[✔️] November 7, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Risk tipping points, UN's Six Tipping Points, Six tipping points, Wet Bulb Risk, Change now or die sooner, 2012 DTFM

[Richard Pauli]

/*November *//*7, 2023*/

/[ the United Nations warn of future risks//- //]/
*Risk tipping points*
The 2023 Interconnected Disaster Risks report analyses six 
interconnected risk tipping points, representing immediate and 
increasing risks across the world.
A risk tipping point is reached when the systems that we rely on for our 
lives and societies cannot buffer risks and stop functioning like we 
expect it to.
Today, we are moving close to the brink of multiple risk tipping points. 
Human actions are behind this rapid and fundamental change to the 
planet, driving us towards potential catastrophe.

Luckily, we are able to see the danger ahead of us. Changing our 
behaviours and priorities can shape a path towards a bright, sustainable 
and equitable future.
https://interconnectedrisks.org/

- -

/[ UN lists Six Tipping Points ]/
*2023 Executive Summary*
Humans often think of processes as being simple and predictable. When we 
need water, we turn on the tap and water comes out. However, we do not 
give much thought to where the water came from in the first place, and 
we are often unaware of the many underlying processes that occur before 
it reaches us. This leaves us with little understanding of the effect of 
our usage on others in the system, or the risk that one day the source 
of our water could be gone.

Systems are all around us and closely connected to us. Water systems, 
food systems, transport systems, information systems, ecosystems and 
others: our world is made up of systems where the individual parts 
interact with one another. Over time, human activities have made these 
systems increasingly complex, be it through global supply chains, 
communication networks, international trade and more. As these 
interconnections get stronger, they offer opportunities for global 
cooperation and support, but also expose us to greater risks and 
unpleasant surprises, particularly when our own actions threaten to 
damage a system.

When our life-sustaining systems, such as those for our water or food, 
deteriorate, it is typically not a simple and predictable process. A 
tower made of building blocks might remain standing at first if you 
remove one piece at a time, but instability slowly builds in until you 
remove one block too many and it topples over. Like the stack of blocks, 
when a certain threshold of instability is reached in a system, it might 
collapse or fundamentally change. We open the tap, and suddenly nothing 
comes out. This is called a tipping point, and tipping points can have 
irreversible, catastrophic impacts for people and the planet.

*Risk tipping points*
There are different kinds of tipping points. Climate change has 
so-called “climate tipping points”, specific thresholds after which 
unstoppable changes occur, influencing the global climate. When the 
increasing temperatures push vast systems around the world, like the 
Amazon rainforest or the Greenland Ice Sheet, past certain thresholds, 
they will enter a path towards collapse.

But tipping points are not always physical, and climate change is just 
one of the many drivers of risk. Many new risks emerge when and where 
our physical and natural worlds interconnect with human society. Some 
tipping points trigger abrupt changes in our life-sustaining systems 
that can shake the foundations of our societies. This is why the 2023 
edition of the Interconnected Disaster Risks report proposes a new 
category of tipping points: risk tipping points. A risk tipping point is 
the moment at which a given socioecological system is no longer able to 
buffer risks and provide its expected functions, after which the risk of 
catastrophic impacts to these systems increases substantially.

- -

    [ YouTube 9 mins ]
    *Interconnected Disaster Risks 2023: Risk Tipping Points - Human
    Interest Video - long version*
    United Nations University
      Oct 25, 2023
    If you are a rice farmer, one of the resources you need most for
    your rice paddies, is water. Much of that water will come from rain,
    rivers and canals, but when that is insufficient or not available,
    farmers tend to rely on groundwater. Globally, water taken from
    underground reservoirs supports 40 per cent of agriculture. But if
    we take out more water than what can naturally be replenished, the
    groundwater levels fall, and it becomes harder to reach over time.

