save humanity from catastrophe and possible extinction. Famed Australian microbiologist Frank Fenner, a key figure in the elimination of smallpox in the 1970s, now believes that humans will be extinct in 100 years after making the planet uninhabitable. Others have pointed out that the United States and other nations continue to adopt insufficient targets from carbon reduction and that our passing the critical “3C” threshold now appears all but assured due to opponents and deniers of climate change or reforms.
Fenner insists that it is now a sure bet that we will pass the point of no return and that humanity has missed its window to act. He was reacting to the G7 announcement on Monday that it was asking all countries to reduce emissions — a meaningless effort that scientists around the world denounced as too little too late. The G7 simply asked all countries to reduce carbon emissions to zero in 85 years despite the overwhelming scientific data showing that such a target date would be too late to stop the disastrous course for the planet.
The view of the scientific community is that no treaty that emerges from the current United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany, in preparation for November’s United Nations climate conference in Paris, can now avoid the global disaster.
Scientists generally use the target of 2 degrees Celsius as the level that must not be passed. At 3C, the trend is viewed as unstoppable. Even the Pentagon now rates climate change as a “Threat Multiplier” and an existential threat.
While the Obama Administration has moved aggressively, the U.S. target (a 26 percent to 28 percent decrease from 2005 levels by 2025) is viewed as based on clearly erroneous and rosy projections. The European Union has proposed a 40 percent decrease from 1990 levels by 2030 while China as usual is the worst with a call for an unspecified emissions peak by 2030.
There have been dozens of academic publications from around the world reaching basically the same conclusions from leading academics and institutions. For the less scientifically trained, Bill McKibben did an oft-cited piece in in 2012 explaining the stark realities of these figures and why they will not avoid disaster. McKibben noted that the target temperature has already increased 0.8C, and even if we were to stop all carbon-dioxide emissions today, it would increase another 0.8C simply due to the existing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That would leave only a 0.4C buffer to hitting 2C. The failure to act by humanity has squandered its chance to avert the global catastrophic results. Indeed, as Pope Francis expressly denounced, powerful industrial interests have succeeded in blocking efforts to act and delaying any meaningful reforms. For many scientists, it is the Nero complex of fiddling as the planet burns.
The 100 year prediction of demise seems a bit too specific a time frame but that period does represent the passing of the critical 3C line that is expected to trigger catastrophic and cascading global changes. Regardless of whether we are speaking of extinction in a 100 years or worldwide famine and natural disasters, many of us are left to marvel at man’s capacity for avoidance of difficult challenges, even when our very existence could rest in the balance. The refusal to act in the face of such overwhelming scientific evidence and warnings is a sad (and possibly lethal) conclusion of our species.
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=The_Population_Bomb#Predictions
Remember this book, “The Population Bomb”?
I don’t want to cast too much dispersion on its authors as the dire predictions of a virtually unstoppable collapse due to over population were not new or unique to that best selling book.
I know Huxley in “Brave New World Revisited” (1958) also predicted a similar future.
Advances in technology were the missing elements in their thoughts and could easily be so for this issue as well.
Shadow,
I agree that commentary like ‘we will be extinct in 100 years’ can play into opponents’ hands. It sounds like “end-times” talk.
Yet, he may have something to say about it nonetheless. It is a systems problem, and viruses are part of the system.
If our ability to thrive is hindered due to environmental problems (toxin overload, droughts, pesticide-resistant insects), then could we become more susceptible to infection? Is the virulence of viruses affected by the climate or the environment? Could our immune systems be sufficiently dampened by environmental stress as to cause pandemics?
EARTH DAY PREDICTIONS FROM 1970
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” — Harvard biologist George Wald
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” — Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich
“Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born… [By 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” — Paul Ehrlich
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” — Denis Hayes, Chief organizer for Earth Day
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions…. By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” — North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter
“In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution… by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half.” — Life magazine
“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” — Ecologist Kenneth Watt
“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” — Paul Ehrlich
“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate… that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'” — Ecologist Kenneth Watt
“[One] theory assumes that the earth’s cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes, and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun’s heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born.” — Newsweek magazine
“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” — Kenneth Watt
Paul,
I will say this though, when a scientist speaks outside his scientific field of expertise and the media doesn’t explain that, s/he can do more damage to science and scientific findings than any Pope.
Paul,
I’ll answer when I have read the encyclical. Haven’t done so yet. Maybe Squeaky can answer? She’s read it. Squeaky? Have you awakened yet?
Paul,
I remember that the temperature listed for Phoenix was always higher than what was in Tempe due to all the concrete in Phoenix.
If the gauge is at the airport, I wonder if the exhaust also affects the temperature by changing the atmosphere slightly?
Regarding the effect of concrete, can extensive concrete negatively affect the regional environment? Could the extra heat affect the amount of water being recharged? The permaculture video I posted on the Pope’s Encyclical thread is applicable to Phoenix, what with the increased salinity of the soil, especially on the golf courses.
