TUHO: “Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end,” Rockstromm said.

uz bylo na case, dostaneme lekci z planetarniho alignmentu :)

CHOSIE: A ještě přidám tuto studii, připomenu si povvšimnout, že se často hovoří o "dočasném" decouplingu (jak v této tak i v jiných publikacích)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X24006861#s0065

In order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, it is necessary to actively promote a coordinated and balanced relationship between carbon dioxide emissions (CO2e), material footprints (MF) and human development, based on the economic and social development stages of different countries and their material resource endowments.

This study comprehensively evaluated the nexus between CO2e, MF, and human development index (HDI) in 151 countries from 1990 to 2019 based on the modified coupling coordination degree model and the improved decoupling index model.

The results show that, both the global MF per capita and HDI have maintained an increasing trend, and the MF per capita has been increasing significantly faster than the HDI. The trend of CO2e per capita is slowly dropping, with very high HDI countries being the main contributors. Besides, global regional differences in CO2e per capita and MF per capita are still expanding.

Net energy exporting countries with high HDI have advantages to achieve decoupling of CO2 emissions.

Net energy importing countries with low HDI shows a significant coupling trend in material footprints.

The study shows that, as the level of human development continues to rise, humanity has made the leap from intermediate to advanced levels of development. However, the real impacts of unsustainability, like the accelerated depletion of natural resources and the massive emission of greenhouse gases, have also intensified.
In the current context of globalization, although achieving a temporary absolute decoupling between CO2e, MF and HDI may occur frequently, maintaining this trend over the long term remains challenging.

PALEONTOLOG: tak sem nahazej nejaky relevantni zdroje a posun debatu .]

zatim mi neni zrejmy, ze by ten negativni impakt byl negativnejsi nez impakt soucasnyho geoingeneeringu uhlikovyho cyklu

to jaky presne to bude mit impakt je zatim celkem nejasne z toho co jsem si prolustroval, bude zalezit i na metode a kam se to vypusti


What goes up must come down: impacts of deposition in a sulfate geoengineering scenario - IOPscience
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab94eb?ref=the-wave.net

The problem of reducing the impacts of rising anthropogenic greenhouse gas on warming temperatures has led to the proposal of using stratospheric aerosols to reflect some of the incoming solar radiation back to space. The deliberate injection of sulfur into the stratosphere to form stratospheric sulfate aerosols, emulating volcanoes, will result in sulfate deposition to the surface. We consider here an extreme sulfate geoengineering scenario necessary to maintain temperatures at 2020 levels while greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow unabated. We show that the amount of stratospheric sulfate needed could be globally balanced by the predicted decrease in tropospheric anthropogenic SO2 emissions, but the spatial distribution would move from industrialized regions to pristine areas. We show how these changes would affect ecosystems differently depending on present day observations of soil pH, which we use to infer the potential for acid-induced aluminum toxicity across the planet.


The potential environmental and climate impacts of stratospheric aerosol injection: a review - Environmental Science: Atmospheres (RSC Publishing) DOI:10.1039/D3EA00134B
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2024/ea/d3ea00134b

Methane Myopia - Seth Itzkan

My response to the typical methane inquiry about grassfed cattle, enjoy!

“Allow me to put this matter into proper context. Methane is a natural result of the digestion of cellulose via methane producing bacteria (methanogens) in the guts of animals (including insects) that are optimized to eat grass and wood (cellulose sources), such as cows, sheep, goats, termites and cockroaches. This breakdown and recycling of plant nutrients is - of course - essential to the heath of grasslands and their carbon rich soils. Grasslands NEED the interaction of grazers and prodigious amounts of them. The healthier the grasslands, the more grazers must be present. That’s how nature works. It’s like the seals and the kelp forests. They are a system. In a natural grassland system, there is no methane loading. The methane emitted via the necessary biological digestion of the cellulose is then broken down naturally in the soil and in the atmosphere in measure equal to what is produced. Most of the world’s soils today are suffering from a paucity of ruminant herds. There aren’t nearly enough. Ruminant numbers will very likely need to at least double in order to restore the soils of the world that have been decimated by the decline of megafauna at the hands of humans over the past 15,000 years, or so, since the last ice age. In the absence of these wild grazers and their predators, livestock, managed holistically, are our only choice.