    For farmers in the Punjab region of India, this is the harsh reality
    they face. They depend on groundwater from the Indo-Gangetic basin´s
    aquifer system, which spans across India, Pakistan, Nepal and
    Bangladesh. As this highly productive agricultural region is India´s
    food basket, the groundwater is being heavily used and depleted
    faster than it can replenish, resulting in consistently falling
    groundwater levels.

    Interconnected Disaster Risks is an annual science-based report from
    United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human
    Security (UNU-EHS). It takes a closer look at disasters happening
    around the world, their interconnections with each other and with
    human activities, and highlights solutions.

    This year’s edition, published on 25 October 2023, focuses on “risk
    tipping points”, points past which the systems we rely on stop
    functioning as we expect, substantially increasing the risk of
    catastrophic impacts. It analyses and warns about six impending risk
    tipping points, groundwater depletion being one of them.
    More information on risk tipping points as well as strategies to
    avert their worst impacts is available on the dedicated
    Interconnected Disaster Risks website: https://interconnectedrisks.org/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka5DRcucTWs

*Six Tipping Points*

    *Accelerating extinctions*
    A chain reaction to ecosystem collapse

    *Groundwater depletion*
    Draining our water, risking our food supply

    *Mountain glacier melting*
    Running on thin ice

    *Space debris*
    Losing our eyes in the sky

    *Unbearable heat*
    Living in the unliveable

    *Uninsurable future*
    With rising risks, insurance becomes unreachable

https://interconnectedrisks.org/summaries/2023-executive-summary



/[ study of risk to humans reveals our bodies are not so resilient  ]/
*Greatly enhanced risk to humans as a consequence of empirically 
determined lower moist heat stress tolerance*
Daniel J. Vecellio https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9431-0744 
dvecelli at gmu.edu, Qinqin Kong https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4593-3643, W. 
Larry Kenney https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1326-8175, and Matthew Huber 
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2771-9977Authors Info & Affiliations
Edited by Kerry Emanuel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New 
Harbor, ME...
October 9, 2023
120 (42) e2305427120
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2305427120
*Significance*
Increased heat and humidity potentially threaten people and societies. 
Here, we incorporate our laboratory-measured, physiologically based 
wet-bulb temperature thresholds across a range of air temperatures and 
relative humidities, to project future heat stress risk from 
bias-corrected climate model output. These vulnerability thresholds 
substantially increase the calculated risk of widespread potentially 
dangerous, uncompensable humid heat stress. Some of the most populated 
regions, typically lower-middle income countries in the moist tropics 
and subtropics, violate this threshold well before 3 °C of warming. 
Further global warming increases the extent of threshold crossing into 
drier regions, e.g., in North America and the Middle East. These 
differentiated patterns imply vastly different heat adaption strategies. 
Limiting warming to under 2 °C nearly eliminates this risk.

    *Abstract*
    As heatwaves become more frequent, intense, and longer-lasting due
    to climate change, the question of breaching thermal limits becomes
    pressing. A wet-bulb temperature (Tw) of 35 °C has been proposed as
    a theoretical upper limit on human abilities to biologically
    thermoregulate. But, recent—empirical—research using human subjects
    found a significantly lower maximum Tw at which thermoregulation is
    possible even with minimal metabolic activity. Projecting future
    exposure to this empirical critical environmental limit has not been
    done. Here, using this more accurate threshold and the latest
    coupled climate model results, we quantify exposure to dangerous,
    potentially lethal heat for future climates at various global
    warming levels. We find that humanity is more vulnerable to moist
    heat stress than previously proposed because of these lower thermal
    limits. Still, limiting warming to under 2 °C nearly eliminates
    exposure and risk of widespread uncompensable moist heatwaves as a
    sharp rise in exposure occurs at 3 °C of warming. Parts of the
    Middle East and the Indus River Valley experience brief exceedances
    with only 1.5 °C warming. More widespread, but brief, dangerous heat
    stress occurs in a +2 °C climate, including in eastern China and
    sub-Saharan Africa, while the US Midwest emerges as a moist heat
    stress hotspot in a +3 °C climate. In the future, moist heat
    extremes will lie outside the bounds of past human experience and
    beyond current heat mitigation strategies for billions of people.
    While some physiological adaptation from the thresholds described
    here is possible, additional behavioral, cultural, and technical
    adaptation will be required to maintain healthy lifestyles.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2305427120

