COP28 was political theater. It seems to have been even more deeply corrupted by fossil fuel interests than the previous climate COPs. I think we need a different format for the conference of parties to address climate, one from which all lobbyists are excluded. Perhaps we could then seriously address the existential crisis that we face.
oh my goodness Rob this breaks my heart... as you lay down with such clarity all that I already know my body shattered like a broken glass reverberating to the 'right' pitch: the failings of our broken human system that has lost all connection to the living earth is only getting more broken.
...and oh my, oh my, the ending - my heart sings and is broken open all at the same time... can enough of us hear her calling?
Rob, beautiful. thanks for giving voice to Mother Earth. I'm afraid we humans will have to curtail our appetites, which doesn't seem likely, until there's nothing more to eat.
We won’t find the right solutions in our rationality of science. We feel confident to understand parts asile, but I start to guess that only when we understand how vulnerable we are, how interdependent, we will start to get the right answers.
Only our emotions intertwined will start to show os the real path.
Your poetry is helping to connect and find the way.
This is gorgeous--this potential "swan song" of the Earth. I keep thinking of how we would read these essays when it's all gone. And hopefully that is not the way this is going to go. Hopefully just the right people are listening.
Thank you Rob for writing this piece – for its clarity and quiet passion.
I wrote something similar, but focusing on the massive destruction of our ecosystems by industrial animal agriculture, over on my blog (#9) yesterday; the farming lobby was at COP28 in droves, of course. And the subsidisation of such an industry is mind-boggling; especially when we think that only 4% of all other-than-human mammals is/are wild; that is, free-living. (Include humans as also not free-living in any ontological sense, and that drives the figure down more.)
We write very differently, but I'd like to think that our perspectives are in tune, or at least complementary.
Thanks, Roselle. Yes, I think our perspective are very much in tune. I too "find myself paying extra-careful attention, almost urgent attention, to any creature I see nowadays, as if witnessing everything on the brink."
Thank you. I started reading this newsletter after reading your article in AcresUSA Magazine. This simple message -that we can't save the Earth without saving the actual physical, water-and-soil-and-plant Earth- needs to be said and re-said until everyone understands.
We've been disappointed by the scientists, leaders, and especially the "environmentalists" (like Sierra Club, Audubon, Union of Concerned Scientists, etc...) who have decided to advocate for industrial "renewable" energy as the only solution. They've looked at the massive environmental destruction required to mine, manufacture, and construct solar and wind farms and connecting transmission lines - and said yes, this is the price we have to pay to save the world.
However, there is hope within the current system. The push to save biodiversity, while sometimes sidelined, has significant support in the COP15 agreement. That agreement, and related work by TNFD, will have to be considered, often for the very first time, by every company and gov't with sustainability disclosures.
Also, the upcoming (in 2024) standards for including land use change in Scope 1/2/3 emissions reporting will explicitly tie real environmental destruction (clearing forests, bulldozing farmland) to the statistics that accountants love to worship, total tons of carbon emitted. Now developers (even of renewable energy) can't ignore the cost that continued industrialization has to the Earth's life-giving ability to absorb and store carbon. https://ghgprotocol.org/land-sector-and-removals-guidance
Hopefully, with all of these connections being made - and with your excellent blog posts! - people will finally start to give credit where credit is due, and give thanks to our beautiful, fragile planet for all it does for us.
My current focus has been linking the existing carbon standards to biodiversity. The water angle is interesting & important, but there aren't already standards that could motivate organizational change. Just trying to keep it simple.
Thanks, Conor, You make the point quite clearly. One interesting thing pointed out by the Russian physicist, Anastasia Makarieva, is that existing vegetation has increased it's carbon absorption rate due to increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Scientists didn't expect this because carbon is not a limiting nutrient, like nitrogen or phosphorous. But plant life has nonetheless responded to the disturbance by increasing carbon uptake, supporting the Gaia hypothesis, or what Makarieva calls Biotic Regulation.
I looked at a Carbon Brief analysis https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-land-use-drives-co2-emissions-around-the-world/ that shows forest harvesting results in a carbon sink when the trees grow back. The problem with this is that they are replanted with plantation trees, not naturally regrown forests. These plantations are burning everywhere because they're not true forests and cannot properly hydrate themselves. We're growing tinder boxes.