Eventually, large parts of the world may be “rewilded,” but, given the panic that emerges with even the slight presence of foxes near human settlements (with their precious pets), I really don’t see how most people are going be ok with billions of wild grazers and 100s of millions of wolves, hyenas, lions, and all the rest, stampeding and patrolling right through suburbs. Don’t see it happening, and even if it did, and the grasslands were restored, would that then lead to an atmospheric methane problem? Is it ok for wild ruminants to emit methane, but not domestic ones?

The problem - of course - isn’t the animals, domestic or wild. The problem is the “system.” Are the animals in a system which is in balance with nature or aren’t they? If they are in a feedlot, eating soy and making manure lagoons, then, obviously, they aren’t in a system that can be self regulating. If, however, they’re on grass, and just eating grass, and moving in a way that restores soil, then they’re in a balanced system. The methane emitted is recycled. There’s no net gain. Assessing the impact of a system by just looking at one variable is, of course, profoundly misleading. There is no scenario in which building livestock to restore depleted soil is bad for the atmosphere or anything else. It is only a net benefit and it is something we must be acting on urgently. Thank you for your interest.”

A Children's Story About Holistic Management

Today, Christopher Cooke asked Chat GPT to explain Holistic Management and soil regeneration as if it were a children's story, taking place in the distant future at the beginning of civilization. Below is what he got back -- pretty good stuff. Please read it to your children and grandchildren and see what they say. Perhaps someone could illustrate it and turn it into a children's book.

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Many, many moons into the future, on a brave, new world called Nova Terra, a group of pioneers decided to start a civilization. They called themselves the Terra Novans. They were people of diverse skills, and amongst them, there were farmers like Elder Greenthumb and his grandchild, Seedling.

The Terra Novans, under Elder Greenthumb's guidance, began to cultivate crops. However, they quickly noticed that the crops on Nova Terra were not growing as they should. "The soil isn't as rich and healthy as it was on our old home," said Elder Greenthumb, with a worried furrow in his brow.

"But Grandfather, how can we improve it?" asked Seedling, eager to help.

"We must learn from the mistakes of the past and apply two ancient principles, Seedling: Holistic Management and Regenerative Soil Management," answered Elder Greenthumb.

Seedling was puzzled. "What do those mean, Grandfather?"

Elder Greenthumb, with a twinkle in his eye, explained, "Holistic Management is viewing our entire habitat as one big, interconnected system. Just like the human body, everything affects everything else. If we hurt one part, the rest suffer too. We must care for our plants, animals, soil, and water in a balanced way."

"And Regenerative Soil Management?" inquired Seedling.

"Ah, that's the magic to reviving our soil, dear Seedling. It's like recharging a battery. Our soil needs nourishment to be productive. We do this by composting, crop rotation, planting cover crops, and using our livestock to 'heal' the soil."

"But how do animals help the soil, Grandfather?" Seedling asked, intrigued.

"Well," chuckled Elder Greenthumb, "When animals graze, they eat the plants, encouraging new growth. Their hoofprints create spaces for seeds to nestle in, and their droppings... well, they serve as a natural fertilizer."

Seedling giggled at the thought but understood the principle.

The Terra Novans began to practice Holistic Management and Regenerative Soil Management. Over time, the soil became healthier, their crops grew stronger, and their animals thrived. They saw their new home bloom into a thriving, sustainable civilization.

Elder Greenthumb and Seedling taught the Terra Novans to view their settlement as one big, interconnected family, where everyone, even the smallest creature, played a part in the health of the whole.

And so, from the stars, a new civilization was born, one that respected and cherished its new home. As the Terra Novans looked out onto the fields of their flourishing crops, they knew that they were guardians of Nova Terra, promising to protect it for countless moons to come. And that, dear star-child, is the story of how to cherish and respect every world we inhabit. The end.

