CO2 Levels Are the Highest in a Million Years as Extreme Weather and Flooding Rage Across the Globe

Juan Cole

Countercurrents | September 01, 2022

Girls use a temporary raft across a flooded street in a residential area after heavy monsoon rains in Karachi on July 26, 2022. A weather emergency was declared in Karachi as heavier-than-usual monsoon rains continue to lash Pakistan’s biggest city, flooding homes and making streets impassable. (Photo: Rizwan Tabassum/AFP via Getty Images)

CNN reports that satellite photos show that the overflowing Indus has created a new body of water in southern Pakistan some 62 miles (100km) wide. It will take days or weeks for the water to recede, and in the meantime millions are left homeless and over all, 33 million people have been affected by the worst monsoon floods in recorded history. CNN quotes Pakistan’s Climate Minister Sherry Rahman as saying “That parts of the country ‘resemble a small ocean,’ and that ‘by the time this is over, we could well have one-quarter or one-third of Pakistan under water.’”

Because of our burning of fossil fuels to drive cars and heat and cool buildings, the world is heating up. But the Indian Ocean is heating up a third faster than the rest of the world. Very warm waters in the Bay of Bengal are helping create more destructive cyclones and flooding. The air over warming waters contains more moisture than the 20th century average. Warming waters also make the winds that blow over them more erratic, and wayward winds from the Arabian Sea helped push the heavy monsoon rains farther north than they usually extend.

GHG Concentrations, Sea levels And Ocean Heat Hit Record Highs In 2021

Countercurrents | September 01, 2022

The annual State of the Climate report ( https://ametsoc.net/sotc2021/StateoftheClimate2021_lowres.pdf)  report published Wednesday in the U.S. shows that in 2021, greenhouse gas (GHG) levels, global sea levels, and ocean heat reached record highs.

The international report was led by scientists from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information.

“The data presented in this report are clear — we continue to see more compelling scientific evidence that climate change has global impacts and shows no sign of slowing,” NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a statement. “With many communities hit with 1,000-year floods, exceptional drought, and historic heat this year, it shows that the climate crisis is not a future threat but something we must address today as we work to build a climate-ready nation — and world — that is resilient to climate-driven extremes.”

Carbon emissions rapidly rebounded following COVID pandemic dip

Jeff Tollefson

Nature | November 04, 2021

China is a large consumer of coal, which is used to run power stations such as this one in Shanghai.Credit: Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty

The abrupt decline in global carbon dioxide emissions during the COVID-19 pandemic, caused by government-mandated lockdowns, will be all but erased by the end of this year, a consortium of scientists reports this week. It predicts that carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels will rise to 36.4 billion tonnes — an increase of 4.9% — in 2021 compared with last year (see ‘Pandemic rebound’). That’s a faster recovery than many scientists expected. The rapid rebound, driven in part by the increasing demand for coal in China and India, suggests that emissions will begin to rise anew next year without substantial government efforts to bend the curve, the researchers warn.

“This is a reality check,” says Corinne Le Quéré, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, and a member of the Global Carbon Project, which presented the report this week at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, UK, where nations are debating the pledges they will make to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. “I’m expecting that it will really hit home with the negotiators and make it very obvious that action is needed.”

Ecosocialism Not Extinction!

STATEMENT TO CO26

Ecosocialist Alliance statement on the opening of UN climate talks in Glasgow

This statement was drafted by the Ecosocialist Alliance, a UK-based coalition organized by Green Left, Left Unity and Anti-Capitalist Resistance. After discussion and adoption of amendments proposed the Global Ecosocialist Network, it has been endorsed by a wide range of individuals and groups, including Climate & Capitalism. It will be distributed at COP26, the United Nations climate conference that opens on October 31 in Glasgow.

Climate and Capitalism | October 24, 2021

ECOSOCIALISM NOT EXTINCTION!

COP 26 unfolds against a backdrop of growing climate chaos and ecological degradation, after an unprecedented summer of heatwaves, wildfires, and flooding events. Climate change is upon us, and we face multiple interlinked and inseparable crises- of climate, environment, extinction, economy and zoonotic diseases.

As ecosocialists we say another world is possible, but a massive social and political transformation is needed, requiring the mobilization of the mass of working people across the globe. Only the end of capitalism’s relentless pursuit of private profit, endless waste, and rapacious drive for growth, can provide the solution not only to climate change, environmental degradation, and mass extinction, but to global poverty, hunger, and hyper exploitation.

The big issues of climate change will be debated in Glasgow but whatever is agreed, capitalism can at best mitigate climate change, not stop it. Genuine climate solutions cannot be based on the very market system that created the problem. Only the organized working class, and the rural oppressed and First Nations of the global south -women and men – have the power to end capitalism, because their labour produces all wealth and they have no great fortune to lose if the system changes, no vested interests in inequality, exploitation, and private profit.

Action now to halt climate change! We demand:

We demand real zero, not net zero!

Declaration adopted by the Oilwatch International Global Gathering in Nigeria, October 19-21.

Climate and Capitalism | October 26, 2021

Oilwatch International network members, community representatives from oil regions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community-based organizations (CBOs), the academia and the media met in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State, Nigeria, between 19–21 of October 2021, physically and virtually, for the maiden edition of the Oilwatch International Global Gathering.

The gathering, which had the theme Demanding Real Zero, Not Net Zero aimed to present the way out of the climate quagmire and present real options for climate action. The Global Gathering looked critically at the false solutions to Climate Change including the Net Zero concept which world leaders, corporations and investors are echoing as the world gets ready for COP26.

Why a net‑zero future depends on the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon

CLIMATE CRISIS 

Anya M. Waite, Brad Deyoung, Chris Milley and Ian G. Stewart

The Conversation | February 25, 2020

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Most of us growing up along Canada’s East Coast never worried about hurricane season. Except for those working at sea, we viewed hurricanes as extreme events in remote tropical regions, seen only through blurred footage of flailing palm trees on the six o’clock news.