It Will Be Neither Easy Nor Painless But It's Our Last Best Chance

 


It takes a Blitz. Modern governments are incredibly lethargic, even shiftless. Their societies keep falling further behind, unresponsive to looming and dire threats.  We don't mind so we don't matter. A little greenwashing from time to time and - problem solved.

Germany's climate minister illustrates the point and what can be done about it. In its coalition government, the Greens hold the climate portfolio occupied by Robert Habeck who is trying to shake things up on his country's road to carbon zero.

Introducing a broad outline of his ambitious plans to the public for the first time since entering government as part of a three-way coalition last month, the Green party’s Robert Habeck called for a threefold increase in the speed with which carbon dioxide emissions are reduced, arguing Germany faced a race against time and required a “massive national debate” to achieve the goals set out by his ministry. He said the government faced an uphill task to win many people over to the idea of a transition.

“It is a large political task, but one that of course also offers an enormous chance,” he said, adding that it was “mightily ambitious” and would require the entire country to engage in “fresh thinking”.

Habeck warned Germany was currently “dramatically behind” in its aim to achieve a goal for 80% of energy to come from renewable sources by 2030, as well as for a 65% reduction in greenhouse gases compared with 1990 levels, and to become climate neutral by 2045. Currently about 42% of energy in Germany comes from renewables.

Last week it was announced that, globally, the hottest seven years on record were the last seven years. That's terrestrial heat. Now the other shoe has dropped. Ocean temperatures hit a record high last year, the sixth consecutive record year.

Last year saw a heat record for the top 2,000 meters of all oceans around the world, despite an ongoing La Niña event, a periodic climatic feature that cools waters in the Pacific. The 2021 record tops a stretch of modern record-keeping that goes back to 1955. The second hottest year for oceans was 2020, while the third hottest was 2019.

Oceanic heating differs from atmospheric heating. Think of the ocean as a giant heat sponge.  The heat is in the oceans but not necessarily forever. That stored heat energy can be returned to the atmosphere from the ocean depths. It's the "conservation of energy" thing. Changing currents and change in prevailing winds can cause that heat energy to return to the surface where it can be returned to our already overheated atmosphere.

So, what's a little extra heat from the oceans? Look at it this way. It's not "little." The oceans, which cover 70 per cent of Earth's surface are absorbing 90 per cent of global heating.  The heat energy that is fueling our atmospheric rivers, floods and droughts, severe storm events of increasing intensity, duration and frequency, the wildfires that now sweep our forests nearly year round - all that is from the 10 per cent the oceans don't absorb.

The amount of heat soaked up by the oceans is enormous. Last year, the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean, where most of the warming occurs, absorbed 14 more zettajoules (a unit of electrical energy equal to one sextillion joules) than it did in 2020. This amount of extra energy is 145 times greater than the world’s entire electricity generation which, by comparison, is about half of a zettajoule.

Hey, that's an eye-opener, isn't it? Does it make you wish your government was taking this extinction event a bit more seriously? Do you think it's time to stop building pipelines and focus instead on far more important things?




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