EU becomes first leading economy to legislate for ‘green tariff’ on imports | International trade | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/dec/13/eu-becomes-first-leading-economy-to-legislate-for-green-tariff-on-imports

In the early hours of Tuesday morning the EU became the first big economy to legislate for a “green tariff” on imports, to be levied on goods that are produced with high carbon dioxide emissions.

The carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) means that countries which fail to green their industries will soon face a new threat: an effective carbon tax that will penalise those hoping to profit from high-carbon activities, and force them to clean up.

The system will be applied at first to iron and steel, cement, fertilisers, aluminium, electricity, hydrogen and some chemicals.

Jozef Síkela, minister of industry and trade of the Czech Republic, who led the negotiations in the EU parliament, said: “The carbon border adjustment mechanism is a key part of our climate action. This mechanism promotes the import of goods by non-EU businesses into the EU which fulfil the high climate standards applicable in the 27 EU member states. This will ensure a balanced treatment of such imports and is designed to encourage our partners in the world to join the EU’s climate efforts.”

...

if all goes according to plan, CBAMs will come into force on a trial basis from next October.

For Arendt, hope in dark times is no match for action | Aeon Essays
https://aeon.co/essays/for-arendt-hope-in-dark-times-is-no-match-for-action

For Hannah Arendt, hope is a dangerous barrier to courageous action. In dark times, the miracle that saves the world is to act

...

After the war, in a letter to the American philosopher Glenn Gray, she wrote that the only book she recommends to all her students is Hope Against Hope by Nadezhda Mandelstam. Written by the wife of the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, the devastating memoir details life under Stalin’s regime and the struggle to stay alive. (In Russian, nadezhda means hope.) Arendt called it ‘one of the real documents’ of the 20th century.

...

Even the most jaded observers of world affairs can find it difficult not to catch their breath at the moment of suspense, hoping for good to triumph over evil and deliver a happy ending. For some, discussions of hope are attached to notions of a radical political vision for the future, while for others hope is a political slogan used to motivate the masses. Some people uphold hope as a form of liberal faith in progress, while for others still hope expresses faith in God and life after death.

Arendt breaks with these narratives. Throughout much of her work, she argues that hope is a dangerous barrier to acting courageously in dark times. She rejects notions of progress, she is despairing of representative democracy, and she is not confident that freedom can be saved in the modern world

...

In her essay ‘On Humanity in Dark Times’, she writes: ‘In hope, the soul overleaps reality, as in fear it shrinks back from it.’ And her book The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) begins with a discussion of hope: ‘Desperate hope and desperate fear often seem closer to the centre of such events than balanced judgment and measured insight.’

Arendt’s most devastating account of hope appears in her essay ‘The Destruction of Six Million’ (1964) published by Jewish World. Arendt was asked to answer two questions. The first was why the world remained silent as Hitler slaughtered the Jewish people, and whether or not Nazism had its roots in European humanism. The second was about the sources of helplessness among the Jewish people.

To the first question, Arendt responded that ‘the world did not keep silent; but apart from not keeping silent, the world did nothing.’ People had the audacity to express feelings of horror, shock and indignation, while doing nothing. This was not a failure of European humanism, she argued, which was unprepared for the emergence of totalitarianism, but of European liberalism, socialism not excluded ... It was an ‘unwillingness to face realities’ and it was a desire ‘to escape into some fool’s paradise of firmly held ideological convictions when confronted with facts’.

...

Reflecting back on his imprisonment in Auschwitz Tadeusz Borowski’s wrote:ů

Never before in the history of mankind has hope been stronger than man, but never also has it done so much harm as it has in this war, in this concentration camp. We were never taught how to give up hope, and this is why today we perish in gas chambers.

...

It was holding on to hope, Arendt argued, that rendered so many helpless. It was hope that destroyed humanity by turning people away from the world in front of them. It was hope that prevented people from acting courageously in dark times.

...