Prairie Rose – they moved it once and we had the highest recorded temperature every in Phoenix (121) so they decided to move it to a cooler place, but still at the airport. I am not sure exactly where it is located but there are four terminals there and it is a very busy airport, so the difference between Gilbert (where I live) and Phoenix was 5 degrees yesterday. However, the official temperature for the entire Valley is at Phoenix.
Instead of a “Plea to False Authority,” this is a Plea from False Authority. Fenner is a virologist, not a climate change expert. At least I have found no evidence of his expertise in the area. He played a major role in wiping out smallpox, so now he’s a climate change expert?
Sometimes Climate Change advocates are their own worst enemies. Climate Change is a problem, and it could get bad, but extinction? Predictions of doom by false authorities play right into the hands of their opponents. If it’s too late, as some suggest, why bother?
Shadow – if the Pope can be an expert on climate change why can’t this guy?
Steve Fleischer said …
If we are past the point of no return, then why worry? Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
A very real sentiment. Once upon a time in my life I had it press down and running over…those days when I was most grateful to see another sunrise. Those conditions were man caused and had nothing to do with climate change. The climate at hand was war. War is an affliction, world wide, we’ve not managed to subdue, so I am amused by the concern about our future solely upon climate. Better we press down harder on reduction of wars everywhere. If we may die tomorrow, then celebrate today. At one time it was all I had.
Problem with scientists’ predictions is, nobody goes back to check.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/17/top-ten-science-based-predictions-that-didnt-come-true/
Top Ten Science based predictions that didn’t come true:
10. “The earth’s crust does not move”– 19th through early 20th century accepted geological science. See Plate Tectonics
9. “The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.” — Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project
8. “That virus is a pussycat.” — Dr. Peter Duesberg, molecular-biology professor at U.C. Berkeley, on HIV, 1988
7. “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” — Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
6. “Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” — William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899.
5. “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932
4. “Space travel is bunk.” — Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of the UK, 1957 (two weeks later Sputnik orbited the Earth).
3. “If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.” — Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads.
2. “Stomach ulcers are caused by stress” — accepted medical diagnosis, until Dr. Marshall proved that H. pylori caused gastric inflammation by deliberately infecting himself with the bacterium.
1. “Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F.” — Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University in Time Magazine’s June 24th, 1975 article Another Ice Age?
What was predicted in 1962.
“What’ll It Be Like in 2000 A.D.?” asked Popular Science in its April 1962 preview of the marvels to be found at the Seattle World’s Fair, which opened that month. First up on Popular Science’s tour of the future was the Standard Oil diorama. Not surprisingly it featured a host of gas-guzzling vehicles for land and air—and failed to predict either fuel shortages or oil at $100 a barrel.
Huge, rocket airliners that can take off and land vertically soar through the skies. Individuals take to the air in scooters. Big jet helicopters serve as aerial busses and trucks. A few gyrocopters—silent as a breeze—float overhead.
Air scooters instead of jet packs? This was a bold departure from the accepted canon of 21st-century gadgetry. Anyway, for commuters, there were jet-propelled monorails (a step up from the electric ones that brought visitors to the fairgrounds) and rocket subways “roar[ing] through plastic tubes.” Superhighways were electronically controlled and “surfaced with colored plastic, various hues indicating the fast, slow, and exit lanes.”
General Motors expanded the electronic highway theme, imagining cars (perhaps even the Firebird III pictured above) that were “steered, accelerated, braked or stopped without any assistance from their drivers.” (Amend this to “from their drivers’ brains,” and I think we would all agree this is happening now.) Instead “various current-carrying wires [were] buried in the pavement. Pickup coils . . . mounted on the cars” flashed signals to “electrohydraulic servos” which did all the work. “Meanwhile, the driver can safely take a snooze if he likes.”
Plastic-walled houses got their electricity from a “petroleum-powered fuel cell . . . the size of a standard office desk,” at least according to Standard Oil. Another view was presented “in the Fair’s theme diorama, ‘The World of Tomorrow.'”
Here are houses put together with chemical fasteners in place of nails, built of color-impregnated materials that never need painting, and kept clean by high-frequency sound. The homes have solar ovens for use on clear days, microwave ovens for stormy days. Each chair or sofa can be heated or cooled individually to suit the sitter. Heating devices are woven into the rugs and installed in the walls.
Dwellers would wear “lightweight, all-year, disposable clothing and incredibly durable plastic shoes.” They’d sleep on disposable sheets and eat from disposable dishes. Once again, frozen food was the dinner of the future . It would be stored in “big cellar freezers which would rise to the kitchen at the touch of a button.” “Domestic computers, sometimes casually given their instructions over the telephone, would be your servants.”