- -

/[ explaining future heat hours and human heat stress - video ]/
*Billions of People at Risk from Wet Bulb Temperature’s Rendering Major 
Cities Uninhabitable*
Paul Beckwith
Nov 5, 2023
*Crucial Point:*

    Although the theoretical limit of the human body to tolerate heat
    and humidity is a wet bulb temperature of 35 C (with 100% humidity),
    practical empirical studies show that the limit for healthy, young,
    individuals is more like 30.6 C (with 100% humidity). Thus, our
    human body is nowhere near as resilient to heat and humidity as we
    previously thought.

Also, very bad is the fact that the elderly, the very young, people on 
medications like antidepressants, the obese, those with medical 
conditions, and people exercising outside, and exposed to sunlight, are 
much less resilient than those healthy, young individuals in the study, 
so the heat and humidity combination for them to collapse is even lower 
than 30.6 C with 100% humidity.

Not good.

The new study that I chat about is:
“Greatly enhanced risk to humans as a consequence of empirically 
determined lower moist heat stress tolerance”
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas...

Basically, this study used the empirical body resilience wet bulb 
numbers to see which regions of the planet will become uninhabitable first.

Climate models project warming and humidity conditions into the future 
for various warming levels, and show that billions of people will soon 
be exposed to temperature-humidity conditions not conducive to survival 
outside. They will have to stay indoors with air conditioning, unless 
they burrow underground or wear spacesuit like chill suits to be outside 
for any length of time.

You may ask: What is the world coming to?

I am trying to tell you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUT4hN9e5Ds



/[  change now or die sooner  ]/
*Scientists say only transformational change will avoid environmental 
tipping points*
Ahead of COP28, UN-backed scientists warn that to avoid six irreversible 
climatic and ecological changes, the root causes must be addressed.
By Catherine Early, China Dialogue
Nov. 5, 2023
The world is facing several environmental “tipping points” that are 
interrelated and could cause drastic changes to societies if 
unaddressed, scientists have said in a new report.

Published by the UN University Institute for Environment and Human 
Security (UNU EHS), “Interconnected Disaster Risks” is designed to 
highlight the interconnections between the risks the world faces. It 
underlines that when ecosystems, food systems and water systems 
deteriorate, instability can slowly build until a tipping point is 
reached, changing the system fundamentally or even causing it to collapse.

The report favours solutions that address the root causes of the six 
risks it highlights: unbearable heat, biodiversity extinctions, 
groundwater depletion, glacial melt, uninsurability and space debris.

These risks are all apparent already in some regions of the world. For 
example, more than 50 per cent of the world’s aquifers are losing water 
faster than it is being replaced. If water falls below the level that 
wells can access it, food production is put at risk. Saudi Arabia has 
passed this tipping point: in the mid-1990s, large-scale groundwater 
extraction allowed the country to become the world’s sixth-largest wheat 
exporter. Since 2017, however, it has relied on imports.

The report’s solutions include: slashing greenhouse gas emissions; 
creating a world without waste; respecting the needs of nature; 
nurturing “a global civic mindset”; and replacing growth based on 
relentless economic increase with one based on supporting human 
wellbeing while remaining within planetary boundaries.

*Melting ice*
Meltwater from glaciers and snow provides water for drinking, 
irrigation, hydropower and ecosystems. But, like groundwater 
overexraction, glacial retreat – when glaciers melt faster than snow can 
replenish them – is underway in many locations. Between 2000 and 2019, 
glaciers experienced a net loss of 267 billion tonnes of ice per year.