Caught between fear and ‘feverish hope’, the inmates in the ghetto were paralysed. The truth of ‘resettlement’ and the world’s silence led to a kind of fatalism. Only when they gave up hope and let go of fear, Arendt argues, did they realise that ‘armed resistance was the only moral and political way out’.

For Arendt, the emergence of totalitarianism in the middle of the 20th century meant that one could no longer count on common sense or human decency, moral norms or ethical imperatives. The law mandated mass murder and could not be looked to for guidance on how to act.

...

An uncommon word, and certainly more feminine and clunkier-sounding than hope, natality possesses the ability to save humanity. Whereas hope is a passive desire for some future outcome, the faculty of action is ontologically rooted in the fact of natality. Breaking with the tradition of Western political thought, which centred death and mortality from Plato’s Republic through to Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), Arendt turns towards new beginnings, not to make any metaphysical argument about the nature of being, but in order to save the principle of humanity itself. Natality is the condition for continued human existence, it is the miracle of birth, it is the new beginning inherent in each birth that makes action possible, it is spontaneous and it is unpredictable. Natality means we always have the ability to break with the current situation and begin something new. But what that is cannot be said.

This election has forced a generational shift in German politics | Anke Hassel | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/30/election-generational-shift-german-politics

On climate change, the FDP favour more market-based instruments, which the Greens do not oppose. Both would agree that Germany’s best contribution towards solving the climate crisis would be to become a leader in climate-friendly technologies, provided by the highly successful German Mittelstand of small and medium-sized businesses and the country’s engineering base.

...

Austere fiscal policy and balanced budget rules will constrain public investment in innovation and necessary infrastructure. The three parties will have to come up with new ideas to mobilise public investment, either through an investment fund or through the reallocation of existing subsidies for new investment.

Market solutions for fighting climate change are likely to exacerbate social inequality and might drive up prices for mobility and housing. Germany fears popular discontent against climate policies if incomes are affected. Finding mechanisms to compensate lower-income households for the higher costs that climate policies will incur is a policy priority.

Beyond Supply and Demand: A Revolutionary New Concept of Sustainability
https://systemschangealliance.org/...upply-and-demand-a-revolutionary-new-concept-of-sustainability/

In both classical and Keynesian economics, the balance between the supply of a quantity of a good or service and the demand for it is determined by the price of this quantity. What is counted, on the supply side of the equation, are the production costs, which include labor, capital, energy and materials, the expectations of future prices and suppliers, and the technology and technological advances that are used in production. Production costs are determined by the relative availability or scarcity of the amount of material and energy resources which comprises these products. Yet there is no consideration of an ecological dimension. Even the rate at which people and their organizations may harvest or use a particular resource within its regenerative capacity is viewed as the production of an economic yield, not an ecological yield.

Conversely, the demand-side measures consumer income, tastes and preferences, prices of related goods and services, expectations about future prices and incomes, and the number of potential consumers. Rather than reflecting actual human need, demand is a measure of individual consumption at the point of sale. Only the price at which a person is willing to pay for something is reflected in demand, reflecting how much cash or credit a person has. What’s not measured is the individual’s accessibility to air, water, food, health, safety, shelter, security, love, belonging or inclusion — no subjective expression of need, and no social or ecological dimension.

...

Neither of these approaches to supply and demand —in which the quantity demanded by consumers or borrowers is directly balanced by the quantity that firms or banks wish to supply — reflect the constraints to the productive capacity of Earth’s resource base and the maximum size of a population which can be maintained indefinitely within an area.

As a result, planetary civilization has reached the point where these economic proxies for ecological balance have created an enormous misalignment. Human population is using resources food, water, energy and rare minerals faster than Nature can replenish them to meet human needs.

Our epistemology, our ideology and our accounting systems are to blame for this massive market failure. First, we must stop conceiving of the connection between resources and human needs as a ‘supply chain’. Instead, let’s reconsider the relationship of ecology with population.

...