Where the futurists of 1962 really shone, however, was in the field of communications. AT&T predicted fiber optics (“enormous conversational traffic will ride on beams of light”), cordless phones, videophones, teleconferencing, and the internet (“Between offices hundreds of miles apart, machine will ‘talk’ to machine, as computers automatically feed data to one another.”) RCA claimed that all televisions would be color, ranging in size from that of a book, to “a very large set, only five inches thick” (huge compared to today’s flat-panels, of course, but slender for the day). “One such console will offer a choice of live or preselected taped TV shows, plus stereophonic radio and tape recorder”—a primitive home entertainment center.
Even the American Library Association got in on the act, predicting computers that “at the twist of a dial” would “spew out complete lists of reference books on any subject. And if you want to take a look at a rare picture or manuscript in some distant library, you can do so by closed-circuit TV.”
Some relevant questions:
How does the soil microbiome (which is not included in climate models) affect carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? How does this factor into the recommendation to “reduce carbon emissions to zero”?
So far, I haven’t read ANY good systems approach to pollution–not as an argument describing the problem or as a recommendation for solving environmental problems. Is there a functional medicine environmental doctor in the room?
If the planet is sick, why? I am not looking for “because of factories” or “because of man’s exploitation” arguments. What is making the planet sick? What is the disrupted physiology? What should be changed, what is the remedy? Farming practices? If so, in what ways? Wetland preservation? Why?
The Pope brought up other factors that can affect the environment, factors beyond our control: “other factors (such as volcanic activity, variations in the earth’s orbit and axis, the solar cycle)”. How do these things factor in to the health of the environment? Are they exacerbating problems or are they also symptoms (can the earth’s orbit and axis be affected by the weather or by mining)?
Since temperature numbers are in dispute, are there other methods of “taking the temperature” of the planet that does not include actually taking the temperature? How about acres of increased desertification? Change in pH of bodies of water or soil around the world over 50 years? Change in amount or frequency of precipitation over 50 years? Frequency and degree of algae blooms? Wild animal/fish reproduction data?
How would ‘greening the desert’ or stopping desertification affect the atmosphere? Can permaculture help with toxic run-off, soil and water health?
People need help seeing how local environmental changes affect the regional environment. People need better explanations than what we are currently getting in newspapers. I hope this blog discussion can head in that direction.
Prairie Rose – one way we could help is to move the temperature gauge in Phoenix from the middle of the airport (surrounded by acres of concrete) to someplace with real shade. We could do that with a lot of other temperature gauges throughout the world.
“The G& simply asked all countries to reduce carbon emissions to zero in 85 years despite the overwhelming scientific data showing that such a target date would be too late to stop the disastrous course for the planet.”
This needs greater clarification as to the meaning of “emissions” or it sounds silly. Are we to stop breathing or do they mean carbon emissions not related to simply being alive (like factories)?
Also, these kinds of discussions can end up sound hysterical–“we’re all gonna die!”–when lacking a tempered argument about the causes and effects of pollution from a systems point of view. People end up ignoring “we’re all gonna die” or “you disagree with me so you’re an idiot” conversations. I’d rather this argument not become entrenched.
If we are past the point of no return, then why worry?
Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
Steve Fleischer – you are right. Why pour good money after bad.
Manipulating by using negative emotions like fear and anger only works in the short run. After a short period, people become desensitized. The global warming charlatans have been using fear for decades. EVERY prediction made has been wrong. I would love to play poker w/ these people. That JT is such a cult follower is strange.
Hey, I was told in high school that by the year 2000 we were all going to be dead from aids. JT using the Rolling Stone now for a source? I didn’t know Jagger and Richards could write.
I can’t wait for all of Max’s links and isaac to tell how great Europe is.
Jim22 – the fact that Jagger and Richards are both alive and still working gives us all hope. I thought Richards wouldn’t make it past 35.
Scientists should be encouraging change no telling people to forget about it. Warnings do doom won’t jump start efforts to clean up the environment rather they play right into the game oil and gas are playing that argue change doesn’t matter.
Change to renewables is a matter of national security. This is true also in the area of manufacturing. Why on earth are we buying sensitive products relating to our military and other important segments of our society from RUSSIA or China. It is insane.
All of these decisions and position are motivated by money. Humans and nations have no value to multinationals or billionaires.
Bill McKibben did a piece in Rolling Stone in 2012 explaining the stark realities of these figures and why they will not avoid disaster.
No doubt it was rigorously fact checked.
Fenner insists that it is now a sure bet that we will pass the point of no return and that humanity has missed its window to act.
It’s really too bad 100 years is past his expected lifespan. I’d bet him on this in a second.
On the bright side the result of alarmists signalling their allegiance to the cause by claiming more and more outlandish outcomes will be more and more people dismissing them.
“I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.”
The Departed.
And yet we have NOAA playing with the data to make the ‘pause’ appear like it never happened. Chicken Little lies!!!!
The climate may change significantly in the next 100 years, but the idea that it will change significantly enough to wipe out humanity seems unlikely.