But as you point out, it's complex and still an important part of the picture, with organizations beginning to account for it, a good thing. Thanks again, Rob
I dream about solar on every roof top. Residential and industrial, schools and hospital tops, parking lots with solar as shading and plug ins for EVs - while you shop. White everywhere.
And basketball courts next to our schools. I mean everywhere! Lots of good paying jobs to get it done.
No more digging holes in Mother Earth. No more fracking for Methane (natural gas they told us, remember?) Forest fires carry the fracking toxins on the winds across the land, east to west.
Excellent article, thanks. Far too few people seem to be really taking into account the biodiversity crisis and far too often we see nature being destroyed for green infrastructure, so it's very good to read your perspective here.
COP28 was political theater. It seems to have been even more deeply corrupted by fossil fuel interests than the previous climate COPs. I think we need a different format for the conference of parties to address climate, one from which all lobbyists are excluded. Perhaps we could then seriously address the existential crisis that we face.
Are politicians not lobbyists in they the lobby for their own interests?
oh my goodness Rob this breaks my heart... as you lay down with such clarity all that I already know my body shattered like a broken glass reverberating to the 'right' pitch: the failings of our broken human system that has lost all connection to the living earth is only getting more broken.
...and oh my, oh my, the ending - my heart sings and is broken open all at the same time... can enough of us hear her calling?
Thank you, Greer. It is heartbreaking, isn't it?
Rob, beautiful. thanks for giving voice to Mother Earth. I'm afraid we humans will have to curtail our appetites, which doesn't seem likely, until there's nothing more to eat.
Thanks again Rob!
Your words and poetry shattering!
We won’t find the right solutions in our rationality of science. We feel confident to understand parts asile, but I start to guess that only when we understand how vulnerable we are, how interdependent, we will start to get the right answers.
Only our emotions intertwined will start to show os the real path.
Your poetry is helping to connect and find the way.
This is gorgeous--this potential "swan song" of the Earth. I keep thinking of how we would read these essays when it's all gone. And hopefully that is not the way this is going to go. Hopefully just the right people are listening.
Thanks, Didi. Let's do our best to make sure it's and opening anthem and not a swan song.
YES!
Thank you Rob for writing this piece – for its clarity and quiet passion.
I wrote something similar, but focusing on the massive destruction of our ecosystems by industrial animal agriculture, over on my blog (#9) yesterday; the farming lobby was at COP28 in droves, of course. And the subsidisation of such an industry is mind-boggling; especially when we think that only 4% of all other-than-human mammals is/are wild; that is, free-living. (Include humans as also not free-living in any ontological sense, and that drives the figure down more.)
We write very differently, but I'd like to think that our perspectives are in tune, or at least complementary.
Thanks, Roselle. Yes, I think our perspective are very much in tune. I too "find myself paying extra-careful attention, almost urgent attention, to any creature I see nowadays, as if witnessing everything on the brink."
It's good not to feel alone with this. Thank you, Rob.
I originally wrote 'almost pre-grieving', but my partner said that was far too downbeat, melodramatic and melancholic. But there is that sense.
Thank you. I started reading this newsletter after reading your article in AcresUSA Magazine. This simple message -that we can't save the Earth without saving the actual physical, water-and-soil-and-plant Earth- needs to be said and re-said until everyone understands.
We've been disappointed by the scientists, leaders, and especially the "environmentalists" (like Sierra Club, Audubon, Union of Concerned Scientists, etc...) who have decided to advocate for industrial "renewable" energy as the only solution. They've looked at the massive environmental destruction required to mine, manufacture, and construct solar and wind farms and connecting transmission lines - and said yes, this is the price we have to pay to save the world.
However, there is hope within the current system. The push to save biodiversity, while sometimes sidelined, has significant support in the COP15 agreement. That agreement, and related work by TNFD, will have to be considered, often for the very first time, by every company and gov't with sustainability disclosures.