The needs of a population for its resource support systems must be given a new empirical basis in policy. This begins with a little reorientation. What is presently on the supply-side as the extraction and production of resources is redefined as the self-organization of resources within the limits of the planet to sustainably regenerate those resources. And what is now on the demand side as a measure of income or purchasing capacity is redefined as the self-sufficiency of people in meeting their needs through their use of these resources

...

When supply becomes an ecological value and demand becomes a value of human need, ’build it and they will come’ is transformed into ‘demonstrate the need, and it will be met’ and the new dynamics of society as a living system begins.

Now, instead of a crude approximation for economic equilibrium, we have an actual measure of the cooperative activities of people using resources to meet their needs — the balance which an ecology can optimally ‘carry’ or sustain to meet the needs of its people.

This is biophysical economics — measuring the replenishment of both renewable and non-renewable resources and enabling society to manage them to sustain their yield for the human population. With this integrated accounting, we’ll generate an entirely new expression of sustainability, living and working together within the metabolism of society.

Greenland ice sheet reached tipping point 20 years ago, new study finds
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-greenland-ice-sheet-years

While the ice sheet's decline has been well-documented over the past two decades, this latest study, led by Michalea King of the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, found that widespread glacier retreat helped push the ice sheet from a balanced to an imbalanced state. This work suggests that even if the oceans and atmosphere were to stop warming today, the ice sheet will continue to lose more ice than it will gain.

In the decades leading up to the turn of the century, the ice sheet was in a state of relative equilibrium. The ice lost in a given year would be replenished by wintertime snowfall, and the sheet maintained a near-constant mass. But beginning around the year 2000, ice discharged through outlet glaciers—channels that flow outward to the sea—started to outpace annual snowfall that, in a balanced year, would replenish lost ice. The authors sifted through 40 years of satellite data, tracking outlet glacier velocity, thickness, and calving front position over time to determine the rate of ice loss. The shift they found represents a tipping point that is unlikely to be reversible in the near future. King told GlacierHub, "It's like a gear change… we've accelerated the drainage at the edge of the ice sheet, and now… we expect mass loss to be the new norm for the ice sheet in the near future."


https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-0001-2

We compare decadal variability in discharge and calving front position and find that increased glacier discharge was due almost entirely to the retreat of glacier fronts, rather than inland ice sheet processes, with a remarkably consistent speedup of 4–5% per km of retreat across the ice sheet. We show that widespread retreat between 2000 and 2005 resulted in a step-increase in discharge and a switch to a new dynamic state of sustained mass loss that would persist even under a decline in surface melt

This is South East Colorado near Springfield. Freshly broke virgin land around 1900. Zero fertilizer added and oats above the farmers head.

This is the power of a healthy soil structure and diverse balanced biology. Obviously We've degraded these lands to a sickening degree over the past 120 years.

We can't become complacent with our current production and soil health. The soils capacity to heal and improve is astounding as long as we humble ourselves enough to learn the ways of natures natural systems.

What if We Stopped Pretending the Climate Apocalypse Can Be Stopped? | The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending/amp

And then there’s the matter of hope. If your hope for the future depends on a wildly optimistic scenario, what will you do ten years from now, when the scenario becomes unworkable even in theory? Give up on the planet entirely? To borrow from the advice of financial planners, I might suggest a more balanced portfolio of hopes, some of them longer-term, most of them shorter. It’s fine to struggle against the constraints of human nature, hoping to mitigate the worst of what’s to come, but it’s just as important to fight smaller, more local battles that you have some realistic hope of winning. Keep doing the right thing for the planet, yes, but also keep trying to save what you love specifically—a community, an institution, a wild place, a species that’s in trouble—and take heart in your small successes. Any good thing you do now is arguably a hedge against the hotter future, but the really meaningful thing is that it’s good today. As long as you have something to love, you have something to hope for.
...
There may come a time, sooner than any of us likes to think, when the systems of industrial agriculture and global trade break down and homeless people outnumber people with homes. At that point, traditional local farming and strong communities will no longer just be liberal buzzwords. Kindness to neighbors and respect for the land—nurturing healthy soil, wisely managing water, caring for pollinators—will be essential in a crisis and in whatever society survives it.