The Suicide of Industrial Civilisation.

Every single hour of every single day, every country on this planet - some, it is true, much more than others, but all to a degree - continue to pour carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, with a reckless insouciance bordering on insanity.

The result is that CO2 has reached 426.91 ppm as of June 2024, whereas methane (CH4) had reached 1,930.75 ppb (parts per billion) by March 2024. For comparison, the yearly mean CO2 in 1959 was 315.98 ppm, whereas the mean annual atmospheric level of CH4 in 1984 was 1,644.85 ppb.

Nitrous oxide (N2O), the third major greenhouse gas, reached 337.66 ppb in March 2024, compared to the annual mean atmospheric level of 316.36 ppb in 2001.

The International Maritime Organisation's 2020 regulation (IMO2020) reducing sulphur emissions from shipping  (by reducing the sulphur content of their fuel) has had an inadvertent effect on the climate, because these emissions are cooling aerosols, and have a global cooling effect, reducing global warming - as pointed out by Yuan et al (2024).

It is deeply ironic, not to say distressing, that a regulation made for the sake of improving public health and reducing air pollution should make global heating worse. This, however, is in line with what was predicted by Hansen et al (2023), who argued that reducing cooling aerosols, including particulates (PM10s and PM2.5s), desirable though that was from the perspective of public health, in terms of reduction in the morbidity and mortality rates from respiratory diseases, would double the impact of greenhouse gases.

This month, these fears appear to have been confirmed, as the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service reported that, on successive days, Sunday 21st and Monday 22nd July 2024, the daily global average temperature was a record in their dataset going back to 1940, the 21st being 17.09°C, the 22nd, 17.15°C.

June of this year marked the twelfth month that mean global temperatures had been 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era, Copernicus informed us, basing their reference point on the 1850-1900 period - somewhat late, in fact, historically speaking. McCulloch et al (2024) argue that global warming exceeds 1.5°C already, basing their claim on three centuries of sclerosponge thermometry.

Furthermore, Schneider et al (2023) point out that uncertainties in the dataset for global temperatures in the 1850-1900 time period, indicative of an over-estimate of Summer season land temperatures, make the Paris Agreement targets harder to achieve.

The current level of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere, 424.7 ppm on 24th July, according to CO2Earth, 424.59 ppm, same date, according to the Keeling Curve (Scripps Institute), is just below the maximum (425 ppm) reached in the Mid-Piacenzian Warm Period of the Pliocene Epoch, see de la Vega et al (2020).

In the absence of the cooling aerosols present in our atmosphere due to our industrial civilisation, the level of global warming at that time was 3°C above the pre-industrial Holocene norm, and sea-levels were 20 metres (over 65 feet) higher than they are today.

I have contributed to the literature on this subject (Blaber, 2023), for all the notice than anyone has taken. It is a matter of simple logic and common-sense: if we, as a species, go on fouling our own nest, we'll end up with no habitable nest. Climate change is only one aspect of this: the various different forms of pollution, environmental destruction and wholesale slaughter of animal and plant species is another, see, for example, Dirzo, Ceballos and Ehrlich (2022); Ceballos and Ehrlich (2023).

The inexorable and remorseless logic of capitalism, however, points in the direction of ever-increasing economic growth, ever-increasing consumption of resources and energy, ever-increasing production of waste and pollution, and an ever-increasing human population on a finite planet. Sooner, rather than later, the crunch will come - the train will hit the buffers, and disaster will ensue. I, for one, don't want to be here when it does.