It’s a Race: Will Human Extinction Result from Loss of Aerosol Masking or Ongoing Overheating?

 

The American Biology Teacher, 1 April 2001: Teaching & Learning the Scientific Method

The Guardian, 9 January 2023: Global pollinator losses causing 500,000 early deaths a year – study

Environmental Health Perspectives, 14 December 2022: Pollinator Deficits, Food Consumption, and Consequences for Human Health: A Modeling Study

 

AVID Audio Course Description (Conservation Biology)

 

 

Latest Peer-Reviewed Journal Article:

McPherson, Guy R., Beril Sirmack, and Ricardo Vinuesa. March 2022. Environmental thresholds for mass-extinction events. Results in Engineering (2022), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rineng.2022.100342.

Draft script:

I have repeatedly reported on the ability of either the aerosol masking effect or the ongoing overheating of Earth to cause our extinction. A frequent response is to claim I’m a paranoid conspiracy theorist, which indicates that the person making the claim has no idea about the source of my information or what constitutes a theory. If you’d like a simple explanation of rudimentary science terms, you can read my peer-reviewed paper from April 2001. It’s titled, Teaching & Learning the Scientific Method. It was published by TheAmerican Biology Teacher and it’s only four pages long. It includes references to several other relevant papers. I’ll include a link to the pdf at the blog post at guymcpherson dot com released coincident with this video. And now, I’ll turn to the evidence I use to support my dire conclusion, all of which was discovered by other scholars. As nearly as I can determine, there is no long-time effort to label these other scholars paranoid conspiracy theorists.

Back to the point of this short video: Human extinction via loss of aerosol masking or continued overheating of this planet. Of course, these are not the only means by which we are rabidly pursuing near-term extinction of humans and all other life on Earth. They represent merely my starting point and, for this video, the ending point.

 

The aerosol masking effect is probably the best-kept secret in climate science, which is why I keep hammering away at the topic. For a short overview, you can read the evidentiary papers and watch the video at the blog post titled, Means of Extinction: Loss of Aerosol Masking. It was posted on June 22nd, 2021 at guymcpherson dot com. The really brief version goes something like this: According to professor James Hansen, aerosols fall out of the atmosphere in about five days. Based on peer-reviewed papers and the scholars who produce them, we need only reduce industrial activity by about twenty percent to cause a stunningly rapid increase in temperature. We’ve already accomplished this task locally and regionally as industrial activity declined in various places around the globe as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately for all life on Earth, we have not yet managed to reduce industrial activity on a global scale sufficient to trigger rapid planetary heating.

 

We could be very close, though. As 2022 drew to a close, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the United States hit its lowest level in 38 years. That’s the lowest level since 1984, when Ronald Reagan was the president of this country and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was being created. It did not exist in this country until 1977 and it grew steadily until an emergency drawdown in 1991. It’s been marginally up and down during the last three decades. A recent, rapid decline began about two years ago, as you can see here.

Because the rate of environmental change is fundamental to the continued existence of all life on Earth, including for human animals, loss of industrial activity is very important. Because most paid climate scientists are educated in physics and other marginally relevant topics, the rate of environmental change has been deemed unimportant, albeit incorrectly. Actually, it’s extremely important, although you’d never know as much based on the work of paid climate scientists, media personalities, and government employees. These are the sources frequently used by misinformed people who send me email messages on a daily basis indicating that a certain temperature above the 1750 baseline will be required to cause our extinction. I want to be painstakingly clear because these email messages cause me great pain: It’s not the number that matters, it’s the rate of change.

Beyond aerosol masking, the other point I’m trying to make with this video—and with a few dozen previous videos and essays—is that the current and ongoing rate of planetary overheating is already driving us to extinction. Worse yet, we seem intent upon taking all life on Earth with us, into the permanent grave of extinction. The Buddha said a few thousand years ago, “all is impermanent.” What he meant was that all is impermanent except extinction. After all, contrary to the Buddha’s well-known expression about impermanence, extinction is forever.

Of course, we have created a video in this space, and the attendant blog post, to support the idea that the current rate of heating has already doomed us to extinction. That blog post, including the relevant video and the attendant peer-reviewed papers to support the idea, was posted at guymcpherson dot com on July 30th, 2021. It is titled Means of Extinction: “Death” by a Thousand Cuts. It includes mention of a synthetic paper produced by the European Strategy and Policy Analysis Systemin April 2019 indicating that a 1.5 C increase in global-average temperature above the 1750 baseline will be sufficient to drive us to extinction. That’s the 1750 baseline, not the 1850 or 1950 or 1980 or 2020 baselines broadcast by paid climate scientists who know better. The whole point of these dates is to avoidself-reinforcing feedback loops, many of which have already been triggered. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admitted as much with its IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, published on September 24th, 2019. As I have reported repeatedly in this space, based on the October 2020 book written by renowned professor Andrew Glikson, we have already surpassed the 2 C Rubicon we were told to avoid … by an economist, as if an economist would understand anything about climate change. Specifically, professor Glikson writes on page 31 of The Event Horizon, “During the Anthropocene, greenhouse gas forcing increased by more than 2 Watts per meter squared, equivalent to more than 2 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures …” In other words, a rapid global-average temperature increase of 1.5 degrees C will drive us to extinction, yet we are more than 2 degrees C above the pre-industrial temperature of this planet. Glikson’s book was published by Springer Publishing Company, one of the world’s leading research, educational, and professional publishers.

If you believe we have not yet entered the domain of dangerous climate change, you would be well-advised to study a few headlines. As one of my middle-school teachers used to say: “Feel around. You might find out you’re still in bed.”

 

There were, and are, record-setting heat waves around the world. They’ve hit the United States. They’ve hit Europe. Neither the number nor the magnitude of these events is declining. People are dying from them, and they’ve only just begun. One result of planetary overheating is the ongoing insect apocalypse, about which I have reported in this space several times. Results include half-a-million early human deaths each year based solely on the loss of pollinators. Links to this story in a corporate media outlet and a peer-reviewed publication can be found at guymcpherson dot com upon release of this video. In summary, we can only imagine how bad it will get, and how soon. I guarantee that hopes, wishes, and prayers aside, everything related to climate change will get worse and then, just when we believe it’s as bad as it can possibly get, it’ll get worse … much worse. I don’t relish the future dictated by abundant evidence, which is yet another reason to appreciate this moment.

In short, I could easily conclude that we’re done. Done, as in, it’s game over for the human species. As I’ve reported a few dozen times in this space, the ongoing rapid rate of human extinction translates to the follow-up extinction of all life on Earth. I’m no fan of human extinction, much less the extinction of all life on Earth. Indeed, I’ve made substantial sacrifices to prevent just such an outcome. These sacrifices have further served to have me labeled a paranoid conspiracy theorist, with only three incorrect words in the description: paranoid, conspiracy, and theorist.

Again, I could easily conclude that we’re done. But I won’t. I’ve no doubt we will continue, as a society, to run away from the sacrifices necessary to ensure habitat for our species. Notably, we won’t walk, we will run from the necessary sacrifices. As a society, it appears we cannot be bothered to make even minor sacrifices to ensure our continued survival on this most beautiful of planets.

 

My response to our societal indifference remains the same. I will continue to point out the evidence, discovered by others, regarding our near-term demise. I will continue to encourage the pursuit of excellence and the pursuit of love. I will continue to seek a way out of the mess in which we are embroiled. Please join me, if you find life worthy. If you don’t care about life, then my message is not for you.