Why is there almost no acknowledgement amongst world leaders that we are in a climate emergency?
It is well past time that engineers universally accepted the seriousness of anthropogenic global heating, declared a Climate Emergency, and committed unprecedented efforts to avoiding impending catastrophe.
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The science underpinning anthropogenic global heating is no longer in dispute.
The role that carbon dioxide molecules and other greenhouse gas molecules play in capturing infrared radiation coming outwards from the Earth (essentially becoming hot molecules) and then returning to their normal state, reradiating a pulse of infrared radiation in all directions, is undisputed.
The more greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere, the more heat is “captured” and forced back to Earth. This is known as the radiative forcing impact of greenhouse gases and has been known for more than 120 years. Over the past decade or so, we have refined the actual measurement of energy being returned to Earth, and it is now at about 1.33 watts a square metre (for every sq m of the earth). This might not sound much until you realise it equates to exploding almost a million Hiroshima sized nuclear bombs every day.
For every degree of warming, the atmosphere can hold 7 per cent more moisture. This is simple thermodynamics. The additional energy also causes the circulatory systems of the atmosphere and the oceans to change dramatically. We do know that rainfall, storms, cyclones, flooding, and droughts are becoming more intense. How many times do we hear the word “unprecedented” in the media.
We watch as ice caps melt, as the Arctic becomes water instead of ice, and we worry with dread what a stalled Gulf Stream will mean. Increasing temperatures are drying landscapes and causing bushfires to wipe out huge areas of nature and wildlife habitat, not to mention humans suffering and dying from heat stress.
The evidence is increasingly telling us that these negative changes are accelerating and that the world is indeed facing a very serious crisis. The IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports have been warning us for decades with terms like we are in a “code red” situation.
Why is there almost no acknowledgement amongst world leaders that we are in a climate emergency?
However, it is well known that all IPCC publications are vetted by the bureaucracies of all United Nations member countries before being released to the public. The result of this “vetting” means that IPCC reports tend not to portray the seriousness of the real situation. Climate scientists have been warning us for decades that the truth is worse than the IPCC reports tell us.
Why is there almost no acknowledgement amongst world leaders that we are in a climate emergency? The problem is another kind of “capture”. The fossil fuel industry comprises some of the wealthiest corporations in the world, either owned or run by the world’s wealthiest billionaires. They want to keep the industry going to generate more and more wealth for the very few. To ensure that the status quo remains in action for as long as possible enormous funds are appropriated by the industry to “capture” our political, financial, educational and social entities.
Disinformation is spread through so called think tanks and social media where anthropocentric global heating and its consequence, climate change, is often referred to as a great hoax.
Enormous donations to political parties ensure that politicians take no real action to restrict the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. The fossil fuel industry provides funding to universities for research and teaching that undermines the true science and even appoints (captures) university executives to their governing boards.
Even our professional associations are not immune from this insidious capture by vested fossil interests! Sponsorships of conferences, seminars, and events, and the funding of sporting teams are also used in attempts to capture the public over to the continuation of the coal, gas, and oil companies and their mining and burning of fossil energy sources.
The only way that I can see to challenge this “capture” is to call it out at every opportunity and to educate people to grasp the seriousness of the climate emergency.
Engineers should take the lead in declaring that the world is facing a climate emergency. We need to apply careful due diligence to ensure that, as a profession, we are never “captured” by vested interests.
We need to mobilise enough people to protest about the current failure to act on the climate emergency. To call for a very rapid transition away from fossil energy to renewable energy sources, more efficient energy usage, and to lessen the demand for ever increasing growth of consumption. We need to examine and find alternative economic constructs that can better manage the transition in a just and equitable way for all, and for nature.
