with Johan Rockström (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research)
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37 Comments
There is no objective observational evidence that we are living in a global climate crisis.
The UN's IPCC AR6 WG1, chapter 12 "Climate Change Information for Regional Impact and for Risk Assessment", page 1856, section 12.5.2, table 12.12 confirms there is a lack of evidence or no signal that the following have changed:
Air Pollution Weather (temperature inversions),
Aridity,
Avalanche (snow),
Average precipitation,
Average Wind Speed,
Coastal Flood,
Agricultural drought,
Hydrological drought,
Erosion of Coastlines,
Fire Weather (hot and windy),
Flooding From Heavy Rain (pluvial floods),
Frost,
Hail,
Heavy Rain,
Heavy Snowfall and Ice Storms,
Landslides,
Marine Heatwaves,
Ocean Acidity,
Radiation at the Earth’s Surface,
River/Lake Floods,
Sand and Dust Storms,
Sea Level,
Severe Wind Storms,
Snow, Glacier, and Ice Sheets,
Antarctic Sea Ice,
Tropical Cyclones.
Extinction rates (1500-2009) peaked around 1900 at 50 per decade. Extinction rates have declined dramatically to around 4 to per decade in the 2000s. So the extinction rate is very low: 900 known lost species for 2.1 million known species in 500 years (IUCN), so from observations there are an average of slightly less than 2 species lost every year. Out of a known species total of over 2 million. That gives an annual percentage loss of less than 0.0001%. That's background extinction. At that frequency it will take over 930,000 years to reach 80% extinction of species experienced at the K-T boundary that saw the extinction of the dinosaurs. Of course, extinction is a natural part of the evolution of life on this planet with the average lifespan of a species thought to be about 1 million years (cf 930,000). It is estimated that 99.9% of all plant and animal species that have existed have gone extinct. It should also be noted that no taxonomic families have become extinct in the last 500 years. In fact marine diversity at the taxonomic level of families is the highest it has ever been in the Earth's long history (see Sepkoski Curve). In a review of 16,009 species, most populations (85%) did not show significant trends in abundance, and those that did were balanced between winners (8%) and losers (7%) (Dornelas et al, 2019). There have been only 9 species of continental birds and mammals confirmed extinct since 1500 (Loehle, 2011). No global marine animals have become extinct in the past 50 years (McCauley et, 2015 using IUCN data).
There is no climate crisis.
Humanity's current level of influence on the planet represents a fundamentally new variable, one that has no precise historical precedent in Earth's long history. While natural cycles like ice ages, tectonic shifts, and even volcanic events have shaped the Earth for billions of years, the scale and speed at which humans are impacting the environment are unparalleled.
The only thing we should be doing given that this is the case is empowering those able to reimagine humanities existence on earth rather than looking to keep things as similar to todays arrangement as is humanly possible,,,, if those gripping on to humanity to harvest the spending potential of our species do not let go, the window of opportunity we have to utilise the creative variation and potential of our population will vanish in order to maintain the advantages of a few……!
Dear Prof Rockström. Iam always impressed by your speeches. I would love to meet you. But today presentation and please Iam sorry for my words, but today Iam feeling like I have to puke and cry in the same time. What can a single person, a father, a husband do to change our Path of humanity? What can we do? Iam so scared and Iam a scientist, a geographer for climaterisk. Looking forward to your answer.
Equity means overcoming capitalism through Marxism analysis
As expected, Rockström ended the lecture by administering some Hopium for the masses and leaving the audience with the sensation that "The Window of Opportunity" is still open.
Petroleum based Parasitic Plague Phase aka 8.3 Billion and growing…WASF
He is an amazing scientist, and a un-amazing speaker. Terrible. Even for interested listeners after 2 minutes this monotone blabber is impossible to comprehend. I dont get why the academics cannot get speakers trainings.
Great take, but humans cannot achieve what it would require to not kill themselves. Better luck next time
70 years warning, nothing ever changed
There is no climate crisis. It's called an interglacial. The Eemian wasn't a crisis for the Neanderthals, the Holocene isn't a crisis for us.
Loss of biodiversity is due to overpopulation, habitat loss, and overfishing.
We might hance a chance is the world wasn't full of dictators and the American election was being fought on something more serious than an old fart's obsession with cats and dogs.
While the animals were being decimated, while they were killed my family ridiculed and tortured me when I tried to talk about it. They're Americans. Happy, successful and far more popular than I am, capable of decking me, their sister, for talking.
Verifiable mathematical proof ( link below) that the unfolding biosphere collapse is the result of Mass Global Deforestation(MGD) of 1/3rd of the Earths(Ice free) Land Mass, for the 80 Billion animals bred for eating every year. Without which we could reforest 78% of agricultural land which would be enough of a Carbon Sink to sequester more CO2 than is currently emitted ( while also ending the biggest Methane emitter and biggest cause of Ocean Dead Zones). Non Industry funded study by Systems Analysist Dr Sailesh Rao explained in simple terms how animal ag is responsible for 87% of CO2 emissions!. –https://youtu.be/rSc_51xR8sQ?si=3JKvhDKbAFQ0T9J8
Ursula von der Leyen a Stewart of the Planet? Which planet? On Planet Earth, she's known as a War mongering profiteer cheering on Zionists' (to defend themselves = ethnically Cleanse Palestinians) & Ukranians (to die for NATO).
Look into the environmental impacts of brutal & senseless wars, Prof. Rockstrom, before inviting guests with such a deplorable CO2 track record!