Even the IPCC addresses the importance of land use - the latest AR6 still shows global photosynthesis absorbing net carbon every year, despite human land-use change continuing to destroy that literal lifeblood of our planet. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-global-carbon-cycle-boxes-are-carbon-pools-and-the-arrows-the-fluxes-between-them_fig2_255642401
Also, the upcoming (in 2024) standards for including land use change in Scope 1/2/3 emissions reporting will explicitly tie real environmental destruction (clearing forests, bulldozing farmland) to the statistics that accountants love to worship, total tons of carbon emitted. Now developers (even of renewable energy) can't ignore the cost that continued industrialization has to the Earth's life-giving ability to absorb and store carbon. https://ghgprotocol.org/land-sector-and-removals-guidance
Hopefully, with all of these connections being made - and with your excellent blog posts! - people will finally start to give credit where credit is due, and give thanks to our beautiful, fragile planet for all it does for us.
Best,
Conor
Thank you, Conor. Great points and thanks for the links. The IPCC seems to be coming around in terms of carbon, but they still seem to underestimate the cooling and climate-regulating power of vegetation. https://theclimateaccordingtolife.substack.com/p/the-earth-is-not-a-person-sleeping
Agreed! I love that essay and that metaphor.
My current focus has been linking the existing carbon standards to biodiversity. The water angle is interesting & important, but there aren't already standards that could motivate organizational change. Just trying to keep it simple.
For example, I just wrote about how Development contributes to green house gas emissions and must be counted in GHG reporting. Let me know what you think? http://weltanschuuang.blogspot.com/2024/01/land-development-releases-greenhouse.html
Thanks, Conor, You make the point quite clearly. One interesting thing pointed out by the Russian physicist, Anastasia Makarieva, is that existing vegetation has increased it's carbon absorption rate due to increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Scientists didn't expect this because carbon is not a limiting nutrient, like nitrogen or phosphorous. But plant life has nonetheless responded to the disturbance by increasing carbon uptake, supporting the Gaia hypothesis, or what Makarieva calls Biotic Regulation.
I looked at a Carbon Brief analysis https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-land-use-drives-co2-emissions-around-the-world/ that shows forest harvesting results in a carbon sink when the trees grow back. The problem with this is that they are replanted with plantation trees, not naturally regrown forests. These plantations are burning everywhere because they're not true forests and cannot properly hydrate themselves. We're growing tinder boxes.
But as you point out, it's complex and still an important part of the picture, with organizations beginning to account for it, a good thing. Thanks again, Rob
288 K w GHE – 255 K wo GHE = 33 C cooler, -18 C, Earth.
Just flat wrong.
YouTube: Greenhouse Effect Theory Goes Kerbluey
GHE balance calculated 396 up/333 “back”/2nd net 63 unreal perpetual “extra” energy loop.
Just flat wrong.
YouTube: Atmospheric Heat Balances That Don't
Earth radiating 396 W/m^2 LWIR as a 16 C BB.
Just flat wrong.
Search: “Bruges group kerbluey”
GHE
Just flat wrong.
CAGW
Just flat wrong.
Earth is cooler with the atmosphere, water vapor, 30% albedo not warmer.
Ubiquitous GHE heat balance graphics use bad math& badder physics.
The kinetic heat transfer modes of the contiguous atmospheric molecules render the “extra” GHE LWIR energy of a BB surface impossible.
Consensus science has a well documented history of being wrong & abusing those who dared to challenge it.
GHE & CAGW are wrong so alarmists resort to fear mongering, lies, lawsuits, censorship & violence.
I dream about solar on every roof top. Residential and industrial, schools and hospital tops, parking lots with solar as shading and plug ins for EVs - while you shop. White everywhere.
Roofs and streets, sidewalks
And basketball courts next to our schools. I mean everywhere! Lots of good paying jobs to get it done.
No more digging holes in Mother Earth. No more fracking for Methane (natural gas they told us, remember?) Forest fires carry the fracking toxins on the winds across the land, east to west.
STOP ! and breathe
Excellent article, thanks. Far too few people seem to be really taking into account the biodiversity crisis and far too often we see nature being destroyed for green infrastructure, so it's very good to read your perspective here.