Glacial “peak water” – the point at which a glacier produces its maximum 
volume of water run-off due to melting – has already passed in the 
Andes, leaving communities with unreliable sources for drinking and 
irrigation. Peak water is expected within the next ten years for many 
small glaciers in Central Europe, western Canada and South America, 
according to the report.

Meanwhile, heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense. In the past 
two decades, extreme heat has been responsible for an average of 500,000 
excess deaths per year. This is disproportionally affecting people who 
are particularly vulnerable due to, for example, age, health conditions 
or profession.

The tipping point at which a human body can no longer survive is a 
“wet-bulb temperature” of 35C for more than six hours. This measurement 
combines temperature and humidity and is important because high humidity 
hinders the sweat evaporation needed to maintain a stable core body 
temperature.

Wet-bulb temperatures have already crossed the human survival threshold 
on occasion in the Persian Gulf and the Indus River Basin, researchers 
warn. By 2070, parts of South Asia and the Middle East are predicted to 
surpass it regularly. The report says that by 2100, more than 70 per 
cent of the global population may be exposed to deadly climate 
conditions for at least 20 days per year.

Events this year back up these findings. Record-breaking heat in the 
south-west of the US and Mexico, Southern Europe and China raised 
heat-related hospitalisations and caused multiple deaths. In July, more 
than 200 people in Mexico died in this way, while authorities issued 
heat warnings for large parts of the population in Italy and Spain and 
over 100 million people in the southern US.

*Uninsurable*
The researchers also outline how adapting to severe weather will become 
more challenging as locations or activities become uninsurable. 
Insurance premiums have climbed by as much as 57 per cent since 2015 in 
areas where extreme weather events are already common. Some insurance 
companies have limited the amount or type of damages they can cover, 
cancelled policies or left the market altogether.

If this trend reaches a tipping point, where insurance becomes 
unaffordable or unavailable, people will be left without an economic 
safety net if disaster strikes. This will increase socio-economic 
consequences, particularly for those least able to move to safer areas.

Extinctions are also at risk of a tipping point, the report warns. If a 
strongly connected species in a particular ecosystem disappears, this 
can trigger cascading extinctions of dependent species, eventually 
leading to ecosystem collapse.

For example, sea otters help balance Pacific kelp forests by feeding on 
sea urchins, but they are endangered due to overhunting. If sea otters 
are not there to protect kelp from urchins, more than 1,000 species, 
including sharks, turtles and whales, will lose the shelter, food and 
protection of these forests.

Transformational change
The report asserts that societies and governments are currently failing 
to deal with the root causes of these problems with the necessary 
transformational change. Instead, action is being delayed with temporary 
solutions that merely slow the journey to tipping points, rather than 
halting it.

For example, global heating has led to a huge rise in air conditioning 
installations across the world. The report’s lead author Dr Zita 
Sebesvari points out that while this is understandable, these cooling 
technologies are also increasing greenhouse gas emissions. She says the 
world could be slashing these emissions by using more efficient 
technology, for example.

Sebesvari says the upcoming UN climate talks at COP28 will provide an 
opportunity to deal with this: the United Arab Emirates presidency and 
the UN Environment Programme have been promoting a pledge to reduce 
emissions from cooling that they hope governments will sign up to.

Dr Jack O’Connor, lead author and senior expert at the UNU EHS, says the 
issues raised in “Interconnected Disaster Risks” are very much related 
to COP28: “If we look at these tipping points, continuing CO2 emissions 
is connected to driving up risk in many different areas, so addressing 
this will logically reduce our risk in many different areas.”

This article was originally published on China Dialogue under a Creative 
Commons license.
https://www.eco-business.com/news/scientists-say-only-transformational-change-will-avoid-environmental-tipping-points/


/[The news archive - Note the important acronym: "DTFM" = ( Do The 
Fuckin' Math)  ]/
/*November 7, 2012 */
November 7, 2012: The 350.org "Do the Math" tour commences in Seattle.
http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/11/08/bill-mckibben-kicks-do-math-tour-seattle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbdJRb7yaWY




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