Climate Change - Australia

[Dimmesdale]

a friend wrote this up:

The Global Carbon Project has estimated that the Australian bushfires have emitted 400 million tons of carbon over four months. Meanwhile, Australia's total carbon emissions from man-made sources in 2019 were roughly 540 million tons over twelve months.

Normally, Australia's annual bushfires are considered carbon-neutral, because the carbon emitted by these fires is re-absorbed by new grassland and forest growth in its wake. The current bushfires, however, are decimating forestland at such an unprecedented rate that it strips the Australian biosphere's potency as a carbon sink.

By my own reckoning, this may be the first major climate-change-caused disaster to emit greenhouse gas faster than the man-made sources that caused the disaster in the first place. The positive feedback effects of climate change are now more powerful than our own ongoing contributions to the problem.

If humanity's global carbon footprint abruptly went to zero right now, greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere would continue to accelerate without us, culminating in a climate inhospitable for human life. The extinction of the human race is sealed unless we can remove carbon from the atmosphere fast enough to outpace natural sources of emissions, including wildfires and permafrost melt. Since our forests are being stripped away, this challenge is increasingly formidable.

What little remains of human history will look back on the Australian wildfire as the tipping point of the apocalypse.

When people talk about climate disasters, they usually focus on the immediate casualties. Dozens of people dead, thousands of people displaced, billions of animals burnt alive. These losses are heartbreaking but, with respect for those suffering the direct effects of the Australian fires, the scariest part of this picture is not the human element--- it's the smoke. Every house that burns becomes another ton of carbon gas that will linger to usher in worse disasters to come. The problem is self-perpetuating, self-accelerating, and expanding, and we are not ready for it.

[Menotu]

a friend wrote this up:

The Global Carbon Project has estimated that the Australian bushfires have emitted 400 million tons of carbon over four months. Meanwhile, Australia's total carbon emissions from man-made sources in 2019 were roughly 540 million tons over twelve months.

Normally, Australia's annual bushfires are considered carbon-neutral, because the carbon emitted by these fires is re-absorbed by new grassland and forest growth in its wake. The current bushfires, however, are decimating forestland at such an unprecedented rate that it strips the Australian biosphere's potency as a carbon sink.

By my own reckoning, this may be the first major climate-change-caused disaster to emit greenhouse gas faster than the man-made sources that caused the disaster in the first place. The positive feedback effects of climate change are now more powerful than our own ongoing contributions to the problem.

If humanity's global carbon footprint abruptly went to zero right now, greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere would continue to accelerate without us, culminating in a climate inhospitable for human life. The extinction of the human race is sealed unless we can remove carbon from the atmosphere fast enough to outpace natural sources of emissions, including wildfires and permafrost melt. Since our forests are being stripped away, this challenge is increasingly formidable.

What little remains of human history will look back on the Australian wildfire as the tipping point of the apocalypse.

When people talk about climate disasters, they usually focus on the immediate casualties. Dozens of people dead, thousands of people displaced, billions of animals burnt alive. These losses are heartbreaking but, with respect for those suffering the direct effects of the Australian fires, the scariest part of this picture is not the human element--- it's the smoke. Every house that burns becomes another ton of carbon gas that will linger to usher in worse disasters to come. The problem is self-perpetuating, self-accelerating, and expanding, and we are not ready for it.

Humanity isn't ready for most everything that happens on this planet. Humanity takes a whole lot more than it gives. Sooner or later, that's gonna' come back and bite us in the bum