Change can only be made by government leaders, the majority who are self centred.
At seven years old, crossing the pacific in a jet, as my father had just returned from Vietnam, I had a thought: that when I grew old, there would be no safe place, except space and the ocean…. gave up on space in High School and went into Oceanography at HSU CA, in college. The thought was about war, and we now know the civilization collapse occurs from the financial instability and inequality, climate change and war, all together, the thought is still accurate that we in a collapsing state and that the survival could occur for the humans who get into a safe situation : we must build ecotowns on a new civilization paradigm, and as that happens from the bottom up, we each need to be the change we want to see in the world : Gandhi, we need to each get solar, electric car, greenhouse or room, get yourself and family as resilient as possible now. Eco architecture houses can grow into ecovillages and eco world , Get on it ! Theodore Unitown.US
Blackrock ; iE executives, and all Republicans should be forced to watch this.
50 years of ecological overshoot!! His optimistic closing words sound ridiculous to me. We're also destroying the Congo rainforest.
It is common to believe that the last two hundred years of relative climate stability is something normal, but if we extend our gaze the climate looks far from stable, and we can trace human history through climate variability. Nations and empires have risen and fallen as rains have moved, lakes and rivers dried up, and agriculture failed, what is happening is not a new phenomenon.
The current increase in rainfall across Africa, could be an anomaly, or it could be the return of a former pattern ? After all Africa once had a thriving river transport system connecting the oceans with great lakes, food production was high, and great empires existed, ancient maps describe this as do ancient texts.
The world wasn't connected in the instantaneous way it is now, so when climate shifts happened it was viewed as localised phenomena, and there were winners and losers, but we adapted, and will adapt again to climate variability.
In the past societies would blame their gods, or neighbours, or in more advanced civilizations, the variabilities of the cosmos and the solar activity. But now because as Nietzsche said " we have killed God " , we blame human activity and Co2, ignoring that our own science tells us that the global average temperature was 20°c during the Carboniferous, and Co2 was 1500 ppm, where as now it's 12°C and 407 ppm Co2, life was abundant during the Carboniferous, so much so that the remnants of that life formed the carbon that fuelled the industrial Revolution, and lifted the majority of us out of poverty, so that we instead of subsisting, could try to understand the weather 😊
Please remember that Reagan started the IPCC in order to cover up the problems they KNEW the oil industry would bring. They are using atmospheric alterations to try and stop the runaway heating they KNEW was coming. As this is being done, it is holding in heat and humidity, making things worse. Nature is going to do what She has to do in order to stop the chaos we have caused. Our technology and brilliance is killing all life. We are an insane self centered species.
Nuclear weapons is another crisis that could happen any hour of every day.
And no mention of human overpopulation? I grew up seeing the beauty of forests, water systems, and clean air go away in order to build more houses, roads, bridges, dams, high rise structures, all for the convenience of man, without considering Nature. Sorry, this presentation is BS. Corp doesn't give a shit about the planet or anything else about Nature or life itself.
We
We simply need to evolve as a species and come together as a common humanity fighting for survival; we can do this as easily as I can write it!
Change will come. By design or disaster. Our choice…
Apocalyptic bullshit
Just plant trees. Do not get overcomplicated.
Also, nature is a path for humans to walk with for a satisfying healthy life.
Stratifications of soil layers pose a threat, since moisture is getting too low to sustain life there to interact with upper layers; then heat and carbon not easily levelled among plants – domino effect on animals… Then more heat and moisture must be levelled on open spaces not covered by manmade constructions – last decade more billion buildings, roads… to cover the ground than ever before reducing area to spread heat + moisture; then instead increasing extremes and delaying dividing of energies to increase temperatures when less rugged terrain or open divided space so wind/eddies can break up energies and divide vapors, and lower relative humidity, to get us more stratifications of soil…an evil feedback.
Rubbish absolutely crap
we should be quitting our jobs and rewilding the whole planet (and chasing billionaires and agro-evangelical-fascist deniers)
Ursula von der leyen is there in the audience? WTF! a major war criminal in the audience. Where's the social justice in this space.
I see some posts by climate change deniers here. I would like to suggest "the rainforest alliance" and perhaps "inside Climate news" as sources that give advice on how to counter the propaganda from climate change deniers. There is a lot of fossil fuel money supporting huge efforts to downplay or deny the climate crisis. The fossil fuel lobby easily buys the populist politicians
Some on this site have stated wrongly that extinctions are actually declining since 1900. This is not true. It can easily be fact-checked. Here is a quote from the Royal Society as one example: One of the largest effects of humans on the natural world has been to raise the rate of extinction of species far above natural levels. This began many thousands of years ago, and as a result the human-caused loss of global biodiversity was already significant before the modern era. Now, the extinction rate is accelerating, biodiversity is in rapid decline, and many ecosystem processes are being degraded or lost.
A common ploy of many climate change deniers is to pose as real scientists and misuse or misquote statistics. Frequently, they make long posts with lots of numbers in them to try to impress people. They follow this with a sweeping statement that there is no climate crisis. There is a very good example of a climate change denier in the comments here. You don't have to look far. I make a note of some of the internet tags of these people and counter the misinformation where possible.
Some of the climate change deniers on this site not only try to impress with long posts full of spurious irrelevant numbers and pseudoscience, they also give themselves misleading tags, including for example the word "scientist", to give the impression that they are a real scientist.